Life is EXACTLY What You Imagine it to Be.

Means all this around us is exactly what we think it to be. This gives our reason for why things tend to be so bad around us – we allow the news to treat it that way. This explains why we are having a rise in pornography addiction and pedophilia – people are able to surround themselves with deviant material and so become that world: they are filling their minds with sexually-related materials and their world then fills with that same material.

Find the Silence

Isolated communities don't have these problems. The Amish, for example, are living lives mostly unchanged since the 1800's. Murders, rapes, incest, all these problems are relatively unknown. They don't have the child-star murders and the publicity-seeking pedophile. They don't have the teen disappearances which glut the news for weeks. They do have farming accidents which maim or kill. But their lives are simpler.

Several authors tell one to “seek the silence”. Haanel describes this simply as sitting still and learning to control one's own thoughts. Entire Eastern disciplines have evolved around this one point. In our Western culture, we marvel at people who can meditate for days and weeks in a single sitting. Yet this is a skill people are not taught modernly.

Emerson and Thoreau wrote about taking walks in the woods in solitude and letting themselves become immersed in the simple activities of the wildlife around them. And people of our age used to appreciate being able to jog on quiet lanes – though more modernly, they are taking iPods and other distractions with them.

It's been noted that our society doesn't like silences, can't stand the pauses in conversation and impulsively seek to fill them. In older days, people trained their young to think before they spoke – children were best “seen and not heard.” The reason the white immigrants to Hawaii were known as Haole (those who do not breathe) is because the traditions of Polynesia included taking a breath before one spoke.

As a culture, we have grown away from the discipline of listening and thinking, of pausing before speaking, of gathering your thoughts before acting. Yet this is a simple skill to master.

I am told the Ukraine today have a similar custom. Before taking a trip, they get everything ready and then go sit in the house and think. In this way, the could review their plans and preparations – and then discover anything they had failed to include or hadn't prepared for.

Conversely, I recently went with a friend to build some wooden platforms for a remote training program. The truck had been packed with all sorts of tools, generator, power cord, wood, screws, bolts, drill, etc. We were only 10 minutes away, but there was no power available and every thing had to be trucked in. When we got there, measured and marked everything out – we found that the circular saw had the wrong blade in it, one for cutting tile, not wood. So we had to go back for another saw. When we returned and cut the first pieces, we found that we didn't have a drill bit the right size. By now, with all our preparations and lack of , it was nearly time for lunch. Those platforms did get built in the afternoon, but we wasted most of a morning by not simply double-checking before we started off. We could have taken a “breather” just before starting, but didn't.

But what's this got to do with imagination?

Plenty.

The person who cannot control what he thinks about gives over much of his choices to the environment. That person cannot master his environment as he/she says that what the media, the Internet, the TV says is more important than his/her own choices in life, than his/her own beliefs.

This is why people get “addicted” to porn, “become” pedophiles, become addicts to any drug or political party or any habit. Those people have simply given up their power of choice over to something else. They have simply quit thinking for themselves – for the most part. All addictions are from giving your power of choice (and your responsibility for your own actions) over to some physical universe substance.

This flies in the face of all the successful self-help authors, not to mention many, many historical and religious figures who realized, said, and acted on the exact opposite.

The bulk of self-help revolves around the single fact (proved empirically by multiple thousands of people, just in this century) that whatever you think, you become. Another phrasing is that whatever you think about comes to pass. Or the reverse – your environment shows what you are thinking about. While based on Eastern and even older philosophies/religious beiefs, the fact of this principle isn't easily denied – and never effectively.

Napoleon Hill based a book on this fact that has been estimated by one publisher to have sold over 30 million copies. His Think and Grow Rich was based on his cumulative conclusions after interviewing over 500 successful people in twenty years. Norman Vincent Peale based his successful book on the same premise: if you think positive thoughts, you get positive results; if you think negative thoughts, you get negative results. Earl Nightingale, in his landmark bestselling classic recording “The Strangest Secret” lists a panoply of authors who have concluded the same thing – earlier than Plato and Aristotle, up through Jesus, Shakespeare, Emerson and William James, right on up to the present authors of that date: George Barnard Shaw, Einstein, and more. Nightingale's conclusion: We become what we think about.

