The Right Choice of Thoughts

According to Descartes, the great French philosopher, your mind thinks, and you create your thoughts, which are then expressed in language or words. You can choose your words, just as you can choose your thoughts.

As a simple illustration, here are some plain facts about my grandfather:

He came from China to the United States at the end of the 19th century. He studied at Cornell University, where he earned his bachelor's degree in economics. He became a successful banker, and started his own banking business in New York City. He made a great fortune, and began investing in real estate, making millions of dollars Then came the Great Depression, and he lost everything because he had to pay tax for all his real estate investments.

With an implicit presumptive mindset, my predictive thoughts with expectations could be: "If it hadn't been for the Great Depression, he might have become a real estate billionaire. He could have left my father—his only son—a  great fortune, and we would have been very rich. . . . . .How unfair that he had to pay all the land and real estate taxes that bankrupted him!"

With a different mindset, my thoughts could be: "Wealth and good fortune are unpredictable, and nothing in this material world is permanent. So, we should be grateful for whatever we presently have."

We all have a choice when we process data and information in our minds: with consciousness, we can always add or delete our own assumptions, expectations, and predictions. Again, with consciousness, we can choose to think about it, or simply reject it. For example, if my thoughts about my grandfather tend to be negative, then I could reject them whenever they pop up in my mind; on the hand, if my thoughts about my grandfather are positive, then I could  share the story of my grandfather with my friends.

The bottom line: we all have a choice about what is happening in our minds. If an unpleasant past experience pops up in  the brain, make a conscious effort to distract it by thinking about something else instead. We all have a choice.

If You Just Don’t Die!

If you just don’t die—"How should you live the rest of your life to overcome your daily problems and life challenges?" To do just that, you need the right choice of thoughts

The objective of this book is neither to convince you to crave longevity, nor to show you how to live to one hundred and beyond. It simply presents you with the consciousness of living the rest of your years as if everything is a miracle—if you just don’t die!

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau