Once upon a time there was a frog sitting near the bank of a river. Enjoying the warmth of an afternoon sun, his relaxation quickly turned to panic as he noticed a scorpion fast approaching. Startled, the frog hopped frantically toward the water, knowing well that scorpions can’t swim.
“Frog! Wait, wait!” yelled the scorpion. “I need your help!”
The frog, with caution, stopped to hear him out.
“I need to cross the river, but I can’t swim!” said the scorpion. “Can you please carry me across on your back?”
“No way!” replied the frog. “You’ll sting me.”
“Of course not. If I did that, I would drown, because I can’t swim,” said the scorpion.
Realizing this was true, he agreed to help the scorpion. He jumped in the water, the scorpion climbed on his back, and they began making their way across the river.
Halfway across, the frog looked up at the scorpion in complete disbelief, as he felt the stinger thrust into his back.
“Scorpion, why!? Now we will both drown. Why did you do this!?” yelled the frog.
“Because I’m a scorpion,” replied the scorpion. “It’s who I am.”
---
You will always behave in accordance with your identity -- your beliefs about who you are -- even if doing so will cause you harm. If you believe you’re a failure, then you will behave in such a manner that engenders more failures than successes. You will have created a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Think about it. When you believe that you’ll never get the job you want, do you even try? And if you do try, how much heart do you put into the effort? Not much. Instead, you make a half-hearted attempt, fail to get the job, and then use this failure to further strengthen your belief of your inadequacy. It becomes a downward spiral. Your beliefs of inadequacy prevent you from truly trying, so you don't really try, so you fail. This failure, then, further strengthens your belief of inadequacy, causing you to try less and less, causing you to fail more and more.
Have you ever experienced this in some part of your life? I have. The question is, is there hope? Is there a way out of this downward spiral? Or are we stuck in it for the rest of our lives? What can we do?
Now, read carefully, because the principle I’m about to share is the most important idea you will ever read about on my blog. It’s a principle, a truth, that’s been called The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale -- the secret to success. Here it is:
As you think, so shall you become.
As you think, so shall you become.
Our lives are determined, are shaped, are formed, by our thoughts. What’s on the outside is a manifestation of what’s on the inside. People who think about becoming lawyers become lawyers. People who think about becoming writers become writers. And people who think they can’t succeed, don’t. It’s a truth that’s been stated in many different ways, in many different sources:
"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."
-- Proverbs 23:7 Bible“We are what we think.
All that we are arises
With our thoughts.
With our thoughts,
We make our world.”
-- The Buddha“We become what we think about.”
-- Earl Nightingale“Our lives are defined by our convictions of who we are.”
-- Anthony Robbins“Man is what he believes.”
-- Anton Chekhov
You can evaluate the quality of your thoughts simply by evaluating the quality of your life. If your life is bad, your thoughts are bad. Your thinking is too negative. Similarly, if your life is good, it’s because your thoughts are positive. Going back to our question: How do we escape the downward spiral of failure? We escape by changing our thoughts. This must occur first. We must change our thinking, because remember, our thoughts are the reasons we’re in the spiral to begin with. Once we change our thinking, our actions and behavior will reflect our thinking, as will our lives.
---
I’m going to stop here and continue this discussion in my next entry, where I’ll talk more seriously about Self-limiting Thoughts, the beliefs that prevent us from transforming our lives into the ones that we desire. For now, I hope you understand the utter importance of your thoughts, for it is with your thoughts that your life is shaped.