James Allen put it this way:

“A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.”

I could go on with other authors who have intensively investigated this very subject, but the fact is observable by anyone. If you simply keep your mind on a single goal, you will inevitably achieve that goal, providing you consider that you think about that goal in an easy and relaxed state of mind, that you consider the goal already achieved, that you always think about that goal only in order to perfect the details and completeness of it.

Addiction is simply filling your mind with the drug, or porn, or habit until you feel you can think of nothing but that substance or act. Why is Alcoholics Anonymous so successful? Because it brings people into a group so that they can interrupt those habits which have become so destructive and get them back under control. Any successful drug program is just so, because it enables the person to utilize group support and also helps the person to re-educate oneself.

Whatever you think determines what has happened to you, what is happening to you, and any future you are going to have. Your environment reflects your own thoughts and attitudes. Hopeless people life in relative squalor. Those who have “given up” live in the poorest of surroundings. Those who have confidence build their own rich lifestyles on this planet. (As well, those children of these rich people, who were not taught the secret of thinking, will squander all those inherited riches in a single lifetime, leaving nothing for their own children except debt.)

Your life becomes what you have thought about – not what your parents did or didn't do for you, not what your teachers taught you or failed to teach you, nothing happens in your life based on how rich or poor or mistreated your distant forbears were when and how they stepped on this continent. Your life on this planet depends on what you have thought and are currently thinking. It's really that simple.

There are no victims, only lazy thinkers.

You can't sue anyone to get you a better life. If you consider you are fat, you are. But suing hamburger joints won't make you thin – you have to get a vision of yourself at a certain weight and then get in your own discipline to eat and exercise better. Drop your caloric intake and start taking energetic walks and you will lose pounds by the dozen – and this will only work to the degree you keep your vision in front of you all the time.

Same for getting rich. Both Hill and Wattles say the same point in their books on getting rich: you have to consider that you are rich and work effectively toward that vision. Winning the lottery is very possible, but it doesn't happen for those who harbor more doubt than faith that it is possible.

The law behind this is no real secret – it never has been. But unless you discover and utilize this law for yourself, it might as well be secret.

Conceive, Believe, Achieve.

Get Hill's book and follow his six steps. Get Wattle's book and follow his summary to the letter. For more work, get Haanel's book and do all the 24 lessons to personal result. And there are many, many other authors who have written about this law and they will all tell you the same thing: You become what you think about.

So it is really up to you. What has happened to you in the past doesn't have to keep recurring. All you have to do is change your mind. Look around you and see what could be improved. Build a picture in your mind, a vision of the ideal solution for that scene. Figure out what steps you need to take to start achieving that goal and start getting these steps done. Eventually, you'll arrive right where you want to wind up, providing you keep faith in your own dreams and visions, and constantly work toward them.

If you dither about, and lie on the couch to just channel-surf – then you are going to accomplish only what the advertisers put into your mind. So – your life is up to you.

See you on the other side.

Four steps to re-create your world

Four simple, interlocking steps can be the start to creating the world you always have wanted.

1) Get rid of the things that are holding you back.

2) Get onto a real schedule and keep on it.

3) Eat right and get some exercise.

4) Pray/Meditate/Review daily.

Let's take these one at a time:

1) Get rid of the things that are holding you back.

Turn off the TV and gain 3-4 hours a day.

Figure that the bulk of your lifetime is spent working to make income and spending your hard-won income for someone else. You spend 40 hours working and some 10 hours or more commuting each week to that job. Many, especially in the Midwest with our lower income job scenarios, will work three jobs between one couple as they raise their kids. Take out the 7/8 hours sleep we get a night - 56 or so hours a week. Now, if all your spare time (62 hours, not including meals) is spent in front of the boob tube, then you are giving up the majority of your "thunking" time to someone else.

If you aren't moving forward by improving something in your life, are you moving backwards or what? If you are thinking for someone else all the time, what are you accomplishing in your life?

