What the mind of man can conceive and believe the mind of man can achieve.  This famous quote by Napoleon Hill (born 1883 died 1970) and highlighted in his book “Think and Grow Rich” has impacted millions of people in and out of business.

“There is simplicity in how I view the mind in its totality. It is separated into two parts; the Conscious and the Unconscious. The primary driver of the Subconscious is to protect the Conscious. Positive or negative thoughts are impregnated into the Subconscious through our environment as well as the circumstances of life; verbal, physical, written and orally. I have read where much of this is cemented into the mind by the time a child is 3-5 years old! Whether intended or unintended, attitudes do seep into our consciousness over the entirety of our lifetime; for many more slowly the older we get.” Jon Bailey (circa 2014)

Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, Lee Iacocca, et.al have suggested that it is their belief that people stop having “The Ability To Learn” by the time they are 18-21! You have heard it said “You cannot teach an old dog new tricks!” well now you may know why. At this very young age people have begun so closed minded that if you lose this ability, you just may never be able to get it back.

There is clear evidence that it takes a huge amount of pain to get people to change yet even with that pain, they may still choose to continue doing what they have always done! The Bible is an excellent source to observe how even God uses pain to teach His people to go in one direction or another and so often will not give in! Years ago at a church service, I heard a preacher discuss how years after the civil war people went back to the plantations and found a significant population who were still living on them and in terrible conditions, why? The concept of what freedom provided them was not in their mindset! Freedom is not freedom until you are able to walk it out freely! The landowners were no longer responsible to provide any level near the sustenance of life; a meager wage, a share of a crop that was sufficient; AND STILL THEY REMAINED!

“Freedom from a cemented, closed and wasted mind-set is only a small step away for each one of us!” Yes, for each and every one of us. There is a tendency for many people to listen to people whom they agree with, to hang around the same crowd of like-minded individuals. Different attitudes are not only uncomfortable they are absolutely wrong. We can truly see this in the National Political Stage today.

Attitudes affect our mindset in a very dangerous way because each of us believes that they are proper (correct). We are so very comfortable with them! We see the impact of our attitudes every level of measurable success/failure particularly in the military, business, medical and sports fields, where they can make or break the team. We must develop an understanding that it is not just critical in a narrow set of circumstances but in our everyday life.

The problem with our attitudes is that they play such a huge and often unseen role in the conclusions we make about any issue affecting our lives. Attitudes which we have actually can form our conclusions. Henry Ford wanted to build an engine with 4 cylinders on each side; the expert engineers told him “it couldn’t be done, it never would work properly!” I guess you have already heard the rest of the story. But wait! In the mid-late 70’s I purchased a new car with a fairly new engine type, the V-6. Engineers at the time were suggesting it would never be very successful because it would not run smooth. Well, you have also heard the rest of that story as well.

So the Million Dollar Question is, how do we change attitudes that are preventing what we truly want out of this life?

Napoleon Hill recognized the importance of this process which is called “Autosuggestion”.

Wikipedia: Emile Coué discovered that subjects could not be hypnotized against their will and, more importantly, that the effects of hypnosis waned when the subjects regained consciousness. He thus eventually developed the Coué method and released his first book, Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion (published in 1920 ). He described the Coué method as “ … an instrument that we possess at birth, and with which we play unconsciously all our life, as a baby plays with its rattle. It is, however, a dangerous instrument; it can wound or even kill you if you handle it imprudently and unconsciously. It can, on the contrary, save your life when you know how to employ it consciously. Coué still believed in the effects of medication, but he also believed that our mental state was able to affect and even amplify the action of these medications. He observed that his patients who used his mantra-like conscious suggestion, “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better”, replacing their “thought of illness” with a new “thought of cure,” could augment their medication plan. According to Coué, repeating words or images enough times causes the “subconscious” to absorb them.

The Rolling Stones have a song, “Sad Sad Sad” with the lyrics “The Elephant in the Bedroom, Throwing all his weight around”; that is our Subconscious Mind! Daily we need to learn to manage wherever it is going, if we don’t it will take us places where we never intended to go. The mind is the most precious and important organ which we have and it truly does have a mind of its own!

Jon Bailey                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      2014