Thoughts Become Things

On a recent high-school tour, I saw a sign inside a classroom that read, "Thoughts become things." I like that idea.  I had heard it before, but I wasn't sure where.  I thought it might be a quote from an unknown person or something from a book or play.  I decided to research it and maybe use it in an article.

So I went where we always go these days to find out — straight to the Internet.  The first thing I ran into was this, from a Metaphysics site:

"Thoughts become things when they are given substance with feelings in the Mind."

Bunk.

It is true that thoughts can become things but it takes a whole lot more than "feelings in the mind" to make a thought — some might call it an idea — become a reality.

Good ideas are a dime a dozen; they really are.  World peace — there's a good idea.  Well, we've been rolling out "Visualize World Peace" bumper stickers for decades and we're still visualizing, aren't we?  

Every Master or even Grand Master comes into his term filled with good ideas and the intention to make Freemasonry in general or his Lodge in particular better by the time he leaves.  Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't.

What are the secret ingredients that make things work?

Think about that… because you and I both I'll bet have sat through many meetings, in the fraternity and in business, where great ideas are kicked around. Those meetings can produce a gold mine of things we can do. Those are the meetings we walk out of feeling energized, but if the ideas are not put into practice nothing gets done.

John Ruark of the Masonic Roundtable and Robert Johnson, host of this podcast, have written a book that, like those meetings, is bursting with ideas.  You may have read the book. You may have told John and Robert it's the greatest thing you've ever read; but then, if you put it on the shelf and do nothing, they have wasted their time writing the book and you have wasted your time reading it.

You see, Brothers, the secret ingredients that make things work… that make thoughts become things… are action, dedication and hard work.  If we take the ideas from that inspiring meeting and do nothing or take the book It's Business Time and put it on the shelf, what have we accomplished?

Let's challenge ourselves to take a single idea from that great meeting, or just one of the chapters from John and Robert's book and put it into practice. That might not solve all our problems, but it would be a great start. Full disclosure: I'm doing this for Robert's podcast, but neither he nor John knew I was going to talk about their book.

Steve Jobs, you may recall, had a lot of good ideas; and he knew how to turn those ideas into a lot of good things.  I like his take about thoughts becoming things: "Most people," he said, "have a disease: they think once they've had a good idea they've done 90% of the work.  Coming up with the idea is easy. Working to make it a reality is the hard part."