You Become What You Think About

“You Become What You Think About

All Day Long!”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

An Article by Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown, July 26, 2024 

The year was 1975, I was a Yeoman First Class Petty Officer (E6) with the U. S. Coast Guard.  I had been selected to become a Class A Yeoman School Instructor which at the time seemed peculiar since I had never attended Yeoman School.  I was known as someone who “struck” for a particular rating. In simple terms, I was placed into a position where I was able to take advantage of experienced Yeomen. If I took the appropriate mail-in courses and passed a service-wide examination, I could and was promoted to Yeoman Third Class Petty Officer. (E4)  I did that in 1966 and the rest is history.  I entered the Coast Guard as a Seaman Recruit and eventually retired as a Lieutenant with a lot of promotions in between. 

I tell you this to set the stage for the rest of this Nugget and how it relates to the Emerson quote as its title; not to brag about my career.  I just found it strange that a “striker” would become the “instructor.”  I doubt this would have happened had I not been mentored by several of the best people I have ever served with while assigned to the Eighth Coast Guard District Office in New Orleans! 

We moved Yeoman School from Governors Island, New York to Petaluma, California; a bigger change in environment would be impossible to imagine.  Governors Island was in the heart of New York City’s harbor at the foot of Manhattan and across from the Statue of Liberty.  Petaluma was huge, several hundred acres and a former U. S. Army Communication Base located completely in the country surrounded by farmlands, cows and wild deer and barbed wire fencing. 

The move was confusing to say the lease.  New facilities, lack of proper equipment (manual typewriters versus electric typewriters), new members on the base, old friends left behind.  As a result of the change of duty stations, there was a second roster of students that reported aboard and we were only set up for one such class.  The Training Officer decided that the best decision was to separate the students into two groups. One group would consist of the supposedly smarter students and the remainder would be assigned to, for lack of a better term, the less intelligent of the two groups of students. 

That was the beginning of a remarkable chain of events for me.  I was assigned to teach the “less intelligent” students.  To be honest, I had no clue what I was doing as I was doing it, I did what I thought was right – at the time.  During my 4 weeks of instructor training, we were all taught how to create lesson plans, create graphic posters whenever they were needed but more importantly, we were taught how to stand, where to stand, what NOT to do and what we were supposed to do.  That became rule #1 for all instructors.  On paper and in the instructor’s training course, that all seemed to make sense to the people who created the program but made little sense to me after trying it,  still I followed along with the training. 

Once I arrived at the Training Center in Petaluma, CA, I made a personal decision that I was not all that effective of an instructor using the techniques I had been taught.  One day at the beginning of class I made a decision “on the fly.”  I began the class as I always had, very structured, very formal, I stood behind the podium and taught the class.  Then after lunch, I took an entirely different approach.  I removed the podium; I stood in front of the class but instead of just standing there I began to walk up and down the isles with students on both sides of me.  Occasionally, I would pause and touch one of the students on their shoulder and move on.  At the end of the day, I stopped the class and asked them if they noticed anything different between the morning session and the afternoon session.  Most of the class said that the afternoon section seemed more relaxed and to my surprise, they thought of me as a real person, I was just like they were and was someone who had become what they wanted to become; not me but a Yeoman.  I then asked them which technique did they prefer?  They all said the afternoon Jim Brown, not the morning Jim Brown.  It was on that day I learned how to really teach a class.  It is not always what others think you should be doing, oftentimes it is more of how YOU respond to what the people want from you.  Obviously, I could not violate any respect due to someone who is senior in rank to me, specifically the unit’s Training Officer.  Still, I began teaching the way the students felt they had a better chance to learn.  THIS WAS A HUGE REVELATION TO ME!  HUGE! 

Back to the smart class versus the less intelligent class.  I knew what the training office had done.  They expected that if they put all the smart students in one class room, they may graduate sooner and that would enable them to get back into a proper scheduling of the next new classes to come.  I did not tell the training office what I did next, just did it on a whim.  I gathered the students together and told them what had happened and that some people felt that this class (them) didn’t have the level of intelligence to compete with the smarter students and it would take longer for them to complete the training. THAT WAS ALL THAT IT TOOK!  The students took off running and never looked back!  They finished not only ahead of schedule, they finished ahead of the smart class of students.  

