Thought in Action

By: Lynne Hoft, EdD & Vivian Hildebrandt, MA

Richard Carlson gave us a great insight when he said, “Thought is not something that happens to us, but something that we do. It comes from inside of us, not from the outside. What we ‘think’ determines what we see – even though it often seems the other way around.” Thinking is automatic; it’s going on all the time.

Where do our thoughts come from? We each have a thought bank that we carry around with us that contains all of our beliefs and thought patterns. It also contains all that we’ve learned at home, at school, and in our communities. Our thought banks contain only what we have experienced in the past.

We also have another source of thought that we call Brilliance. Brilliance is our connection to a higher dimension of thought, awareness and consciousness. It only occurs in the Now and always leads to the most expanded viewpoint.

Understanding thought is critical. Our knowledge of how thinking works determines the degree of power we have over our lives.

How can we distinguish when we are caught up in our thought bank or when we are connecting with our Brilliance? When you are worrying or feeling unsure, angry, or depressed you are caught in old habits of thinking from your thought bank. When experiencing a sense of peace, of confidence, and certainty, you have tapped your Brilliance.

Thinking about thinking is a learned habit and the biggest barrier to accessing Brilliance. We’ve been taught to “think about it”, to think about everything. All of this thinking keeps us in the past and blocks the path to Brilliance. Learning new habits will prevent this tyranny of the thought bank.

Learning to quiet the mind is very important. Taking slow deep breaths or simply listening to your breath stops the thought flow. When we are quiet we can hear our intuition, the voice of Brilliance, giving us new ideas and solutions.

Many people are unaware that it is our thoughts that create our lives. We are creating all the time. Thoughts are ‘just thoughts’ until we put our attention on them, activating them into expression. If we are on auto-pilot we have abdicated our ability to choose what we create and are at the mercy of the media, advertising, our colleagues and our families, even our two-year olds. Just look around at the world today and see what extreme unconscious thinking creates.

We can change the world by learning to connect with and maintain our Brilliance. This can be done in many ways. Centering exercises like meditation and yoga help us to relax and be present. We can stay in the flow by being in nature, walking, running, playing basketball or engaging in any activity that puts us in the now. Smiling at yourself and others, laughing often, and celebrating every step of the way move us into higher vibrations.

Brilliance is the path we must take to experience higher consciousness.

When we become conscious of our thoughts and choose to put our attention on our Brilliant thoughts we elevate our expression and move into higher states of being. We truly can bring heaven to earth.

Back to Brilliance © 2011

Some of the thoughts she gets caught up in are: how she’ll come up with the money she needs when her classes don’t fill, or why her classes didn’t fill, or how she can stop worrying about money.

In our mindset program we discuss how important it is to stay connected with our natural Brilliance. It is our mindset that comes from our old patterns of thinking that gets in the way of recognizing our brilliance and living from this wisdom. Steering clear of these limiting thoughts allows us to experience our Brilliance thinking. It’s like we get out from under a cloud and the sun shines.

In the last year we’ve learned an exercise that clears our negative patterns of thinking more quickly and thoroughly than anything else we’ve tried. The exercise comes from the book Zero Limits, written by Joe Vitale and Ihaleakala Hew Len, PhD. “Ho’oponopono” is an ancient Hawaiian healing process.

There are five steps:

1.    I accept responsibility for creating this experience or situation that I want to clear. This come from understanding that we are all constantly creating our reality from our thinking and that it is our thoughts that have created this problem.

2.    I am sorry for this situation.

3.    Please forgive me. Here we ask for forgiveness from all those whom we’ve harmed; we forgive all those who have harmed us; and we forgive ourselves for all harm given and received (real or imagined).

4.    I love you. We ask Universal Source to transmute all of our old beliefs, thought patterns, and habits of thinking into Universal Love unlimited. It is Love that heals us and thereby heals the world.

