I want to introduce a concept that involves mental pictures or imaging.

This is called the Thought-o-meter. Thanks to Napoleon Hill for this idea.

Put an image in the front of your mind of one of those meters on your dashboard. It’s always there as you drive and you’re usually checking it out as you move along.

Once you get this image in your mental dashboard you will constantly be checking it.

On this meter put the word negative on the left side and the word positive on the right. You can color code them if that will make them more impactful for you.

This is your thought-o-meter.

All day long practice periodically looking at your thoughtometer and see where it is. If you see it on the left (negative) stop and figure out what thoughts you’re having.

Then pretend you’re driving your car and mentally put your foot on the brake – find a thought or image that will make the needle on your meter zoom on over to the positive side

If you can find something funny to take the place of your negative thought, it will be even more effective.

The point is twofold. One, you want to get your mind from the negative side of the dial over to the positive side.

Secondly you can’t erase a thought (whether positive or negative). You have to replace it. That’s easy to remember.

Replace don’t erase!

Does it work?

This morning I was reading something political and started to get upset.

But I immediately recognized it, stopped and asked myself “can I control this? Can i do anything about this right now?

And of course the answer was no.

That’s all well and good and it stopped me from reading any more but it didn’t totally get rid of the anger and frustration I was feeling. You know when they say someone is stewing over an issue?

Well that’s what was happening internally even if I had turned off the burner. All I’d read and thought was still simmering inside.

What to do?

This works Even if you haven’t totally become aware of what’s causing those internal yucky feelings. (That’s a medical term – yucky.)

First I visualized my thought o meter and saw that the dial was over on the left (negative). I wanted to get it over to the positive side and since I said I was stewing, I thought about making a stew and then having it served up to me in a fancy dish and it made me laugh. That process enabled me to replace my thought and get a good laugh too.

I think if you practice this all day long it will become a habit and then when you really need to deal with something hard, you’ll already have the tool in hand.