Not Kindle Related.
Was waiting for a free game book to download and ended up reading the first chapter of Think and Grow Rich.
Just the first chapter. However, was struck by this -
… our brains become magnetized with the dominant thoughts which we hold in our minds, and, by means with which no man is familiar, these “magnets” attract to us the forces, the people, the circumstances of life which harmonize with the nature of our dominating thoughts.
You mean to say Andrew Carnegie commissioned a study of 500 successful people and this is what the study found?
It seems pretty strange.
Dig deeper though and there are a few different works that are all pointing to the same thing i.e.
Quote from the Buddha
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.”
Found out about the quote thanks to ‘You Are What You Think’ Buddha t-shirts.
Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist
The Alchemist talks about the Language of the World and thoughts manifesting into reality -
When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream.
I learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things.
Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.
James Allen’s As a Man Thinketh
Courtesy Wikipedia -
A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.
Every action and feeling is preceded by a thought.
Could these works hold a grain of truth?
We live in a world where nothing is a given i.e. evolution, climate change, mentos+coke, unicorns – everything is disputed.
So obviously something this strange is bound to attract a lot of flak.
However, let’s look at the various explanations put forward before we make a decision.
How could thoughts possibly manifest as real, physical objects or affect any changes?
For all these theories to have some basis in reality there must be some explanation for how thoughts could actually affect physical things.
The Crazy Sounding Explanations
- The Alchemist’s theory that the Universe is conspiring to give us what we want.
- Think and Grow Rich’s claim that Our minds become magnets and attract the things we think about.
The Less Crazy Sounding Explanations
- Brain Waves affecting other waves. After all we do have wave-article duality i.e. all matter (and energy) has a wave-like quality. It’s interesting that Quantum Physics might help make a case for The Alchemist and The Buddha’s teachings.
- When we focus our thoughts on something our subconscious is working behind the scenes and unconsciously directing our actions in a way to get us our desired outcome.
- When we focus on something we tend to do more of it and think more about it and get insights and get better at it.
While there are various arguments for each of these, the Brain Wave theory has something very real going for it.
There actually are Brain Wave operated devices
- Here’s a write-up of a game controller that works based on, amongst other things, your brain waves. You can even buy it at Amazon.
- Monkeys are moving artificial arms with their thoughts.
- It’s obviously not nonsense because even Intel is working on chips that harness human brain waves to operate PCs and more.
If our brain waves can trigger a device, could they trigger other things too?
It’s hard to say.
You could take ‘all matter has a wave-particle duality’ and make a case that our thoughts (being brain waves) could conceivably have some affect on matter.
It’s just such an unexplored area that it’s hard to say what’s reality and what’s mumbo-jumbo.
Which brings us to a final thought.
What if Our Thoughts Really Did Dictate our Lives?
What if we were literally thinking things into existence - If we were determining the story of our lives by the thoughts we were choosing to think.
We do have the Placebo Effect. It’d be totally crazy if the Placebo Effect existed for every single thing (and not just medicine).
It’s a crazy thought – our thoughts might be determining what happens in our lives. Why isn’t there more research into this?
Filed under: Reality Tagged: | confusion, thoughts into reality
I’ve had this happen enough to believe in some respects that it is true. Of course since I don’t understand the why or how of it I just smile…
Same with me. To the point that probably should accept it.
Read “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America” by Barbara Ehrenreich (available on the Kindle) for interesting commentary on this topic.
Thanks for the link. Just read an interview with Roger Federer and he’s super positive too – he talks about how he likes to ‘focus on winning’ as opposed to Tiger Woods who ‘hates to lose’.
It’d be really cool if someone did a very intensive study of this.
research noetic sciences-there is actually a field that askes these same questions or variations of them
thanks. will have to look into noetic sciences.