Udeme Archibong

Once upon a time, a citizen was arrested by one of the Barons and shut up in a dungeon. He stayed in the dark dungeon for 20 years. Each day, the jailer would come into the cell to give him a pitcher of water and a loaf of bread and immediately afterwards, the door was closed again. Well, after 20 years, the prisoner had reached his threshold limit and he decided he wasn’t going to continue living in that condition any longer so he planned that rather than committing suicide, he was going to assault the jailer who would then kill him in self-defence.

Therefore, he decided to test-run his plan, as he caught the door handle and turned it, to his amazement, the door opened. On close examination, he discovered that the door had never been locked and in fact, there was no lock upon it and never had been. In all those 20 years that he was in the cell, he had not been locked in, except in his mind. He found his way out and the soldiers around never paid attention to him; he walked out a free man.

For 20 years he had been living in an illusion rather than in reality; he was held captive in his own thoughts; he was imprisoned in his mind. In life,it is the mind that imprisons and it is also the mind that sets free.Your mental concept determines your life condition.

A new year has begun. Will you make the most out of the year? You can never make the most out of the year until you make the most out of life; you can never make the most out of life until you make the most out of yourself; you can never make the most of yourself until you make the best use of your mind; you can never make the best use of the mind if you are not in control of your thoughts; you can never be in control of your thoughts if you do not choose your thoughts wisely.

The New Year is an inanimate thing; it does not bring anything to anybody. It is not really the New Year that counts; it is what you bring into the New Year that counts and what you have brought into the New Year is you.

The year 2014 will probably be like the previous years if you carry the same mind-set you had in previous years into the New Year.You see, your physical world is a print-out or a reflection of your inner world- mental world; emotional world and your spiritual world. And if you want to change your physical world, you must first change your inner world. And your inner world is rooted in your mind-your thought life.

We must realise and understand that our present condition and circumstance is a product of our level of thinking. As the story above reveals; many people are held captive by their own minds-imprisoned by poverty; marital disharmony; lack of inner peace; lack of true happiness and the joy of living; lack of job satisfaction; wrong and unhappy relationships with people; bad habits; the list goes on and on.

The unfortunate thing is that blaming the government; economy; people; circumstances and everything except ourselves only worsens our present state. Blaming and complaining in a universe that is governed by laws only makes us sink deeply into despair and frustration. As Stephen Covey rightly states, “When you think that the problem is out there, stop, that thought is the problem.”

You can never rise above your circumstance until you rise above the thoughts that had attracted the circumstance. In life, you attract the events; people; circumstance that are in harmony with your most dominant thoughts. Therefore, your state of life is determined by your state of mind. An improved life is a result of an improved mind. I’ll be taking you through a series of mind transformation.
Remember, mind transformation leads to life transformation.