There are some general trends in the distinctions associated
with feelings of confidence, happiness, and certainty. Not
surprisingly, there are expressions in everyday language that
reflect this. For example:
❏ “The future is looking brighter” as opposed to “The future
looks black.”
❏ “That’s becoming clearer” as opposed to “That's unclear.”
The richness of your internal thinking leaks through into your
communication and into the way you influence yourself and
others. Enrich your thinking—enrich your life.
Once you have experienced something it becomes a memory.
When you react to a memory you are reacting to the way you
store that memory in your mind. Managing the distinctions in
your thinking gives you the ability to influence and change the
nature of your memories, so that you can store them in a way
that results in your feeling the way you want to feel.
Many people become skilled at storing memories in a way
that leads to depression, anger, or other negative feelings. Why
choose these when you could choose pleasure or peace? The
same is true for the future. Why make yourself worried or
frustrated about an event that hasn't occurred when you could
be making yourself confident and comfortable? You might
choose to keep some of the worry in the form of concern. The
point is that you choose the state you want rather than its
choosing you. Our ability to manage our state is more and more
important as the world around us defies control and becomes
increasingly unpredictable.
You can be sure that you already use distinctions in your
thinking patterns in this way. Whenever you change your
experience of something you are almost certain to have
reprogrammed the way you think about it, even though you
may not have realized that this was what you were doing.
THINKING PATTERNS 25SUMMARY