This brings me back to the quote.  You become what you think about all day long!  You actually do.  I believed I had a classroom of intelligent, well-liked students and taught them to think in the same way.  Much later in life I read most if not all of the Wallace Wattles books which are all amazing reads.  He had one recurring sentence in all of his writings.  If you wanted to be rich, healthy or whatever, you knew that you could as long as “you think in a certain way.”  He did not elaborate on what that certain way was but it was obvious, just like the quote, YOU BECOME WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT ALL DAY LONG!  If you consider yourself a loser, you will be a loser if you are not one already.  If you consider yourself a winner, you become a winner even if you have always thought of yourself as a loser in the past.  So, I thought about Emerson and Wattles and came up with the following thought: 

You become what you think about most, so think about only GOOD and WHOLESOME thoughts about you and what you want and that relates to “thinking in a certain way” just as Wattles had recommended.  My smart students formerly considered to be less intelligent students proved not only the leadership wrong, they exceeded what they had believed about themselves prior to entering school.  

I don’t want to leave the impression that I was some sort of genius.  I had never been taught any of this, I did it as a reflective action and we all know, every action has a certain and almost predictable reaction.  Maybe I was just lucky but I don’t think so.  I feel as if someone or some thing guided me to do what I did and I don’t regret a moment of it.  My students thought they were all winners and they were! 

Then I began to realize I had been living what I had just done without knowing it.   I had created a plan that would eventually see me retiring from the Coast Guard as a Lieutenant after entering the service at the very bottom of the ranking structure as a Seaman Recruit (SR).  I, like everyone else, was promoted to Seaman Apprentice (SA) upon graduation from Boot Camp.  Unconsciously I began to ask questions as to what I needed to do to make the grade of Seaman (SN) the next promotion in a line that would go from E-1 (SR) to eventually Master Chief Pettey Officer (E-9) in a certain rating like Yeoman or Storekeeper etc.  In other words, not only had I established a GOAL or OBJECTIVE, I had began creating a mental plan to achieve what I had wanted.  Again, like both Emerson and Wallace suggests, I was thinking about what I wanted, I was “thinking in a certain way” and I never lost my focus on both.  I saw myself as a Chief Petty Officer which at that time was a lofty goal for sure.  For almost everyone, making Chief Petty Officer was a very special achievement!

 I am NOT naive, I fully understand that if you are not educated and believe in the Catholic faith, you will never be able to become Pope.  In the 1950s, I had envisioned myself playing basketball in college.  When you are only 5 foot 10 inches tall, the odds of either or both of these things were very unlikely to occur.  Were they impossible?  No, just very unrealistic.  You CAN become whatever it is you want to become but there are restrictions as just mentioned.  For most choices, you can consider the guidance given me by Joe Tye when he suggests that we are all given a bag of cement, a shovel and water.  We can then either build a wall to stop us from going any further or we can build a walkway around whatever walls are standing in our way.  It’s a great metaphor for life. 

Want more proof?  It is almost impossible to like everyone you meet in life.  Different strokes for different folks.  As a real estate broker, responsible for a lot of real estate agents (105 was the highest number I had ever achieved), is it impossible to like every agent that signs onto your company?  I did my best, but like in so many businesses, there was “this one person” that just made life miserable with every interaction they were involved in.  The animosity between the two of us went on for several months and I avoided talking with her and that was just wrong but it made my life a little easier.  Then I made the mental decision to “think in a certain way!”  I decided  to “love this person!”  Don’t misinterpret “love” for sexual love but rather just a true feeling of caring for another individual and support them in their believes as long as those beliefs are morally correct and also legal.  Shouldn’t have to put that disclaimer in but someone will obviously take exception to it. 

What happened next is nothing short of a miracle.  Every time I saw the agent I said to myself, “I love this person!”  I also thought what I had been teaching all of my agents to do. That was to think that they could see a tattoo on the forehead of everyone they meet that read. WCILFTP.  What does that mean?  WHAT CAN I LEARN FROM THIS PERSON.  When you marry those two thoughts, you will be amazed, as I did, the results that those two thoughts can bring about.  In short order over just a matter of a couple of weeks, our relationship completely changed and we have been friends ever since.  I changed, the agent changed and all was well in my business space and life because of it.  I had used the cement to build a wall but then I began to use the cement to build a walkway around a perceived problem.  What changed was the way each one of us thought of the other.  We began to care about the other person because we both ended up “thinking in a certain way!” 

