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“Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

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Have you ever had a mini deja vu? Yesterday or last week you were thinking about something you want or vision, and today you got exactly what you were thinking. It looks supernatural of course, but viewing from psychological perspective it isn’t a rocket science. You may have read or heard about a very popular book several years ago titled “The Secret”. It was a groundbreaking book about the power of our thoughts, how it translates to reality and the importance of having a vision in life. What I’m saying here is not merely supernatural events happening, it is about the subconscious mind working without us realizing it is working right now as you read this post. Everything we see, hear, and feel is recorded in our brain. The first time you ride a bike, what your parents said about you, how you react in the previous similar situation, etc. Our subconscious mind never stop working, even when we are sleeping we had dreams which represents our deepest thoughts and feelings.

In daily practice it translates to our action, when we believe that we are competent person we behave like a competent person in the fields we are working at. And so does the reverse. There’s an experiment where students are told they were less capable than students in other classes, when actually they have the same average score previously. What happened next was surprising, they did perform worst than the other classes compared. But when they are told that they were being experimented, their average score improve again to the previous level. What I’m higlihgting here is the importance of our perspective on ourselves and public view regarding us. We could deny negative public view (like when we are being gossiped), but if we are not strong enough, or if we don’t have a strong values we will be swayed by the negative effect.

We have to reflect from very early on what traits and beliefs we have, assess whether it is reflected in our action daily and formulate a self development plan from the weaknesses we have. It’s no shame to have weakness, I used to have a discipline problem, so. I disciplined myself using pain/pleasure for my action. By knowing my strength and weakness I know if I’m going to be tempted by others proposition or not. When we know we would succumb to a temptation, we could do better in avoiding it at all.