5.    Thank you.

When we get caught up in worrying about where our money is going to come from, how we are going to fill our classes, or what we need to do to make more money, we have succumbed to our old habits of thinking. We are worrying about not having enough and are afraid that we won’t get enough. These thoughts have created our reality. Our collective thought system perpetuates this “reality” in the world we live in. When we use the “Ho’oponopono” process our old beliefs and thought systems are cleared from ourselves and the world around us and are replaced with Universal Love. In this way we heal ourselves and our world by healing our mindset.

Back to Brilliance, ©2008

All for One and One for All

Imagine finding yourself in the situation Shirley Sharrod has experienced in the last few days. A highly edited video portrayal left her reputation in tatters. Then insufficient investigation and blatant assumptions resulted in her losing her job. In the mix it appears that distorted mindsets put this in motion to meet personal agendas.

• It seems that the blogger who cooked the video was deliberately intending to undermine the NAACP and the current administration and claim some fame at the expense of Ms. Sherrod.
• Fox News then grabbed the video and used it to attack both her and the administration.
• It seems that her employer also jumped to conclusions in a context of fear over past racial discrimination in his department and fired Ms. Sherrod.

This story appears to be the norm rather than the exception. We are living in a world of distorted beliefs and thoughts that are contributing to fear, conflict, and destruction on a personal and global level.

Here are some other examples:

• There was the BP employee who reported problems with the Gulf oil well which were ignored by his supervisor resulting in a disaster of untold proportions.
• For the past month there has been a supreme effort in Congress to block the passage of an extension of unemployment benefits for millions who have been out of work for months, even years, as a result of our economic crisis. These workers were portrayed by some members of Congress as lazy and unwilling to get a job.
• Then the latest discussions on the news of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan indicate that we will need to be there for many more years.

Are we living in an insane world? Perhaps we are, and it’s our thinking that is creating the chaos around us.

• Our conditioned beliefs, our thoughts, that it is our right to put our agendas above the good of the whole lead to permission to deliberately distort the truth and cause harm to others.
• Our beliefs that safety is less important than bottom line profits opens the door to negligence and resulting catastrophe.
• Our greedy thoughts that we can have everything our way regardless of the needs of others, leads to extreme imbalance in personal, national and international relationships.

When is this going to stop? If you have ever felt alone, victimized, cheated, wounded, or hopeless, you have experienced the insanity resulting from dysfunctional habits of thinking. Each of us has the power to stop this insanity.

• When we clear our distorted habits of thinking and focus on thoughts that bring us peace, joy, and harmony we will create the new world.
• When we take the time to tune into other perspectives, to see the value and strengths in everyone, we will increase the quality of our lives.

So, Shirley, we apologize. We admire your dignity and honesty. And, we will work to build a consciousness of Brilliance in our communities so that all can benefit and live together harmoniously.

Back to Brilliance ©2010

We have again reached the tax deadline date of April 15. Guess what!  “Taxes” are just a thought, unless of course, you have to write a check to mail before midnight.

We’re here to tell you that thoughts are really just thoughts. The thoughts we choose to pay attention to become energized and real in our lives.  Why think “taxes” when you could be thinking “tax return”?

If you want to re-tune your thinking a little, read our tips on thinking listed below. They will help you re-focus on the reality you truly want to create.

1. Become Aware if the thoughts you think.
2. Choose the thoughts you pay attention to.
3. Realize that thoughts come before feelings.
4. Remind yourself that thoughts are just thoughts.
5. Use your brilliance to open the door to possibility.
6. Eliminate thought attacks.
7. Ask yourself, “What Was I thinking?”
8. Connect with your Brilliance, your self-esteem.
9. Recognize that thoughts become things.
10. Create the life you really want.

One kind of thinking originates in our computer mind. This is where all of our thoughts, experiences, and training are stored.  It’s like a real computer file. Everything we experience today will go into that file to be stored, available for use in the future.

The other kind of thinking comes from the transmitter mind, or Brilliance mind.  This mind has access to the whole universe, to what we call Universal Brilliance. Once we have that connection, we can quiet down, listen, and ask for what we need.  At that point we discover a bigger viewpoint.

