Mind Matters

When you were born you came into this life with a marvelous gift – your mind. With it came the awesome power to use it any way you wish in making whatever choices you desire to make. You actually were given the ability to create your life right from your thoughts, and the experiences you experience come directly from your conscious and unconscious thoughts. Your human mind is an incredible gift that separates you from the animal kingdom!

Your mind is composed of two parts: conscious and unconscious. Your conscious mind makes up only 10-15% of all your mental power while your subconscious mind makes up 85-90%. The conscious mind is all about reasoning and analytical power with logical explanations whereas the subconscious mind stores the patterns and beliefs you hold onto, which in turn propitiate the behavior you subsequently display. So you can see that your unconscious mind is the largest contributor in creating your life. Compare your mind to a computer. Data is entered and stored, and these programs give you the information to live your life according to what has been placed in your mind’s memory bank.

However, if you look at your life right now, there may be some parts of it you’d like to change. Then change your thoughts and you can change your life! Easier said than done, right? As human beings we have been programmed from fear primarily, so often do not understand the power we have right in our mind. Most of what has been put there is stored in the unconscious – all those fear-based and limiting programs. There is tremendous power in your mind and although it may not seem easy, programs can be deleted and new ones added. Let me share some examples of just how powerful your mind is.

In recent months there have been several incidents that reached the news due to their spectacular results – those of people mustering enough strength to actually lift a car off an individual trapped beneath it. Sounds impossible perhaps, yet video footage was shown of the actual happening to prove its authenticity. The minds of the individuals who achieved this amazing feat were focused on lifting the car, regardless of the odds against enough strength to do it, because they wanted to save the trapped person’s life. Understand this, their strength was already within them, but it was their mind focused on what they needed to do that actually pulled it off with the desired results. Pretty incredible to my thinking, but a glorious example of just how powerful the human mind is.

We are in a continuous dialogue with ourselves from the moment we awaken every morning until we drift off to sleep every night, and our thoughts continue even as we sleep with whatever was last on our mind. Our self-talk can be positive and therefore have a positive effect on our life, or it can be negative and thus give us negative results. Remember this gem: If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you are right! So whatever is on your mind 24/7 is what you will create in your life.

Think about this for a moment, something you’ve probably heard all your life – whatever you sow you reap. If you plant oranges in your orchard, you will reap a harvest of oranges. But if you plant squash, you cannot ever have a harvest of oranges; it is just not possible. So it is in your life. If you continually sow seeds of negativity and fear, worrying about this and that, doubting that good things can show up for you, you will never reap a harvest of wonderful happenings in your life; it just is not possible. Of course, even when you plant oranges in preparation for a plentiful crop of delicious oranges, you will have to care for the orange trees and tend to obstacles that will undoubtedly appear: fending off insects, watering when dry weather, protecting when the temperatures become too cold, and fertilizing with the nutrients needed to produce a bountiful crop. If you sit around worrying about what might happen but never take a step to protect and nurture the trees, your harvest will not yield what you desire. And even if you still take the necessary steps to protect and nurture the trees, what will any negative thinking do to you personally? I can guarantee it won’t be something positive.

Dr. Masaru Emoto performed an experiment with his students some years ago to prove the power of the mind, all documented in his book entitled “The Message of Water.” We’ve talked about energy many times previously, but let’s reiterate the fact that everything in the universe is composed of energy, everything! It is the energetic vibration of living things that allows the flow of positive or negative energy to move throughout the universe, picking up more of the same energy; this includes our thoughts, every one of them. So positive thoughts based from love can only grab onto more loving thought-energy as they move throughout the universe, and negative thoughts formed from fear can only latch onto more fear-based thought-energy as they travel throughout the world.

In one experiment, Dr. Emoto had his students write the word love on the bottom of a bottle of water and the word hate on the bottom of another bottle of water. As they put them on the bottom of the bottles, he instructed them to send the feeling with the thought of what each one meant. Then the bottles of water were placed in a freezer to see what kind of crystal forms would develop. To everyone’s amazement, the bottles with the word love on the bottom were symmetrical, clear and beautifully formed, but the one with hate on the bottom was jagged and cloudy, not beautiful at all. You might wonder how this could be since the word wasn’t spoken and nothing seemed active as the water froze.

Obviously, the example just shared gives you an amazing representation of just how powerful a mere thought actually is, being that it is pure energy, and feeling it makes it real. But just in case you still doubt that your mind is so powerful it can produce whatever reality it has been convinced to create, here are yet some other examples of its power.

Over and over there have been illustrations of a powerful mind with the “placebo effect.” In these control group studies, people are divided into two groups; one group receives a particular drug and another group receives a placebo. In countless cases, the ones who received the placebo actually had better results than those taking the prescribed drug, even when stabbing pain was present. One astounding study I reviewed, documented that when administering chemotherapy to a control group and a placebo to the other half of the group, those given the placebo actually lost their hair! This shows the power of the mind when the mind has been convinced of a particular outcome!

In a long-term study conducted by a university about optimism versus pessimism, it was documented that the pessimists died before the optimists, and that those who were in the top 25% of being pessimistic had the highest death rate. Another study that lasted for 10 years on elderly people, documented that those who thought they were actually old and elderly had a significantly higher death rate than those who thought of themselves as middle-aged or simply mature. Pretty amazing, right?

