Do a mind laundry

Before going to bed every night, I put on an audio with Bible verses, especially the ones that reinforce the promises of God to me as a child of God, or Christian music that soothes me to sleep. It plays until I wake up the next day. I don’t do this just because I am a Christian but because I want to ensure that the first things I hear in the morning as well as the last things I hear before going to bed are deposits into my spirit, soul and body. Since I started doing this, I have not had one nightmare! I recommend it to every reader of this column.

Your life reflects your mind. Your outer conduct is a product of your inner construct. What are the thoughts that run through your mind when you wake up in the morning or the last things you think about when you go to bed? These things will have a direct hearing on the outcomes of your life. It is vital to declutter in your mind before you sleep. Be careful what you spend time reading, watching or listening to on social media, especially as you wind up your day and prepare to sleep. Sometimes, even when you are not conscious of it, the thoughts or images imprinted in your mind by those things can determine the things you dream about. The Holy Bible teaches that where there is too much busyness – especially of the mind – dreams will come. Our belief system is shaped largely by repeated images and reinforced information to our mind. What you repeat, you believe, what you believe you become and what you become you behave.

Be careful what you repeatedly meditate on, because words are shaped by thought. The devil does not know what you are thinking until you give it verbal expression. The words we speak constantly will also shape our conduct. Our words and actions determine our outcomes. So, every day, your life reflects back to you your dominant input via thoughts and words. If you constantly meditate on and repeat words of fear, you will be discouraged. But if you repeat affirmations of words that tell you that with God, you have capacity to achieve certain outcomes, you will always feel empowered. Always think of possibilities. With a possibility mindset, even if you have challenges, they can be resolved more easily.

We rise or fall by the daily conditioning of our mind.  Have you ever heard about the Law of Cosmic Habit Force? It’s simply about the principles of how creation works. The whole of creation is governed by laws or principles. If you keep having doubts about everything, you will treat every opportunity that comes your way with skepticism, no matter how evident or simple they appear to be. Meditating on or speaking words of fear will always bring discouragement and sometimes depression. Possibilities only gravitate towards you when the words you utter reflect faith and hope. If you meditate on wealth, you will receive inspiration about various legitimate ways to produce it. If poverty or thoughts of lack and shortage occupy your mind, it could well become your reality because your focus is on lack even when you are surrounded by so much abundance. Money is like a magnet. It attracts people whose minds are prepared for it even before it is reflected in the bank balance. Wealth and poverty are first states of mind before they are a bank balance. Your outer world is a very precise harvest of your inner world. Your mind is a garden. It is what you plant in it or allow in it is what grows. Anything that is not deliberately planted in a garden is a weed and needs to be uprooted before it overshadows what was deliberately planted. That is the essence of cultivation.

Be very intentional about life. I wrote extensively in my book LIVING INTENTIONALLY. If intentionality does not characterize your life, you will constantly be asking yourself why certain things are not happening in your life. As a believer, I can tell you that the sovereignty of God and His grace rule and can overrule our plans or thoughts. However, that does not remove our responsibility to do what we need to do, while trusting Him to change our course if He decides to. Have you ever heard some figures mentioned and your head started spinning because you could not convince yourself that anyone could ever make that kind of money legitimately? Whatever figure your brain finds difficult to conceive possibilities around is your ceiling in terms of potential wealth. Money is simply energy in motion. It is either moving in your direction because your thoughts, word and conduct attract it or it is moving away from you because your thoughts and words repel it. So, your money conversations and your money habits have a direct bearing on your finances. There is no preacher who can preach any sermon to you that can uninstall from your life what habits installed into it. Any habit can only be changed by the development and substitution of another. What makes anything permanent in your life is your inner belief and the commands you give to and in the course of your life. Those subconscious commands develop into habits. Until you build the castle inside you, the world may never give you the space to do so.

Here are some suggestions. First, reconfigure your hard drive. If you feed garbage into it, you get garbage back. Reconfigure the architecture of your life if you want to see a change in your outcomes. Remove every virus of fear, doubt and vague decisions. If you are a Christian, use the mind of Christ to install courage, faith, boldness, capacity, abundance, quality relationships. Your heart must be a sacred space that you guard with all diligence as the Bible advises us to do. Why? It is the warehouse of all the issues of life. Do a thorough virus scan and debug your entire system.

Everyone who succeeded significantly did so because of intentional, resolute focus on power, purpose, possibilities powered by faith in something or a cause bigger than themselves, or the capacity of opposition to stop them. Never tolerate opinions or ideas that negate your vision. Make every effort to minimize your presence (if you cannot avoid it totally) in environments where negativity and defeat or lack constitute the main topics of conversation. As much as you can, avoid contributing to conversations that deflate the balloon of hope in you or bring discouragement about your convictions. Detach from associations that do not empower you. When it comes to the issues of destiny, not everyone can be your friend.

Deliberately cultivate the company of people who speak the language of your destination, not the language of your frustration. Start learning and speaking the language of where you want to go, not that of where you are currently feeling stranded.

Finally, never accept the narrative of lack or failure as a final verdict over your life. In God, there are always possibilities.

May your eyes be open to see them!

Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!