It's the Thought That Counts

For the last 6,000 years in recorded history, all the great philosophers, scientists, industrialists, historians and theologians have all agreed on one point: you and I ultimately become what we think about.

In other words, many highly respected thinkers in disparate disciplines have concluded that thought is the total determiner of how our lives will go. For your convenience, here's what some of them have said about this crucial point:

• Buddha: What we think we become. We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

• Spinoza: I saw that all things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save insofar as the mind was affected by them.

• Mahatma Gandhi: A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.

• Albert Ellis: People and things do not upset us, rather we upset ourselves by believing that they can upset us.

• Henry Ford: If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right.

• Shakespeare: There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

• Robert Collier: Any thought that is passed on to the subconscious often enough and convincingly enough is finally accepted. One comes to believe whatever one repeats to oneself sufficiently often, whether the statement be true or false, it comes to be dominating thought in one's mind.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson: A man is what he thinks about all day long.

• Peace Pilgrim: If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.

• Abraham Lincoln: People are about as happy as they make up their mind to be.

• Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: When we think of failure, failure will be ours. If we remain undecided, nothing will ever change. All we need to do is want to achieve something great and then simply do it. Never think of failure; for what we think will come about.

• Norman Vincent Peale: Change your thoughts and you change your world.

• Ernest Holmes: Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.

• Jesus: As you think, so shall ye be.

In summary, you and I relate to everything and everyone on this planet through the mechanism of thought. It is not what is in the world that determines the quality of our lives, it is how we choose to process our world in our thoughts.

Our future is formed by the thoughts we hold most often. Not only do we literally become what we think about, but we are all given the gift of being able to write our own story.

So, starting today, I cordially invite you to write a great story for yourself - one that is filled with love, happiness... and fun!