Everything is Mind

They say a smart man learns from himself but a wise man from others. For centuries there has been 1 common thread, 1 unique perspective, 1 single truth that all the greats you admire reiterated. Most people never apply it to their lives, or even worse, discover it. Here is the secret in the words of others.

This is not mysticism, nor motivation or just quotes. This is woven in reality and in our DNA. A part of your brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS), filters sensory inputs to highlight what aligns with your dominant thoughts. If you focus on the color red, you will notice red things more often. What you focus or think about, the RAS makes sure you SEE. What you think, your reality becomes.

In a world obsessed with the physical—money, cars, showing off—we often overlook the true driver: the mind. The following is the universal iron law, that anyone can employ to change their reality.

The universal law? Everything is Mind.

As Nightingale put it: "We become what we think about."

Mind and Body and Reality are One

Yet, this principle extends beyond external reality to the intimate union of mind and body. Plato, in The Republic (Book III), captured this: "not that the good body by any bodily excellence improves the soul, but, on the contrary, that the good soul, by her own excellence, improves the body as far as this may be possible."

Here, the mind (or soul) manifests in the body—not as separate entities, but as one seamless whole. If your mind is intact, focused, and resilient, so too is your body, responding to mental states. This can even materialize as psychoneuroimmunology, where positive thoughts bolster immune function and overall health.

Speaking Into Existence: The Prophetic Perfect

A literary technique used in the Bible: Biblical prophets harnessed a powerful linguistic tool: the prophetic perfect tense, where future events are declared in the past tense, as if already accomplished, to affirm their inevitability.

By reciting goals as faits accomplis ("I have achieved success"), you prime the RAS to manifest them, bridging imagination and reality.

But knowledge alone won't transform you. Let's break it into five actionable sections: control what you can, prioritize inputs, ignite imagination, embody the change, and persist while ignoring reality.

1. The Mind Is All You Control

"You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself… He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others." — Leonardo da Vinci

You can't dictate external events—the economy, others' actions, or random chance—but you command your inner world. Neurologically, the RAS acts as your brain's gatekeeper, amplifying signals that match your mindset while ignoring the rest. If you dwell on failure, it highlights setbacks; shift to possibility, and solutions emerge.

2. Newton's Third Law: Action and Reaction

But what is Newton's third law? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If your mind and actions are aligned, and you force yourself into the world, and focus your energy into inputs, then by universal law, equal and opposite outputs MUST occur. It's the only possible reaction.

If you put your energy into becoming an NBA athlete, and act like one, doing everything an NBA athlete does—then you will become an NBA athlete. If you put your energy into acting, studying film everyday, practising in the mirror—you will become a great actor.

Energy in. Newton's Third Law.

3. Ignite Imagination

Imagination is the beginning of creation. The word imagination is derived from imaginari ("to picture oneself"). Once you can picture yourself as something, neuroscience tells us we become it. Vivid imagination activates the same brain regions as actual experience, rewiring pathways for manifestation. There is no difference, neurologically, between how your brain interprets reality vs a thought.

As George Bernard Shaw put it: "You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will." Tie this to the prophetic perfect: Speak your visions as already real.

4. Before You Can Be, You Must Become

Embody the Change. Stop waiting to "feel ready." That's the trap.

You don't become the version of you that already won by sitting around hoping one day it clicks. You become it by moving like it's already done.

"Dress like the man who made it. Speak like the man who made it. Decide like the man who made it. Walk into rooms like the man who made it."

Your brain doesn't know the difference between real experience and deliberate, repeated rehearsal. Every time you act the part, you're literally carving new neural highways. Athletes do this every day before they ever touch the field—visualize, feel, then move like it's already happened.

The secret is simple: Act as if failure is impossible. Live as if the crown is already on your head.

Mike Tyson didn't say "I hope to be champion one day." He said you have to be champion before you become champion.

5. Persist and Ignore Transient Reality

One of America's greatest inventors, Robert Fulton, inventor of the steam boat, which revolutionized American commerce, travel and transportation—wrote accounts of the early days of his inventions. Visiting the shipyard in New York, he wrote:

"As I had occasion to pass daily to and from the building-yard, while my boat was in progress, I have often loitered unknown near the idle groups of strangers, gathering in little circles, and heard various inquiries as to the object of this new vehicle. The language was uniformly that of scorn, or sneer, or ridicule. The loud laugh often rose at my expense; the dry jest; the wise calculation of losses and expenditures; the dull, but endless, repetition of the Fulton folly. Never did a single encouraging remark, a bright hope, or a warm wish, cross my path."

Take this as a lesson. Ingrain it. That the ignorance of reality leads to new reality. Where everyone is different, with different opinions, you stretch yourself thin if you conform to their perceptions.

Instead remember: As Vincent van Gogh wrote, "If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning."

Now

With the tools above, you have the weapons of the greatest religious leaders, military generals, monarchs and rulers.

Start small. Lead the conversation today. Make the decision today. Carry yourself today like the upgraded version is already here. Momentum builds fast once you stop acting like a spectator in your own life.

Shakespeare advised in Hamlet: "Assume a virtue, if you have it not."

References

• Nightingale, Earl. The Strangest Secret (1956 audio recording)
• Watts, Alan. Lectures on mind and reality (GraveMind YouTube compilations)
• Tyson, Mike. Quotes from interviews and Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth
• Neuroscience: Reticular Activating System (Mayo Clinic, Harvard Health)
• Plato. The Republic (Book III), translated by Benjamin Jowett
• Maté, Gabor. When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress (2003)
• Shakespeare, William. Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 4)
• Prophetic perfect: Wikipedia entry on Prophetic Perfect Tense; Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University
• Shaw, George Bernard. Quotes on imagination from Goodreads
• Van Gogh, Vincent. Letters to Theo (Nuenen, January 1885)
• Hill, Napoleon. Think and Grow Rich
• Peterson, Jordan B. Lectures on attention and potential