You are a unique individual. Regardless of age, gender or culture, you live moment by moment with a unique set of priorities or values—actions or things that are most to least important to you in your life. Whatever this set or hierarchy of values is determines your destiny, because it determines what you filter out of your surrounding environment and perceive, what you efficiently decide, and what you spontaneously and persistently take action upon. Every decision you make is based upon what you perceive will give you the greatest advantage over disadvantage, gain over loss, or benefit over drawback at every moment in time.
You individually filter your reality according to what you value most. Your pulvinar nuclei in the subcortical thalamic portion of your brain acts as a filtering or gating center for specific perceptions to prevent you from being overwhelmed and distracted by the vast barrage of external stimuli you face from your outer environment and the actions you decide to take.
If you are a young woman and mother, for instance, with three young children and your highest values are your children, you will spot anything in the shopping mall that will give you an advantage over a disadvantage in providing for your precious children.
If you are a young man and entrepreneur with a new business venture, and your highest value is your business, you will spot anything in that same mall that will give you an advantage over disadvantage in providing for your inspiring new company.
You, as a young woman or man, will both spot valuable items and make purchasing decisions more rapidly and stick to them and take the essential actions required to fulfill what you value most. Anything that is lower on your list of values, you will experience a sort of attention deficit disorder leading to procrastination, hesitation and frustration as a feedback mechanism just to get you to return to your higher values or priorities where you are most creative and productive.
If you do not fill your days with higher priority actions, your days will fill up with low priority distractions. Whatever your highest value is, your life and identity will therefore, with extremely high probability, revolve around it.
Whatever is highest on your list of values, you will spontaneously take action on and you will be disciplined, reliable and focused on fulfilling it. Just like a young boy who loves his video games will reliably be playing his games. Whatever is lower on your list of values, you will require repeated extrinsic motivation (punishment if you don’t and reward if you do) to get yourself to take action and you will procrastinate, hesitate and get frustrated trying to fulfill it. Just like a young boy who does not love his chores, homework or room cleaning will be unreliable and forgetful in getting them done.
Whatever is highest on your list of values, you will also spontaneously think about, and it will dominate your thoughts within your brain/mind. Your thoughts will therefore reflect your hierarchy of values. Whatever is highest on your list of values, you will spontaneously and reliably think about and whatever is lower on your list of values, you will procrastinate and hesitate thinking about. Because your thoughts reflect your attentions (what you perceive) and your intentions (what you act upon and toward), your thoughts will determine your perceptions, decisions and actions which will, in turn, dictate their direction, destination or destiny.
Identifying what is truly highest on your list of values is therefore essential and wise, and setting objectives that are congruent to it, or to your top three highest values, is paramount for you to obtain your greatest achievements and fulfillment. Your innermost dominant thoughts become more spontaneously manifested into reality when you are most congruent.
In addition to the relationship between your thoughts and your hierarchy of values, you may have also noticed times when you have thought about some individual and then, within a relatively short period of time, this contemplated individual suddenly appears, communicates or is run into mysteriously, and in some cases, almost synchronously. It happens too frequently for you to ignore such synchronicities, but not frequently enough to bet large sums of money on them. It is in a grey zone of probability.
I assisted around a thousand doctors over a certain period of time during the 1980s with an experiment concerning the power of their thoughts by focusing on 50 of their inactive patient files. Those patients had been unseen for more than six months, and 20 percent of these contemplated patients (10) mysteriously showed back up in their practices within one week. Synchronicities of running into individuals publicly or receiving calls or some form of direct or indirect communication from them when they were previously thought about often exceed random and predictable probabilities.
There appears to be both a rational reason why your thoughts become things and your outer realities occur as described initially above, but there also appears to be a more subtle, yet to be fully explained mechanism responsible. It is similar to two strings on a musical instrument with resonant frequencies attuning to each other when you think about other individuals or things and these individuals or things then come into your awareness and/or reality.
You have little to lose by concentrating your thoughts on what is truly most valuable and meaningful and that inspires you most. Michael Phelps was noted for his mastery of focusing and thinking about perfect swimming and this impacted his reception of 28 gold medals. What do you lose by focusing your thoughts on what you would love to bring into reality and highly value most? Your thoughts become things.
Dr John Demartini is an international best-selling author, educator and consultant and Founder of the Demartini Institute—featured in the movie Thoughts Become Things. Drdemartini.com
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