The Power of Thought

As Napoleon Hill, the father of the modern Self-improvement / Personal Development movement said, “The creator gave us power over but one thing and one thing only, our own conscious minds”. Everything we ever do in this world begins with a thought and our thoughts can be either positive or negative. For some reason the vast majority of people are thinking negatively about themselves or the world around them most of the time. It is said that about 90% of the thoughts we think in the course of a day will be negative. We must turn that around because such negativity can be terribly destructive. You only have to look at the fact that suicide is on the increase to realise that. It all comes about because of our thoughts and how we mentally process things, how we perceive things. It is not what happens to us in our lives that can make us happy or unhappy it is how we perceive those events, how we process them.


Suppose a group of people were made redundant from their place of work. At one extreme some people will be thinking, “Oh no. That’s it, I’ve had it. No one will employ me now. I’m on the scrap heap, finished”. At the other extreme there will be other people thinking, “Wow! That’s great! I hated that job anyway so now I can get the sort of job I really want/start my own business/re-train/travel” or whatever. Of course there will be a variety of other reactions in between. The same event can happen to a number of people and they will all perceive it differently. Some will perceive it positively and some negatively. If those that perceive it negatively are not careful they could be totally destroyed by it yet that same event can spur others on to achieve great things. All of this is brought about by our thoughts. If we can change our thoughts from negative to positive our possibilities may be limitless. If we can’t then we may end up as another statistic on the list of suicides. If we can change our thoughts to positive we can change our whole lives for the better!

The brain is said to function like a highly sophisticated computer and negative thinking can be likened to negative programming. We must reverse any negative programming by constantly putting in positive programming. Positive or negative the mind can only hold one thought at a time. We must replace our negative thoughts with positive ones. As David J. Schwartz said, “The person who achieves controls his thinking. He doesn’t let his thinking control him”. Or, as Robert Holden said, “Unless we are prepared to think differently we will experience no difference. Thought is creative”.

So how can we improve upon our thoughts? The first way I want to talk about is to do as Brian Tracy says and to go on a positive attitude diet for 21 days. Every time we catch ourselves thinking negatively we must immediately stop that thought and change it for a positive one. Behavioural psychologists say that we should actually say “STOP!” inside our head and then think a positive thought instead. The reason we must do this for 21 days is that it takes that amount of time to form a habit so if we keep it up we will form the habit of constantly thinking positive.

The second method is my favourite. We have to RAPP.

“When you’re down and feeling blue

just remember what to do

you can RAPP, you can RAPP

you can RAPP now!!!”

So what is RAPP? R.A.P.P. stands for ‘Run A Positive Programme’, i.e. in your mind, your bio-computer. There are two types of positive programme you can use. The first is to recall the memory of a pleasant, happy and positive experience from your past. Think of several such experiences and then choose the best one. Once you have chosen one play the ‘video’, if you like, of that memory over and over several times to fix it in your mind so that you can easily bring it into consciousness whenever you need to. Make sure you really highlight all the positive aspects by bringing it closer, brightening up the colour, sharpening the focus and enhancing the sound or even add some appropriate music if it helps. Make sure you really feel the happy, positive emotions that go with your memory/video. Then whenever you are feeling depressed or stuck in any kind of negative thinking run your positive programme and really see it, hear it and feel the emotion of it. Within a few seconds you will be feeling happier and more positive!

The second, and I think, best technique is to run a positive future programme. In this method you run a programme of one of your goals. Decide which goal you want to use and create a video or visualisation of yourself having achieved it. See what you will see, hear what you will hear and feel what you will feel. Make a complete mind video of your goal from beginning to end making sure that you really feel the happy, positive emotions that go with it. Once again you run this video in place of any negative thinking. Using this method not only will you feel the positive benefits but you will help to bring your goals into reality more rapidly.

I shall leave you with a final quotation from Jack Black, another leader in the field of Self-improvement / Personal Development: “Your thinking determines all things. In other words, think negatively and you will attract negative realities. Think positively and the benefits you desire in life will come to you. It’s that simple. Whatever we choose to think we choose to have in our lives”.