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“I THINK therefore I am” is a famous quote from the French philosopher René Descartes.
This suggests that we see the world through the eyes of our thoughts. This is certainly true, but what if our thoughts are limited (which they most can certainly be!). Then that would suggest that if our thoughts are limited or misguided, then the way we see the world is limited and misguided.
There are numerous examples of this in our history and at the risk of boring you, perhaps the most famous was man’s (and dare I say Church’s) belief that the world was flat.
Because the belief (thinking) was that the world was flat, man’s very existence was controlled by that very belief. Sailors were living in dread of what might happen to them should they fall off the edge of the world.
There existed (in the minds of the people) all sorts of monsters and creatures that controlled this netherworld that would devour you and put the hair standing on the back of your neck.
As a result of this overwhelming belief that resulted in overwhelming fear, man was not very interested in sea-travel as it was sure to end in tragedy.
Therefore the earliest form of exploration was done over land with perhaps the most famous of these being Marco Polo a Venetian explorer who first travelled overland to China in the 13th century.
It was nearly 200 years later in the 15th century that man became comfortable with the belief that the world was round that we began to see the resulting explosion of renowned sea travellers, such as Bartolomeu Dias (c. 1451 – 1500), Vasco da Gama (c. 1460 – 1524), Christopher Columbus (1451 – 1506), Ferdinand Magellan (1480 – 1521), among others.
These men were true pioneers as they went where no man had ever gone before, but also for the purpose of this article they put reality to the newly realised belief that the world was actually round and thus all the fears that existed since the beginning of mankind were now unjustified.
Reality showed that these previous beliefs were false and thus unjustifiably limiting.
Sailing boats would never have been invented if man didn’t believe in the laws of floatation.
Aeroplanes would never have been invented if man continued to believe that it was impossible to fly.
If man didn’t believe in the possibility of automated travel, then there would never have resulted in the first cars run by a combustion engine and pioneered by the likes of Karl Benz and Henry Ford.
The possibility of communication by telephone would never have been contemplated had it not been for a change in belief from pioneers like Antonio Meucci, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson.
It shows that when we change our thinking pattern, this results in a change in belief and thus possibility. So therefore we should be very, very careful of our thinking patterns as they can limit us from realising our true potential.
Again to give a quote from one of my favourite life gurus Mr Wayne Dyer
“When we change the way we look at the world, the world we look at changes”.
In other words when we change our thoughts we can change our lives.
Next week I am going to write about – A great story from Padre Pio.
