Change Your Thinking

Change a decision or an opinion,

There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be, and you keep and hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking.

— William James

Once upon a time there was a woman, about 30 years old, married with two children. Like many people, she had grown up in a home where she was constantly criticized and often treated unfairly by her parents. As a result, she developed deep feelings of inferiority and low self-esteem. She was negative and fearful, and had no confidence at all. She was shy and self-effacing, and did not consider herself to be particularly valuable or worthwhile. She felt that she was not really talented at anything.

One day, as she was driving to the store, another car went through a red light and smashed into her. When she awoke, she was in the hospital with a mild concussion and complete memory loss. She could still speak, but she had no recollection of any part of her past life. She was a total amnesia.

At first, the doctors thought it would be temporary. But weeks passed and no trace of her memory returned. Her husband and children visited her daily, but she did not know them. This was such an unusual case that other doctors and specialist came to visit her as well, to test her and ask her questions about her condition.

2 < Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

Starting Over

Eventually, she went home, her memory a complete blank. Determined to understand what have happened to her. She began reading medical textbooks and studying in the specialized area of amnesia and memory loss. She met and spoke with specialist in this field. Eventually she wrote a paper on her condition. Not long afterward, she was invited to address a medical convention to deliver her paper answer questions about her amnesia, and share her experiences and ideas on neurological functioning. During this period, something amazing happened. She become a new person completely. All the attention in the hospital and afterward made her feel valuable, important, and truly loved by her family. The attention and acclaim she received from members of the medical profession built her self-esteem and self-respect even higher. She become a genuinely positive, confident, outgoing woman, highly articulate, well informed, and very much in demand as a speaker and authority in the medical profession. All memory of her negative childhood had been wiped out. Her feelings of inferiority were wiped out as well. She become a new person. She changed her thinking and change her life.

•The Blank Slate

The Scottish philosopher David Hume was the first propose the idea of the tabula rasa or blank slate. This theory says that each person comes into the world with no thought or ideas at all, and everything that a person think and feels is learned from infancy onward. It is as though the child’s mind is a blank slate that every passing person and experience leaves a mark on. The adult becomes the sum total of everything he or she learns, feels, and experiences growing up. What the adult does and becomes later is the result of this early conditioning. As Aristotle wrote,” Whatever is impressed is expressed,” perhaps the greatest breakthrough is the field of human potential in the twentieth century was the discovery of the self-concept. This is the idea that each person develops a bundle of beliefs regarding oneself, starting at birth your self-concept then becomes.

Change Your Think 3

the master program of your subconscious computer, determining everything you think, say, feel, and do. For this reason, all change in your outer life begin with a change in your self-concept, with a change in the way you think and feel about yourself and your word.

The child is born with no self-concept at all. Every idea opinion, feelings, attitude, or value you have as an adult you learned from childhood. Everything you are today is the result of an idea or impression you took in and accepted as true. When you believe something to be true, it becomes true for you. Whatever the fact may be.”You are not what you think you are, but what you think, you are.”