The Most Valuable Psychology Principle I Have Ever Found

Sometimes we can run across a piece of knowledge that proves to be extremely valuable in our lives. In all of my 37 years of study and involvement in psychology, there is one principle that keeps coming up over and over again because of how valuable it has been in my understanding and having control over what goes on in my heart. And of course having that kind of control is very valuable because what goes on in our heart has a tremendous impact on how pleasant or unpleasant our experience of life will be.

This principle has been so key because it has shown me how many of our feelings don’t originate in our heart, they originate in our mind (conscious and subconscious). So instead of being the victim of what just happens to be going on in our heart, we can have an affect on what goes on there by what we say and believe in our mind. Here’s how the principle goes:

WHATEVER WE SAY OR BELIEVE IN OUR MIND AS BEING TRUE, OUR HEART WILL RESPOND AS IF IT IS TRUE, WHETHER IT IS TRUE OR NOT.

The great revelation here is to see that our thoughts and beliefs can create unpleasant reactions in our heart that DON'T HAVE TO BE. We can eliminate them by merely changing our thoughts and beliefs to just seeing reality and being in harmony with optimum human functioning.

A way that you can prove this principle to yourself is: close your eyes and fantasize that you are on a nice tropical beach in Hawaii; or fantasize that you see someone who you love; or fantasize that a tiger is about to attack you and is right in front of you; or fantasize that you just won the lottery or scored the winning touchdown or won a beauty contest; or fantasize that you were just elected president of the United States. Now, didn’t you have emotional reactions to all of those? Yet, none of those things really happened. So now you see how emotions can be manufactured in the heart just by what you are thinking. In fact this is how a healthy fear can be turned into paranoia or scrupulosity.

The reason why this principle is so valuable and important is because: people tend to believe that what is going on in their heart is a real reaction to reality…and is even reality itself. They even go so far as to identify with what they are feeling. In fact, most people think that they ARE their feelings. But no…the heart is only a feeling mechanism that resides within our being and is not us.

I have found this principle to be extremely valuable when I was feeling something I didn’t want to be feeling. I would simply look at what I was thinking and then question if it was real and necessary or not. If it wasn’t, I would stop the thought and the feeling would go away.

Of course there can be lifelong wrong thinking programmed into our subconscious in times of trauma. And it often makes a direct line to our heart, causing bad feelings. But we can also eliminate these if we pay close attention to what is going on in our mind, rather than impulsively letting it dictate our behavior and beliefs.

The ultimate utilization of this principle happens when we transform our thinking to being in line with perfection (exact truth and optimum human functioning).

Towards the end of discovering “exact truth and optimum human functioning”, I’ve written two books: Why Are We Here? and Sweeping It Under The Drug…both of which can be purchased at http://www.UltimateTruths.com or Amazon.com.