You routinely work at solving someone else's problems at work. Commuting is spent listening to popular radio shows - you are trying to "take your mind off" the stresses of the job or the commute or whatever. Lunch is hobnobbing or gossiping and is another escape from work stress. When you then get home, your 5 hours each night watching a movie or syndicated TV show (leaving you one hour to get ready for work in the morning).

Helluva life, huh? You have the weekend only to get any thinking done for yourself. Two days of relative peace and quiet. Do you spend these days recovering after the late-night parties on Friday and Saturday night? Again - who are you working for? What is all your precious spare time being spent on?

If you really want to improve yourself, the question becomes: How do you invest the time you spend on this planet daily and weekly?

If you are spending your time thinking for someone else, then using the money you gain in all sorts of "entertainment" devices and rentals and expenses - you are spending your time for someone else. There is no personal gain in watching TV, reading newspapers, or popular novels - if the reason you are doing this is as a distraction to the real world.

If there is something in your life you would like to improve, then you obviously have to start re-investing the available waking hours you have to better use. Something's gotta give.

At work, your best use is not daydreaming, but getting your job done and getting more efficient at what you do so that you are kept on and keep getting valuable raises each year, let alone promotions.

During commutes, you might use that CD player most cars to play inspirational or self-help MP-3's - or learn another language, or listen to audio versions of books you need for your job or your spare time hobbies.

When you get home, don't turn on the TV. Just say no for a couple of weeks. Don't read the newspaper. Fire up the computer and get some news and sports summaries instead. Only read the articles which you are really interested in and feel will do you some good or improve your life in some fashion. This doesn't mean you drop out of touch - it just means that you can use the computer to selectively keep only those top stories you really need to know about. Means the network and cable news programs can't just distract you anytime and in any sequence they want to. Get your news and then get off the computer. Don't sit there and fire up a video game.

Now, you have all this free time every day - about 3-4 hours - where you can do what you want.

If you are interested in self-improvement, here is where you plug in your own schedule or program to accomplish what you want. Exercise, do yoga, pray/meditate, start studying to train up on what you want.

But the first point is clearing out your life of unnecessary control. Imagine all the commercials you don't have to listen to anymore. (Especially during political season - you already pick who you want based on word-of-mouth and how your parents voted, so let's be real about these guys and their hatchet-job ads on each other.) Ignore the mainstream press and also the cable guys. Ignore popular TV (except those shows which forward your own personal improvement program, like educational channels).

Turn off the TV, only watch the Internet selectively. Start taking charge of your own world and those few hours you have which you can call your own.

Clean your room.

Now that's something you can do. Get a thorough house-cleaning done and work in a schedule to keep it clean through weekly action. Get those old files organized or thrown out. Yes, you should keep your old financial records for some years, but box them up and put them into a nice, dry space suitably labeled. Otherwise, do you really need all those old newspapers and magazines? If they really are collectors items, then get them into plastic protectors and store them where they can't get damaged. But if they stay around the house, they get damaged and lose value - same for getting dusty.

Re-organize your stuff so that you can find it when you need it. Closets get this way - clutter, clutter, clutter. Horizontal surfaces like tool benches can get like this. But this isn't to say you have to become a "clean-freak" or get obsessive on this subject. Just get some tool boxes for the tools you have, or a pegboard where they can go back when you are through using them. Leave your projects out where you are working on them, but keep the parts in containers so they don't get lost if you have to move the project before you are done. Just keep track of things.

Set up your life so that you can quickly put things away when you get them and don't just lay things around or stack them on various surfaces. Go over those shelves and figure if you are keeping stuff you don't need anymore. You should have some references to look up facts and so on. Some magazines are great in a collection - so these get file boxes or binders with labels, so you can find things when you need them.

You have to organize things according to what product you are supposed to be producing. It's really that simple. If you don't really know what you are trying to accomplish in life, then that is an underlying question to answer.

