“One summer day, a man by the name of Nick Sitzman was doing his usual job on a train crew.  The train crew were informed that they could quit an hour early in honor of the foreman’s birthday. Accidentally, Nick was locked in a refrigerator boxcar, and the rest of the workmen left the site. 

Nick went into a panic as soon as he found out he was locked in.  He banged and shouted hoping to get someone’s attention.  No one heard him. “If I can’t get out, I’ll freeze to death in here,” he thought. Wanting to let his wife and family know exactly what had happened to him, Nick found a knife and began to etch words on the wooden floor. He wrote, “It’s so cold, my body is getting numb. If I could just go to sleep. These may be my last words.” 

The next morning the crew slid open the heavy doors of the boxcar and found Nick dead. An autopsy revealed that every physical sign of his body indicated he had frozen to death. What couldn’t be explained was that it was discovered that the refrigeration unit of the car was inoperative, the temperature inside the cart never went below fifty-five degrees.” 

I ran into this story while listening to an interview of Trevor Moawad, a Mental Conditioning expert and strategic advisor who was named “Sports World’s Best Brain Trainer” by Sports Illustrated in 2017.  He was talking about the power of words and how when we say something out loud, we significantly increase the probability of it happening. Actually, he states it’s even more powerful when you say something negative vs something positive.  And this is how the story above came up.  I had to look it up to check the legitimacy of it, and at least from what I found, this story still remains a mystery.  So technically you can’t rule out that this person died just by the power of his thoughts, amplified when he started saying them out loud by writing them. 

This whole concept is nothing new, right, if you think about it, if you visualize it, if you say it out loud, you increase the probability of it happening.  There are many people that have talked about this, there are many books out there that have been written about it.  And it’s easy to be skeptical of this as on the surface it doesn’t seem logical.  But my thought is this, if you keep seeing the same message in several sources then you at least should pay attention as chances are there’s some validity to what is being said.  There are two more stories I’ll share, both are NFL stories, but one is an example of impact of positive thinking and the other of negative thinking, this one taken from the same interview of Trevor Moawad. 

Michael Strahan told a story of how, leading up to Super Bowl XLII, his dad told him his team, the NY Giants, had already won that game, they just needed to play it through.  The Patriots were undefeated leading up to that game and the Giants had made it into the playoffs through the wild card with a 10-6 record.  Fast forward to the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl, with the Giants trailing the Patriots 10-14, Michael kept his father’s words with him and told his team that they were going to win that game 17-14.  The Giants of course did win that game 17-14 and the game went down regarded as one of the greatest games and one of the biggest upsets in the history of professional sports. 

It is the third quarter of Super Bowl LI; the Falcons are leading the Patriots 28-3.  One of the Falcons’ players shares his thoughts with other players in the sidelines, saying something like, “Man, as long as they have Tom Brady no lead is secure”.  The Falcons ended up blowing the lead, with the Patriots making the largest comeback in Super Bowl history, winning 34-28 in overtime. 

Let’s start with negative thinking.  You could just tell yourself, “I’ll just stop thinking negative things”, but that’s not very realistic is it.  At least for most of us it is not possible to control all our thoughts.  But what we can do is be aware of them, what they mean, the impact they can have, and how we should respond to them.  For example, don’t say them out loud, that one is much easier to control.  And if you are interested in taking this even further into controlling your thoughts, those voices in your head, then it’s worth looking into meditation if you don’t currently practice it.  And if you’re not interested in meditation, I suggest you read the book THE SURRENDER EXPERIMENT by Michael A. Singer first before completely dismissing it.  The way he describes going into meditation will make you at least want to look into it.  But bottom line, be aware of the impact negative thinking can have in your life.  Think of it as something toxic and so you want to minimize as much exposure to it as possible.  By the way, this includes any negative people in your life, you want to make sure to get them out of your inner circle if possible. 

Positive thinking, above all else, can counter the negative thinking.  If we go back to the example of the Falcons’ player, after his thought of “they have Tom Brady, no lead is secure”, he could have countered it with something like “but we have a great team and we got this far for a reason” if he would have been more mentally aware of the impact of his negative thinking, 

There’s a quote by Marshall Sylver that says, “Everything begins with a thought, and thoughts are turned into a plan, and plans into reality”.  If we want positive outcomes in our life, it starts with positive thoughts.  I mentioned earlier that it’s not possible to control all our thoughts.  The key is self-awareness.  If you plant that seed in your brain that negative thoughts are toxic, suddenly you’re able to put a spotlight on them when they show up subconsciously, and in return become conscious of them and treat them as such. 

There’s certain content out there that takes positive thinking further, stating if you visualize it, it will become reality.  The most famous book about this that I’m aware of is THE SECRET by Rhonda Byrne.  I agree that visualizing it is part of the process to make it become reality, what I don’t agree with is that that’s all it takes, which books like THE SECRET seem to suggest.  In my opinion, once you have that vision, you create a plan and start taking actions towards it.  It’s not enough to know where you want to be, you have to know how you will get there.  This is basically what Marshall Sylver refers to in his quote. 

And so now you can equip yourself with your self-awareness, ready to counter those negative thoughts with positive ones, and you create that vision of what you want to achieve.  Do you now create that plan and grind it out, following the plan to a T.  My thought is no.  The journey should be just as beautiful as the destination.  It doesn’t mean you don’t work hard to achieve what you want, on the contrary you will have to.  But be willing to flex the plan as there might be a good reason for it.  Michael Singer mentions in his book I reference above, “I had gone through most of my life thinking I knew what was good for me, but life itself seemed to know better”.   

And so I’ll end my post with this.  Plant that seed of how you will view your negative thoughts and actions you will take when they present themselves. Create the vision and the plan on how to get there.  Then get going and be ready to pay attention to those obstacles that show up along the way.  Some will need to be removed, but others might show up for a bigger reason as they might lead you to an even greater destination if you choose to go with the flow.