Another example of how this all works happened when I received a call “out of the blue” from an owner of a large real estate office in Mandeville, about 20 minutes from where I lived in Slidell.  He wanted me to become the new manager/trainer for his Mandeville Real Estate Office; they had about 25 agents at that time.  First. I was honored and then I wondered how he picked me being 20 minutes away, for his new manager?  I asked. He said I had created a good resume of getting results, being an involved member of the Local Board of REALTORS® and through the “word of mouth.”  The “word of mouth” was especially meaningful to me because that is how I conducted my business, how I grew my business and how I wanted those to react that I worked with because “word of mouth” is the BEST form of advertising, EVER!  People are giving other people THEIR personal RECOMMENDATION.  The answer to his initial question was definitely yes and I took the job going form a real estate sales agent to a real estate office manager; something I had never done before, knew nothing about but knew I could handle it.  

In the very popular book The Secret, it describes how the universe works.  You put in place the Emerson quote, you become what you think about all day, and the Wallace principle of doing things in a “certain way” and miracles tend to happen.  It is actually goal setting with a purpose but most people shy away from anything closely related to having to set goals for themselves.  Setting a goal without action and without a third party to keep you accountable to what you want to achieve, is nothing more than HOPE   Dr. John Maxwell often states, “hope is not an effective strategy!”  Hope without action is nothing more than a wish and we all know how wishes work out for us.  First you must understand that like most adults having graduated from high school, I stopped reading books when I left school; just wasn’t interested.  But then…I was in a waiting room and picked up a magazine and I saw an advertisement for a two-set cassette recording of a program called “Creating Teamwork” by Lee Shelton.  I knew I was taking on a new position as manager so I thought, what the heck, and I ordered it.  I found the tapes so fascinating that I listened to them over and over again before I began my new job as manager which in effect is exactly what the tapes were all about – creating teamwork! Teamwork may not have existed or if did, how was I going to improve what was already in place.  

I later met Lee Shelton and attended one of his seminars.  He introduced me to the audience and then said “Jim could teach this seminar as good as he could” because he knew how I put into practice those things he taught.  In keeping with the theme of this Nugget, Shelton taught that the mood you are in as you enter your work space will eventually become the mood for the entire office.  He pointed out that people can immediately detect when someone is in a sour mood or a happy mood.  Therefore. if you want a happy work place, begin by making the personal decision every morning that it is a great day to be alive.  Believe that you could not be any happier.  Happiness like gloom and doom are contagious and spread through casual contact.  Don’t believe me?  Just say “hello” or “good morning” to a total stranger you see on the street or in a store and then watch the expression change on THEIR face as you do.  I have experienced this on many occasions; it just works!  Why, because I thought and acted in a “certain way!” 

The greatest compliment I could have received came from a competitor when he called and told me that he called because he was having a bad day and he new that our conversation would pick him up because it always did in the past.  Was I always happy the way things were going?  Certainly not but very few people ever knew it.  Being upbeat was the best beat to be! 

Going back to my Coast Guard career.  Most people that enlist are able to reach the pay grade of E6 over the course of a 20-year career.  The next REALLY BIG promotion is when the First-Class Petty Officer (E6) is promoted to Chief Petty Officer (E7).  Such a promotion carries with it more income, more responsibility and frankly more respect from both the enlisted side of the service as well as the Officer Corps of the service.  There is a perceived and certain degree of trust and specific knowledge about their specialty, or in my case, a Chief Yeoman (administrative work for the most part).  It was such an honor to become a Chief!  I began focusing on becoming a chief (E7) when I was still an E5 Petty Officer Second Class.  I knew that I had to first satisfy a goal that was directly between E5 and E7 and that first making E6, First Class Petty Officer.  I focused on what I wanted most.  I thought about sewing on the E6 rating badges on my uniform and then instead of relying on a hope of becoming an E6, I began to study more about my rating and took the first service-wide exam available to me and yes, I passed, and yes, I was promoted to E6.  There was a requirement that you had to be an E6 for at least 24 months BEFORE you qualified to take the exam for E7.  It was during those two months that I worked on my specialty but I also worked on my relationships with others that I served with and served for.  Trust is everything, so if you want people to trust you, you must work on creating that trust by demonstrating that you know what you are doing and they can all count on you doing the right things; especially when no one is watching. 

