Should What You Think Be What You Say?

Dear loving people,

Thanks to a friend, I read from an article by Marty Makary published in The Wall Street Journal of Friday September 21, 2012 that “Medical errors kill enough people to fill four jumbo jets a week”

Frightening isn’t it? Really scary but wait a minute. How many lives have been destroyed by the ideas we sometimes generate within and that consequentially lead to wrong decisions? Have you ever thought about that? The figures are far more alarming.

I always teach that great inventions were once ideas conceived in the mind and acted upon in the physical world to bring them to reality. Think of any modern invention, Internet, Television, cars, airplane, etc. All of these were once ideas acted upon by individuals or a group of persons and today they make life better for us. What will the world look like without an airplane for example?

In the same way, if the original idea is a bad one, so shall it destroy you and the many people who subscribe to it. For those who did history, you will agree with me that if there was a French revolution in 1479 that got Louis XVI to the guillotine, it started with the intoxications of Maria Antoinette. As queen of France, she was so unpopular but extravagant and mounted an opposition to reform that contributed to the overthrow of the monarchy; she was guillotined along with her husband in 1793. All of this was because she did a perfect job of turning her husband the king into a despot.

Haven’t we seen families that have been ruined because one member of that family was such a bad influence, an epicenter of bad ideas and self-generated rumors.

There is no limit to the imagination, it can produce life-changing ideas or life-destructive ones, it all depends on how we discipline it.

If  medical errors kill enough people to fill four jumbo jets a week that is bad enough but what about our own ideas that not only kill ourselves but equally others? Isn’t it about time we start watching what we think and say to others?

The ideas conceived within that give birth to the words that we speak out loud or the words that we silently kept in our heads are very powerful. From the moment you say something, you bring it into reality and can’t take it back. Whether positive or negative words are spoken, “You shall reap what you sow” as the Bible warns. This implies that as humans, we have to be exceedingly careful of what we think and say no matter the circumstance. As an African, I grew up to know that blessings or curses can be spoken with just a few words especially from the elderly.

Each time you are to utter a statement, weigh your words, think about its implications on others. Are you a promoter of life or a destructive factor? Great achievers are those who mend in all that they think, say and do.