How do we go about recognizing and mastering our state of mind or the quality of our thinking?

Years ago, I remember watching a  television commercial. In the advertisement, an overweight person signs up for a membership at a health club.  He then goes into the gym runs around the room once, waves his arms a few times, and jumps on the scale.  He is disappointed that he has not lost a significant amount of weight and complains to the management that the program is ineffective.

To most of us, this seems like a ridiculous scenario and the person seems to be totally unreasonable, if not comical.  However, in working with countless people, I have found that most often the reason for their successes or failures is embodied in the simple concept outlined in this advertisement. The person cannot expect to lose weight simply because has signed up for a well-tested fitness program at a reputable club.  Making the decision to do this, doing the research, and coming up with a system are only the first steps. In order to lose weight the individual needs to follow through with the process of exercising on a regular basis.

What is important to note here is that all lasting change only comes about through a process.  The process needs to be interactive and quite often will only at best superficially resemble the plan that was put in place to be followed. Most people do not have much difficulty with ideas or strategies. Why they most often fail is because they do not fully understand and manage the process itself. This is ‘The How’ I referred to before. It manifests through our actions. It calls upon all those other aspects of our thinking that are not so much cognitive, but rather govern our conditioned responses.

So what is behind a process of learning? What is it about the mind that it seems to require an interactive process for learning to effectively stick?

If you think about it behind all learning processes there is an interactive component. There is an element where you actually perform the action that is being taught. It is at this point that you internalize it and make it yours. You put it into your own language or framework.  Throughout this process, the mind reinforces patterns and organizes them into a framework that fits into the specific context of that person’s mind.

Any information, no matter how valuable or clearly presented will not have a lasting impact on a person unless it can fit into their own personal context. While working with countless people throughout my life, I have discovered that the reality of things matters little; what is important how the information fits into an individual’s reality.