And the question is. . .

I have a question for you: What are you thinking?

In his play, “Hamlet,” Shakespeare wrote: "There is nothing either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so."

 

Norman Vincent Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking” is still a best seller as is Napolean Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich.”  And, if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend “Oh the Thinks You Can Think” by Dr. Seuss.

 

All of these authors made the power of thought the central theme of their books. Although each approached that theme from unique perspectives, they all drew the same conclusion: “We are what we think.”

 

Author Earl Nightingale concurred  with them in his book, The Strangest Secret.  In it, by drawing a parallel between rich, fertile land and the human mind, he describes how we become what we think.

 

Nightingale said good, fertile land gives the farmer a choice; he may plant whatever he wants. The land doesn't care. It's up to the farmer to make the decision. Let’s say the farmer decides whether to plant spinach, a food product, or night shade, a poisonous plant. Once the farmer makes a decision, he plants the seed, then waters and cares for the land. In the end, the land returns to the farmer what the farmer planted.

 

Ultimately, Nightingale says, “The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works the same way. It doesn't care what we plant...success...or failure. A concrete, worthwhile goal...or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety. But what we plant in it must return to us.” Then Nightingale reminds his readers, “It will return anything we want to plant.”

 

So, I’ll ask you one more time: What are you thinking?