Thought power

It has been estimated that we think approximately one thought per second. That comes out to approximately 60,000 thoughts during the waking hours of each day. Now, stop and think about how many positive, empowering thoughts you’ve had in the last day or two. Can you remember any at all? Is it a lot or is it just a handful? And if it’s just a few positive, empowering thoughts, thoughts that are focused on achieving the life you desire, then what are all those other thoughts about?

Are your thoughts working for you or are they mostly working against you? Even if you sit down every morning and evening for fifteen minutes with a list of positive goals, and even if you visualize each of those goals in vivid detail, and even if you positively focus your thoughts on them, that’s only 1,800 thoughts out of 60,000 for the day. So what are you thinking the rest of the day?

All too often, we’re thinking things such as: I can’t, I’m afraid, I’m worried, I’m angry, I don’t like this. We’re busy thinking of how to get even, of how to appear as something we’re not, we’re all too often worried about things that are probably not very likely to happen, we’re focused on what we don’t have rather than on what we can accomplish with what we do have. And these negative thoughts, just like any other thoughts, have enormous power. The more of them we think, the more power they gain. The more frequently we think them, the more influence they command.

The amazing thing is that every single negative thought can be replaced by a positive thought. “I can’t” can be replaced with “I’ll find a way to.” “I’m afraid of” can be replaced with “I’m preparing for.” “I don’t like this” can be replaced with “Here’s how I’ll make it better.”

Whether you like it or not, whether you accept it or not, whether you do anything about it or not, your thoughts have a major impact on your life. So it makes sense to make use of those thoughts rather than letting them bring you down.

If someone handed you sixty thousand dollars one morning, would you spend the day throwing fifty-five thousand of those dollars in various trash cans? Of course not. You would most likely use the money to improve and enhance your own life and the lives of those around you.

So what are you doing with the sixty thousand thoughts you think each day? Are you throwing away most of them on destructive negativity. Or are you making full use of those thoughts to improve your own life and the world in which you live?

Typing characters on a computer’s keyboard does not cause words to be printed on paper—the computer’s printer, not the keyboard, does that. However, typing the characters on the keyboard determines precisely which words will be printed onto the paper. In the same way, thinking does not make it so. Your actions are what make it so. Thinking, however, directs and controls those actions. So although thinking does not, in and of itself, create anything tangible, thinking determines what does get created.

As such, there is enormous leverage associated with your thoughts. Leverage occurs when a small effort produces a large result, and nowhere is the possibility for leverage greater than with thought. A small change in thought, which takes almost no effort at all, can produce an enormous change in the quality of your life.