Mindset

Why does the positive thinking never quite take? You have done the affirmations. You have read the right books, kept the gratitude list, repeated the mantra in the mirror. And the year still came back the shape of your fear. Elsie Lincoln Benedict has a picture for that, and it is the most useful thing in How to Get Anything You Want. She calls the subconscious a cannon — built on the boomerang principle. Every shot you fire comes back to your own feet, and it does not come back alone. It returns laden with results, realities, actual occurrences. The thoughts you load are the ammunition. But the mood you carry is the aim. ...

The word you pick is the temperature you feel. Tony Robbins makes a small claim with large effects: the habitual words you use to label an experience set how strongly you feel it. Call a setback a "disaster" and your body answers a disaster. Call it a "snag" and the heat drops enough to think. Watch a team after a miss. One says "we got crushed." Another says "we read that one wrong." Same result on the board. Two different rooms — one bracing for impact, one already reaching for the fix. ...