Words Matter

First thing first.  You must immediately realize that words matter.  Your mind is a powerful thing, and conscious intent and subconscious reality don’t always play along.

Imagine that you are trying to break a habit.  Let’s try smoking cigarettes for the heck of it.  The way I see it, there are two mental approaches:

• First, you say to yourself “I don’t want to smoke anymore. I don’t want to be addicted to smoking.”  Whether you know it our not, your brain still senses the words “want to smoke” and “want to be addicted”.  Your subconscious has a lot of data on you already and that data says “smoke.”  Your aren’t giving it much of anything else to go on at this point.
• Alternatively you can say to yourself “I want to enjoy the feeling of clean supple air and breathing throughout my lungs.  I want it to the point that I can imagine how it feels that my lungs are operating perfectly.  I love that I can run a mile with excellent lung capacity.”  Your subconscious, while it has data on you, starts to listen to this and sees the visions you see.  Interestingly, the subconscious mind has a tough time separating reality for dreaming.  In this sense, you can focus your mind on the appropriate change.

This focus on words and vision applies throughout life.

• “I will be healthy, vivacious, and active” versus “I don’t want to be fat anymore.”
• “I am developing a fruitful future for my family and I” versus “I don’t want to be in debt.”
• “I am organized and have a handle on everything that needs to get done” versus “I wish I weren’t so absentminded.”

Hopefully you fully understand now what I mean when I say that “words matter.”  Keep this in mind as you read on and you will see the value in the thought process.

The Box

Think Outside The Box?

Yeah ok.  But who the heck created the box in the first place?  One of my major contentions is that in order to think outside of the box, you have to believe that there is a box in the first place.  If you believe that there is a box, then you have in your mind’s eye a full vision and understanding of what defines that box.  Even though your intent is to avoid everything that makes up or is in that box, your mind will do tricky things and you will start to attract to yourself all of the elements of that box.

There is no Box!

So how do we set our minds right so that we can fully embrace creativity?  We must realize that there is no box.  If someone is to tell us that we need to think outside of the box, they must be saying that what ever rules exist in the box simply don’t matter.  If we operate opposite of that, we have created another, albeit larger, box.  Forgetting that there ever was a box, we can allow the creative mind to consider any solution.  Guess what?  That solution may just use some elements from inside the original box.  Who cares?  Stay creative and inovate without any stupid box weighing on your mind.

The Glass

Is your glass half full or half empty?

This is a popular two-second personality test.  Apparently the answer helps one conclude whether you are a pesimist or an optimist. In business, we often hear folks talk about their problems and someone else may turn the conversation around with the argument that every problem is actually an opportunity.  This is getting close to what I need you to understand.

The glass is always full.

Let’s think pure physics for a second.  Matter is everywhere in varying degrees of density.  The screen you are using to read this is made of matter.  The water in our glass of personality test is made of matter.  The air you are breathing is made of matter.  Examine the glass.  There is water in half of the glass.  What’s in the other half?  Air.  The glass is completely full.  It’s just a matter of realizing that it may not all be water. 

It is the concept that I believe we need to consider when we encounter any situation in life.  There is always something to learn so even an event that seems completely negative has something of value for you.  This is not saying that we need to live our lives in a state of sugar-sweet sickening optimism.  It’s merely neccessary to be able to take a step back and consider what lessons are available for growth.

The Box and Glass

These concepts are a part of what I hope to bring to the writings on this website.  Evaluations of life.  Lessons to consider.  Growth opportunities of which we can take advantage.  Enjoy and leave me a comment when you have something to share.