By Michael Griffin
Jan 9th 2009 Podcast
How To Your thoughts create and control your circumstances
Can you see yourself a year from now, walking on the beach – the beautiful blue ocean out before you. The water is so clear you can see the fishes, small ones, larger ones, and some big ones. It is a wonderful day, perhaps you’ll take a swim later but now you are just taking it all in. You are here because a year ago you got some ideas and you immediately took action and put them to work in your business, in your life — now you are here on the beach on a perfect day.
Do you get that?
Thoughts + action taken = results
This is the underlying theme of “As A Man Thinketh.”
What kinds of thoughts is your mind churning out? It probably depends on what has gone into your head. Are you hearing how business is bad and no one has a chance. Perhaps you heard it on the news or even from some marketer who wants to use scare tactics and have you believe that his product is the only way out of your business dilemma.
The fact is the human mind is the most powerful goal seeking system on the planet. A question properly phrased, an instruction to find the answer, and the understanding and underlying belief that the result will come. In the case of the news and the marketer, information was planted in you mind by someone other than yourself. In the case of the marketer he had in mind actions that he would like you to take. In the case of the news report, perhaps a reporters bias of the facts, or a government agency, or something that is just wrong, has skewed the report causing confusion and inaction.
You have to take control of the information that feeds your mind. You have to examine what has gone into your mind that is driving the decisions you are taking today and that those decisions are driving your tomorrow.
Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad
thoughts and actions can never produce good results. This is but
saying that nothing can come from corn but corn, nothing from
nettles but nettles. Men understand this law in the natural world,
and work with it; but few understand it in the mental and moral
world (though its operation there is just as simple and
undeviating), and they, therefore, do not co-operate with it.
Could your thoughts bring such great results to your life?
Allen says:
The soul attracts that which it secretly harbours; that which it
loves, and also that which it fears; it reaches the height of its
cherished aspirations; it falls to the level of its unchastened
desires,–and circumstances are the means by which the soul receives
its own.
A person must come to a decision about his life that he (he or she) is responsible for it. At that point he must begin to examine his thoughts and recognize the powerful goal seeking system that is his mind. He must look at the beliefs that would have him not make that extra sales call, or watch three or four hours of TV instead of looking for ways to produce the income that will give him the perfect days at the beach, that will insure his future.
TV wasn’t a part of the picture when Allen wrote As A Man Thinketh but there have always been plenty of ways to ‘sew nettles’ in the fertile field of the mind. The point is what beliefs are running your mind and therefore your life that would cause you to spend so much time in a way that will cause you to be only a very ordinary person? Earl Nightingale discusses this very issue, he calls it “The Strangest Secret.”
How They Laughed When I Said – my thoughts create and control my circumstances
What is it that you want to do that you’ve had on the back-burner so long that you hardly think of it at all anymore? Perhaps you bought a course quietly, to study in private, so people wouldn’t see you reach for the stars? So people wouldn’t laugh? Where did that thought – that people will laugh – come from? Is it your thought or is it just one of those thoughts generally held that keep people mindlessly doing the same thing as everyone else and causing them to trail down the road of life one-after-the-other like cattle to the slaughter?
New Thought Will Help You Put the law of attraction to work in your life, bringing you the things you want rather than what society has for normal people.
Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at
the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions
of his life.
If you direct your mind – if you tell it to seek the things that you want by holding a clear and definite picture of the outcome you want, then it will begin to target that result and not the results that people all around you are getting.
Nature helps every man to the gratification of the thoughts, which
he most encourages, and opportunities are presented which will most
speedily bring to the surface both the good and evil thoughts.
Remember that your mind is a powerful goal seeking system. Unless you want to wind up somewhere else – you need to take over what goes into it yourself, you need to be the programmer. Allen has also, without saying so, introduced the law of attraction into the mix. This is a step beyond the simple cause and effect relationship that we spoke about in part 1 of this post and have continued until now. “Nature helps every man” and from the previous quote: “rapid transformation.” These are acknowledgments of the larger force at work as we have been discussing in Wallace Wattles “The Science of Getting Rich.” We will develop the idea more as we examine the later chapters of the book but will not focus too much on it for now.
The Effect of Thought on Circumstance – As A Man Thinketh – This is the message, take charge of your thoughts and you will take charge of your life.
Next time we’ll pick up with chapter 3 of James Allen’s “As A Man Thinketh.”
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
It is Intriguing the way these great books interleave. I’ve read The Science of Getting Rich several times but I see it diffently when laid along side As A Man Thinketh. Thanks for the great articals.
James Allen really did have the secret covered in his book. Thank you for the great articles and especially for the audio books.
I have the audio books and the podcast on my IPod and I play it through the car stereo on my commute.
The thought of going like a cow to slaughter is chilling. It is important to go back and find out where those thoughts and beliefs started. I listened to the YouTube stuff from Earl Nightingale too. How profound – that guy was ahead of his time.
I’m thinking this stuff should be taught in schools. People need to come to a philosophy of life and they need to do some serious planning along the lines of that ideal day.