I only tell you this because it puts a confirmation stamp on what I believe and that is the Emerson quote as modified by Wattles.  I never lost focus on what I wanted but more importantly I TOOK ACTION to make it happen and it happened.  Not only did I make Chief Petty Officer, I was later promoted to Chief Warrant Officer which signifies to others that you have successfully been recognized as trustworthy, you can handle more and more responsibilities, you can make decisions and you have become a very trusted and respected link between the enlisted members of the service and the general Officer Corps of the service.  

I REMAINED FOCUSED ON WHAT I WANTED, I THOUGHT IN A CERTAIN WAY AND THEN I TOOK ACTION TO MAKE IT ALL HAPPEN. 

But it got a lot better and maybe that is the icing on the cake in regards to a technique for success that I had accidently discovered.  I was a Chief Warrant Officer W3. That meant I went from Chief, to Chief Warrant Officer and attained three promotions as a Warrant officer W1 through CWO3, there was only one more to attain, CWO4, the crème dela crème for an enlisted member of the Coast Guard.  How did it get better?  The Coast Guard created a Limited Duty Officer (LDO) program where they selected people within their specialty to be promoted to Lieutenant which in the pay grade list would be an O3 skipping over O1 and 02.  The highest anyone could get through this program was O4 or Lieutenant Commander.  Length of service would make it very difficult if not impossible to go beyond that pay grade as an LDO (Limited Duty Officer).  When the Guard announced the new program, my Commanding Officer encouraged me to apply.  Just his encouragement put an exclamation mark on my career because I doubted, he would have recommended such a leap unless you have proven to him that you deserved it.  Once again, I put the theory to the test and became laser focused on making the best application I could to be considered as one of only TWO members each YEAR, to receive this type of promotion for my specialty.  As it turned out, I was selected and eventually retired from the service as a Lieutenant (03).      

 Always keep in mind what Zig Ziglar taught, “If you think you can or if you think you can’t, either way you will be right!”  I believe that may have first been said by Henry Ford.  The choice is yours!  

YOU GOT THIS! 

Recommended Reading List of Wallace Wattles:

The Science of Getting Rich

The Science of Being Well

The Science of Being Great

How to Get What You Want

 

Get them all in one book at:  Amazon.com, search for Wallace Wattles

lAKE cHARGOGGAGOGGMANSHANGGAGOGGCHAUBUNAGUNGAMANGG

 

Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
By Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown. July 24, 2024

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/10/lake-chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubun.html

Maybe the longest name in history or close to it.  It’s a Native Indian name for a lake now known as Lake Webster but the Nipmuc Indians had named it long before it became Lake Webster.

Stories and legend suggest there were different tribes on each side of the lake who constantly battled over the fishing rights on the lake.  The solution was apparently decided upon when the leaders of the tribes agreed that each tribe would fish THEIR side of the lake and NO ONE would fish the MIDDLE.  Is that really true?  Who knows; it makes for a good storyline.  Thus, they named the lake: Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg; you fish your side, I fish my side, no one fishes the middle!

It also makes for a significant metaphor for America in 2024.  How so?  Glad you asked!

Step 1: Divide people into three very distinct categories as if they don’t already exist in America.

·         Rich/Elites:  Politicians, royalty, heads of corporations, grossly overpaid actors, athletes and entertainers

·         Poor:  Anyone making less than minimum wage, anyone relying 100% on government subsidies or those receiving life support from charities, the jobless, the homeless, the people living solely on Social Security and or who have no visible income whatsoever.  And of course, the person who believes that if you make $1.00 more than they make, they are in the rich category. You get the picture and I have no desire to lump you or anyone into any specific category; that’s not the point.

