How a Thought Becomes Reality: Intention Belief Creation
A lot has been said and written on the subject of turning ethereal thoughts into solid things, but how is it really done?
How a thought becomes reality, from intention to belief to creation, is an intriguing question!
Is this an even bigger secret to reveal? Perhaps it is.
I have been as keen as anyone to unlock the secrets of the mind in the way we are supposed to be able to communicate with a higher power, often referred to as "Infinite Intelligence" as alluded to in the iconic writings of Napoleon Hill, most notably in his book, "Think and Grow Rich".
I have read and re-read that book many times over the past few years and at one stage really thought I had earned the right to turn down a glass, as Hill suggested.
I'll get back to that discovery a little later on. But first I want to tell you what sent my own ideas into free-fall for a while until I steadied myself and regained the direction of my mental path.
The Secret Was Too Simple!
In the preface pages of my reprinted edition of Think and Grow Rich, one of the introductions contains the revelation of what Hill's "secret" was as being "What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve." But that is only a part of the secret (at least to my way of thinking).
There is more to it!
Back when I was training as a hypnotherapist, that concept was taught as part of the ability of the human mind to create a person's reality through self suggestion or autosuggestion. I was fully aware of Emile Coue's affirmation,
"Every day in every way I am getting better and better"
and many of the similar suggestions that the subconscious mind could absorb and then bring into reality by causing the relevant behavioural patterns to move into step with the suggestions.
But there was a problem back then in that I was not aware that without charging such suggestions with strong, positive emotion, the words were meaningless. You could repeat some great affirmations all day long and never benefit from them in the way you could.
So The Secret was really too simple to be effective unless it was clothed in better and fuller understanding. It took a long time before I got that understanding, but I have it now.
Why Thoughts Remain Just Thoughts
For the vast majority of people who are trying to grasp the implications of the Law of Attraction and all the peripheral laws of nature that bind together to create our reality, just knowing how it all works is not enough.
Just watching the movie or reading the book will not change anything in your life unless you put that information into practice by taking action.
Just knowing that your thoughts are energy forms that vibrate at certain frequencies and are able to attract other energy forms that vibrate at the same frequency will not attract anything much to you.
Except maybe you're likely to attract plenty of negative things, since negativity seems to be a far stronger attractive force than positivity.
Hill explains that it is very easy to attract poverty, limitation and lack into your life because these are traits of failure.
And failure needs no encouragement to enter your life.
Whereas success and plenty needs to be worked at very hard if it is going to feature in your life.
The Truth Sinks In
So you have to do more than just know what you need to do in order to make your thoughts coalesce into their physical equivalents. You have to act to bring those thoughts out of their insubstantiality and onto substantiality.
But how do you do that? I didn't know for the longest time because no one really explained it in a way I could understand.
I was re-reading Think and Grow Rich for the umpteenth time one evening after having listened to Bob Proctor give his "Science of Getting Rich" lecture and the penny dropped. I got it.
Bob mentioned something about what Andrew Carnegie had said to a young Napoleon Hill during that fateful interview that, while I'd heard it countless times, I really only heard for the first time that day. He said,
"Any thought that is held in the mind that is emphasised; that is either feared or revered will immediately begin to clothe itself in the most appropriate physical form available."
Why had I not acknowledged that statement before? It is so profound and so devastatingly powerful that it is in essence the answer to that carefully hidden secret that has been hiding in plain sight all that time!
Hiding Before My Very Eyes
I don't think I actually even heard it during Bob's talk. It struck me several hours later when I was reading the chapter on Imagination in Think and Grow Rich.
I was thinking about something entirely different, yet all of a sudden that statement flashed into my mind. Along with it came a realisation. A light bulb appeared.
There was the concept that can bring about success in any form but only if it is acted upon. This is significant! You have to act on your thoughts or they will never see the light of day. But how do you do that?
Hill tells you exactly how to do that in the second chapter on Desire. He tells you the six steps to riches (or success) that you must follow if you truly desire a thing. One of those steps is writing down your desire and then writing down your plan to achieve it.
He keeps reiterating that point in subsequent chapters. You have to commit your thoughts into writing. That's how you begin to bring them into form.
When you write down what you are thinking, what are you doing? You're giving them substance as being written words on paper!
That is the secret of how to turn thoughts into things.
Turning a Desire into its Physical Equivalent
Once you have rendered your thought into its written form (yes, you have given it form) the next step is to follow your written plan to bring the desired thing into your life. That's vitally important because merely sitting in a chair and dreaming that your desired thing will appear in your life will not make it happen.
You have to make it happen!
It's a process that starts with a thought or an idea. That idea gets its first taste of physical reality in written words on paper. Then it gets transformed from words on paper to its physical reality by your subsequent actions in following your plan with a keen earnestness, persistence and total faith that you can and will achieve it.
And there it is. Whatever the mind can conceive (the idea), and believe (have faith) it can achieve (bring the desire into physical form). Hill's hidden secret is simple yet not quite so simple as you'd like it to be.
Why So Many People Fail to Turn Their Thoughts into Things
Just to create some balance in this article, it seems fair to look at why so many people try to make this work for them but fail at the task. I believe it is a combination of several factors, with the most prominent three of those being:
- Lack of full and deep understanding
- Lack of tenacity
- Lack of belief
Understanding
I didn't fully understand this concept for a long time. A very long time! And I didn't really know how I could make this amazing law of nature work in my favour until very recently.
I would imagine many people are in the same situation as I was. I can't give anyone understanding and nor can anyone else. It's something you have to gain for yourself by constantly reading and re-reading the concepts until they hit that realisation point in your mind.
Tenacity
Luckily for me, tenacity is one trait I have in abundance. I've always been pretty stubborn and when I get a problem I know I can solve, I tend to go at it until I do solve it. That was probably one of the reasons I wasn't so popular with managers in my old IT career because I could often take far too long to reach answers when they wanted them yesterday!
Far too many people give up when they don't see the solution to their problems present itself to them quickly. They expect an answer and if it doesn't appear right away, they drop it because they can't be bothered working at something that might not yield the solution they are seeking.
A common saying that people use as an excuse to give up on something that looks too difficult is, "it's no use flogging a dead horse." Well from my perspective, if that horse isn't moving, it doesn't mean that it's dead.
Belief
Luckily also for me in that I totally believe this stuff is real. I truly believe it is working in my life all the time and that's why I work constantly to make myself understand it and put it into practice as far as I am able to each day.
That belief wasn't always there either, but once a thing makes logical sense in my mind, then I will go with it and discover whether it falls apart under scrutiny or remains cohesive. These life laws have absolutely remained cohesive and make as much logical sense to me as the very laws of nature.
Since quantum physics has proved that everything in this universe is made of energy, everything is created from energy and our thoughts are measurable sources of energy, then the logic of the law of vibration is sound in my mind. That doesn't mean it has to be believable for anyone else. But as long as I believe it, that's all I need.
Conclusion
People fear what they don't understand and back away from the things they don't believe in.
It's far too easy to pass a cursory glance in the direction of these concepts and discount them as hooey without really giving it a chance. That's because it is basic human nature to take the easy path and avoid doing difficult things until they become absolutely necessary.
This is not a trait to chastise yourself about if you have decided not to follow this up. You're just being human!
However, if you are going to embrace this huge concept completely, you are going to have to decide you're going to face the difficult, set your objections to one side and just embrace it without reservations. If you can do that, you can gain the understanding of how a thought becomes reality, cultivate the belief and nurture the tenacity necessary to make it work in your life.
(TOP)
