If you ever feel overwhelmed with the volume of the literature out there on self improvement and goal achievement, know that everything you learn hinges on this single fact; that everything begins in the mind. Anything you want to achieve begins in the mind and then manifests itself on the outside. Your thoughts determine your actions, which then determine the life you create for yourself.
Environment is not a factor. People often point to external circumstances and use it as an excuse not to achieve. For example, you hear people say “To make money, you need money”. Ok then, who’s going to get the money you need in the first place? That’s going to be you. It is YOU, more specifically your thoughts which lead you to take the necessary actions to get the money you need in the first place.
I want to give you a quote from James Allen’s Book “As A Man Thinketh” (free download for newsletter subscribers). James Allen has an eloquent way of writing that I can only dream of doing and I think he sums up perfectly the point I want to make with the following words.
“Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not remain so if you only perceive an ideal and strive to reach it. You can’t travel within and stand still without.
Here is a youth hard pressed by labor and poverty. Confined long hours in an unhealthy workshop; unschooled and lacking all the arts of refinement. But he dreams of better things. He thinks of intelligence, or refinement, of grace and beauty. He conceives of, mentally builds up, an ideal condition of life. The wider liberty and a larger scope takes possession of him; unrest urges him to action, and he uses all his spare times and means to the development of his latent powers and resources. Very soon so altered has his mind become that the workshop can no longer hold him. It has become out of harmony with his mind-set that it falls out of his life as a garment is cast aside. And with the growth of opportunities that fit the scope of his expanding powers, he passes out of it altogether.
Years later, we see this youth as a grown man. We find him a master of certain forces of the mind that he wields with worthwhile influence and almost unequaled power. In his hands, he holds the cords of gigantic responsibilities; he speaks and lives are changed; men and women hang upon his words and remold their characters. Sun-like, he becomes the fixed and luminous center around which innumerable destinies revolve. He has become the vision of his youth. He has become one with his ideal.”
Now take a look at the kind of childhood that Oprah Winfrey had to go through and you’ll develop a new appreciation for the simple fact that environment and circumstances are nothing compared to the power you wield inside your own mind.
Most people focus on the things they don’t want and blame it on the environment, hence giving away their power of control and choosing to replace it with incredible focus on the things they don’t want, which just results in them taking actions that are conducive to those exact same thoughts that result in the exact same things that they don’t want to see in their environment. It also brings along with it a host of other problems such as depression and hopelessness because they feel as if they’re not in control.
You are always in control. ALWAYS. Take back your power to control your thoughts and then focus on the things you do want. Keep on doing that and you’ll find yourself taking the correct actions to get to your ideal life.
Realize the significance of your thoughts. Many people don’t realize how powerful a role their thoughts play in their lives because they fail to link up the effect their thoughts have on their actions due to the time lag in between them.
We’ve been conditioned to only see cause and effect when it happens instantaneously. Push a button on the remote (cause) and the TV will turn on (effect). Open up Internet Explorer (cause) and you’ll have access to mounds of information at your fingertips (effect). Stub your toe on a chair (cause) and experience pain (effect).
We fail to see how our thoughts influenced our very actions to get to where we are today.
There is a time delay between your thoughts and actions and that delay truly serves you. Can you imagine if your thoughts resulted in actions instantaneously? The world would be a very interesting and dangerous place.
The time delay between thoughts and actions serves to reward the ones who desire true change, because they are the ones who will recognize this simple fact and subsequently hold a long term view while endeavoring to change their thoughts.
In due time, their long term thoughts will influence their actions, and these very same people will then find themselves in the situation they were imagining in and come to realize the domino effect that ensued to get them there.
They don’t realize the power of their thoughts until they are in that moment and it is in that precise moment, where they truly understand how significant a role their thoughts play in creating the life they imagine, not just at the conscious level, but at the core level of their being.
I know I’ve stated this concept many times before, but it has to be repeated. You’ll find that the most important things in life are repeated for a reason and that is to ingrain the important facts within us as they can easily get lost in the myriad of things we deal with on a day to day basis.
It all begins in the mind, with time. From there, everything will come about. You need nothing else.
