The Power of Choice

My focus for this week is on the mind because it impacts every aspect of our life...our health both mental & physical... relationships...success...wealth.

That said I'm going to share with you some of the things that I've learned over the past year on my journey of taking control of my thoughts, attitudes, and what I speak. Its a lot harder than I thought it would be! In fact I challenge you to pay attention to the random thoughts that go thru your mind on a continuous basis...become conscious of what you think about and say, then change any negative thoughts to positive ones as soon as they show up. I picture a big red X for delete on the computer of my mind whenever they happen...sometimes I even say delete that out loud!

Our conscious mind can be called "directing" mind. It is characterized by the words "I choose." With it, we weigh values; we weigh reasons for and against; we judge; we decide; we deliberately choose what we desire to do, what we desire to be, what we desire to have. And we deliberately choose the thoughts we wish to think.

All of our choices are made in conscious mind.

Our subconscious mind is the creating, the manufacturing, phase of mind that takes what conscious mind gives it and turns thoughts into things. Beneath the surface, it works ceaselessly to turn those thoughts - both good and bad - into the outward conditions of our lives.

It has no power of choice, it never reasons. It cannot refuse to take what conscious mind gives it. It must always work from a pattern, and it has no choice but to work from the pattern of thought that comes to it from conscious mind. Like the soil that must accept the seed, it must accept that thought.

Subconscious mind is habitual mind. Whatever we entertain often enough and vividly enough in our conscious mind - whether by conscious , deliberate choice or by choice made so rapidly that we are not aware we have made it - eventually passes into subconscious mind, where it continues to act automatically. This is the process by which we learn everything that we learn.

A negative disposition, for instance, is the result of repeated negative thoughts that have sunk into subconscious mind and have become habitual. But a cheerful, happy disposition can become just as automatic by conscious choice of positive thoughts. Thus it is not true that some people are blessed with positive natures, and others cursed with the opposite. People are not born optimistic or pessimistic: they learn to be what they are.

What anyone earnestly desires to be, he may become, not, however, by waving a magic wand but by the same procedure he uses to play the piano or to swim.

It is the level of the thought of subconscious mind - of our inward mental states - that makes us and our outer circumstances what they are and will become.

The loom that weaves thought into thing.
We all know enough about the principals of rug weaving to know that there are a loom, threads, and a weaver (or overseer) - and a rug.
The loom has only one task; that is, to keep weaving. It does not decide whether it will weave a beautiful or an ugly rug. Hour after hour, it moves back and forth, while yard after yard of rug comes slowly forth at the end of the loom.
The weaver watching it may be displeased and outraged by what he sees coming out, but he does not berate the loom and say, "Why have you done this to me?" He does not sit at the other end crying over the ugly pattern wishing it would somehow change into a thing of beauty. He knows that the only place where beauty can be made to replace ugliness is on the rack of spools at his end before the obedient weaving apparatus gets it, and so he changes the threads. He takes off a dark spool, replacing it with a brighter color; he exchanges a gaudy yellow for a mellow gold. Then he starts the machine once more, and as he watches what now comes out at the other end, he is pleased.

Daily, man's loom of mind weaves the pattern of his life. If he does not like the pattern, he is foolish to sit crying about it or wishing it would change. He is wrong to complain about "luck" or to berate "Providence." He, and he alone is the weaver.

The great law of cause and effect gives us back what we have put in.

The above is taken from the book The Science of Mind by Dr. Frederick Bailes

These were initially hard concepts for me to swallow...to think that our thoughts have brought circumstances that we honestly don't believe to be our fault into our life is a hard lump to swallow! I argued profusely with the friend who shared these concepts with me...giving him all the reasons "why" I was NOT responsible for this or that. The sad reality is that now that I've taken the time to study these principals and pay attention to what I'm thinking and saying my mind has been happy to send me instant replay messages of all the things that I previously thought to create the circumstances that I didn't feel responsible for. Your subconscious mind never forgets anything! The bright spot is that you can start immediately to reverse the negative and shift to the positive...this has truly changed my life.