We become what we think about.
Earl Nightingale
You can’t always trace your way back to where it started. Back to the time where your thoughts began to mold you into who you are. You can’t travel back in time, but you can stay right here and observe who you’ll become tomorrow, by examining what you spend your time contemplating today.
The thoughts you welcome into your life in a moment, will soon begin to shape who you’ll become.
It won’t happen all at once. They will come and make themselves welcome. They will become life changing habits. Over a long period of time, they will predictably guide your life, despite your best intentions.
How do you start your day for example?
Do you begin by reading the daily newspaper? Shaping your mind with stories, written by a corporation which profits from predicting incessant doom and gloom around every conceivable corner?
How much hope do you think you’ll find in those finger staining pages?
Do you think the tragic news of yesterday will bring you happiness today? Or will you instead help you tense up a little and close up a little? What do you think a life of tensing up and closing up will be like?
It’s not all in our thoughts of course. We are also governed by our genetic dispositions. We are shaped by thoughts imprinted on our consciousness by our society, culture, and religion. Regardless of how well intentioned they were well intentioned they are, for better or worse, they have shaped and molded you into who you are.
You think therefore you are, but you also are what you ultimately think about.
Thoughts become things.
Given time.
The ideas you focus on and contemplate will ultimately come true.
And how can they not?
I spent a lot of time commiserating with other people. I read the daily newspapers, studied history and philosophy. I accepted the responsibility of saving the world from itself. But the world doesn’t need saving, not that kind, anyhow.
The world needs us at our best. We have far more power to make a difference by creating instead of complaining or mending. Life doesn’t need preventative measures. It doesn’t need walls, borders, meetings, and committees.
Life needs you to think and to act. It needs you to imagine and dream up things that never were. Life invites you to bring into being what nobody else can. Not because they stubbornly refuse, but because they’re not you and have their own gifts to bring.
Take care of your thoughts.
Your thoughts are yours to nurture.
What you think about you will become true.
So chose them carefully.
Chose them well.
