Last weekend was my niece’s 10th birthday party. (I am going to make myself sound old now by saying that) I cannot believe how fast 10 years has gone and, I also cannot believe what a wonderfully wise 10-year old girl she is (even if she is my niece). I overheard her having a conversation with her mom (my sister) and another adult woman at the party. During this conversation, the other woman was talking about how she “wished” she could be more healthy with some of her life choices, to which my sister began replying in a very practical, tangible fashion about some things the woman can do to begin to make more healthy choices. My niece jumped right in, interrupted her Mom and said to the woman, “You just have to think you are healthy and you will be.” There was silence from the adults and my niece said, again, “If you think you are, you will be because you are what you think you are.” And off she ran to play in the yard with her cousins.
A very profound statement from a very young mind – a mind that knows it all begins with what you think about and focus on. The point is that if you think and truly believe you are a healthy person, the opportunities for you to make healthy choices will present themselves to you and you will be that healthy person. The same holds true with other areas of our lives. We are what we think we are – if we think we are unhealthy, or unproductive, or unable to advance in our careers, then that is the filter from which we see things and the information that is presented to us comes through that filter. If we think we are healthy, productive, and successful and we truly believe in those things, then our filter changes and we begin to notice the opportunities in our lives that support us being healthy, productive, and successful.
I am very proud of my niece for knowing how powerful her mind and her thoughts are at such a young age. I believe we all intuitively know this power but, as adults, it’s easy to forget because we let external circumstances become more dominant. I think if we take some time each day to remember what it was like to be a kid, when we truly could be anything we dreamed of, we might begin to change that filter a bit and see some evidence to prove exactly what my niece said: “You are what you think you are.”
