YOU’LL BELIEVE ANYTHING - The Pursuit of Better

Have you ever heard this expression “If you believe that, then you’ll believe anything”?

It’s usually meant as a statement of ridicule. The suggestion is that you are being gullible, naive, or easily fooled because you believe what has been told to you.

Though it was meant to be critical, there is a bit of truth in what is being said.

Truth is, we can all be gullible at times, especially concerning the things that we tell ourselves.

Quite naturally we’re going to believe ourselves, why wouldn’t we?

We should believe anything that our own minds tell us, right?

That’s not always the best thing to do or the right thing to do! Allow me to explain myself a bit further in today’s talk, You’ll Believe Anything, the Pursuit of Better.

We all have at least 2 minds, a conscious mind and an unconscious mind or the subconscious.

Our conscious mind is in “NOW Mode”, the things we are feeling right now, doing right now, seeing right now, touching right now, and experiencing right now. Those things that we are consciously aware of, in this present NOWNESS.

We should be cautious when making future decisions on now occurrences.

Our conscious mind doesn’t have the capacity to store information because it is running thousands of scenarios real-time, in the NOW. It’s busy thinking and making so many decisions based on current incoming information that it doesn’t have the resources or time for anything else. It can’t think ahead, it only thinks about NOW!

By contrast our unconscious minds / subconscious stores everything that we have ever experienced in life. Every emotion we’ve ever had, every tear we’ve ever cried, every celebration we’ve had, every disappointment we’ve ever known, every bump, every bruise, laugh, smile, tickle, pinch, pain, uncomfortableness, all the good, all the bad, and all the indifferent things we’ve ever experienced in this life are stored there. It can’t think ahead either, it only thinks about past feelings and experiences.

Our conscious mind is our logical mind, where we think and rationalize the information we receive. Logic rules the day in our conscious minds.

Our unconscious minds are ruled largely by emotions, spontaneity, and instinct. This mind controls our actions. It doesn’t judge, it just simply reacts based on previous experiences.

Our unconscious / subconscious is where needs are addressed like food, thirst, safety, intimacy, and others.

Together these two minds bring us either success or failure, frustration or achievement, happiness, or anxiety depending on our mindset.

Our mind is one of the most complex and valuable things in the entire universe. That’s why a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

There are so many variables and possible instabilities, that’s why we can’t just go with whatever pops in our head. We should not be left to our own devices.

Listen to this wise proverb, “There is a way which seems right to a man and appears straight before him, but its end is the way of death. Even in laughter the heart may be in pain, and the end of my joy may be grief.” Proverbs 14:12

Well, what can we do? What makes the difference in the outcome?

What decides whether we will experience angst or jubilation?

It’s all determined by our mindset. The things that our mind is set on.

What we feed our mind, becomes our mindset!

It’s impossible to change our mindset without first changing our mind.

Our mindset controls everything we do. But we control our minds.

Again, what we feed our mind becomes our mindset.

We can set goals all day long and yet never accomplish them because we did not equip our mind with the tools necessary to change our mindset to hit that target or goal.

Someone once said, “just because you sit in a garage, it doesn’t make you a car!”

The answer has less to do with what you want to happen, and more to do with what you prepare and plan to happen.

We must prepare for the better that we want in life, not just hope for it.

Hope is fine, but it is not enough just by itself.

Our brains have what is known as automatic default thinking. Which means that we will automatically default to certain tendencies and behaviors unless we consistently feed our minds new and different information to begin reprogramming ourselves.

In short, we will do what we’ve always done, unless we have a change of mind.

It is said that ninety five percent of our behaviors are automatic.

Setting goals is a function of the conscious mind, but reaching those goals is a function of the unconscious mind. Remember that’s where the information is stored.

If we have a lot of negative images or memories stored up, we will have a negative mindset. Or if we have several fears stored up, we will be fearful.

But that’s not the end of the story. We can’t change our past experiences, feelings, or thoughts, but we can change our future by changing our mindset.

To change our mindset, we must change our mind, by feeding it new positive information, and thus we change what’s in the storage bin that we pull our information from.

Dr. Fredrick K.C. Price put it best, “feed your faith and starve your doubt to death”.

Let’s begin today believing what we tell ourselves, as we change the stored information from what we have experienced to what God has said.

That’s how we can begin The Pursuit of Better! Next time we’ll learn other steps.

To hear other Thompson Truths like this one, please pick up a copy today BOOK OF TRUTHS - THOMPSON TRUTHS VOLUME 1 — Benton T. Thompson III (bentonthompsoniii.com)

             This is a Thompson Truth