The Law of Subjective Reality

The nature of your world is determined by your nature. The way you see your job or your family or
your friends is not determined by some objective standard—it is determined by the way you see
yourself. The bottom line is that there is no objective world, only your personal world, a world that you
shape and influence according to your social beliefs, attitudes, past conditioning and the set of lenses
through which you choose to view it. Think about it for a moment. Is any object

naturally good or bad, or is it the way that you perceive it or interpret the object or event that
makes it good or bad? The face of one person’s best friend might be the face of another’s worst enemy.
In both cases, the face remains the same. The different responses come from two different people
processing the same information in entirely different ways. A heavy rain will make a drought-plagued
farmer dance for joy while annoying two lovers who had just sat down to enjoy a romantic picnic. Again,
the same stimulus—the rain—elicits two entirely different responses depending on the thoughts of
the perceiver. The power of this law lies in the fact that if you want to change your response to any triggering
event—and thereby change the nature of your reality—you have only to change the nature of your
thoughts and the way you think about the object or event. The person who sees another’s best friend as
his worst enemy can start focusing on this individual’s good points or on what a waste of
energy it is to think of anyone in a negative light. Toxic thoughts drain the mind’s vitality. More
empowering alternatives liberate mental power and advance you along the road of mental mastery.

Culled from Shine in your World.