Every one of us has an image of ourselves in our minds eye (the subconscious mind).  It is this image, that is based on every experience, every action, every event in your life that has brought you to this point in your life.  That time you stole something from the supermarket.  The time you tripped and embarrassed yourself in front of family and friends, the time when you told someone you loved them and they didn’t say it back.  The time you won the little league world series, or threw the winning touchdown in the division finals.  Even the time you bought a lottery ticket and won “another ticket” only to not win on that ticket.  All of these events are there determining who you see yourself as, and how you decided to add weight to these experiences is how much significance they play in that self image. For example, some people forget that they won a hand in black jack that recouped the money that they had lost the previous 4 hands, but when they tell the story, they put so much emphasis on the losing of four hands before they finally got lucky.  That implies that they are normally unlucky and the winning was the fluke.

Here is a story that proves my point:
 a little 6 year old boy runs in the house all sweaty and dirty and begs his father to come outside and see what an amazing baseball player he is. The fathers reluctance was quickly won over by the shear excitement of his son.  The boys beats the father out the back door where he has his bat and baseball strategically placed by his make shift home plate.  The dad comes out and sits on the back steps, and motions to his son to let the show begin.
The little boy was shaking in anticipation of presenting his skills to his father. He lined himself next to home plate, moved his feet into exactly the right position, gripped the bat so tight, with his right hand his knuckles were white, and with his left hand he picked up the baseball and gave it a toss into the air. He drew back the bat, and swung with all his might and woooosh, and spun completely around. The ball dropped un touched onto home plate.  The dad cringed at the amount effort put into the swing, that yielded nothing.  The father motioned to his son to try again, and told him, its ok, get this next one.  The boy performed the same exact motions again, and got the same result.  This went on for the next 10 attempts.  Each time, he set his feet, lined himself up, gripped the bat and tossed the ball into the air, and whiffed the bat through the air, and the ball laid to rest on the plate untouched by the bat. The father was so disappointed in the display that he got up to go inside, looked back at his son who was out of breath, with sweat dripping from his brow, and said, its ok buddy, maybe tomorrow, lets get cleaned up for dinner.  The little boy, was illuminated with pride and ran up next to his dad and motioned him for a high five. The dad high-fived his son without out an ounce of excitement.  Then the son yelled as he ran inside , dad, aren’t i the best pitcher ever!. I struck out the batter every time!

Did you see the kid as a failure or a success?  Your life events have determined what you will see when a particular situation occurs. This is why the police department has such a hard time investigating a bank robbery, everyone sees life through their own lense of experience.

For an up to date feed on what I am doing and saying – find me on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/josephingram  or Twitter