I've heard of organizations which have taken this to extremes. A carpentry section was made to clean up every mote of sawdust after every single piece of wood was cut. They weren't allowed to clean up at the end of the day, or before a meal break, or at a logical point like at the end of a project or before they started painting or finishing, but after the sanding. (But this example was from a control-freak organization which has been in the middle of imploding for some time.)

Maintenence is another point. Forest fire fighters clean and sharpen their equipment no matter how tired they are when they finish a job. The tools are ready instantly when they need them. I know of farmers who don't clean their equipment or maintain it until they need it - and then waste valuable days getting something ready when they could be planting. Other farmers had shops where they pulled each piece of equipment they owned right in sometime during the winter and got them all prepped for spring. It's a matter of what lifestyle you want to lead.

Just organize and clean so you can find stuff when you want to get something done.

Throw the junk out.

When you are cleaning along, you will probably find stuff that is hard to find a place for. This may be because it doesn't really have a use any more. Do you really need that pile of adult-themed magazines? Maybe you can sell them online, but maybe we'd all be better off if you just junked the lot.

Computers can get pretty filled up with nonsense. But perhaps you only need a search program so you can find stuff by keyword, even on your own machine. But programs you don't need just slow your computer down. One graphic artist I knew kept the basic law of constantly backing up her files so that a minimum of 50 percent of her computer hard-drive was free at any given time. In these days of massively cheap storage, this might not make as much sense. I personally use a website mirroring program to capture good sites which are full of reference materials, so that I can then search quickly on my own computer for specific files when I am researching a particular subject. But the massive sites which host innumerable cheesecake photos have no place on my computers, since I get nothing out of the titillation.

So computers have to be cleaned and organized as well. But don't make a life out of it. Figure what you are trying to accomplish and how your computer assists in that.

How you clean up your life goes big and small. You may want to clean up a section of your room at a single sitting or over a weekend. But when you turn the TV off, you suddenly have a great deal more time to invest in such projects. When you do get your personal spaces under control and organized, you will find that you are making far more progress toward your goals.

Purpose and goals

I've covered some of this point of your life purpose and goals earlier. I'm not going to review it here, other than the point that you have to organize your life so that you can accomplish your goals, which then enable you to achieve your life's purpose or make considerable progress toward it.

But you have to organize for it. Get your spaces in order, both personal and work spaces. Insist those around you also keep good order so that they can achieve their goals and/or at least don't hold you back.

The next step is to organize your time - which has to do with schedules.


2) Get onto a real schedule and keep on it.

3) Eat right and get some exercise.

4) Pray/Meditate/Review daily.

(draft... stay tuned...)

Eating the Dog Food

This third book is the least complete, to be honest. I've laid out the logical sequence of re-programming oneself. But I haven't tried it myself. So now I am. I've got all these ideas rolling around and all of them are completely plausible and possible. But untested.

So I'm going to eat the dog food I manufacture.

This blog will cover the essays I produce during this treatment, while another blog, A Modern View, will cover the day-to-day changes I make in myself. Here I will have the writings which end up in the book.

The first thing is really wanting to change, as the old saying goes/is misused. Second is organizing your life to handle the changes - taking time from other work to actually accomplish things. Third is to be ready for change and willing to accept it. I'm certain that some habits will rear their heads and try to prevent my adopting these new practices - but that is all part of the adventure.

A new world awaits...

The Tetrast: What of these other fours?

Well, well - though I've dropped the original blog which covered tetrads "per se", I give a link-back to this well-thought gentleman.

In this current blog, tetrads have been updated to "four-way thunks", but I do have a Lulu book which contains the original doctorate thesis. (The former blog title has been claimed by someone who titled it "womanonline". I'm sure that "tetradsystem" means something completely else...)

The Tetrast: What of these other fours?: "“Why tetrastic?,” some fourfolds echo each other in ways for which I have not yet managed, at least to my satisfaction, to uncover the reasons, even when the fourfolds separately from each other have seemed clear enough. Turn a sign this way, then that, align it with others, the world seems to crack open, and the chase may be on."

This quote sums up my thoughts about tetrads/four-way's - they challenge thought and transport it into new dimensions.