Suddenly, Max was aware of his surroundings; he was in a hospital. The last thing he could remember was a total stranger telling him that he didn’t look well. Slowly he began to remember that more than one person had told him that he didn’t look well. In fact, five total strangers, within one hour, had told him that he didn’t look well. After the fifth person, everything was a blur.
This is a dramatization of a true story, or rather an experiment that was conducted by an early 20th century journalist named Napoleon Hill. The “strangers” were people who worked for Napoleon Hill. The goal of the experiment was to find out what would happen when a perfectly healthy person was told that he looked ill. The result? The “perfectly healthy” person passed out. This experiment proves that the mind is extremely powerful and that if a thought-seed is planted, it will, most likely, become a reality.
Adolf Hitler demonstrated this powerful principle by actually taking someone’s life with a game of the mind. Hitler had one of his soldiers conduct an experiment on a prisoner. The victim was tied to a chair and blindfolded. Then the soldier used a piece of ice to “cut” the wrist of the prisoner. No cut was actually made, however the soldier held the melting ice on the wet wrist, allowing the dripping water to fall into a bucket. Next the mind game began; the prisoner was repeatedly told, “If you tell us what we want to know, we’ll stop the bleeding!” The feeling of a slice, the wet wrist, and the dripping sound along with Hitler’s words were enough to convince the prisoner that he was bleeding to death, so he did; he bled to death without actually bleeding.
These two stories are negative examples of how strong the mind is, but if the mind is powerful enough to kill, then it is also powerful enough to create happiness and success. A person is, literally, what he thinks. Our circumstances and surroundings are a product of our deepest thoughts and subconscious desires. Most of us have heard the old adage, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” This is a true principle. However, the meaning of this cliché is not found in the physical act of making the lemonade (turning the bad to good), but rather in the attitude that leads one to discover that lemonade can be made. Even the character Doc Brown from the hit movie Back to the Future demonstrated his understanding that attitude and thought governs action when he said, “If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.”
If a man can think he’s bleeding to death and die from the thought, then a person can think he’ll be successful and succeed from the thought. If we truly believe without a doubt that we can do it (‘it’ being whatever we want out of life), then we will do “it.” As Henry Ford said, “If you think you can do a thing or you think you cannot do a thing, you are right.”
Dr Robert Schueller calls it “The power of Possibility Thinking”.
Angel
August 3rd, 2009
I’ve never read any of Schueller’s stuff. However, I love that phrase, “Possibility Thinking.”
Jeff Stone
August 7th, 2009