·         Middle Class: Everyone in between the Elites and the Poor in America. They are not wealthy nor are they poor and they typically live a comfortable life.  But oftentimes they live payday to payday with very little discretionary funds.  They are like the middle of the lake; undisturbed and in their own world.

Using Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg as an example, the “elites” would live on one side of the lake, the “poor” on the other side.  The vast center of the lake would be the Middle Class.  The “elites of the country have no desire to ever become one of the Middle Class or the Poor.  The poor on the other hand have every desire to become either a member of the middle class or the elite class.  As for the Middle-Class majority, who reside in the middle of the lake, they are “comfortable” where they are!  It’s better known as complacency.  That would explain why so many Americans, certainly not you, seem to be satisfied where they are and keep their heads buried in the sand regarding world events, national, state and local politics.  POLITICS, the ONE THING  that determines everyone’s futures but many can’t seem to see the forest for all of the trees.  How else can you explain away the malaise that has become middle class America in 2024?  You stay on your side; I’ll stay on my side and the rest can best fend for themselves in the middle.

What’s wrong with this graphic?  Squire wheels?  Round wheels in the cart? Three men pushing, one man pulling?  If one or more of those suggestions is your answer, you missed the “Big Picture!”

THEY ARE SATISFIED WITH THEIR PROGRESS!

THEY DO NO THINK OUT-SIDE-THEIR BOX!

THEY ARE FOLLOWING THE DIRECTIONS OF ANOTHER PERSON OR GROUP!

THEY LACK CURIOSITY!

THEY LACK INGENUITY!

 

Nothing will ever change until “We The People” get up off of our collective asses and get involved even if it is just researching the BS that streams out of Washington!  Get to really know your candidates before you just vote for the “small d” or the “small r” after their names.  Read and understanding any amendments on the ballot BEFORE you get into the voting booth.  Become an informed voter before you lose the ability to do so! 

This has never been more evident than in the 2024 Presidential Election.  One side appears to cater to the elites of the country while the other side is trying to unite the poor and middle class together to fight off the unwanted policies created by the elites at the top, OF BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES.  It was not that many years ago, the Democrat Party was for the “little man” the “blue collar workers?  During that same period the Republican Party was considered to favor big business and the Country Club Set.  Those rolls have been completely flipped upside down in 2024.  If you think there is a difference between the Democrat and Republican Parties, you are badly mistaken.  In the end, they both want to spend YOUR money on needless projects and foreign wars.  This has never been more obvious than to realize how much money YOU and I have GIVEN to Israel and Ukraine to ensure that the wars will continue.  At the very same moment in time, we are shamelessly mis-treating our veterans (see the following link to a documentary that provides video evidence of just how badly that treatment has been).  This all occurring while we are NOT securing hundreds of miles of our Southern Border where millions of ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS have crossed over and an untold quantity of deadly drugs having been smuggled into our country.  The result?  Over 250,000 Americans have died using these drugs.

I sincerely hope you watch this video regarding veterans and how they have been treated by THEIR employer, OUR GOVERNMENT!  SHOCKING!  https://rumble.com/v4w5pqe-documentary-american-veterans-discarded-and-forgotten.html?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR0AmJ4U2oCU9pbaJoMiLvdi1l7AwNPbF8ut5-cA9DYW57BAoz4Wo93vqlU_aem_K6bUnAcZt3TD0Nzb6HjC7Q

None of this makes for any common sense.  People have taken sides as if THEIR side is the ONLY side that is correct.  Therefore, “you fish your side, I’ll fish my side and no one will touch the center or middle ground.  While this principle may have worked in the 1700s, it is very much flawed in 2024!  The middle ground has been eliminated.

Here is the way politics actually works.  One side (A) wants something so they push forward with their idea. The other side (B) naturally will fight against it because it came from their opponents (A).  It doesn’t matter if the bill is good, bad, ugly or more importantly salvageable (compromise).  Then side B begins pushing back to Side A all the while A is sliding more towards side B.  It is a case of push and shove until one side reaches their red line that they refuse to cross.  More red lines have halted progress for decades upon decades.  Case in point, the Southern Border.  Name just one person who believes that trafficking children and Fentanyl across the border into the states is a good thing, just one!  No one knows for certain what happens to the thousands upon thousands of children that go missing; that alone should be a criminal act!  As for The Fentanyl, it’s been estimated that over 250,000 Americans have died from Fentanyl poisoning and that is a low number.  Tell me:  WHO WOULD BE AGAINST STOPPING THIS LUNACY?   

