The Space you have between your ears
You’ve heard that voice before. The boo bird on your shoulder that always thinks the worst. How many times have you hesitated when you should have gone for it? Why do we often initially view opportunity as a negative?
Humans are born with an awesome space between our ears. Teachers referred to mine with great regularity. They meant to demean but were actually paying me a great compliment. Nature hates empty spaces and works hard to keep them filled. The phenomenal capacity of the human brain to fill its empty space with imagined possibilities differentiates us from other creatures on the planet.
Whether we like it or not, our minds obsessively paint pictures of possible futures 24 hours a day. Mental pictures are important because a large determinant of how we choose to behave, is our conscious or below conscious expectation of what the future holds in store. You are predisposed to move towards whatever your mind is dwelling on. Think the worst or the best, and odds are high that it will probably happen. According to the late Dr. Ron Lippitt, people are programmed negatively before the age of five. Your well intentioned parents, older siblings, friends and other family members, left you with an outlook on life conditioned negative to a ratio of 12:1—that’s if you are average.
An example of unintentional negative programming took place each Sunday morning in my childhood home. I would race down the stairs and bolt for the door. Typically, I’d get the hook seconds before freedom. Mother would unceremoniously use both hands to comb my unruly hair. I could never get it right. She unintentionally conditioned me to believe our family’s reputation was resting squarely on my head. As a mature adult, I’m still at the mercy of an inner voice saying, “go out with your hair looking like that and you’ll scare the neighbors.” Lippit’s ratio suggests that left to our own devices we can expect as many as 12 negative images before we’ll see a single positive. Not all mental pictures are experienced consciously. Subconscious negatives are troublesome because they leave us feeling uncomfortable without knowing why.
You can avoid undisciplined “chattermind” by keeping that creative vacuum between your ears filled with positive pictures. A productive mindset is accomplished by imagining preferred futures. The alternative is to accept negativity because your space will fill based on prior conditioning. Paint yourself a picture of what it will be like when things worked out perfectly. Don’t worry about being considered naïve or overly optimistic. At 12:1 a few positive thoughts will only level the playing field. The following is an authoritative perspective on this topic… “where there is no vision, the people perish…” Proverbs 29:18