Do You Believe?
by Michael A. Thompson

Now that’s an interesting title of an article. What do I mean, "Do You Believe?"

Do you believe in yourself? Do you believe that you have what it takes to succeed?

Dr. David J. Schwartz, writer of the classic best seller "The Magic of Thinking Big," titled the first chapter of his book:

Believe You Can Succeed and You Will*

He says that when a person believes strongly that they can do something, your mind starts to figure out ways to be successful.*

I’ve always wondered, "How does this really work?", so I decided it might be a good idea to write an article on this subject.

Are you kidding me? If you’re looking for an expert who understands the complex workings of the mind, well ... You came to the wrong place! I have no idea how all this works, so don’t ask. O.K.? Don’t even try to explain it to me, because I’m not listening.

So this would normally end this article. But hey! If there’s one thing that I can admit, it’s the fact that not knowing how to do something never stopped me from doing it!

If you seriously think that my advice might be worth something, please read the legal section.

So, I’m going to try to put together, mainly for my own amusement, how I think this mind and body thing might work. After all, I’ve read a few books on the subject.

I once heard a wise man say that there are basically three parts of the human body. Well. there may be more, but for this article let’s say there are three. They consist of the mind, the sub-conscious mind, and the body.

Let’s pretend for a few minutes that you’re a computer. Please don’t crash on me.

I see the mind as the part of the computer that puts in input through our five senses. You remember them. Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. Think of them as your keyboard, mouse, and whatever other means you use to place input into your computer.

The hard drive is where that input is stored. Your computer acts according to the input stored on your hard drive. Hey, I don’t know that much about computers either, but bear with me for a minute.

The subconscious mind is where you store your input. When you’re a kid, you learn how to walk, ride a bike, and so on. When you woke up today, you probably were able to walk without even thinking about it. All of the input that you needed to walk was already stored in your subconscious mind. You didn’t have to learn to walk all over again. It seems to me, being a person of limited intelligence, that the information stored in your subconscious mind automatically tells your body what to do.

Let’s look at a fictional character I like to call the habitual smoker. In the past, he lit up a cigarette every time he sat down to have a cup of coffee. The mind sends this information to be stored in the subconscious mind. If he does it enough times, your subconscious mind permanently stores this data. So as his subconscious mind goes through it’s data files, it sees that every time he has a cup of coffee, he smokes. The subconscious mind then tells his body to smoke a cigarette the next time he has a cup of coffee. So, the next time he has a cup of coffee, what happens? He automatically picks up a cigarette and smokes it without even thinking about it.

Now lets say he wants to quit. In order to do that, he would have to reprogram his subconscious mind. He would need to let it know that he doesn’t want to smoke anymore. However, the next time he has a cup of coffee, what happens? He automatically picks up a cigarette and smokes it without even thinking about it.

It seems that a person can not reprogram their subconscious mind by just telling it they don’t want to smoke anymore. A person has to convince their subconscious mind that they are serious.

In his book, "Think and Grow Rich", Napoleon Hill says in his chapter on "Auto Suggestion" that the dominate thoughts that you allow to stay in your conscious mind reach the sub-conscious mind and influences it with those thoughts.*

Even the Bible says in the book of Psalms,

"For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he"*

Napoleon Hill also said:

Whatever the Mind of Man can Conceive and BELIEVE, it can Achieve.

So, do you believe? Do you believe that you can be successful or do you still have some doubts?

If you’re still struggling, I have come up with a list of books that have been very helpful to me. You can find them in the book section.

Now, go forth and be successful!

* see bibliograpy for a list of refrences