“Freud almost got some things right, but sadly, missed by miles. People ought to remember descriptions are only describing aspects of our universe. The map is not the territory, and the description is ONLY a description of what the territory is like. It’s not reality or what’s going on. The menu is not the meal. Descriptions may be accurate reflections but theories aren’t true. Get this. A photo is the real thing.

They ARE the best explanation of what MAY be occurring that we have in a MOMENT given the exploration we conducted. Wise investigators know we update a theory as new information becomes available. Some theories fall by the wayside, others get updated. They’re not the truth. They’re explanations of our understanding and beliefs shaping what we think, say and do. We replace them. Quantum physics replaced much of Newton’s.

The world didn’t end because we update our descriptions. Innovations made as a result of a certain understanding didn’t disappear because we have a different, updated description of what might be occurring. Freud, Jung and others displayed an understanding. They’re not true, but useful. Those descriptions enable us to think about things we might otherwise not think about. While this quote has been attributed to Freud, it hasn’t been proven. Obviously, someone said it about Freud’s observations.

DEVELOP THE POSITIVE ATTITUDE, MINDSET AND BELIEFS TO TRANSFORM YOURSELF

‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.’ There is no ego, id and superego. Those are concepts. Those are descriptions. Not real. Concepts but myths. Those are names given by Freud to processes but you don’t possess any sort of thing. Nor do you have a shadow side. There’s no angel or demon within you. These aren’t realities or ‘things’ within you, they’re descriptions of processes we’ve historically tried to understand.

There’s no human in your subconscious. Your subconscious isn’t a person. It’s not someone attempting to thwart you. Get this. There’s no inner person deciding if you do well or not. There ARE processes, neural wiring, and habitual electrochemical happenings. There’s no actual inner you, inner child or anything like that. However, the concepts may be useful for understanding descriptions of human behavior.

Anything that helps a person understand an aspect of behavior may be helpful to modify or adjust it. This is Placebo power. Get it? Help is help. Whether it’s historically or medically accurate. Take the unsolvable mathematics problem solved by a student who didn’t realize the problem was unsolvable. I provide the following historical background on that story published by Snopes.

DEVELOP THE POSITIVE ATTITUDE, MINDSET AND BELIEFS TO TRANSFORM YOURSELF

Here’s an amazing example of what is or isn’t possible based on what we think is true. It shows us expectations shape our reality. Beliefs shape our reality! What we think matters. Our results stem from our thinking. Get this.

‘One day in 1939, George Bernard Dantzig, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, arrived late for a graduate-level statistics class and found two problems written on the board. Not knowing they were examples of “unsolved” statistics problems, he mistook them for part of a homework assignment, jotted them down, and solved them.

(The equations Dantzig tackled are more accurately described not as unsolvable problems, but rather as unproven statistical theorems for which he worked out proofs.) Six weeks later, Dantzig’s statistics professor notified him that he had prepared one of his two “homework” proofs for publication, and Dantzig was given co-author credit on a second paper several years later when another mathematician independently worked out the same solution to the second problem.

DEVELOP THE POSITIVE ATTITUDE, MINDSET AND BELIEFS TO TRANSFORM YOURSELF

George Dantzig recounted his feat in a 1986 interview for the College Mathematics Journal: It happened because during my first year at Berkeley I arrived late one day at one of [Jerzy] Neyman’s classes. On the blackboard there were two problems that I assumed had been assigned for homework. I copied them down. A few days later I apologized to Neyman for taking so long to do the homework —

— the problems seemed to be a little harder than usual. I asked him if he still wanted it. He told me to throw it on his desk. I did so reluctantly because his desk was covered with such a heap of papers that I feared my homework would be lost there forever. About six weeks later, one Sunday morning about eight o’clock, [my wife] Anne and I were awakened by someone banging on our front door.