It’s similar to an aerial view over congested traffic. When you’re in slowing or stopped traffic you can’t imagine what is going on. You might tune in to the radio and hear about what is happening from a helicopter above that can see the whole picture.  This is the kind of connection we need to make sense out of our lives.Every day we are working, relating to family, friends and co-workers, and always trying to figure out who we are and what is important.  We usually know what we love to do to relax but aren’t always aware of how we can contribute or what our special gift is in this life.  Making that Brilliance Connection helps us get a bigger picture.

We understand Brilliance to be the conscious, intelligent, creative energy that is within us and within all life. Brilliance has the answers to our questions that our past history from the computer mind cannot discern.  What we learned in the pat or from the school of hard knocks is not always sufficient to answer the questions about our purpose and direction. With new challenges and conditions, the files from our past are seldom enough.

We all have an inborn core of natural Brilliance. It is part of every human being, part of the human package from day one.  It is always available and present. Once we have learned about and activated our Brilliance, we find the fail-proof answers we’ve been looking for. We can trust that it holds the answer for any situation we will face in the future. Brilliance can serve as our first and best friend throughout life.

Lynne was talking to a group of fifth grade students recently about their natural Brilliance.  In the discussion, she shared that you have to get quiet and listen inside yourself in order to connect with your Brilliance.  Sometimes, when you get in touch with that brilliant part of yourself, it might direct you to another person. But remembering to follow the inner wisdom of Brilliance will lead you to the next step, the right person, the answer that you need.

In our culture we are not told that we have Brilliance. Sometimes we’re told to connect with our higher power, or Spirit, or the Universe. All of these are names for that true part of ourselves that is the core of “who” we really are. Making the connection with our Brilliance is critical.

It may seem strange at first to look inside ourselves because we are conditioned to look outside of ourselves from the time we are little children. It’s “see what Mom’s doing” or “what Dad’s doing.” People tell us, “don’t do that”, “stay away from that”, and we hear all kinds of shouldn’ts and do’s or don’ts.  We’ve become conditioned to listen to others for what’s true in our lives. And we lose who we really are when we forget to pay attention to our own unique, natural Brilliance.

Are you still looking for “the answers?” Do you feel sad when you ignore what tour heart whispers to you? Has it be a long time since you’ve taken time to evaluate your purpose and true expression in life? Take a few deep breaths, relax, clear your mind, and connect with your Brilliance. It has the bigger picture for each of us, complete with the directions for living full out and beyond happy.

Our first response is to turn off the TV or blame someone or something for the horrible news. Perhaps you have thrown up your hands, like us, and said “How could they be so stupid?” or “How could someone do such a thing?” If we take the time to go to the next level of understanding and responsibility, we may find that we, too, are implicated; we, too, are a part of creating the world we see on our TV screens.

For every person slaughtered in a foreign genocide, we can identify a thought we have held – a thought that diminished another in order to raise our own esteemed status a little higher.  For every report of shaken baby syndrome and the subsequent shattered lives, we can locate that short but strong impulse to shake someone, to wake them up, to shut them up, that we have felt inside of us.

As the health care debate in congress continues, so does the tenor and tone of the accusations and discord. It looks like everyone is out there looking for the dirt on everyone else. All are hoping to gain some fame by broadcasting the inflammatory findings that will turn the tide, or at least make a big splash.

What is going on?  What do we need to understand at a new level? How can we create a world that is not distinguished by the most brutal events, but rather the most brilliant?

What IS going on? Our consciousness, the level and focus of our thoughts, beliefs, and feelings, is creating what we see around us. We tend to separate ourselves from these ‘bad’ events and we believe that we could not or never would engage in such occurrences.  Yet when we examine our thoughts in detail, we find that we engage in destructive habits of thinking every day.

We are part of the whole; we are connected to everything around us. We must change ourselves, our consciousness, before we can change the world.

There is more than we can see as this is a time of great change. There is a dynamic healing occurring as we come to understand that our thoughts contribute to the outer reality of life on earth. With our uplifted and expanded awareness of how it all works, we are creating this cleansing and healing. Much of the negativity that we perceive at this time is connected to this releasing of old habits of thoughts and patterns of being in the collective consciousness.

