How Your Thoughts Today Shape Your Reality Tomorrow
Remember the classic example of a glass half full, and the difference between optimists and pessimists? Or have you ever wondered what sets generally healthy people apart from those who are frequently ill?
When people who are often sick are asked what they think (and literally imagine) about their health, they tend to picture a long sequence of slides where they are always getting sick, or they hear a quiet, gloomy inner voice with matching commentary.
For healthy people, it’s almost the same, except in their mental “movie,” they always recover, no matter what happens. Plus, their inner voice is just as quiet, but it’s upbeat and confident, saying things like, “Everything will be fine.”
As Winston Churchill once said, “The main thing is not the facts, but how you interpret them.”
But really, what makes people who are often sick focus only on illness? In fact, they have a much richer experience of recovery than healthy people do. If you listen to them, they’re absolutely convinced that they get sick often, but I’ve never once heard any of them say that they recover often.
The famous family therapist Virginia Satir, based on her vast experience, claimed:
“The survival instinct is far from the strongest instinct in people. The strongest instinct is to do things out of habit.”
There’s a saying: “For every habit, there’s a way to break it.” And another: “Sow a thought — reap an action; sow an action — reap a habit; sow a habit — reap a destiny.” Or, more simply: “What you think today becomes your reality tomorrow.”
Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) experts might correct us: “How you think today becomes your reality tomorrow.”
Check Yourself: How Do You Think About Your Health?
If, in your mind’s eye, you see a dreary sequence of illnesses, try reducing the brightness, sharpness, and size of those images. Make them dull, colorless, and literally push them farther away from yourself.
Instead, recall the many times you’ve recovered, even from minor injuries. Make those images or “movies” bright, clear, and large. Bring them closer to you, and add a confident, energetic inner voice saying something like, “I always recover. My body knows how to stay healthy.”
Healing Visualization Technique
If your mental collage is full of illness slides, imagine blowing it up and letting a bright white dot appear in the center. From that dot, let a collage of recoveries quickly unfold, scattering the “scraps of illness” in all directions. Do this several times (about five is enough), but always finish with a black screen (“turn off the lights”) to avoid creating an endless loop.
In our digital video age, it shouldn’t be hard to mentally find examples of similar effects. And if you think you’re not good at visualization, just try to think about it in the right way. Believe me, you don’t need a 3D movie on a big screen for this to work.