With our thoughts we create the world

Seth Godin made an interesting point in a post about whining, where he wrote:

… whining is a reverse placebo. When you get good at whining, you start noticing evidence that makes your whining more true. So you amplify that and immerse yourself in it, thus creating more evidence, more stuff worth complaining about.

Indeed, that on which focus becomes our reality. If we focus on the positive in our circumstance (I prefer to view it as accepting our circumstances, rather than the ‘positive’) then our energies move in that direction. If we focus on the ‘negative’, ipso facto our energies move there.

The Buddha said something like:

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.

Or more simply:

With our thoughts, we make the world.

I’m not a Buddhist as such but I believe those words to be a fundamental truth.

In business and our personal lives we frequently face challenges. How we construct our view of those circumstances invariably affects our life path.

My biz, Red Hill Publishing, recently moved through a difficult phase in our growth. We sought professional assistance from outside the business (check out Shirlaws), focused on that which we could change, stopped putting energy into that which we couldn’t and the results over the past month or so have been staggering.

So, where’s your focus?