Let’s talk a minute about your health. In the book, “Love, Medicine and Miracles,” Bernie S. Siegal, M.D., states this: “Many of the mind’s effects are achieved directly on the body’s tissues without any awareness on our part. The body responds to the mind’s messages whether conscious or unconscious.” If you awaken in the morning expecting to be tired or dreading the day ahead, what do you think is going to show up for you? Exactly…you’ll be tired and probably less productive throughout the day. Any thought related to your health has an impact on every cell in your body. Your cells are alive and composed of energy so will relate to whatever energy you are putting out with your thoughts. This is your mental diet . There have been multiple miraculous healings from even life-threatening illnesses that have been documented throughout history. Sure, prayer has great power, but there has to be a belief that the prayer has power in order for healing to occur, (or the prayer wouldn’t be said in the first place) whether it be your thoughts or someone elses thoughts on your behalf.

But consider this aspect as well. It doesn’t mean that you can disregard knowledge and insights about what is good and healthy for you and what isn’t. For example, we’ve been told for some time now that eating foods with trans fat will clog arteries and can lead to cardiovascular disease. While it may be possible to use your mind to overcome any ill effects of eating foods containing trans fats, it is not likely this will happen. If you didn’t use your mind positively with the knowledge you had, but instead chose to ignore the scientific facts about trans fat ingestion and continued eating it because you liked it, you are allowing your ego to have control rather than your spirit. Your ego often leads you in the wrong direction which renders a negative outcome. We have to be responsible with what our mind chooses and focus it from love and positiveness. Choosing something known to you as unhealthy is not treating your body with love. It is important you understand your personal ownership of what you choose to do from your thoughts.

Buddha adds more to our discussion of the mind when he stated this: “All that we are is the result of what we have thought.” This applies to your health, wealth, relationships, career, energy, talents and the choices you make that bring to fruition your life experiences. Your life right now is the sum total of what you’ve thought throughout your lifetime up to now. This includes programming from parents, teachers, friends, family , peers and anyone who crossed your path and influenced you thus far. It also includes every choice you’ve made according to the thoughts you thought. Sounds pretty heavy doesn’t it, but actually it is a very simple principle: whatever you think about every day is what shows up in your life experience.

Many people have been and are experiencing challenges right now in their lives, but as long as they think of those challenges as a problem or difficulty, they are coming from fear-based thinking. Perhaps you are one of these individuals. However, if you look at these challenges as an opportunity to step into something new or grow stronger as you overcome the issue, you have made it a positive with a real potential of actually creating something better. It’s not denying reality or a “pie-in-the-sky” flakiness, which is often suggested when relating to positive thinking . Rather, it is in understanding the universal law that governs the entire world that your thoughts create your reality. The circumstances in your life haven’t changed, only the eyes through which you see them. You may still be without a job, have just ended a relationship and feeling the pain, or be facing a health concern, but how you approach the challenge will make all the difference in your end result. As Albert Einstein once said, “In the middle of every difficulty lies an opportunity.”

What do you believe about yourself? Do you love yourself just as you are and appreciate all the wonderful qualities you possess, or do you doubt your abilities and shrink from facing who you really are and what you are here to complete? Do you step up to the plate but become so afraid you might strike out that you turn away from swinging the bat due to the fear of failure? Or are you more afraid you might hit the ball and have to run the bases back to home? Oftentimes individuals are more afraid they might actually become successful and fear they cannot measure up. Either one of these thoughts is not empowering and does not produce favorable results. However, if you told yourself that you have the ability to swing the bat, hit the ball and run the bases for a home run, and that you would give your best in the process, there is a strong possibility for you to be successful.

Many stories have been shared of athletes who are grounded from participating in practices and games for a period of time due to injuries that need healing time. But these same athletes, if they practice the plays in their mind every day, can again play in the game when they are healed because they know the plays and have lost nothing during their time out. The focus of their mind allowed little if any loss during their down time.

Here is a fact: You are created from the same loving energy pool that all living things come from, and you are a magnificent masterpiece just as everyone else is. Then your mind enters the picture and you are able to make any choices you wish, and where your energy (thoughts) go is where your power produces effects that become your life experiences. When individuals make unwise choices they reap the results just as those who make wise choices reap their results. One masterpiece chooses to finish college and step into a career that enables him or her to become a millionaire, but another masterpiece chooses a life of drugs that spirals them downward into a dark abyss. Both began from the same source of loving energy, but their choices brought a huge contrast in their life’s outcome. As Louise Hay put it, “All the events you have experienced in your lifetime up to this moment have been created by the thoughts and beliefs you have held in the past.”

So now it is up to you where you go from now on. It will take a conscious effort on your part to change your thoughts and beliefs into positive loving ones throughout your daily life. It will require surrender and asking for divine help to achieve this. In the beginning it will seem impossible to achieve because you will probably catch yourself thinking negatively most of the time, and trying to change that will feel like a foreboding task. But if you choose to persevere, it will become easier to accomplish as time goes on, and you will readily notice your “slips” from positiveness and be able to immediately release and replace the negative thoughts with positive ones. Your mind matters and you can use it for the good you want to create in your life. And it all begins with the thoughts you choose to think!