This should not be a political issue; it’s black and white no matter what so many political parasites want to convince you to otherwise believe.  There have been many elected officials, local, state, and Federal, but especially Federal beginning at the White House, have been committing acts of treason against the Constitution of the United States.  There is an ongoing invasion happening along the border states and no one in power seems to give a shit.  If that offends you, GREAT, it SHOULD!

America has problems, name a country that doesn’t.  The question of the day is why do “We The People” continue to send so much money, so many weapons, tons of armor and thousands of our own blood and guts to foreign lands to fight or support some conflict(s) that have nothing to do with the safety of the United States?  What are the some of the problems that money could have been better spent on here at home?  So glad you asked, let me count the ways and they are not necessarily in order of priority but pretty close nor are they the ONLY ones that exist:

·         SECURE SOUTHERN BORDER

·         FIND AND HELP HOMELESS VETERANS ON THE GOVERNMENT’S DIME, NOT CHARITY!

·         REMOVE THE USA FROM THE UN

·         REMOVE THE USA FROM THE WHO

·         FORM BETTER RELATIONSHIPS WITH CANADA AND MEXICO

·         WORK TOWARDS ELIMINATING THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS

·        ELIMINATE INCOME TAXES, LOCAL, STATE AND FEDERAL. CREATE A SALES TAX ON PRODUCTS AND SERVICES EXCLUDING ESSENTIALS LIKE FOOD AND MEDICINE

·        AUTOMATICALLY REDUCE THE SIZE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BY NO LESS THAN 10% OR MORE!

·       PASS LEGISLATION OR CHANGE THE CONSTITUTION TO IMPOSE TERM LIMITS FOR EVERYONE IN GOVERNMENT, CONGRESS, WHITE HOUSE AND THE SUPREME COURT. 

·        PASS LEGISLATION OR CHANGE THE CONSTITUTION THAT WOULD REQUIRE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO ARRANGE AND FUND THEIR OWN RETIREMENT PLANS.

·         PASS LEGISLATION OR CHANGE THE CONSTITUTION THAT REQUIRES MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO PARTAKE OF THE SAME HEALTH CARE THEY IMPOSE ON WE THE PEOPLE. 

·        PASS LEGISLATION OR CHANGE THE CONSTITUTION REQUIRING ALL ELECTED OFFICIALS TO PLACE THEIR FINANCIAL PORTFOLIOS INTO A TRUST WHILE SERVING IN OFFICE TO AVOID THE APPEARANCE OF INSIDER TRADING.

·        CREATE A SPECIAL OVERSIGHT AND APPROVAL OFFICE THAT REVIEWS REQUESTS FOR FOREIGN TRAVEL AND WHO CAN ATTEND AND HOW THEY WILL TRAVEL ALONG WITH AN APPROVED BUDGET FOR EACH TRIP.

·        ONCE AND FOR ALL, CREATE A COMMITTEE TO DRAFT IMMIGRATION LAWS AND THEN ENFORCE THEM. THESE LAWS SHOULD ALSO INCLUDE PROVISIONS TO TRACK “OVER STAYS.”  IMMIGRATION IS A GOOD THING BUT IT SHOULD BE TRANSPARENT AND FAIR AND LEGAL!

·        PAY BACK INTO THE SOCIAL SECURITY ACCOUNT ALL OF THE MONEY THAT WAS TAKEN FROM IT;  PLUS, INTEREST!!!!!

FINALLY; PICK A VICE PRESIDENT WHO HAS THE QUALITIES AND INTELLECT TO ACTUALLY BECOME PRESIDENT SHOULD THE OCCASION EVER ARISE.

DON’T PICK A VICE PRESIDENT JUST TO CHECK OFF A BOX!

DON’T PICK ONE THAT MAY GET YOU SOME FIRGGIN VOTES!