Once I went to a bar with a friend.

As soon as I walked in, I noticed that the walls were covered with Corona flags.

We sat at our table, I ordered my drink, and he studied the menu.

After a little bit of thought, he ordered a Corona.

He acted like he’d decided on Corona ONLY after reading the menu.

I laughed, and he asked why.

I pointed out all the Corona signs and he looked stunned.

When I was a kid I saw this stage show at an amusement park.

The trick was that I was supposed to whisper something to a dog, and the dog would go and retrieve it.

I did, and the dog retrieved it.

Since I was a kid, I really thought the dog could understand me.

But my brother explained that the trainer had carefully slipped that idea into my mind, so I thought it was mine.

Every show, the dog would always get the same thing.

And every time, the kid thought it was HIS choice that he told the dog.

Just like my Corona ordering friend, the thought had been carefully implanted in there.

Had my brother not explained the trick to me, or had I not shown my friend all the Corona signs, we would have thought it really WAS our thought.

So here’s the uncomfortable question:

How do you know your thoughts are really yours?

Grocery stores are laid out to alter our buying choices.

TV ads are carefully designed to alter our thinking choices.

And since most people think the same thoughts every day, what does it mean if those same thoughts (that people think every day) are really put there by others?

Whose thoughts are we REALLY thinking all day long?

Our lives are built from our behaviors.

Our behaviors are a result of our thinking.

But if our thinking is secretly controlled by others, WHOSE lives are we living?

On a big scale, this sounds terrifying.

But on a much smaller scale, it’s not so bad.

If you’ve got a massive garden that is overrun by weeds, it’s not a very happy thought.

But if you just took out ONE weed per day, and replaced with a seed for a flower, pretty soon you’d transform your garden.

Your thoughts, and the behaviors that create, are the same way.

Even if ALL of your thoughts are really somebody else’s, you can start small.

And slowly replace them with YOUR thoughts that will build the life that YOU want.

Not anybody else.

Learn How:

Seven Disciplines