Mind Matters Most - Chapter Six

MMM Six

Our conditioning creates what we believe

It’s been said that there really is no objective world out there; that things are how we perceive them to be.  We create our environment.  Whether this is true is something we won’t delve into here.  However, what I will say is that we subjectively experience our world in such a way that it is different for each of us.  Our interpretation of what we see, hear, smell, touch or taste varying not necessarily because of what is, but because of the mental constructs we bring to that experience.  In some ways it’s a matter of motivation and preference.  It is a matter of experience rather than an objectivity common to all.

Bit too abstract?

Let’s get down to something a little more tangible.  We each of us judge situations by our mental conditioning.  In many ways we get what we expect.   If we’re brought up in a household where everyone around us has a certain level of, say, honesty, we assume that to be the norm and that is what we unconsciously emulate and expect from others as we grow through our formative years.

Now let us take a hypothetical case where a young lad, we’ll call him Jimmy, has a dad who is a burglar. Dad’s a thief.  He breaks into houses, factories and office premises and returns home with the spoils of his thefts.   Dad talks of these escapades with his mother and elder brothers.  Young Jimmy notices his father displays no sense of shame.  It seems he’s proud of his prowess, in fact.  However, Jim notices that Dad keeps these discussions of his exploits within the family.  No talking about burglaries and robberies to the neighbors - and the police are regarded as ‘the enemy.’

Our conditioning creates what we believe

Jim, as a younger child not yet introduced to a larger outside world, takes it for granted that this is the way people operate.  Stealing from others it not regarded as wicked, rather it’s an opportunity presented that people can take advantage of.  “Oh, they just left it lying around, “and “It just fell off the back of a truck.”  With this sort of early conditioning, if someone dropped something and Jimmy found it, he’d jump for joy.  The last thing that would cross his mind is that what he’d gained was the result of someone else’s loss.  Sympathy for others’ losses would not be in his repertoire of emotions.

As the years went by Jim would realize that thieves overall are not regarded highly.  The signals society-at-large had been giving out through conversation, through newspapers, magazines, books, television and film, is that people should be leading moral and honest lives. Further, that honest people are happier.  They win out.  Crooks end up losing.   This would set up within the mind of our hero a lot of conflict.  A schism would form.   “Do I conform to society’s desires that I lead an honest life, or should I continue on as before? “ Jimmy might ask. 

Let us assume that no outright decision is made.  Our Jim goes on much as before.   One thing is guaranteed.  Our young villain will be living in a world where he trusts no one.   His belief will be that everyone around him is like him.   Anyone will steal from anyone else if the opportunity arises.  Indeed, some people will, like his father did, go out of their way to rob people.  There would be instilled in him from a very early age that no one could be trusted.  Even those close to him would have to be watched.   His mental construct would be such that those few people who are reputed to be honest are really confidence tricksters.  Anyone who has attained to riches is a criminal, with some sort of angle he hasn’t yet learned about.  The successful got where they are by clever dishonest schemes and haven’t been found out yet.  Cynicism would be rife.

Chances are that unless something completely changed Jim’s outlook, his philosophy of life, he would experience a lot of angst, a lot of unhappiness.   Trusting no one, because he judges everyone around him by his own standards, he draws to himself untrustworthy associates.  “Birds of a feather flock together,” goes the saying.  We really do draw into our lives our surrounds, our environment, the people and situations that validate our habitual thinking.  How can it be any other way?  With Jimmy a lifetime of criminality is all but assured.

Yet dramatic changes can occur.   For example, let us say Jim, now eighteen, is suddenly drafted into the armed forces.  There is a national conscription policy.  Jim’s surrounds almost immediately become very different.   Let us say that he is drafted to an Army or an Air force base or, for the sake of this example, into the Navy.  He joins a warship where the level of honesty and openness among the crew is high.  There can be few secrets within the confines of such a vessel.

Aboard and at sea, Jim witnesses things such as people helping others out.  He experiences teamwork.  He is part of a crew in a way he’s never been before.  Then someone does something out of the goodness of their heart.  He is subject to an extreme act of unexpected kindness.   Our hero loses his wallet containing a lot of money:  three months shipboard pay.  He’s aghast.   What’s he going to do?  He’ll never get that back!

Then someone aboard who he doesn’t even like much comes up to him and hands him his wallet, everything within it intact.  Not a note or even a coin missing.

Shock! 

“Who is this dope?”  

The man returning the money makes no big deal of it.  Claps him the back and wishes him well.  Such an act could have our hero, conditioned to dishonesty over his lifetime, suddenly turning his whole way of looking at the world around.   It might not.  Then again, it might.  And if he did change and become a much more honest person he would begin to feel better.   There would be more trust.  “Everyone isn’t dishonest,” he would realize.  With further insight he would understand that only a small percentage of people are dishonest.  The world is much better than he had earlier believed it to be.

So what is happening here?

What is happening is something very important.   Our young thief’s self-image, which determines what and who he thinks he is - which limits the very way he looks at his qualities, his values, even his talents and gifts -  has undergone a subtle change.  Jim’s experienced a loss, knows how it feels.  He realizes, perhaps for the first time in any significant way, how it feels to suffer.  The realization comes that he has caused this sort of suffering to others.  An empathy which did not exist earlier has come into his way of thinking.  

Once the shift is made there is no turning back

Then from thereon, after that dramatic introduction to looking at life in a new way, it is likely changes will take place.   Those changes might be nowhere near as abrupt and dramatic.  They   might be very gradual.  It is hardly likely our former young thief will turn into a saint overnight.  But he will change.  That is inevitable.   It is said that once a mind has been stretched it never returns to its former size and shape, and this would be the case with our hero.

We change and grow by first of all being prepared to accept that something is possible.  We don’t believe it at this stage.  We just have an open mind towards it.  We try the water.  We stick in a toe.  Yes, the water was cold but it did not bite.  We ease in a foot…a leg.  Still okay.  We commit more and more of ourselves to something and, if each step works, we start to believe more and more strongly that we can do it.   Once we have done it, we know it.    But before knowing comes belief.  It is belief that opens up real possibility that we will achieve.   As Henry Ford is reputed to have said, 

“If we believe we can or believe we can’t, we are right.”

You are not your thoughts

Mind matters most.   Be aware that your mind is your good tool.   It isn’t you.   It is of you.  You should be in charge of it.   Once you believe it is not you and that you are in charge of it great possibilities open up for you.   You can change your mind, and I’m not talking here of deciding to go out to the pub and then changing your mind because it’s too cold and windy.  I’m talking about a major shift in the way you look at life and the opportunities that are open to you.  One of the affirmations published in Greg Anderson’s book, Living Life On Purpose, “All obstacles vanish from my life.  The doors of opportunity open for me and I know my life’s purpose,” springs to mind.   When a strong enough belief is established you’re willing to accept it as true.  From thereon this is what you act from.