A Mind Set

The lady had just about driven me crazy. A sweet soul, she came to the counseling lab where I was doing my training. She was fifty years old and admitted that she felt a hundred and fifty. She had lost her husband some years prior. He had "run off" with another woman. The lady's negativistic personality was right up there with best of the nagatives.

The fact that she was a referral from a fairly popular counselor in town made me wonder if that good counseling doctor might have pulled one of my "Greyhound Therapy Tactics". Before a client drives you to the point of insanity, put them on a bus to another therapist that you generally don't like.


Ms. Negativistic admitted that she was negative about most everything; she had been that way all her life. At the end of the day she was satisfied with that "mind set". Her mind was set, made up, and she had no intention of changing it for herself or anyone else, which was her right.

The human brain produces thoughts in all humans. If there is no thinking, there is no life. If there is life without a functioning brain, the person is clinically dead. All life roads lead to the brain. The brain is an organ that creates a mind. The mind is thought central. A brain is an organ. We should be careful not to confuse the two.


Some brains have illness or injury and are not rational, capable or reliable. This is a fact of life. A brain that cannot function properly cannot be counted on to produce a mind that is reliable or stable. An individual possessing a perfectly capable, reliable and functional brain should have a mind that is capable of the same.

Minds can be injured. A child with a perfectly good brain can have a mind that is crushed under a load of shame from the power people in his or her life. An individual goes into battle with a perfectly good brain and a stable mind. In the coarse of battle the person experiences much trauma and stress. His mind is injured by the trauma and stress. He begins to have flashbacks and depression and anxiety problems. The brain is fine, the thinking is not.

The mind can be helped. Thinking can be challenged and changed. Perceptions can be altered and the mind salvaged and healed. However, if a mind is made up and a mind set has been established without acceptance of positive possibility, there is little or no hope for anything different in the indiividual's life. A tragic scenario indeed when a person fails to fall forward into mind healing.

Words are Thoughts Too

This morning I read the news concerning an AirFrance plane that disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean. My mind immediately took me back to my last trip across the Atlantic. We had traveled 10 days prior to South Africa on a Safari of sorts and, having completed our mission, were flying home via the Isle of Cape Verdes. Just short of a hour after our departure from the Cape one of our very pleasant sounding flight attendants announced that the captain had informed her that we were having "electrical problems with the aircraft". My God! Should we begin to look for floatation devices, I wondered? I thought they were under the seat, or perhaps the seat becomes a floatation device once it has been ripped from the floor at impact.



That chilling announcement sent a ripple of verbal concern throughout the plane. Only a complete idiot could not have recognized that this aircraft was carrying approximately 300 terrified souls. Perhaps the captain had used those precise words to scare the living hell out of the flight attendants and the passengers. I can imagine a rather adolescent pilot reaching for the microphone and saying to his co-pilot, "Watch this. Flight attendant Semuskisent? Yes, would you announce to the passengers that we are having electrical problems with the aircraft?" Ms. Semuskisent may have developed a serious mood and inquired, "And just what the hell does that mean Captain Turnip?" Maybe he joked with her and said, "Just tell those publicans that the Captain has informed you that there is an electrical problem with the aircraft and watch their faces. Ha!" I don't know. But, whoever choose those words to announce what would eventually be known as a "problem with the television" could have definitely choosen better.



Words are verbalized thoughts. Thoughts are sometimes graphic designs, images with a cinematic flow. At other times, they are words that we hear with the inner ear of the mind. How may times have you said, "And just as I was about to do it, I heard my mother, dad, teacher, minister, wife, husband say..."? When our thoughts are visual images we describe what we are seeing with language. Sometimes it is difficult to find the words to express what we are visualizing in our mind. When our thoughts are words, we are "self-talking" and speech is simply a verbalization of that inner voice in the mind.

How we talk to ourselves determines our reactions to what we are experiencing. How we describe, define, explain, calculate a situation with images or words in our brain is the essence of our perceptions. These perceptions are the sum total of our life experience. Someone said, "If you aren't worried then you just don't have all the facts." In other words, "Your perception needs tweeking."

Of course, that is not necessarily true. Perceptions are unique to each individual. An opinion is a perception. A "stated opinion" is a perception that has been made known. Perceptions can be false to one degree or another, or true to one degree or another. Perceptions are like blood; different types, but everybody has some. And, they matter!



The way we choose to speak about anything or anyone reflects our thinking. Vocabulary enhances or inhibits our ability to perceive and verbalize our perceptions. When a doctor listens to an individual describe and point to her pain, he thinks in terms of his training. He has vocabulary that matches what he is seeing and hearing. He sees and hears what an untrained individual does not see or hear because he has learned anatomy, physiology, pathology, disease and the vocabulary that best reflects those disciplines.



Words are thoughts too. When we change our vocabulary, we change our life because we add to our ability to think about anything. We enhance our ability to perceive and know. Words make a difference in how we act, react, respond and feel. They also make a big difference how others at, react, respond and feel. When the flight attendant verbally informed us that the "electrical problem" was isolated to the aircraft televisions, we all breathed a sigh of relief. Our negative possibility thinking that provoked our feelings of terror gave way to more positive truth and euphoria. I thought about buying everyone on the plane a drink.