What do you see?

By Lanre Oyetade

The me I see is the me I’ll be - Anonymous

It is an incontestable fact that what you see in the mind i.e. what you envision, is what you ultimately become. And the process is quite simple: What you envision is the picture you feed your subconscious, which is what actually drives your conscious thoughts, speech and action, and ultimately decides the results you have in life.
As a matter of fact, nothing ‘becomes’ unless and until you ‘see’ it in your subconscious mind. Research has proven that what a man learns is determined 90 per cent by what he sees; nine per cent by what he hears and only one per cent by the other senses.

So also with the subconscious
And so it is with the subconscious – the ‘driving seat’ of conscious action. The picture you feed it with, which is the equivalent of your vision, is what it feeds on and what in turn determines the signals it sends to the conscious ‘surface’.

Like I pointed out a while back, the subconscious is the equivalent of the workmen in the engine room of a ship, which though unseen below the deck, are the ones that determine the movement of the ship. It is also likeable to the part of the iceberg that lies below the water surface, which is actually its biggest part and which determines the direction the visible iceberg moves.

Our vision is indeed God’s way of revealing the possible to us and is actually our divine heritage following our receipt of the breath from Him. It is part of the Divinity we share with God and what therefore makes us gods, as the Good Book reveals.

Aiding the mind to envision
It has been a practice across ages to ‘assist’ the mind to envision an objective or end by means many and varied. One of such means is to place within physical sight a picture or representation of whatever one desires. For instance, you find on the walls of many homes paintings or pictures of what the occupiers’ ideal home, vehicles etc are. By viewing this regularly even in the conscious, the subconscious is affected and made to ‘see’ the representation as a worthy objective. In turn and with adequate repetitions of this view, the subconscious mind impresses it on the conscious man who in turn ‘thinks, plans and acts’ toward achieving this ideal.

Applying the process
Many people, including myself, have come to the realisation of the workings of this process, and have put it variously to work. For instance, and like I have recalled once in this column, on my resumption at the University of Benin in the mid 80s, I wrote somewhere I could regularly see, my desire to make ‘All-round above 90 A-grades’ in my courses during my stay at the school. Sounds like a tall order, right? Wrong! The trick here was that each time I saw what I had written, it made an impression on my subconscious that that was the ideal and my mind in turn charged my thoughts, speech and deeds in this direction.

And the result? - Even though I did not land on the ‘sun’ like I desired, I got a good landing on the ‘moon’, passing out the best student in my department in my set. Not bad landing, eh?

I have since been applying the same ‘aid’ for my children’s minds. I simply put up pictures and short write-ups about great heroes of time such as Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Owens, the Wright Brothers, Obafemi Awolowo, etc and take time to extol their virtues in my children’s presence when the opportunity presents itself.

Moreover, a younger sister of mine recently made very good grades at her first attempt at the GCE, and after giving her a gift to the knowledge of my kids, I got a copy of her results and pasted it next to my SS2 daughter’s reading time table so that each time she sees it, she would be galvanised to repeat or even better the performance.

Implementing your vision
It is pertinent to note here that it is not nearly enough to possess vision, to see the right things, to conceive the right ideas. These ideas must be followed with action to birth them. Do not let your vision be another that would be taken to the grave unfulfilled. Among my family mantra each morning is that the Good Lord should permit that my vision comes to fruition, but I do realise that after His enablement, I must act to bring the vision to fruition. He plays His role, I play mine and the vision is birthed!

Moreover, we ought not to wait for the world to ‘understand’ our vision before we act on them, for the simple fact is that the world may actually never understand the vision until it finally is made manifest by the visioneer.

Until next week, I charge you to remain inspired in His presence!