We are what we think!

Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure. The way you think about a fact may defeat you before you ever do anything about it. You are overcome by the fact because you think you are. – Rev. Norman Vincent Peale

We start with a quote from the author of The Power of Positive Thinking. I won’t go into the controversy or the following this book has, because we are here to talk about how our thought life changes the physical world we live in. As the quote suggests, what data we choose to interpret and the psychological perspective that we interpret the data from can drastically change the outcomes in our lives.

Picture two young entrepreneurs who on the day off their big presentation are having computer problems and get a flat tire while picking up some last minute supplies. The one entrepreneur says to himself “it is going be one of those days’, and the other “I am prepared for this meeting, and nothing will get in my way”. Intuitively, which entrepreneur do we think will perform better?

Examining the way that we talk to ourselves is one of the easy to spot the psychological context that we are living our lives. The idea is to become aware of how we ourselves and life, and then attempt to create a more useful mental outlook. Awareness will be the key to change. Spend some time actively watching for the assumptions that you are making about the world around you, and how you will interact with it.

“Change your thoughts and you change your world.” -Peale

As we saw on our example, actively work on feeding yourself positive words and mental pictures. As our underlying perspective changes, so will our behavior and outcomes. The inverse of that quote is true too. Change your world, change your thoughts. If a angry and disparaging person attempts to smile and be friendly to his inner circle(even if it is a false pretence), his thoughts and outlook will have a tough time remaining unaffected.