KS Muralidharan
The simplest things in life are sometimes the most complicated; what is most obvious is the most misunderstood.
Take thoughts. Our daily life is full of thoughts — about 60,000 of them in a single day! So what are these thoughts actually? How do they come to us? How do we respond to it? What about negative thoughts? How do we control them? How can we think more positive thoughts? How can we change our thoughts? Let us examine this in greater depth.
Where Thoughts come from
Human beings are thinking creatures. Every moment of every day our minds are working to make sense of what we see and experience. The faculty of thinking is Man’s main source of survival. No one knows exactly where the thought comes from, but perhaps it would not be incorrect to assume that it comes from being alive, from the same place where the heart beat comes from.
What Are They Like
Thoughts are like self-talk, like a special mental command to which the brain responds automatically. Every thought we think, conscious or unconscious, is translated into an electrical impulse which in turn directs the control centres in our brain to electrically and chemically affect and control every motion, every feeling, every action, throughout every moment of every day of our lives.
Obviously, not all the thoughts in our mind come to us on our own. A lot of it is “programmed” by the kind of environment and the people around us, viz. parents, teachers, elders, friends, our immediate society, the culture of the times, etc. These programmed thoughts have a deep influence on how we think. We also know that most of these “programmed thoughts” are either negative thoughts by their nature, or lead to negative thinking in us.
Behavioral scientists are unanimous in their view that only a small part of our life’s programs work for us, i.e. give us a sense of positive self-belief.
Re-thinking Your Thoughts
Suppose your mind has 80% negative thoughts and 20% positive thoughts. This is by no means an unreasonable estimate, for research findings on how the mind works, show this to be true.
Now, suppose you replace the above with a new program of positive thoughts that work for you. Your life will be magically transformed! The barriers that seemed like mountains will vanish and the shackles that chained you will disappear, almost like magic.
Know why? Because the new program of positive thoughts will dissolve all the self-doubts and disbeliefs you had, changing the way you view what you can.
Is this possible? Can we really replace our old program of thoughts which are predominantly negative, with a new program of thoughts that are predominantly positive? Acclaimed psychologist Shad Helmstetter says in What to Say when You Talk to Your Self, “It makes no difference what you have thought or what you have done in the past. From this day on, you can, if you choose change a little to gain a lot.”
Change Your Thoughts
Change your thoughts and you change your world, says Norman Vincent Peale. It is a profound truth evident to everyone. We become what we think all day long. Start the day feeling morose and irritable, and you stay that way throughout the day. On the other hand, begin the day full of joy and your day will be joyous throughout.
This is what Shakespeare was referring to when he wrote, “There is nothing good or bad in this world, but thinking makes it so.” It is not what is in the world that determines the quality of life, it is how you choose to process your world in your thoughts.
Think Wrong, Get It Wrong
Life is full of ironies. For example, if someone comes up to you and says if you think negative, you can expect positive results, you would dismiss the person as insane. But many of us are guilty of such insane thinking, knowingly or unknowingly.
We accept that our mind has a predominance of negative thoughts. We do not make any special effort to change our thinking. And yet we expect to realize our dreams, fulfill our aspirations in life!
Many of us blame our circumstances for our defeat, despair and disappointments. But we should stop playing the blame game. If we think, we can. If we want, we can reprogram, we can rewire our thoughts, we can make them to work for us, and stop them from working against us, both at the conscious level and the unconscious level.
But this cannot happen in a vacuum. To change the way you think, you have to change the way you talk to yourself. And here, visualization helps.
Power of Visualization
The power of visualization can be of great help in this life-changing endeavor. Visualize yourself like you were standing behind a giant wall. That wall stands on the strength of the thousands and thousands of negative thoughts, self-doubts and destructive disbeliefs, you harbor in your mind. Ahead of the wall lies a great, shining future where all your dreams come true. How do we break out of this wall? By changing the way you think. Bombard the Wall with positive thoughts, and it will crumble of itself. Because it derives its strength from its weakness.
The power of visualization holds many delightful secrets within it for us to discover. For instance, everything in life is created twice. First we visualize it in our mind, and then create it. Any invention is first created in the mind, and only then it manifests in the outside world. Many great scientists and achievers in various other fields have acknowledged that this power of visualization has worked wonders for them. True, but they had something else going for them — a control over their thoughts.
(To be continued)