Melvin Feller Looks at our Thoughts and How we Become What we Think
Melvin Feller Looks at our Thoughts and How we Become What we Think
Melvin Feller Business Consultants Group Ministries in Texas and Oklahoma. Our mission is to call and equip a generation of Christian entrepreneurs
to do business as ministry. We provide workshops and resources that
help companies discover how to do business God’s way. When the heart of a
business is service rather than self it can be transformed into a
fruitful ministry. Melvin Feller is currently pursuing another graduate degree in business organizations.
For
at least two decades now, I have been an avid devour-er of personal
development info. I literally have it for breakfast, since I often
listen to audio programs while eating. One audio program I recently
picked up from the local library is Earl Nightingale’s The Strangest
Secret. I own a number of Earl’s audio programs, so I really enjoyed
this one too. It can take a while to get used to Earl’s extremely deep
voice, but I like his no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is style. The
Strangest Secret is from 1988, but I found that most of the ideas are
timeless and still apply today. The “secret” is simply six words: We
become what we think about.
This
certainly is not a new idea. In fact, Earl clearly admits that he
learned it from Napoleon Hill’s classic Think and Grow Rich. In
addition, it is not a unique idea either. There are plenty of other
books that have expanded on the concept, such as Marc Allen’s The
Millionaire Course or James Allen’s As a Man Thinketh.
Nevertheless, the idea is a profound one.
Few
people would argue that our thoughts control our actions and that our
actions largely control our results. If you think about going shopping
and decide to follow through on that thought, your body follows suit,
and soon you acquire the results of going shopping. It all begins with a
thought. Nevertheless, what people often fail to realize is that we
have the power to consciously choose our thoughts. Instead of just
letting our brains randomly cycle through the same thoughts repeatedly,
we can start choosing to spend time thinking about different things. In
addition, if we do that consistently, we will shift our actions in new
directions and thereby acquire new results.
Thoughts
are like seeds. If you want different results in life, you have to
figure out which thoughts are capable of growing those results and which
are not. Then you have to consciously fill your mind with the correct
thoughts and weed out the incorrect thoughts.
For
example, if you want to start your own business, I can tell you which
thoughts are the right seeds and which are the wrong ones. Among the wrong seeds, you will find the following thoughts:
Starting my own business is very risky. I have a family to support.
There is a good chance I will go broke.
I do not have enough money yet.
I have no idea how to start my own business.
I have a safe, secure job. Why would I want to mess that up?
I am not ready to start my own business just yet. Maybe next year.
Please
note that I am not saying that these thoughts are objectively wrong,
just that they are the wrong seeds for the potential result of starting
your own business. In other words, the result of starting your own
business is not going to grow in the soil of the thoughts above.
However, these are the right seeds if you do not want to start your own
business; these seeds will grow the tree of being a lifelong employee.
Therefore, chances are that if you harbor thoughts similar to those
above, you find yourself an employee right now. Nothing at all wrong
with that if it is what you want. On the other hand, if you are an
employee right now and would like to start your own business, but your
predominant thoughts about the idea are similar to those above, then you
have a problem. Those mental seeds simply will not grow a business. If
you retain those thoughts, you will never run your own business, just as
if you plant tomato seeds, you will never grow a watermelon.
So what kinds of thoughts are the right seeds for starting your own business? Here are some of the ones I recommend:
Sure, it is a risk, but I believe in myself, and whatever obstacles come my way, I will overcome them.
I
would rather spend my life working hard to build my own business than
to build someone else’s. If I am going to build a business no matter
what, it might as well be my own.
The
freedom of being my own boss is extremely attractive to me. Imagine
being able to decide how to spend my time every minute of every day.
I can only get so far income-wise as an employee. If I want to hit it rich, I need to go into business for myself.
Now
even though thoughts like those above might be the right seeds for
starting your own business that does not mean that planting the right
seeds, is sufficient to grow the whole plant. Just as plants need water
and sunshine; it takes a lot of hard work to build a business.
Nevertheless, the right thoughts are the first step. I am just using the
starting of a new business as one example. I could have just as easily
used quitting smoking, losing weight, getting married, etc.
The
main point I am trying to make is that if you find yourself in a
situation where you want new results in your life (i.e. something other
than what you are currently experiencing), then the first step is to
examine your dominant thoughts to see if they are the right seeds to
grow the results you want. The odds are probably better than 95% that if
you are not making progress, then you are probably thinking the wrong
thoughts and need to replace them with new ones. For example, you will
not become a nonsmoker by thinking thoughts like, “Quitting smoking is
hard.”
A
key concept to understand here is that shifting your thoughts is a
conscious and deliberate activity. You do not just say to yourself, “Ok,
I’ll think about starting my own business. Sounds good. Next….” You
have to be a lot more proactive than that. You have to set aside an hour
or so to be very alone, sit down with pen and paper, figure out the
correct thoughts/seeds you need to be thinking, and then consciously ram
those new thoughts into your head, repeatedly until they become
dominant over the old thoughts. In addition, if you are trying to make a
big shift in your results, then this is something you will need to do
every single day.
You
might find the above exercise difficult at first. When you start
thinking new thoughts, the most common initial reaction is that you will
feel a great deal of doubt about them. So if you start thinking about
running your own business, your initial images probably won’t seem too
attractive. Then you find yourself thinking about quitting your job, the
negative reaction you’ll get from coworkers, the office politics you
have to deal with on a daily basis, and you suddenly realize you’re back
to thinking the wrong thoughts again. That is normal.
However, use your
imagination to push past the doubt and keep working on it. See that new
reality working out beautifully, even if you have no idea how it could
possibly work in the real world. It is going to be sloppy in the
beginning, but it will get easier over time. After about 2–3 weeks of
this, you will start to actually believe in those new thoughts. In
addition, that is when you will feel the urge to start taking action.
However, in the beginning, you will still be too full of doubt to act.
That is fine it is important to reach the point of belief first. So
just, be patient with yourself, and let your imagination guide you. As
Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Melvin Feller Business Consultants Group Business Ministries in Texas and Oklahoma.
Melvin Feller founded Melvin Feller Business Consultants Group
Ministries in the 1970s to help individuals and organizations achieve
their specific Victory. Victory as defined by the individual or
organization are achieving strategic objectives, exceeding goals,
getting results or desired outcomes. He has extensive experience
assisting businesses achieve top and bottom line results. He has broad
practical experience creating WINNERS in many organizations and
industries. He has hands-on experience in executive leadership,
operations, logistics, sales, program management, organizational
development, training, and customer service. He has coached teams to
achieve results in strategic planning, business development,
organizational design, sales, and customer response and business process
improvement. He has prepared and presented many workshops nationally
and internationally.
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