Your thoughts become your character

With an audience of over 300 people during a public speaking competition, the children of Mexico’s president at the time, those of ambassadors of various countries and other very talented young students, a 13-year-old kid who never once had spoken in public took to the microphone. He looked at his audience and began to talk. He moved around the stage and joked with the audience and just had fun. He won the competition hands down. However, it was the experience which gave him a feeling of fulfilment and just pure and simple joy. The other kids were trained, had experience, and had done a great job. However, this one kid just had fun during the entire process. He loved listening to the others, watching the audience, being on stage and he absolutely loved having people react to him.

He didn't have a written speech, he didn't memorise it either. He just had a couple of flashcards and a great coach who taught him how to visualise, how to rehearse mentally, how to take time to think, and she taught him that mastering the behaviours and emotions he had in one speech would allow him to master every speech.

Mental rehearsal and visualisation techniques have been used for training athletes as well as astronauts, so why not a speaker.

In a society such as ours, we are bombarded by information and stimuli, we have had to adapt to filter the massive amount of data that comes into our brain. Thinking is an automatic process; however, thinking well is a proactive one and requires time attention and hard work. In today’s society with a tremendous amount of production of subjectivity, it is difficult just to sit down to think, yet it is essential to do so.

Have you heard people say stop thinking so much? Have you heard them say stop thinking and start doing? This is one of the critical challenges of today’s society. We believe we need to do, do, do And we neglect to stop and just take time to think and think right.

At home, I have a chair at our bay window which I use only to sit and think. While I’m sitting on this chair I do not speak, I do not write, and I do not incur in any distraction activities. I just sit down to think. I also have a couch where I lay down and take my time to stretch my thoughts. I do this twice a day, first thing in the morning and before going to sleep. My thoughts are therefore intentional and of quality. In the morning I think about the day strategy mostly following Miyamoto Musashi‘s strategic techniques, more specifically those having to do with objectivity. I think of the situations which may present themselves, and of the main events I have on that day, and I extract myself from the equation, thus achieving the closest possible approximation to objectivity. At night I reflect on the day, and the power of reflective thought teaches me what I’ve done right and what I have done wrong. Having a place and time to think, give me great thought making abilities and clarity as well as growth.

If I did not have these strategies in place, I would merely be engaging in diverse distraction activities, which would result in poor thinking.

A thought never begins fully formed, you need to work on it. It takes time, exploration and other people's feedback to mature appropriately. Remember, even in your thoughts you may have blind spots.

Thoughts fail for many reasons, many times its just because it's not a good thought. Persistence in the time which it takes to mature thought is also important, and many times we fail to be patient and persistent enough with a good thought, and we just don't land it.

Criticism is a way in which we can break a thought, we cannot avoid criticism, we just need to know how to accept a critique and stay away from emotionally reacting to criticism because when you allow other people's words to stop you, they will.

When we don't give ourselves enough time to think you just don't land great thoughts.

We live in a highly pressurised society where it is easy to accept ideas and systems which are a simple consequence of the production of subjectivity. It is easy to fall into whatever everybody else is doing, and in doing so, they become mentally lazy and stop questioning themselves.

"It is easy to fall into the trap of allowing the mind to grow flaccid, especially when there are many dominant people all around who would just as soon do our thinking for us. " – Gordon Macdonald

A strong mind never becomes dependent on the opinions of others. They deal with ideas and issues and don't allow themselves to be programmed by rules and regulations imposed by others.

It is essential to question everything around you and make up your own mind about it.

It is indispensable to educate your mind by reading, intelligent, deliberate dialogue, learning, reflecting and stretching your thoughts after challenging them.

It is essential to be firm in your purpose and fluid in your learning.

It is crucial to develop your character through your thoughts because your thoughts become your words, your words determine your actions, your actions form your habits, your habits build your character, and your character is responsible for your destiny.

In my next article, I will go through different techniques you can use to create, shape, stretch and land high-quality applicable thoughts which you can implement in your daily life immediately.

Your thoughts can make you or break you.

For free tools and more information please visit my website and subscribe to my Newsletter.

I look forward to reading your comments and answering your questions.

Till then, as the baseball player, Ted Williams used to say, "if you don’t think too well, don't think too much."

Share it and use it!

Peter Jansen