You Have to Put Good Thinking Into Your Brain Before you Can Access It

It seems so ridiculous to say this, but think about it. When people do stupid things and say "I don't know what I was thinking in those days," it should remind us that if we don't put ideas in our brain, they won't be there for us to use.

To ensure that your brain comes up with better and better solutions for the problems in your life, you must constantly be programming helpful information into your memory banks that you can draw upon later. This is why education is so important. This is why it’s important to have solid ethical and courageous principles that you can draw self-support from.

Suppose, for instance you have a weight problem. You’re at a meeting and overhear someone say that you’re fat. Sure, you can get upset and hate the skinny person who called you fat. You can withdraw from the group in anger and fear. You can blame everybody for being cold and uncaring. Or you can ask yourself, “What can I do to help myself in this embarrassing and adverse situation?”

You can always turn from your emotional brain and put your thinking brain to work. It will help if, ahead of time, you have previously programmed into your memory banks the principle that it is a good thing to strive constantly to be a better person. It will help if you have already programmed into your memory banks what kind of food is more nutritious and less fattening so you could decide, then and there, to start eating carrots instead of potato chips.

It will help if you have programmed into your memory banks the principle that negative emotion should never be an option, that self-denial of things that aren’t good for you is a good thing, that embarrassing situations are good for one’s character. and one is a stronger person to have suffered and survived than never to have suffered at all. It will help you for the rest of your life if you will program into your thinking brain — right this minute — that you can call upon it and it will always come up with some positive alternative to anxiety, anger and fear.