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What Is the Connection?

One day, while driving to work, I was thinking of a problem that I had at work and of how to tell my boss about it. When I thought of my boss, I found myself thinking of how it must be like to be a manager. I thought that a managerial position would require a large number of soft skills, and when I started thinking of the required skills, I remembered the educational center that neighbors my own house and is a good place to learn communication skills. One of its disadvantages though, was a very unfriendly secretary that I just couldn't stand....HUH?

I was surprised, because I was originally thinking of my problem at work, so what brought the secretary, my house and all of these other supposedly irrelevant stuff to mind? The simple answer to that is that all the information in our minds is connected and linked together.

The Network of Thoughts

Think of all of your thoughts and ideas as a connected network like the one in the following diagram; of course this is just a simple representation using a simple 2D diagram, it can never be compared to your real thinking process. Still, this diagram can help you in understanding how your thinking process works.

Point one was the starting point of my thinking process, it was the work-related problem I was thinking about. However, when I reached point two and thought of my manager, I found crossed lines which could either lead me to continue thinking about my problem or to think about management in general just like I did in the example. I kept thinking of management skills without turning or taking a new direction until I passed by point three where I continued the thinking process as was previously described.

What Changes a Train of Thought?

As you can see, a thought can accidentally and unintentionally lead you to another one without you feeling it. As you can see from the diagram, this can happen when new routes and though paths appear. New routes can appear by two methods: either by remembering something that is associated with that particular articular thought (like when I associated my manager to management skills in general) or by receiving an external input, like seeing a car accident can causes you to start thinking about cars, accidents, safety, Volvo …..etc.

That’s Why Bad Thoughts Attract More Bad Thoughts

I am sure that you have already noticed that when you become pessimistic you find that your bad thoughts are increasing exponentially. This is easily explained in light of the previous diagram: because all of the routes you are moving in are negative, you will only think negative thoughts. In order to think positively, you must first discard all of your current thoughts and focus on starting a new and more optimistic train of thought.

If you fail to do this, you can use an external input to force a new starting position. For example, you could listen to some music that reminds you of something and so take this as a starting point.

What’s the Use of All That?

Understanding this theory brings two very good benefits: first of all, by correctly choosing your external input (the music that you listen to, the movies that you watch, the places that you go) you can end up thinking only good thoughts and avoiding bad ones.

The other use is being able to lure the person you are communicating with to speak about a certain topic. By visualizing his network of thoughts in your mind you can actually direct him/her to move in the topic routes you want. So if you talked to him/her about Valentine’s day, most probably (s)he will enter the relationship route and would then start a conversation his/her relationships and experiences.

Did that help?

Yes, but it's still unclear how can I lure a person to think about somthing. Give me an example.

Yes, but how can I make someone think of a certain thing as soon as he sees me?