Education & Career Trends: January 13, 2023
Curated by the Knowledge Team of ICS Career GPS
Content Credit:
- Article by Andy Murphy, published on medium.com. Original article link.
“As you think, so you shall be” — Wayne Dyer. These simple, yet profound words de-mystify the manifestation process and reveal how the universe turns the invisible visible.
The Buddha — true to his minimalistic nature — captured it in even fewer: “What we think, we become”
That’s the entirety of life — from its immense complexity to its innate simplicity — in just 5 words.
Perhaps that’s why Albert Einstein once said:
“If you can’t explain it to a 6-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.”
Buddha and Wayne Dyer aren’t alone here though, other greats have said the same thing too:
“What you hope, you will eventually believe.
What you believe, you will eventually know.
What you know, you will eventually create.
What you create, you will eventually experience.
What you experience, you will eventually express.
What you express, you will eventually become.
This is the formula for all of life”
– Neale Donald Walsch
Mahatma Gandhi put it another way:
“Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny”
Lao Tzu too:
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
Even Muhammed Ali got in on the action:
“What you are thinking about, you are becoming”
Everyone had their unique way of saying it but in the end, they all said the same thing. And there’s no denying it: Everything starts in the head.
Some food for thought:
On any given day, we think around 50,000 thoughts.
To put that into context, there are only 86,400 seconds in a day.
So, it doesn’t take long to work out that we think a thought every 1 and a half seconds or so.
But what’s even more surprising is that of those 50,000 thoughts, 98% of them are apparently the same thoughts we thought of yesterday.
Now, if you’re thinking that you must have read that wrong, you didn’t. So, here it is again: 98% of the thoughts that you and I think today are the same thoughts we thought yesterday.
That means just 2% of the thoughts we’ll think today are new. And as thoughts and emotions go hand-in-hand, it can be hard to change existing patterns that are being fed by existing thoughts, regardless of how many times they’re being “fed”.
That’s why habits of addiction are so hard to break.
Negative thinking is just as damaging, even if it’s less obvious to the outside world.
This is how the past literally carries into the future. It travels along neural highways that we’ve, built, grown, and reinforced throughout our lives.
Luckily, though, these highways can dissolve at any moment if and when they stop serving and new ones can be built in their place.
It takes time, of course, but it’s possible.
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.” — James Clear
A little unknown fact about thinking:
The body, on an experiential level, doesn’t know the difference between a lived experience and something that’s been dreamt up in the mind.
It responds to both fact and fiction in the same way.
To understand this phenomenon more clearly, imagine being scared in a dream. While dreaming, your body is comfortably tucked up in bed here on Earth, but your mind is experiencing fear in an alternative reality, so your body begins to experience fear in this one.
This happens even though, physically speaking, your body is not in any real danger. The same is true when it comes to laughing, crying, or having an orgasm during sleep. There’s nothing or no one that’s making you laugh, cry, or orgasm but it’s real, nonetheless, and your sticky bedsheets prove it.
The significance of this is that if a future vision creates a feeling of joy and excitement, the body experiences the same level of joy and excitement as if it was actually living a joyous/exciting moment right now.
That’s why meditation, visualisation techniques, positive affirmations, and other feel-good methods like breathing exercises can have such a profound impact on our physical and mental health because we can literally think of a new version of ourselves into existence.
And as we think of ourselves changing, we change as a result.
“Thoughts create an electrical charge that connects to the quantum field and feelings are the magnetic force that pulls it towards us” — Dr. Joe Dispenza
In the end, thoughts are just thoughts:
But here’s the thing… as thoughts create emotions and emotions drive the way we move in the world, thoughts can very quickly become real.
They become so real, in fact, that they can make us laugh out loud, cry, generate anxiety, or make us feel like giving up altogether.
What’s important to remember here though is that because the body reacts to anxious thoughts in the same way it does an anxious experience, it doesn’t matter if it’s genuine anxiety or fictitious. It experiences anxiety regardless.
The same is true for love, joy, bliss, gratitude, appreciation, and happiness too. So, there’s no getting away from it:
The quality of our thoughts determines the quality of our lives.
That’s why Robin Sharma warned:
“The mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master.”
All that’s left to decide now then is:
What do I want to create?
And who do I want to become?
Because as Wayne Dyer so wonderfully said: “As you think, so you shall be”
…
Have you checked out yesterday’s blog yet?
What It Means to Live in the Light
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article mentioned above are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ICS Career GPS or its staff.)
Like this post? For more such helpful articles, click on the button below and subscribe FREE to our blog.
Download our mobile app, ICS Career GPS, a one-stop career guidance platform.
