THE POWER OF THE MIND

I want to tell you a story I heard a few years ago.

Apparently a young man who was a very poor student, who never applied himself at school, who ran with the wrong crowd etc, was forced by his mother to take the college entrance exam in the United States known as the SAT.

He told his mom he didn’t want do it and it was a waste of time and so on —- but he did it anyway.

He took the test and he felt he did very poorly.

Several weeks go by and he gets a letter in the mail with his results on the SAT test. He opened it up and it says he received a 1480 out of 1600. This result puts him in the top 1 % of people applying for university .

He’s quite surprised.

His mother is even more surprised. She asks her son if he cheated. She assumes he did. He tells her that he tried to cheat but there were too many people watching him and it was too hard to cheat. So he just took it.

Anyway ,with this information he figures he’s pretty smart. He also figures smart kids go to class. He started going to class.

He figures smart kids apply themselves. He started applying himself.

He figures smart kids study. He started studying even though his grades were abysmal in the past.

He graduates high school even though he was planning on dropping out.

He goes to community college (what Australians call Tafe) because his grades weren’t good enough to get into  university. After a little bit in community college, he gets his grades up enough to go to university. He graduates from University near the top of his class and becomes a very very successful magazine entrepreneur. Years later, a letter comes in the mail from Princeton, New Jersey which is where the SAT test results are compiled and disseminated. It seems that every once in a while the company that administers the SAT does an audit. They found out that the year he took the SAT  there were a few people that actually received the wrong results. He was actually one of those people. His score was literally half of what he was told.

What did he —and what can we; learn from this?

Well, one thing we learn is if we think we can succeed, it sure looks like we can. If we make an effort, we can reach our objectives. If we act like we’re successful; we can become successful. This has been born out in multiple studies.

Another study that shows even more dramatic results of what we can achieve if we have belief was conducted  by Harvard researcher and physiologist  Dr Langer. This study was done with overweight maids. 67% of these test subjects did not consider themselves physically active even though their physical activity exceeded the minimum amount recommended by the surgeon general to lose weight.

Dr. Langer took the maid’s physical measurements and told 1/2 of them that they were exceeding the amount of exercise they needed to lose weight. The other 50% were told nothing. After one month, Dr. Langer‘s team took the measurements once again on blood pressure, weight, and waist to hip ratio. Remarkably, the group that was told that they were exceeding the amount of exercise needed to lose weight even though they never changed anything in their daily life; had a decrease in blood pressure, weight, and waist to hip ratio!!!

The other group, which was not told they should be losing weight because they were exceeding the exercise they needed, had no significant change in any of their measurements.

Dr. Langer associates this change and result in merely a change of mindset.

Yet another study done at Stanford by Dr. Spiegel took a study of 86 women in the late stages of breast cancer. The group was split into 2—-one group only received the prescribed medical care

The other group received the same medical care and weekly support sessions with other patients in a positive supportive environment .

The conclusion drawn from the statistical analysis of the study was that the women who were in the support group survived twice as long those who were not in a support group.

A similar study was repeated in 1999 with the same results

So what do we learn here?

Well, it seems obvious.

Henry Ford once said “if you think a thing can be done or you think a thing can’t be done you’re right either way. ”

This is a message that is not new. Marcus Aurelius, The emperor of Rome from 121 to 180 AD, said “ our life is what our thoughts make it.

Even further back in time, Over 2500 years ago, in the Old Testament we are told “as a man thinketh in his heart so is he”

We also learn that there are 2 kinds of people in the world and 2 kinds of people reading this right now . One, who will think they can’t do it. They can’t succeed. It’s not worth the effort and that it can’t be done.

The other one that believes it can be done. They can and will get the results they want. They will be successful.

The real question is……….

Which one are you ?