MASS HYSTERIA

“[Moral thinking] is debased and poisoned by the influence of society’s weakest and most ignoble elements, the herd”~Welshon 16.

Much of what we think impacts others when a community holds negative views. Our thoughts impact our experience. When we publicize destructive thoughts we begin to plant destructive beliefs. We validate each other’s thoughts based upon what we have read or heard, thus mushrooming an adverse belief (such as about the economy). Experiences will follow. It is our ideals that should be planted firmly within our mind. These are the images we want thrust out into reality. Focusing on anything other than our ideals is a waste of energy.

STAY OUT OF THE SAND TRAPS: MOVE TO IDEALS

Those who forfeit the ideal for the sake of the path go nowhere slowly. Those who put aside the path for the sake of ideal go everywhere instantly.

Sand traps in golf are obstacles encountered on the way to the green. They are those beastly sandy beach areas strategically placed to snag your ball as you approach the green. Sand traps are not easy to swing out of. Each improper hit contains a threat to bury the ball further into the sand. The goal in golf is to avoid the traps by firmly fixing your eye on the green. Your focus, your aim and your hit are kept on the target not the traps. It is quite common to hear golfers say, “Don’t look at the trap. Pretend it’s not there.”

Like the sand traps of a well-orchestrated golf course, life has its own set of sand traps. These present themselves as obstacles in your path to success, abundance, joy and harmony. Your sand traps could be money obstacles, lack of know-how or necessary man power, lack of ideas, or not enough time. Anything can be a sand trap if you allow it to get between you and your ideal.

When your eye is fixed on the sand trap as you take aim in golf, you will land in the trap because your ball goes where your eye looks. The key to avoiding the trap is to look squarely beyond it at the target. Accordingly, your focus had better remain fixed beyond your traps and squarely on your ideal.

You must put aside the personal obstacles you perceive. Any time you catch yourself extending thoughts to the problems associated in reaching your ideal, instead of the ideal itself, you are in a trap. Commonly people get caught in the money trap. They erroneously think they need money to get something: start a new business, get out of debt or seed an invention. Money is the sand trap of every ideal.

Your thoughts are the producers of your minds ideals not money. As long as you hold tightly to your ideal the means will present. Successful people keep their ideals always finely focused on the outcome. It is not the means to achieving the ideal that consumes their thought. It is the Ideal itself. Unleashing your energy on your ideal ensures absolutely that you will get it.

Do not succumb to the temptation to list your reasons for not achieving your ideal as though they are facts. Your reasons are your traps. Release yourself from their captivity. Get yourself out of your mind traps by looking towards your ideal.

In 1998, Sergey Brin and Larry Page dropped out of graduate school at Stanford University to devote their time to a search engine that would organize every bit of information on the web for FREE! This little search engine they donned with the name Google. Neither Brin nor Page at the time Google was being born knew how to make a free search engine profitable. However, that did not stop them. Nor did it stop some very early investors who also saw the insurmountable benefits in Google, but who also were not quite sure how money could be made from something offered for free. Instead of focusing on the profitability of Google, Brin and Page charged forward focusing on Google’s performance as an optimal search engine. The money eventually followed.

Had Brin and Page focused on making Google profitable (money trap) early on instead of focusing on their ideal which was creating a top performing search engine, Google likely would have ended up on the scrap pile of bad ideas. Google’s profitability revealed itself only through optimizing its search engine capabilities, as Brin and Page originally set out to do. They focused on their ideal. In doing so the way in which Google could be made profitable revealed itself.

When your focus is on the problem, then it is the problem that is drawn near. Focusing on the ideal draws forth solutions. Problems iron themselves out. They have to because problems are not part of the ideal. When you find yourself obsessing over how to or you use words like impossible, I can’t see how, it is not going to work; you have your eye directly on a problem and until you alter your focus you will not see the way.

You cannot think of contrasting thoughts concurrently. Remember how impossible it felt trying to think of multiple thoughts: your grocery list and a conversation you had. You cannot do it. When your mind is consumed with a problem, the solution is barred entry. Conversely, when your mind is wrapped tightly around your ideal, less than ideal thoughts are shut out. By holding your ideal and shutting out what is less than ideal, your ideal is the only experience that can form. Do you realize the power contained by holding your ideals firmly in your mind? They must migrate to you. There is no other option.