The power of thought

What a stolen wallet has to do with the power of thought.

My wallet - gone. Disappeared. Stolen. From a trick thief in a train compartment. I was horrified and speechless - which doesn't happen very often.

But one thing at a time. In March, I was back in Vienna to visit my family and friends. My return journey went wonderfully - as far as Munich.

During the stop there, my wallet was very trickily removed from my pocket. It was taken from the ladies' compartment where I was sitting and watching the hustle and bustle on the platform from the train compartment, looking very bored.

The boredom was soon over when an older gentleman came into our ladies' compartment with his blue, somewhat larger sports bag. My fellow passenger reacted very quickly with disapproval. However, he said he only wanted to deposit the luggage for his hip-suffering Marta.

So we tried together to get the bulky thing into the compartment. No chance. So he quickly left our compartment again.

Shortly before Augsburg, I wanted to get a café-to-go in the on-board bistro and looked for my wallet. Only - it was nowhere to be found. Neither in my bag. Nor in my PC bag. Not even under the seats or in any cracks. NO - simply gone.

My blood pressure rose. I became more and more frantic. In the meantime, my passengers had joined in my search. After some back and forth, one of the ladies in the compartment said that it could only have been the man who was so helpfully looking after his Marta's luggage ... and she was probably right. My next stop was the on-board bistro. There I finally found the train attendant and informed him of the incident.

The earth continued to turn. The train didn't make an emergency stop and just kept going. I stayed on the train - until Ulm.

And there I spent 2 hours at the police station until the facts of the case were fully recorded.

While I was on the train, my thoughts were going round and round in my head. "Why is this happening to me?" "My papers are gone! What a lot of running around I have to do now!" "The police are incompetent!" to name but a few.

Why am I telling you this?

What does the loss of my wallet have to do with your electroplating business?

It's about the power of thought. Because our thoughts have immense power over our feelings, our state of mind and our actions.

I was glad that I had to sit idle on the train for another hour or so to Ulm. It gave me time to sort out my thoughts. I actually had to put a very firm stop to the negative, noisy thoughts in my brain.

Our thoughts influence how we perceive things around us, how we evaluate them and how we react to them. And these evaluations, whether positive or negative, come from experiences and adventures from our childhood and teenage years.

I used this "idle" hour on the train before Ulm to get my thoughts back under control. And to become capable of acting. I blocked my cards while still on the train.

Even in business, there are always situations that pull you down and throw you off course. Especially now, in difficult times of the pandemic, when politicians are not making clear announcements. When the unthinkable happens due to war. When long delivery times through no fault of your own severely disrupt liquidity. When the boss himself has to take care of the shiny surfaces of the parts and falls back on his roots as an electroplater because employees are absent due to coronavirus.

I no longer give my thoughts about the quick-reacting trick thief a chance to turn negative. In the meantime, I have to smile at how this man tricked me with simple sleight of hand and freed me from my wallet in such a simple way. Nevertheless, I hope that he will be put out of business very soon.

Here is my tip on how you can better control your thoughts:

The thought stop

To stop the negative carousel of thoughts in your head, a technique was developed in the 1950s in behavioral therapy that is suitable for stopping all negative and annoying thoughts that do not serve to solve problems.

It works like this:

Draw a red stop sign in your mind. And say "STOP" out loud or in your mind - this will first interrupt your thoughts. Breathe in and out slowly and imagine something relaxing.

Then question your thoughts:

• Is it really true?
• Is it always true?
• Is it true for everyone?
• Is it only true for me?

And always remember:

YOU are the boss in YOUR head. You have the choice of how you want to feel, because you control your thoughts.

Photo: Adobe Stock