Do you know the Strangest Secret?

We become what we think about most of the time.

Each we will draw inspiration from a great writing, speech, quote or life and discuss the importance of mindset in creating a great life. This class is a spinoff from my class Great Works. In that class we examined the ideas of the philosopher and pyschologist William James who wrote, “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.”

He also wrote, “If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it. If you wish to be rich, you will be rich. If you wish to be learned, you will be learned. If you wish to be good, you’ll be good. Only you must really wish these things and wish them exclusively and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.”

Examining William James led us to the teachings of Earl Nightingale and his "Strangest Secret."

“We become what we think about most of the time, and that’s the strangest secret.” - Earl Nightingale

While my course Great Works focuses on the arts, there was a desire among students to go deeper in this vein, so I created this course to focus on this specific topic -- the power of the mind to shape our reality.

This is a discussion based course and students are encouraged to share their own ideas. Each week the instructor will select a piece as a starting point as our inspiration. It could be a book like "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. It could be "The Strangest Secret" or "Lead the Field" by Earl Nightingale. It could be the Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Address. It could be Matthew McConaughey's University of Texas Commencement Address.

We could draw inspiration from Machiavelli, who wrote:

“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.”

Or from Jack Kerouac who wrote, “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"

Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you react to it. This class is about developing a winning mindset, and how our thoughts create our reality.

This class will continue indefinitely and I will continue to schedule out new topics for each week.