“Most people look at their current state of affairs and say, ‘This is who I am.’ That’s not who you are; that’s who you were…. That’s the residual outcome of your past thoughts and actions…. When you look at your current state of affairs and define yourself by that, then you doom yourself to have nothing more than the same in the future.” – The Secret

“I don’t have a TV now, but that’s ok. The shows in my mind are almost always better.” – The Maxx

I saw a documentary recently called “The Secret.” I think it’s gotten pretty popular since it got promoted on Oprah and some other places. The interesting thing about it is that the concepts are nothing new, but it does put them in straightforward terms that pretty much anyone should be able to understand. If you’re interested in how people and life work, it’s definitely worth checking out.

The basic idea is that you create reality with your beliefs and thoughts. If you’re happy, optimistic about the future, and expecting good things, good things will come your way. If you’re negative and worrying, you’ll get the things you’re worrying about. You probably see this in the people you know. Everyone knows a happy-go-lucky person who never worries about anything and seems to have the best luck. Or like my dad told me once, it seemed like the guys who avoided taking the point because they were worried about stepping on a mine were the ones who didn’t make it home. Your beliefs become your reality.

This same general idea has hit me from a few different directions over the past few years, in different books and videos, and it’s finally starting to really sink in for me. I’m not going to write a book about it right now, but I’ll probably be coming back to it in other posts. Right now I’m coming up with positive things to write about (not that my blogs were especially negative before, but still), so that should give me a kick-start to get this thing rolling again.