During the first eighteen years of our lives, if we grew up in fairly average, reasonably positive homes, we were told “No!” or what we could not do, more than 148,000 times! If you were a little more fortunate, you may have been told “No!” only 100,000 times, or 50,000 times—however many, it was considerably more negative programming than any of us needs.
Meanwhile, during the same period, the first eighteen years of your life, how often do you suppose you were told what you can do or what you can accomplish in life? A few thousand times? A few hundred? During my speaking engagements to groups across the country, I have had people tell me they could not remember being told what they could accomplish in life more than three or four times! Whatever the number, for most of us the “yes’s” we received simply didn’t balance out the “no’s.” The occasional words of “belief” were just that—occasional—and they were far outweighed by our daily doses of “cannots.”
Leading behavioral researchers have told us that as much as seventy-seven percent of everything we think is negative, counterproductive, and works against us. At the same time, medical researchers have said that as much as seventy-five percent of all illnesses are self-induced. It’s no wonder. What if the researchers are correct? That means that as much as seventy-five percent or more of our programming is the wrong kind. Until very recently no one understood well enough the human mind—how it really works. The result was that without knowing what they were doing, and with us not recognizing the immense effect this “casual” programming was having on us, “they” have been programming us in the wrong way. Everything and everyone around us, without being aware of it, has been programming us.
Unfortunately, most of it was the wrong kind of programming—and we took it to heart. Year after year, word by word, our life scripts were etched. Layer by layer, nearly indelibly, our self-images were created. In time, we ourselves joined in. We began to believe that what we were being told by others—and what we were telling ourselves—was true. No matter how innocently given or subtly implied, we began hearing the same words and thoughts repeatedly; hundreds, even thousands of times we were told, or we told ourselves, what we could not do, could not accomplish. Repetition is a convincing argument. Eventually we believed what others told us and what we told ourselves most; we began to live out the picture of ourselves we had created in our minds.
In time we became what we most believed about ourselves. And in so doing, we created a wall, which for most of us will stand invisibly but powerfully between us and our unlimited futures for as long as our old programming remains in force. Unless the programming we received is erased or replaced with different programming, it will stay with us permanently and affect and direct everything we do for the rest of our lives.
You will become what you think about most; your success or failure in anything, large or small, will depend on your programming—what you accept from others, and what you say when you talk to yourself.
It makes no difference whether consciously accept it or not. The brain simply believes what you tell it most. And what you tell it about you, it will create. It has no choice.
Every thought we think, every conscious or unconscious thought we say to ourselves, is translated into electrical impulses which, in turn, direct the control centers in our brains to electrically and chemically affect and control every motion, every feeling, every action we take, every moment of every day.
As long as you and I allow others to program us in a way that fits their choosing, we are, without a doubt, out of control, captive to the whims of some unknown destiny, not quite recognizing that what hangs in the balance is the fulfillment of our own futures.
Why do so many therapists take their patients back to a time in their childhood when the problem was created? Because that is where the beliefs began. That is where the fear, the trauma, or the self-identity first began to take hold. Out of those early years, each of us formed a composite picture of ourselves. It made little difference whether the pictures of ourselves which we created were true or not. Our experiences, our acceptance of what we heard from others and what we told ourselves became the foundation for the mental programming which directs us today.
Self-Talk gives each of us a way to change what we would like to change, even if we haven’t been able to do so in the past. It offers us the chance to stop being the old self and start to become a different, better self, a self which is no longer the product of conditioned response, but governed instead by personal choice.
That is the difference between just believing in positive thinking and actually creating it in your life. It is fine to throw out the old—it is essential. But it is also essential to replace the old with the new, word for word, thought by thought.
In spite of everything that anyone can do to help, in spite of the doctors and the assistants, in spite of the needs and tears of those who stay behind, when we leave, we will leave alone. There may be abundant spirits to guide us, but of those we leave on earth behind us, not one of them can share that journey with us. We take our first breath by ourselves. And we take our last breath alone.
How then is it that somewhere in between, in that time we call life, we expect someone else to do our breathing for us?
No one will ever breathe one breath for us. No one will ever think one thought that is ours. No one will ever stand in our bodies, experience what happens to us, feel our fears, dream our dreams, or cry our tears. We are born, live, and leave this life entirely on our own. That “self,” and the divine spirit which drives it, are what we have. No one else can ever live a single moment of our lives for us. That we must do for ourselves. That is responsibility.
Through a natural law of cause and effect, when we improve ourselves, the things we would like to have in our lives follow naturally. Improve who you are, and by that same law, you will improve your life. The more successful you become inside, the more successes you will automatically create on the outside.
We are too busy fixing the train to realize that we are on the wrong track. We are too busy staying alive to figure out how to live.
I control the thoughts I choose. No thought, at any time, can dwell in my mind without my approval or permission.
I know that greatness begins in the minds of the great. I know that what I believe about myself is what I will become—so I believe in the best for myself
Just as it is the thoughts, ideas, demands and influences of others which have guided, controlled, and directed most of our lives in the past, it is the personal control of our own minds which now gives us the chance to change our futures—for ourselves.
The adversary has been us. It is the thoughts which we have thought. It is our own thinking which has created the limited self-portraits of who we believed ourselves to be.
Other books* by Shad Helmstetter, Ph.D.
The Gift
Who Are You Really and What Do You Want?
Self-Talk for Weight-Loss
The Self-Talk Solution
Choices
What to Say When You Talk to Your Kids
You Can Excel in Times of Change
Other books recommended by the author:
Dr. Peale’s great book, The Power of Positive Thinking
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