What do we need to understand at a new level? In all cases, we need to understand that everyone is doing the best they can with what they have. This understanding includes ourselves. We are all working with worn-out thought systems that need a fresh infusion of universal Brilliance. This natural Brilliance is what we breathe everyday, what we see as nature rejuvenating the earth in each season, and what is at the center of each atom that forms us.

How can we create a world of Brilliance? We need to be aware that as the dark clouds of old thinking dissipate, we have the opportunity to create a truly brilliant world. We are creating a world that reflects the best in each of us individually and collectively. This new understanding moves us into harmony with ourselves, and then with all of life.  The Time for Brilliance is NOW!

One of the boys was from a really rough public housing area on the south side of Chicago. He was telling his story in a matter-of-fact way. He talked about being 10 years old and coming home one day to discover his Mom and all of his brothers and sisters gone. The apartment was empty.  He’d never seen them since that day. He explained his understanding of what had happened when he said, “But, you know, I was a bad kid, and I was always out running with my friends. I didn’t go to school.”  He wasn’t sad or blaming anyone; this was just the way he saw it.

Another boy in the group, looked at him and said, “Robbie, your Momma didn’t leave you ‘cause you was no bad kid. Your Momma left you ‘cause she just didn’t know how to be no good Momma.” The social worker commented that it took her breath away.  Robbie, who was generally a big talker, was just stunned and couldn’t think of anything to say. It had never occurred to him that he was left behind because his Mother didn’t know better. Instead he had been seeing himself as a bad kid and had been living that out. He had not been to school since he was ten.

He started going to classes at the corrections facility and now he runs a service station. He has a wife and a little boy, and he hasn’t been in trouble since that group with the social worker several years ago.  His new life started the moment his friend told him that his family’s leaving him was not his fault.

What old thoughts and messages are you living from?  Who are you seeing yourself being in life? You may not be seeing a bad kid, but if you didn’t do well in school, you may see yourself as someone who always has trouble learning. If you come from a family with limited income, you may see yourself as always having limited financial resources.  If you are an oversized individual, you may be seeing yourself as fat and ugly and not measuring up to society’s dictates about how a body should look.  These patterns of thinking make us feel less-than, unworthy, broken, and heart-sick. We could go on and on with the mistaken beliefs that we are constructing our lives from.

It’s time to create our lives from who we really are. That means getting in touch with that innate wisdom that links us to all life. In our Back to Brilliance programs, we call this natural Brilliance.  It is the foundation of the human package that each of us has.  Our Brilliance gives us an instant connection to the infinite wisdom of the Universe. In any moment, we can choose to access our best and highest thoughts.  When you are upset, sad, or disappointed, your feelings are telling you that you are activating your old social records and programming. When you become aware of this you have already tapped your Brilliance and can see your situation from the truth of who you are. Choosing to focus on your Brilliant thoughts puts you back on course for the life you were meant to live.

What will your life look like when you aren’t focusing on these limited beliefs? What are your biggest dreams? What ideas light you up? It’s your choice. You can stick with your “old stuff” that is making you miserable, or you can open your life to your Brilliant possibilities. Take the challenge to make a new reality.

Question: Can I understand how I am a “mirror” in my relationships?

If we knew we had it in our power to feel good, to feel fulfilled, to be happy and stress free, we wouldn’t ask others to change to make us happy. And we wouldn’t need to control others to make ourselves feel better. We all wish for great relationships. We all want to be loved and accepted for who we truly are.

The great comedian Flip Wilson used to say, “What you see is what you get!” What we put our attention on is what we get in our relationships.

If we look at the flaws in others, we may find that we are more often criticized. If we complain about and blame others, we may notice that others also are blaming us. In our relationships, we all serve as mirrors for one another. If we are seeing flaws, shortcomings, and problems when we look at those around us, we are seeing a reflection of our own thoughts and attitudes.

When we shift our thinking and see through our natural brilliance, through the eyes of love, we will find that new view reflected in those around us. This is the process for creating the relationships we really want. When we focus on what is working, what we love, what we admire and respect in others, that is what we’ll find in the relationships we create.

