What Is And What If

"People who consider themselves victims of their circumstances will always

remain victims unless they develop a greater vision for their lives."

Stedman Graham

Speaker, Author and Educator

In 1972 I had done seventeen weeks military training in signals and radio training of which the sending and receiving of morse code was a part. My speed was too slow to qualify one week before the completion of the course.

I wanted to be a part of team and continue to the next exciting instalment of a military career.

One week later I qualified second highest on the course.

To me conscious ruminating will only create a fermented cloudy brew of stagnating thoughts and attitude.

There are different approaches to change and the desire thereof. but it comes down to only two choices.

The desire to be free of the pain or the desire to have something more, different, or better.

Too many people focus on the pain and what is going on in their immediate surrounding. The tendency is to narrow the focus and limit the vision to maintain this state.

In many cases these people are either experiencing level two stress, depression or a combination of both. One of the biggest factors is living "in" the experience and to cite an extreme example is the victim of trauma who cannot remove themselves from the fear that the trauma has created.

Often the trauma will have the effect of reinforcing earlier. though maybe not so dramatic events and the responses to them. To the point that thinking is reshaped into patterns that in themselves reinforce and perpetuate the belief.

Having a vision of something beyond that is light or warmth or love can ignite a spark of hope or courage that changes the direction of the focus. This is why animals, in particular dogs, have been introduced into some hospitals. To redirect the focus of the patient. responses generally are profound from the very young to the very old.

The philosopher Earl Nightingale stated that success is progressive realisation of a worth goal or ideal. Success may be something as simple as standing on their own two feet after a long bedridden illness. The progressive realisation may start with something as simple as wriggling the toes while imagining they are in the warm sand of a balmy tropical beach.

This creates not only the mere physical activity, it adds the dimension of feeling good to the exercise. This combination affects the physical with the exercise, the mental with the visualisation utilising and stimulating core responses of visual, as in the beach, auditory as in the waves, the kinaesthetic feeling the warm humidity on the skin, the smell of the salt air and the taste of moist salt air on the tongue.

All great achievements in human history have begun with such fantasies. After all how many things have you done that you fantasised about at some earlier time.

Thoughts create emotions and behind every action is an emotion. The old saying be careful what you think about because you might get it has been rephrased by Earl Nightingale into “We become what we think about.”

Now I'm going to ask you to think about that statement. Think about what you think about and see if that is what is happening in your life. We are where we are in life as a direct result of what we have thought and felt and thereby done in the past.

If we are to move from thinking that all there is, is the brick wall in front of us then we lose sight of the fact that to one side of us is a glass door through which is that tropical beach that we so desire to walk on.

Since as Earl says, We become what we think about, we can change our lives starting with one small seed of an idea which can ignite a spark or cascading train of thought, like watching movie on fast forward.

The seed or the fantasy will if pursued eventually possess us and leads us to the resources to bring it into being. One proviso here though it will need to be actively pursued and in doing the action we create the opportunity for the resources t come across our path.

A friend was developing business which involved developing a large team of people and was impatient with the slowness of the process and the seemingly unavailability of good people. This all changed when he verbalised one day that he was having people put in front of him every time he waited at a stop sign or saw a jet airliner cross his path.

That one small realisation lead to shift in thinking that ultimately lead to his building a massive team of people and a highly successful venture..

So whatever your obstacles or thoughts remember that it only takes something very small like a spark or the seed of an idea to make large changes.

It is, after all, through progressive realisation that a mighty Oak has grown from a small acorn.