Because of your self-concept, you become what you think about most of the time. Your dominant thoughts and aspirations become your reality. The things you think about, and the way you think about them, determine your levels of health, wealth and happiness in every area of your life. You can tell how much you really want anything by how willing you are to discipline your thinking in sucha way that you keep your mind on only the things you want, and off of the things you donot want.
You have created your life today by all of your previous thinking.You are where you are and what you are because of yourself.You can change your future at any time by taking control of your conscious mind from this point forward. You can make your life into something wonderful— an experience of freedom, joy, health, happiness and prosperity —simply by deciding to do so, and by refusing to entertain any contradictory thoughts at the same time. It is you can control.
Because of the nature of your multidimensional mind, you can rewrite your master program by deliberately bombarding your mind with a series of messages, framed in different ways and coming from several directions. If you wanted to become physically fit,you would do exercises that engaged your whole body. If you want to become mentally fit, positive and healthy, you ensure that the messages coming into your conscious mind are consistent with the ideal life you want to live.
This change in the person you are, so you can enjoy the life you really want, is not easy. It has taken you your whole life to get to where you are today, with your current state of mind. It will take considerable effort on your part to change. Fortunately, Brian Tracy assures us that it is worth it, and the results you get will be both rapid and out of all proportion to the effort you put in.
HOMEOSTATIS
To achieve different results, you must become a different person. You must change your goals and ideals for yourself and develop a new self-image. By the Law of Correspondence, your outer world will reflect your inner world. You must become a new person on the inside to permanently experience the good you desire on the outside.
The first and for most people the most difficult obstacle you will face is within yourself. It is your unconscious striving to remain consistent with what you have said and done in the past that holds you back.
This “homeostatic impulse” is another term for your COMFORT ZONE. It is your unconscious tendency to be drawn irresistibly toward doing what you have always done. “This inability to break free of the tentacles of the past is the reason most people accomplish far less than they are capable of and remain unfulfilled and dissatisfied for most of their lives.”
Homeostasis is neither good nor bad. It is a natural mechanism built into you as part of your “standard equipment” to enable youto function automatically in a great number of areas. This mechanism keeps your body at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. It maintains chemical balance in your billions of cells and governs your autonomic nervous system. It is indispensable to the proper physical functioning of your body.
Whenever you think, say or do something contrary to your current habits, your homeostatic impulse attempts to pull you back into your comfort zone by making you feel uncomfortable and uneasy. Because you always move from discomfort toward comfort,you tend to move back toward what you are comfortable doing and move away from things that are new and challenging.
It is vital that you be aware of this homeostatic mechanism. It is nature’s way of keeping you consistent with the way you have been in the past. But all growth and progress requires you to move out of your comfort zone in the direction of something bigger and better.Greater success and happiness are only possible for you when you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable during the process of creating a new comfort zone at a higher level of effectiveness.
PSYCHOSCLEROSIS
The second major obstacle to change, according to Tracy, is a “hardening of the attitudes.”This is rooted in fear, as is much of the homeostatic impulse.‘Psychosclerosis’is your natural tendency to fall in love with your own ideas, and then to vigorously defend them against anything new.
The opposite of ‘psychosclerosis’ is flexibility, the willingness to consider other points of view, other ideas, with the very real possibility that you could be wrong.
This mental flexibility is the mark of the superior person. The very act of considering all options in a particular situation enables you to see much more of what is possible for you. Instead of using your intelligence to find fault with alternative approaches, you suspend judgment long enough to see if you cannot find something beneficial in a different idea, or in a new way of doing things.
This approach is essential in mental programming, in changing your mind for the better. A major reason people fail to move forward in life is that they become too rigid and inflexible in their ideas, especially in their ideas about themselves and what is possible for them. They then dwell on all the reasons why something wouldNOTwork for them, rather than why it would. “They act as their own prosecuting attorneys, building the case against themselves, andyou as well, if you let them.”
A major turning point in your thinking comes when you change your language from “whether” to “how.” When you start thinking about how you are going to accomplish something you want, and you simultaneously refuse to consider whether it is possible or not,your entire mentality begins to change. You do get what you think about most of the time, and if you continually think in terms of how you can achieve it, and the specific actions you can take to move toward it, you are much more likely to be successful in the end.
THE POWER OF SUGGESTION
Tracy reiterates that second only to the power of love in determining how you think and feel is the power of suggestion. “Your multidimensional mind is affected by everything that is going on around and within you.Your suggestive environment has an immense impact on everything you become and on everything that happens to you.” Any change in your physical, mental or emotional environment can change the way you think, feel and act in moments, and thereby change your results.
You are immediately influenced by changes in temperature or noise level. You are instantly affected by conversations or confrontations with other people. One unkind remark can put you off for the whole day. One bit of good news can make you happy and cheerful for hours.
Unfortunately, unless you control them carefully, most of the suggestions in your environment will tend to be negative. Theradio, television and newspapers are full of “negative sensationalism.”Most conversations are filled with fault-finding, complaining and condemning. Most people have developed the habit of “it is awful” thinking and talking. Their conversations are negative and overly critical.
The key to your mental programming is for you to take systematic and purposeful control of your suggestive environment. It is for you to create a mental world that is predominantly positive and consistent with the person you want to be and the life you want to live. Controlling your suggestive environment requires that you decide the ingredients of your “mental diet,” for the indefinite future.
BY CAPTAIN SAM ADDAIH
RTD.
