The power of thought and it's affects on our circumstances

What we think about is powerful. More powerful than you may realize. You have to act on what you think about. Every problem you experience, you experience in thought. If the problem is in your mind, then the solution is also in your mind. You become what you think about. As you think so shall you be. What you think about expnads in your life. Pessimism breeds pessimism and optimism gives birth to more optimism. In the world of thought, everything you think about is already here. If you can conceive of something in thought, it can be brought into form. Now don't get silly here and follow me. I don't want those of you to begin unsuccessfully thinking about Unicorns in the living room. Ok, back to my point. If you tell yourself you can't do something, then you likely will not be able to do it. Richard Bach, the writer of "JOHNATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL" was quoted as saying "argue for your limitations and they most surely will be yours". But if you have a belief that you can do the task at hand, your chances of being successful greatly increase. What is the difference between a child who can swim and an adult who cannot? Is it the child possesses a different physical capacity than the adult? No. The child has a belief that he can do it and they are acting on that belief. The same holds true for many other things such as riding a bike. If the person knows how to ride a bike, they do not have a physical abilty now that seconds before they did not. The ability was always there, but the belief was not. The key is changing that belief and that all lies in the world of thought.
    This is all based on taking responsibiltyfor your own actions and what you desire to be. To seek your own meaning. To avoid bad faith.
    In order to avoid bad faith, you must accept your own responsibilty and do not give control of your life over to others. We alone are responsible for who we become. Bad faith is a blind conformity to the world around us and results in a great self deception. A person thrown into a situation must make something meaningful of their lives. An example of this would be a black child born in the American South during the early 1800's. The chances are that this child will be a slave. But it is thew childs responsibility to search for it's own meaning. Not to conform to the world around it. To do this would be leading a life of nonbeing or a life that is meaningless and void. The goal is to seek meaning in this void or in the situation you have been thrown into.
    The Existentialist view is that each person controls their own life and is the ultimate creator of the self. According to Sartre, "man is nothing else but what he makes of himself." The creation of the self is a life long project. A person who truely seaks his or her own meaning is constantly changing. Evolving. The person becomes a new person every moment of their life. This is how I perceive the term "being and becoming". We alone are responsible for what we become. We cannot become the person we should be without the true seeking of our own meaning in life. This is the one key thing we must take responsibility for.
    Because we are constantly becoming everyday, it is difficult to put a lable on who we are. As the great Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard once said, "Once you lable me, you negate me.". That is, to give us a specific category or description gives the one who hears the label a feeling of having arrived at some destination where complacency sets in and we cease to be humans  being.
    Because man at his birth is thrown into an environment not of his choosing or control, he must make choices about how to respond to this world he exists in. The choices guide man in his search for meaning. We are doomed to make choices. Therefore we are in control but we are not in control. Sometimes choices require a leap of faith. A belief that your actions and thoughts will be just.One must not follow orders or societal norms and more's strictly because that is the way things are done. Man must follow his own mortality and the nature of things to determine his actions in cases of leaps of faith.
    In the case of the black child in the South during the 1800's, he is still in control of his own destiny. By accepting his thrownness and letting it control him is an act of bad faith. If he recognizes his master, then he is a slave. A man is not a slave if does not recognize his master as such. Both master and slave are slaves themselves to the laws of nature. A master is only a master  if he is recognized by his slave as a master. To do this would be for the black child to disrupt his own nature of things. Becoming conscious of someone else to the extent it takes away your humanity places your own existence in flux and your own nature into an inoperable state. Man, must be autonomous in his actions and duties. If you do what you morally ought to do then you are free. Man must do what he knows is right. If the slave was freed as a result of the emancipation proclamantion, he may be legally free in a formal sense, but until he activates his thoughts and his mind toward a path of moral and just thought, then he is but a victim of his environment.
   Man's life is based on his own perceptions, thoughts, and the actions subsequent to those thoughts. As Sartre states in his book "A More Precise Characterization of Existentialism", "thoughts are projects and commitments, his feelings are undertakings, he is nothing other than his life, and his life is the unity of his behavior."


    While in college I took a course in alcoholism counseling and after spending a significant amount of time in the rooms occupied by recovering alcoholics of AA, I became jealous of the tools they have at their disposal for gaining a more sane ands serene view of the world around them and the events that at times triggered them to drink. The AA Bible so to speak is a book refered to as the Big Book. In it are passages that can seen as almost devinely inspired for helping the recovering addict and alcoholic change the way he percieved and reacted to the world. My favorite paragraph is what most members call "page 449". It deals with acceptance. Here it is:
And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation -- some fact of my life -- unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.
Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life's terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.