Researchers report that 40,000 to 50,000 thoughts enter your mind every day. It has also been shown that up to 80 percent of your thoughts are negative on an average day. That means you are reacting to external programming. Since our thoughts affect our emotions it is important to recognize the numbing effect those negative thoughts have on your outlook, your attitude, your creativity, and your passion for life.

Most people believe that their personal thoughts have no power. Our thoughts have been described as harmless bits of consciousness that hold no substance or energy of their own. Neuroscientists, medical researchers, psychologists, and meta-physicians have proven that thoughts are electrical impulses that trigger chemical activity in the brain. When you think, you are giving your brain an electrical command and it responds by doing several things. Initially the brain reacts by releasing chemicals into the body and directing the central nervous system to take any required action. Your thoughts also trigger the brain to scan your memory and to record any necessary information about that thought that may be of future value. Your subconscious mind records every thought that goes through your conscious mind, as well as all the information automatically brought into the brain through all of your senses. These thoughts and information bits are then classified and recorded so they can be recalled when you need them.

Every time we have a thought—right or wrong, true or false—an electric current travels from the conscious mind into the subconscious mind and creates an image or picture. We literally think in images, and the objective of the subconscious mind is to match the images in your mind with the reality of your life. All your future success must be envisioned in your personal mind before it can manifest in your life.

This is probably the opposite of what you have been taught to believe about your brain and about thinking. Since childhood, you’ve been taught to look for the evidence, the facts, and the proof before you believe something is possible. This limiting mindset certainly eliminates creative thoughts about what you believe is possible in your life. Your brain has been trained only to see and believe what the left-brain states are facts, thereby hampering your imagination and abilities to create a new reality with more personal power.

If you have unhealthy emotions of imagined fears, worry, resentment, or guilt, the body responds with a tense feeling of nervousness, stress-related illness, tiredness, and lack of energy and creativity. Your subconscious mind will produce whatever result you ask for. Shakespeare’s statement from hundreds of years ago is still true: “There is nothing good or bad, but thinking has made it so.”

You are made of energy and your self-image contains the imprinted energy patterns of who you are and what you believe. Think of this self-image as a blueprint from which your life is built.

The brain functions with precision, receiving, processing, storing, and then acting on the information it has stored. Remember that your brain, like the earth, does not discern what you plant. The earth works just as hard to grow weeds as it does beautiful flowers. The only difference is the seed that was sown. Like a seed, we are self-fulfilling prophecies because the mind, like the fertile soil of a garden, will produce what we have planted.

Many of your old self-limiting beliefs have no foundation of truth but they grow like weeds! Instead of empowering your authentic self and purpose, they hold you back from success. If you think or believe that you are destined to be poor, unlucky in love, clumsy, overweight, or average, which are all weed seeds, you will take unconscious actions that make these thoughts become reality. None of these thoughts are actually true, but continuing to think them creates beliefs and images in your mind, a sort of blueprint, which reinforces these negative and limiting statements until they actually become true for you.

The subconscious mind does not know the difference between factual reality and imagined reality. You know, your subconscious mind doesn’t even know right from wrong. It doesn’t know current events from past events or even imaginary events. It simply receives and files the thoughts. This powerful subconscious mind has the ability to hold and process massive amounts of data. The mind works upon the information and data you feed into it every day and creates the reality of your life from that information. That’s why it’s so important to carefully consider the kind of information you feed your mind. Everything that you think—true or false, good or bad—is processed by the conscious mind and imprinted on the subconscious. So, whatever information you repeatedly program into your subconscious about your abilities, your potential, and your worth is what you believe to be true about yourself and about what you will be able to manifest in your life.

The average person is so busy reinforcing their own existing limiting mental programs that they cannot connect with their authentic self ’s real talents and natural skills. Your current self-image, whether real or illusion, is the foundation upon which your entire life and future is built. You will simply act out the type of person you conceive yourself to be, based upon your beliefs about yourself. You will not know any better if you do not become conscious that you, and you alone, have the ability to re-direct the focus of your life by changing the thoughts you think about yourself.

Yet, the majority of our thoughts about our own abilities hold us back from achieving the quality of life that is available to us. It is human nature to follow the path of least resistance. Your mind also follows the habit of thoughts that create the least resistance. That is why the old thought patterns embedded in your mind (those “weed seed” thoughts) seem to have power to crowd out the new thought patterns or habits of mind that you would like to establish. By becoming truly conscious of this patterning effect and deliberately feeding your mind with thoughts that empower change, you magically create that new Inner Energetic Blueprint (IEB) for your mind to operate from in the future.

Buddha said, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought.” Your life is the sum total of the information you have programmed yourself to be by your thinking patterns—and for now, you believe it. You are influenced and programmed by the caliber of information that has been recorded in your own self-image, your IEB.

Your IEB is formed by your daily thoughts, and is the core of your being. It determines everything about you from how much money you make, your weight, how fast you age, the success of your relationships, and your risk ability, to how good you are at sports or math. This magical blueprint influences your brain about how to see the world. Are you an optimist, realist, or pessimist? Are you open-minded and curious about life or are you narrow-minded and not interested in learning anything new?

Every day, your IEB sends you millions of messages about WHO you are. Most of us believe that we can’t change our potential or our capabilities beyond whatever has been programmed into our IEB by the many external influences we receive each day.

I have great news for you: You’re not stuck with the old blueprint. You were born with a purpose and a reason for living and the truth is, for most people, that “purpose blueprint” got pushed into the back of your mental operations to make space for your survival-in-the-modern-world blueprint. As soon as you embrace these concepts and do the work to repair your blueprint, you will know that you have the choice to either reinforce old programs and beliefs about yourself (letting the weeds grow!) or to plant the seeds of power in your life with positive images.

Lee Milteer is an internationally known bestselling author, awardwinning professional speaker, TV personality, entrepreneur, visionary, and intuitive business mentor. She is the author of Success is an Inside Job and Spiritual Power Tools, and the co-author of ten books. She has authored over 150 educational products, in which she provides success and spiritual advice and resources to people worldwide.