Positively Programming The Human Mind

The civilized world has become computer conscious. We are now familiar with the idea of programming machines to solve our problems and serve our convenience, saving us time and drudgery. The market is being flooded with pocket calculators capable of being programmed to fulfil a host of intricate calculations. You need not know how they work: you merely push a few keys and in split seconds the correct solution is smiling at you in glowing colour. These developments provide a useful analogy for improving the quality of our day to day living. We may learn to programme our thinking processes so as to produce lives of sunshine or shadow, peace or conflict, health or sickness, enthusiasm or apathy, hope or despair. As the Emperor-philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, wrote long ago, ‘Our lives are what our thoughts make them’. It was a shrewd statement, and it neatly enshrined the main theme of this article. Consider the truth once more; the quality of your persistent thinking governs the quality of your living-the way you behave, the way you react to circumstances, how you influence others, the respect you win from them, the number of your friends, the size of your health, even the size of your bank account. Living in pre-computer days, Marcus Aurelius, had he wished to use an analogy, would have likened the mind to a fertile field able to produce any desired harvest. If the farmer wants oats, he will sow oats, if he wants corn he will sow corn, and so on. In the realm of conduct the principle holds good also, as the New Testament writer declared: Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap. It’s all so very simple and obvious that it is amazing that we have to be constantly reminded of the eternal principle. NEGATIVE OR POSITIVE? To return to our modern analogy, where we think of the mind as a computer which has to be programmed and is capable of giving results accordingly. Ask yourself what programmes you are in the habit of feeding into your mind. Could they be classified as negative or positive? There are thousands of unfortunate folks who have fallen into the habit of feeding into their minds negative thoughts only. If you are like most people, you will admit to using a mixture of both and the results are far from satisfactory. The point of this article is to persuade you to use less and less negative thoughts and more and more positive ones. If you feed into your mind thoughts of envy and jealousy, then your emotional life will be full of discontent and bitterness. Feed in the sorry programme of self pity, and you will know wretched unhappiness. Feed in hatred, and know loneliness and rejection or worse. Feed in worry and anxiety, and know tension and ill-health. CHEERFUL THOUGHTS Conversely, feed in cheerful, hopeful, optimistic thoughts, and you will reap a blithe spirit. Feed in love and goodwill for others, and you will enjoy their love, respect and friendship in return. Think positive thoughts about your health and the functioning of your body, and you will rejoice in continuing good health. Think success in your chosen sphere and you will know it. Perhaps this is what Jesus had in mind when He said As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. If, in the past, you have fallen into the habit of programming pessimistic thoughts into your mind, now is the time to call a halt. This day begin monitoring your thoughts. Reject any savouring of the negative. In for the reverse: substitute I can, I will for I cannot, I will not and begin to transform your life. Remember that no one but you decides what you think. No one but you decides what you record on your mental tapes, but whatever you decide determines whether you enjoy or endure the play-back. This whole business of programming our minds has been dealt with at length in Psycho-Cybernetics by Dr Maxwell Maltz. In this inspiring book, the author stresses the importance of having goals for which to strive. Man is a goal striving being, he asserts, and he functions best when he is striving towards some desirable objective. We have all proved this to some extent. Remember the enthusiasm and energy you displayed when you were going all-out to achieve something? Remember the deep satisfaction the striving and the struggling gave you-perhaps even more exhilarating and health-giving than heady wine of success which, alas, so soon evaporates. Be sure, then, to feed positive programmes of creative achievement into your mental computer. Have short and long term objectives. Tell your mind what it must achieve in the coming year. Press the right keys, and the attractive colourful solution will appear-not with the speed of real computer-but in good time and sometimes quickly than you expect. Cultivate cheerful thoughts because a cheerful hearth doeth good like medicine. Etake Jude.