You Cannot Go Where Your Thoughts Have Not Been

You cannot go where your thoughts have not been.

Consider this, if you’re leaving on a trip to Amsterdam, don’t you mentally go to Amsterdam first? You plan your trip. You determine where in Amsterdam you actually want to go. Are you staying in a hotel?

Hostel?

The streets?

You think about your trip in advance. Your thoughts go to Amsterdam before you ever physically arrive.

Even if you are one of these people who say “I never plan anything. I just go where the road leads” your thoughts are on the road ahead of you, planning, scanning, organizing, preparing. That’s just the way it is.

Okay, forget Amsterdam.

Let’s say you want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Your thoughts go into the kitchen to make the sandwich before the sandwich actually manifests in your hands. Unless your REALLY lucky and have a spouse who will go into the kitchen and make the sandwich for you. The way you like it…slices perfectly aligned…peanut butter spread uniformly across the whole slice of bread…grape, or better yet, blackberry jelly on the other slice topping a nice thin layer of butter, or SmartBalance, whatever, just so long as there is nothing dripping over the sides of he bread.

Did you just start thinking about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Even if you can’t eat peanuts without going into anaphylactic shock, you were still thinking about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Your mind went there. Your thoughts went there.

That’s the way we work. That’s the way we’re created. When you understand that, and how to use it for your good, it’s a powerful thing.

Try to stop your thoughts from going somewhere. Can you?

Maybe you can but I can’t. My thoughts are always active. Always mobile. Always working, planning, testing, devising, and calculating. What we have to do is start guiding our thoughts to go where we want to end up.

I have a plan to hike up Mount Evans this summer. If there’s enough time, I want to hike up Pikes Peak as well. Now my thoughts are being guided to the top of Mount Evans. I am considering what I need to do to be able to accomplish this goal this summer.

Even before I reach the summit, my thoughts have been there a thousand times. I have seen myself leaving the trees behind as I climb above the tree line. I see the rocks under my feet making it difficult to walk. I feel the chilled air even in the middle of summer as I approach 14,000 feet. I labor to breathe as I climb higher and the air has less oxygen.

Then it comes into sight, the summit. I run to the top and jump around like an idiot. I pose for a picture (which I tweet immediately) next to the marker showing 14,258 feet. I go into the Crest House ruins. I drink a liter of water to get rid of the high altitude headache and go collapse into the vehicle ready to drive me down.

I haven’t been there yet, physically, but my thoughts have!

Now let’s get to what I really want to talk about. Where do you want to be?

In your life…where do you want to be? Are you where you want to be? Are you happy? Do you know where you need to be, to be happy?

Are your thoughts going there?

Norman Vincent Peale said, “Change your thoughts, and you change your world”.

I believe this is true. If you want to change your life you have to change how you think. You have to get your thoughts working for you, positively.

That’s the key… get your thoughts working for you, positively. Even if we don’t know it our thoughts are working for us all the time. The problem is that many of us have our thoughts working overtime, working hard, and they’re working negatively.

We think things like,

“I’m so fat.”

“I can’t do it.”

“I guess I was meant to lose.”

“I wish I could travel.”

“I’ll always be sick.”

“I’m not supposed to have a nice house.”

“I was born on the wrong side of the tracks.”

“I will never make it.”

“A day late and a dollar short, that’s my motto.”

We almost think it is ‘righteous’ and ‘humble’ to be beaten down by life and barely get by and not expect anything good…just “Que sera, sera, whatever will be will be”.

What a load of bunk!

Anyone can send their thoughts there. It is the easiest thing in the world to be complacent and accept anything that comes your way as “The way it’s supposed to be” and just do nothing.

It takes intestinal fortitude to stand up and say,

“NO! That is not the plan for my life. I WILL have more.”

“I will do more.”

“I will live more.”

“I will laugh more.”

“I will love more.”

“I will see more.”

“I will give more.”

“I will live the live I am supposed to live. I will live a happy life. I will live a long life. I will succeed.”

Determine what it is you want to do and begin sending your thoughts there.

Determine where it is you want to be and begin sending your thoughts there.

Determine the life you want to live and begin sending your thoughts there.

Remember when I talked about the peanut butter and jelly sandwich earlier? That is a very simplistic way of explaining what I am talking about but it is also exactly how easy it is to change your life by sending your thoughts to the right place(s).

Once you begin, keep doing it.

Henry David Thoreau said “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”

That’s the key, keep sending your thoughts to the place you want them to be. Be in control of your thoughts. Make your thoughts work for you, positively.

Mahatma Gandhi said “A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes.”

That is pretty strong, what we think, we become.

I’ll let the Bible sum it up. Here is what it says in Philippians 4:8 from “The Message” translation:

“Summing it all up, friends, I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.”

I’ll leave you with that. Think on the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly.

Send your thoughts there, the best, not the worst. Get them working for you, the beautiful, not the ugly. Send your thoughts-

Keep Believing…

Let me know what you think. Post a comment or email me. I’d love to hear your thoughts.