I'm Flying!

I'm Flying!

Photo By: Abhinay Omkar

Recently, the NBC television network broadcast a live performance of the musical "Peter Pan."  In one of the play's most exciting scenes, Peter Pan shows the Darling children how to fly.  The secret, he says, is to "Think very happy thoughts."

Wendy, Michael, and John do just that, and - with the help of some wire harnesses - they start to fly around their nursery and eventually off to Neverland.  Now, while no one expects to literally leave the ground while doing so, "thinking very happy thoughts" isn't all that bad an idea.

Your brain has a reticular activating system (RAS).  This RAS controls where your thoughts concentrate.  It acts like a furnace, or a wood burner.  Your RAS will feed on whatever you give it.  The RAS generates the instructions you give yourself. 

You can choose to let positive thoughts become the Velcro of your mind.  The ones that stick.  The negative stuff can slide, Teflon-like, right off.  But you need to make the right choice.  Your RAS needs to know which direction to take you. 

You can think happy, positive thoughts, but if you don't feel them - if your thoughts can't get you across the line into not only an intellectual choice, but an emotional connection - then your life cannot truly change.  It's an incomplete process.  You can become stifled with ideas like, "I've made so many mistakes that I don't deserve to be happy."  Your instructions must become your reality, as driven by your RAS.

Whatever you give your RAS to focus on, the mind immediately focuses on those instructions.  The more you dwell on something - whether good or bad, positive or negative, real or imagined - the more you will focus on it.  This applies to anything in life - marriage, kids, work, other people, you name it.

It remains a self-motivated assignment to actively tweak your own RAS and mindset, if you want to make a meaningful and positive difference in how you approach people, decisions, and behaviors.  When you change the way you think about things, the way you think about things changes.  As Christ says in the New Testament, "As a man thinketh, so he is."  In practical terms, that means if you constantly tell yourself things are tough, that becomes your focus.

The limit of your language is the limit of your world.  Don't stay stuck in negative assumptions, like marriage is hard, relationships are hard, business is bad.  Make the choice - will you live with a victim mentality?  Or will you take Peter Pan's advice and take to heart the victor's mentality of thinking very happy thoughts?

~Eric