Your Thoughts Determine Your Life

The biblical parable of the prodigal son teaches many powerful life lessons regarding the concequences of our thinking, our choices, and our behavior. A key teaching point in this parable has direct implications to your personal growth, achievement, and leadership effectiveness.

The younger of two brothers demands that his father provide him the portion of his inheritance. This is an outlandish and unreasonable request given the culture of the day. The father complies and the younger son ventures off to a far country and quickly squanders his inheritance in lavish, wasteful, spending. Soon after he finds himself desitute and slopping hogs to merely survive. Now here is the key point of this parable, "But when he came to his senses ...." In the midst of his dispair, suddenly this foolish young man gets a good dose of self-awareness. Suddenly he has great clarity over the futility of his past behavior and he starts to think differently about himself, his choices, his current situation, and the liklihood of an improved set of living conditions. In short, with clear and honest self-awareness, he can begin thinking more effectively, and that change in thinking creates a different mindset, that propels him into more effective behavior that will change his life for the better.

So here is my point. Nothing in our lives changes until our thinking changes. Our thinking is the most powerful force in our lives that propels us to achievement or to failure. Our thinking determines everything, and I mean everything, regarding our behavior and choices that determine the outcomes of our lives. Nothing changes until our thinking changes and anything can change when our thinking changes. Self-awareness, clarity of thinking, and effective emotions, that reveal if you are thinking effectively, become the ideal ingredients for mixing a neurochemical cocktail that will change your life. That's worth thinking about today. *

(*These thoughts are captured in the introduction of my new manuscript that is in draft form and editing stages. My goal is to have the book out in published form in 2019. Seminars and workshops on how to become a behavior smart leader are already available and in multiple teaching venues around the country. For more information simply contact me at [email protected] or call 803-760-3519.)