Episode 110 - Thoughts Become Things

William James - The godfather American psychology. An interesting chap, by all accounts...

The Thursday Thesis  - 02/08/2018

William James – the doyenne of 20th Century American psychology – famously remarked that “The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.”

Author and self-help guru Earl Nightingale added that “we become what we think about, most  of the time”.

Both of these things are true – but there is cautionary note to be sounded, perhaps it’s the chime of an alarm bell.

The popular film The Secret even spends 87 screen minutes labouring the point....

But here’s the thing - your dominant thoughts are not necessarily the ones that you are aware of.

There are two levels of thought – the conscious thoughts that you are aware of, and the sub-conscious thoughts which exist just below the threshold of your awareness.

Managing your conscious thoughts and your state is possible, given practice and a structure to build a desired condition or response to circumstances or events.

Your subconscious thoughts are altogether trickier little buggers, though – because you can’t manage what you are not aware of. And since these thoughts are running in the background of your mind at all times, they assert dominance – even over the carefully constructed responses and states held in the conscious mind.

Subconscious thoughts run the machinery of your life – rather like Windows or Mac OS run your computer: everything else runs on top of the operating system, and the operating system is effectively invisible whilst we are busy running our chosen programs.

The good news is that our habitual use of our chosen thought programs will eventually affect and even over-write our subconscious thoughts, upgrading our operating system.
How cool is that?

We can, in effect, programme our own neck-top computer!

And if we don’t run the mental software WE want in our own minds, we will unquestioningly run whatever someone else install in our heads – be it society, media, our peers or our families – regardless of whether those programs help or hurt us.

When you’re watching or listening to the daily torrent of dysfunction, cruelty, misery, hate, fear and pessimism that is the mainstream of modern life, just pause and ask yourself one simple question:
“Is this helping me or is this hurting me?”

You already know the answer, don’t you?

Turn off the TV news, the social media updates, the moronic radio phone-ins and begin , today, to focus on what does good for you instead, what does good for the people you love, the friends you have and the new friends you haven’t yet said “Hello” to.

What takes you forward, fills you with joy and hope?

What one thing, if you began today and did it every day, would transform your life for the better, for ever?

Begin to think about, and then do, that one thing - because everything begins with a single thought...

© Neil Cowmeadow 2018