Morris E. Goodman’s was a college dropout with no purpose or direction  until he read Napoleon Hill’s book,  “Think and Grow Rich.” That small but powerful book taught Morris about the power of thought.

In a year he became a top producer in sales and within ten years, he was successfully running his own company.

Sounds like another great success story but there’s more. A lot more.

At the peak of his career, Morris was in a plane crash that left him paralyzed and unable to do anything but blink his eyes.  The doctors said he would never recover.  Morris would always be a vegetable. 

But Morris could still think. And he knew that what THEY thought didn’t matter.  The only thing that mattered was what he thought. 

He kept seeing himself as a normal person, walking out of the hospital. 

Morris’ goal was to walk out of the hospital, on his own, by Christmas. He walked out on November 13, just 8 months after his accident.

Morris said,  “the only thing I had to work with in that hospital was my mind, and once you have your mind, you can put things back together again.”

He sums up his advice to anyone in six words:  “man becomes what he thinks about.”

What do we think about?

Dr. Fred Luskin,  at Stanford University, did some research on human thoughts.  He found we have approximately 60,000 thoughts per day and  90% of these thoughts are repetitive!

Boy, it’s not only noisy in there but we’re saying the same thing over and over again.

But that’s not all. According to the National Science Foundation, the average person’s thoughts are 80% negative.

Wow!  Let’s do the math.

60,000 thought a day

90% of those thoughts are repetitive  

And 80% of those repetitive thoughts are negative  

That’s a lot of negative thoughts.  It’s not surprising that so many people are so unhappy. 

Let’s face it, all those negative thoughts create a lot of negative stories.  

Let’s look at an example:

“ Oh no, the bus may be  late. It’ll probably be late. Then, I’ll be late. And no one will understand. They will all blame me, and the whole day will be ruined. Maybe I shouldn’t even go.”

Listen to that story. One negative thought after another based on a premise that the bus may be late.

But here’s the good news?  And, yes, there is good news.

Our stories are based on our thoughts and our thoughts are based on our beliefs.

By building a foundation of positive beliefs, we can build more positive thoughts and create more positive stories

Let’s go back to Morris.  Morris had powerful positive core beliefs.  Morris believed that “man becomes what he thinks about.” And, even though Morris could hear the doctors saying he would never recover, he didn’t believe them because, for him, the only thing that mattered was what he thought. 

He could have believed the doctors and created a story that would have left him paralyzed   But, instead, Morris’ beliefs and thoughts were powerful and positive. He said in a later interview, “I could not afford to allow anything to come into my mind that would distract me from my goal and from my vision.”

Morris  created an empowering story and it transformed his life.

And now it’s time for us to create our own empowering stories.

Our first step, is to start by establishing powerful and positive core beliefs.

Here’s a simple, but powerful core belief that we can say when we wake up every morning and throughout our day:  “Today is a great day!”

Then no matter what happens during the day -  if the bus is late, if someone is unkind to us - it’s still a great day.  And this simple core belief gives us the opportunity  to look for the positive in everything that happens to us throughout our great day.

Use the beliefs exercise from the “ESTABLISH CORE BELIEFS”  post to build your own powerful beliefs.  

Remember, beliefs are the foundation of our thoughts and thoughts come together to make stories.  So let’s establish beliefs that are powerful and positive, so we can have powerful and positive thoughts and create stories that support our  health and happiness.

Check out Morris’s amazing story here:

https://youtu.be/fkrp7tffYWc