Jan 8th 2009 Podcast

The Great Books – Ideas Held In Common

The Science of Getting Rich, Think and Grow Rich, and now As A Man Thinketh share the common idea that what you think has a profound affect on your external world. There are several levels on which you can think of this, several levels on which you may or may not choose to accept and agree with the idea.

First it is not much of a stretch to realize that a person who walks around like Eyore in the Winnie the Pooh stories (Eyore is the donkey with the rain cloud that follows him) will not see the good around him nor can he because he is constantly filtering it out. There is so much happening in the world around us that we cannot take it all in and the conscious mind filters parts which it considers unimportant. And so the mind will see the things it is looking for. It will seek them out to find them just like the guidance system on a heat seeking missile it will find what is programmed into it.

On one level, this is what James Allen is saying, our thoughts help us tune into those things in the world that will either empower us or cause us to turn away like Eyore. Eyore either won’t see or doesn’t think he is worthy. So tune up your thoughts to be able to see opportunity and tune up your thoughts to grab opportunities – grab them even if you don’t have the whole answer to it when you do Grab them. Successful entrepreneur after successful entrepreneur tells stories of getting into things that they didn’t have all the information or skills to accomplish and yet they pushed through and found the resources. This is different from not beginning because you notice some little block in the road.

Zig Ziglar uses the analogy of traffic lights. If you are going somewhere do you sit at home and wait for all the lights to turn green before you leave? Next time you have concerns about something down the road on your journey through life think about that a little, it is really quite profound.

That is the first level of accepting what Allen has to say in As A Man Thinketh. Is that something that makes sense, that our mind at the very least filters the world according to what we have put into it. That if we are expecting the worst, we will notice mostly things that are not working out and will have less inclination to try the new thing for ourselves.

Who Has Planted Your Garden?

Allen says that those filters in your mind are as if someone planted weeds in your garden.

Man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently
cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or
neglected, it must, and will, _bring forth._ If no useful seeds are
_put _into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will _fall
_therein, and will continue to produce their kind.

Allen makes the case for examining the thoughts, what is going on in your mind and why. Where did the thoughts come from, are they leftover from childhood, wrong information from a teacher, a pastor, a parent, a friend, something you saw on TV, or words from a song that you liked?

Can you take charge of those thoughts and begin to weed out the ones that stop you, the ones that cause you to believe that circumstance is responsible for your condition?

Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to
be the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes that he
is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and
seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes
the rightful master of himself.

Allen says: “Circumstances grow out of thought.” As we are saying here, you find what you are looking for. Change what you are looking for and find something different.

A particular train of thought persisted in, be it good or bad,
cannot fail to produce its results on the character and
circumstances. A man cannot _directly_ choose his circumstances, but
he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his
circumstances.

In the light of this truth, what, then, is the meaning of “fighting
against circumstances?” It means that a man is continually revolting
against an _effect_ without, while all the time he is nourishing and
preserving its _cause_ in his heart. That cause may take the form of
a conscious vice or an unconscious weakness; but whatever it is, it
stubbornly retards the efforts of its possessor, and thus calls
aloud for remedy.

Change your thoughts and change your circumstances

Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to
improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.

As I said, this is the first level of accepting the ideas of As A Man Thinketh. I don’t believe it is too much of a stretch to accept this. Earl Nightingale put it: “we become what we think about all day long.” He called it “The Strangest Secret“. If you accept this then you are well on your way to a life of accomplishment.

“Only himself manicles man” says Allen. Isn’t it time to put off the manacles and live life on your terms?

We will leave it there for now and pick up again next time in chapter 2.

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