It was Neyman. He rushed in with papers in hand, all excited: “I’ve just written an introduction to one of your papers. Read it so I can send it out right away for publication.” For a minute I had no idea what he was talking about. To make a long story short, the problems on the blackboard that I had solved thinking they were homework were in fact two famous unsolved problems in statistics.

DEVELOP THE POSITIVE ATTITUDE, MINDSET AND BELIEFS TO TRANSFORM YOURSELF

That was the first inkling I had that there was anything special about them. A year later, when I began to worry about a thesis topic, Neyman just shrugged and told me to wrap the two problems in a binder and he would accept them as my thesis. The second of the two problems, however, was not published until after World War II. It happened this way.

Around 1950 I received a letter from Abraham Wald enclosing the final galley proofs of a paper of his about to go to press in the Annals of Mathematical Statistics.Someone had just pointed out to him that the main result in his paper was the same as the second “homework” problem solved in my thesis. I wrote back suggesting we publish jointly. He simply inserted my name as coauthor into the galley proof.

George Dantzig (himself the son of a mathematician) received a bachelor’s degree from University of Maryland in 1936 and a master’s from the University of Michigan in 1937 before completing his Doctorate (interrupted by World War II) at UC Berkeley in 1946. He later worked for the Air Force, took a position with the RAND Corporation as a research mathematician in 1952, became professor of operations research at Berkeley in 1960,

DEVELOP THE POSITIVE ATTITUDE, MINDSET AND BELIEFS TO TRANSFORM YOURSELF

and joined the faculty of Stanford University in 1966, where he taught and published as a professor of operations research until the 1990s. In 1975, Dr. Dantzig was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Gerald Ford. George Dantzig passed away at his Stanford home at age 90 on 13 May 2005.’

What we think is OR isn’t the case may not be what is IN REALITY going on. We accept many things as true or untrue. We think some things are possible and others not. Dantzig demonstrated that his not knowing they were thought to be unsolvable, didn’t prevent him from attempting to solve it. He treated it as any other problem to be solved. So he solved it. What we think is OUR REALITY. Get this!

What we think frames how we interact with the world and others. What we believe matters. Mindset matters. Our expectations shape what we are capable of. Our beliefs and attitude affect whether we will or won’t do something. If we think our inner child exists and is wounded, we’ll go through the world differently if we don’t know about the concept. The concept is used to explain something. It’s theory.

DEVELOP THE POSITIVE ATTITUDE, MINDSET AND BELIEFS TO TRANSFORM YOURSELF

It shouldn’t be considered the truth, but useful to help us understand what happened. Forgive yourself and others. Grow the child up having healed that issue. All are possible healing solutions to events in one’s past. The placebo effect suggests if you think something will help, it helps. This is marvelous! It isn’t less valuable because it’s a function of what one believes and how that inner mechanism works.

Perhaps, for that very reason, because it IS THAT, it IS EVEN more valuable. It means you can solve many things by thinking differently about them. You can solve unsolvable problems by treating them as just another problem to be solved. The amount energy you put into having a problem matters. Some invest significantly in being more broken than being well. Remember, what you focus on expands.

Energy flows where your attention goes. Change that dynamic and anything else is possible. Get it? What you think about you bring about. Thinking makes it so. I hope you understand how powerful your thoughts, beliefs, attitude and expectations are. You have the power to potentially solve the unsolvable. To create new innovations from previously thought impossibility. We have explanations which aren’t reality.

DEVELOP THE POSITIVE ATTITUDE, MINDSET AND BELIEFS TO TRANSFORM YOURSELF

Freud, Jung and others show us that. Many people believe the descriptions. That’s okay according to the placebo effect. My point, is to demonstrate how incredible and powerful we are. Even believing a myth can be helpful. It can be harmful too. It’s what we do with it that matters. YOU ARE  truly magical and incredibly resourceful. You are infinite opportunities, possibilities and resources that you can discover and use that seem to work like magic. Find them. AND realize this. You will find them when you honestly seek them. Celebrate everything!” Rex Sikes