I just finished reading Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, and one of its core messages struck me deeply: Your thoughts and beliefs are real. They have the power to alter reality.
This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this idea. It’s a powerful echo of concepts I’d already explored in Think and Grow Rich—the incredible influence of faith, the subconscious mind, and auto-suggestion.
When the same profound wisdom surfaces in a modern thriller, a classic self-help book, and countless ancient texts, you start to see it as less of a theory and more of a fundamental truth. It’s a common link, a piece of shared wisdom woven through human understanding.
My immediate, recurring thought was, “I should start praying. I should meditate.” But just as quickly, the resistance set in. The idea of carving out a separate, dedicated hour for meditation and prayer just feels overwhelming right now. It’s a common trap: we understand the “what” but get stopped by the “how.”
But then, I remembered a piece of invaluable, practical advice given to me by Cdr. Chax (AFPA) during my SSB prep. He suggested that whenever I feel overwhelmed or stressed, I should simply take a deep breath in and then slowly let it out.
The crucial part of his advice was this: don’t do it visibly. Don’t let it turn into a sigh. Don’t act stressed. Just relax. Meditate. Pray.
The revelation was simple but profound: You don’t always need to sit separately for it. You can just do it.
This transforms the entire practice. It’s no longer a daunting item on a to-do list, but an accessible tool you can use in any given moment. We can just do it whenever the need arises. More importantly, we can do it every day to gather ourselves and align our minds whenever they begin to go astray.
This isn’t just a passive coping mechanism. It is active, conscious training. As the books say, we can (and must) train our minds to think positively. We have to consciously control our thoughts and channel their immense energy into creating the best possible path forward.
This “secret” is mentioned in so many texts around the world. You can see people, many with no formal exposure to these fields, using these very techniques to get the most out of life.
What matters is this: We all have access to this power. It is nothing less than a superpower that gets stronger with each use. The more we leverage it, the better it gets.
So let’s believe it. Let’s have faith. Let’s think positively—consciously.
Let’s kill the darkness and bring the light.