I grew up in relative poverty, both in terms of money and in mindset. We saw “rich people” as “those people” or people who were “lucky.” It turns out that our worldview was pretty ignorant.
As I got older, I still had that thought process lurking in the back of my mind. Being “rich” is bad. This is not only false, but it also caused me to misunderstand other related principles. For example, most people who are financially healthy are first healthy in their mindset. For years I avoided books like “Think and Grow Rich” simply because it has the word “rich” in it. Of course this is silly, but it had far-reaching consequences for me that I had to unlearn later.
In “Think and Grow Rich”, Napoleon Hill talks about how the subconscious mind is related to our dominant thoughts. He says that the more we allow certain thinking to remain, the more we start to believe it. Zig Ziglar calls it, “Stinking thinking.”
Man has absolute control of what reaches our subconscious, here is how he describes it:
“You have a fertile garden spot, in which weeds will grow in abundance, if you do not plant what you want to grow in there, you will be constantly dealing with the weeds.“
If you fill your mind with the outcome you are looking for, you tend to subconsciously look for similarities and see opportunities when they arise.
When I was younger, my life was difficult and I often wallowed in it like a pig in some mud. My constant thought was, “Of course this would happen to me.” It took me a while, but my fortunately my mindset began to change for the better because I learned the importance of putting good things into it. Now I am a person who tends to look for opportunities rather than excuses. Now people say things like, “Of course that worked for you. You’re Arthur!”
Hill also talked about the power of “auto suggestion.” He says that you should read aloud twice a day your written statement of what you want to put into your subconscious. Think that sounds silly? Perhaps. But it works.
What kind of person do you want to be?
Right now I want to be a balanced and Godly influence for my children and for my wife. By writing that out and saying it at least twice to myself daily, it starts to subconsciously connect with me and I begin to see opportunities all around that will help me become that man I am describing.
What kind of person do you want to be? What do you need to start telling yourself about that today that will move you toward becoming exactly that?