Living in Pictures. By Lennie Esomitoje

Before reading this chapter, be sure to read Living in Pictures

Taking seriously the teachings of Norman Vincent Pearle, I went to work on me. I started by deciding to see the positive in every negative, the light in every darkness and a way out when, where there seems to be no way; and decorating my cubicle with challenging, encouraging, lifting, enhancing quotes and pictures.

I remember, that during my frequent travels to and fro Port Harcourt city, of Nigeria, in my youth corps days, I pictured my life and future as green, prosperous as the evergreen (year round) vegetation, especially between Patani to Ahoda towns.  I often mused to myself, meditating, praying inwards and sometimes muttering, how green, great and prosperous my life was going to be. And I believed!

To give potency and life to your desire, vision, dream, purpose and pursuit, decide to womb them. Yes, conceive your dreams in your mind-womb. Conceive pictures of the positive opposites of where you life is heading right now; that is how to reverse it.

You will be limiting your life if you are living after conditions, situations and circumstances of life. There may be facts to what you are faced with at the moment; but don’t make it your reality. You determine your reality. You can so dwell on the positive alternative of where you are right now, till it becomes your fact, and eventually your living reality.

There is also the great need to position yourself against: (1) aborting your dream because its seem unrealistic and unrealizable, (2) miscarriage of your dream because you did not give it enough “brooding over” time, for it to be attached to the wall of your mind-womb, the subconscious, (3) allowing your dream to suffer still-birth, which is realizing nothing at all from it, by keeping company with fear, doubt, anxiety, guilt, unbelief and indecision, and (4) going into forced contraction and delivering a premature, look alike (“not-exactly-what –I-wanted”) version of your dream.

Make a conscious effort (build a habit) to live in picture. Don’t approach life any other way. First, go into your thinking room; and anywhere can be your thinking room since you are the master of your mind and thoughts. But, quiet environments are preferable, no matter how much mind control you would subject yourself to.

It is in those times of controlled thinking, dwelling on particular pictures of the kind of future your desire, that your eventual outcomes in life are birthed. Living in picture (controlled thinking) is how to: become WHO you would like to be; get, receive or accomplish WHAT you want; reach WHERE you want to be in life; know WHEN to take whichever step you need to take to reach your best in life, and to think out HOW.

Yes, it at such sessions that you think out HOW you want to go about becoming the WHO you want to be, reach WHERE you want to be in life, to decide WHEN to take those actions required to achieve your life and to get WHAT you want out of life.

Spell out want you want to change in your life. Decide your desired future, paint such pictures in your mind, and put it on paper. Then, write out positive confessions of as if you’d already there, living your dream life, and it will be so.

What to do with your written positive confessions; Carry them about with you, hang them in your house (off the ceilings), and post them on your walls. I still do and its working for me. Try and see!

In my undergraduate days I got so taken in by this positive thinking stuff, that I used to imagine myself living in a duplex in the centre of large acreage of land that I owned; today it is already a reality, and I am still under 50years in age. Although this may not be much in some circle, my point is, if you can play this “positive thinking” mind games on you, it will work; asides, it is better than being head down in cynicism.

The power I generated from reading through and meditating on those helpful, lifting quotes ( and going through those “greatness-is-possible” pictures), on my walls, or hanging from my ceilings every morning is evident in my life of today.

I had practiced the power of positive thinking, and it made me almost, always unflinchingly have a positive thought about things that I come across and that happen to me in life. I noticed that those pictures took root in my subconscious mind, after repeated sessions of dwelling on them.

Consistent sessions of imagination – picturing, believing for the good life, left deeply entrenched pictures in my mind, such that my subconscious mind, began to freely dictate my daily talk and actions. My subconscious mind is to a large extent trained to force me to like, decide for and prompt me to go for the best in life. This will be your testimony too!

Decide your life; indulge in positive thinking session, so your eventual outcome in life is going to be positive and great.

The mind left fallow, uncultured will naturally grow weeds; and could cause those who lazily left their minds untamed, to become weeds –beggars and disturbances to other people, and problems to society.

To be a solution, you have to consciously begin to plant positive thoughts, paint possibility pictures, carry about optimistic mind-frame; and post them on your walls, hang them of you ceilings, if you can.

You must consciously, intentionally, decidedly take your life in your hands. Do something to your mind, do something positive with your mind; don’t leave if fallow. For nothing left to itself, in its natural state, is of any real value.