Here are a couple of experiments to help you recognize the best in others and to create great relationships.

Experiment #1: Identify one or two things you really appreciate in someone you love, and tell that person how you feel.

Experiment #2: Acknowledge someone in your life who you rarely celebrate or recognize.

Ask yourself this question: Can I let go of judging others in my relationships?

Most of us have a habit of judging others in our relationships. How do we deal with this most common habit and barrier to healthy relationships? First, we need to understand and remember that judgments are just thoughts we have focused on and made real. We judge according to our expectations, losing sight of the fact that we all have separate realities and don’t see things the same.

When we get caught up in judging someone else, we tend to lose sight of the whole person and see only the problem we have identified as theirs. We judge others for the “big” stuff, from not taking out the trash to misplacing the newspaper to being a loudmouth. In our minds they could do better or be better.

We have experienced making judgments, and hundreds of assumptions, because we didn’t take the time to ask questions about what was happening or why someone said something. We all fall prey to the habit of judging others because of how they appear, talk, or where they work or worship.

But in our families, close friendships, or partnerships, we owe those we love or hold dear a better outcome than a fast judgment and the resulting disapproval, cold shoulder, or sermon from the mount. And, why are we on the “mount” anyway? What makes us more qualified to know how others should think, live, or act than they? It’s pretty funny when you think about it. We spend more of our creative energy judging others for being who they are than working on what we can control – our own goals, skills and talents.

Have you ever had a positive result come from making a negative judgment about another or about yourself? All the judgments we’ve identified here are negatives that are classified and held for a long time. This long shelf life of judgments cheats the one making the judgment from really knowing another and prevents the one judged from being known.

Judgments drain our energy. They come from our computer patterns of thinking. When we engage in them, our negative feelings should be our first clue to pay attention and redirect our attention and our energy. Although judgments about nuclear warfare might seem worthy of the negative energy spent, judgments about hairstyles and lifestyles contribute little or nothing. Underneath these judgments we find a lack of respect for ourselves and everyone else.

When we have agreements or shared expectations with others and they aren’t working, we can always renegotiate without judgment in a respectful way. When we disagree about little things, we can agree to disagree without calling loyalty or reason into question.

When we disagree about big things, we can seek common ground, letting go of every detail or stipulation that we think should occur.  When we look at the big picture of life, we can choose to make everything into a mountain, or just loosen up and let people breathe easy, appreciating the wonderful qualities they contribute to our lives.

Any time spent in making judgments or being concerned about the judgments others have made is wasted and produces stress. Judgments are always negative; instead, we can admire, compliment, and acknowledge the positive traits of others seen from our innate wisdom through the eyes of respect. This habit really makes relationships much more rewarding and a whole lot more fun.

Today we can watch the late news and the 24-hour news channels, or a late-night tear ‘em up movie. Some of us get connected to family and friends with late-night phone calls and can’t get to sleep because our minds are processing the conversations again. It’s hard to assess the real risk these news or life events we focus on 24/7 pose in our lives. But the side effects from lack of sleep are well-documented.

So, what is the real solution?

You could take drugs to entice your brain to shut down. You could get up and make the sleepless time useful, like cleaning out that garage you’ve had on your list forever. Or you could get a handle on your thinking. You could choose to focus on a thought that relaxes you, makes you smile, or brings good feelings to every cell in your body.

If you don’t believe you have the power to choose which thoughts you pay attention to, think again. It’s time to figure it out and there’s no better time than now. Stress is a feeling that comes from the thoughts we are thinking. Healthy, happy thoughts create healthy, happy feelings.  And the opposite is equally true.

If you want to stop stress now and sleep well, the fastest way is to handle your thoughts in a new way. Choose to focus on thoughts that relax, give hope, or further your goals and desires. It is simple, once you learn that you are in charge of which thoughts you pay attention to.

For additional information, check out our approach to stress relief and sign up for our “Stop Stress Now” 7-session mini-course, in the blue box on this page.  Give yourself a break, and learn how to relieve your late-night stress.