Your Mental Home

Positive thinking will let you do everything

better than negative thinking will.

Zig Ziglar

Imagine for a moment a "mental home" - the place where you live with your thoughts. Your home is furnished with everything you think about yourself and the world around you (the economy and the markets too). Your "mental home" just as where you live is furnished, much of it antique, handed down from our parents, our teachers, our friends and everyone else who has played a part in programming our minds. They gave you this mental furniture which you have kept and continue to use.

Much of that hand-me-down furniture (our negative thinking) is weary with age. That old tattered sofa is sagging and worn. The chairs are shaky the pictures yellowed and faint. The kitchen table is wobbly and cracked the dishes are chipped and so on. In this "mental home" a strong new piece of furniture (some positive thought) would seem out of place.

Now lets say I agree to come over to your "mental home" and help you get rid of that old furniture. So tomorrow afternoon I arrive and we begin to carry all of your hand-me-down furniture out to the garage. We remove every piece, every dish, every table, every chair, and every rug. We take out every old negative self-belief and store it away out of sight. After I leave you stand in the middle of your "mental home". It is empty and spotless. There is not a negative thought. This is great! Now I can be a positive thinker!

After a little while what do you suppose you do? You will go out to the garage, where the old furniture is stored, and get a chair. A little later, you will make another trip to the garage and get a table, and maybe a dish or two. In a short time all the furniture in the garage will work its way back into our "mental home".

We are most comfortable with the thoughts we have lived with the most. It matters not if those thoughts aren't the best for us - it's what we know, it's what we are most secure in keeping. When you decide to stop thinking negatively, and do not have an immediate new positive vocabulary to replace the old, you will always return to the comfortable, old negative self-talk of the past. We rarely throw out a piece of furniture until we have acquired a new piece to replace that old piece of furniture and so it is with our thoughts and our feelings. Without replacing the old with the new, you will keep all your old thoughts and feelings. You may re-arrange your furniture but the same old programming is still there.

From Prudent Trader Archives 2004