How You Think Effects How You Feel

History is not my idea of an interesting subject. In high school it was one of those classes I avoided at all costs. In fact I didn't take it until my junior year. Up until my senior year I had hated it with an absolute burning passion. That all changed in my History of Civilization class. It was not a complete change or an instant change, but it was still a change. I'd had the teacher my junior year and his teaching method intrigued me enough to take another course taught by him the next year. My teacher taught a history class, but we learned a lot more than just history, we learned about life in general. He gave information that I could actually use in the real world. Bruce Dickey taught me how to be a real person, a sensitive person, and most of all my own person.

Everyday was the same old, same old. I would enter the small, over-heated history classroom with long shelves filled with books on every kind of subject you could imagine and videos from every piece of history that there is. I sat a long, brown table in a hard, straight-backed chair next to my friends Becky and Amber. I would munch on a granola bar and drink a can of Coke trying to stay awake in the early morning hours. An average sized, balding, middle-aged man who looked a little mean and had the reputation for being that way (even though I did manage to find an amusing side to him) would open the window in the middle of a Michigan winter and the over-heated classroom would turn into an ice box. Then he would take his place in front of the chalkboard and begin his "lessons of life". At the beginning of each class he would tell all sorts of anecdotes and pieces of wisdom from books, personal experiences, and information that had been passed on to him. I remember a lot of the stuff he told us, but one piece of information really stuck with me. I don't think I'll ever forget it.

"How you think affects how you feel, and how you feel affects how you perform," Mr. Dickey would say at least once a week as he adjusted his glasses or took a sip of coffee. He would raise his voice on the important parts to make sure that we were listening, and one day I was. I had heard it a million times over, but it had never really sunk in. It was just one more sentence that a teacher had spoken, and then suddenly it had meaning. I think he had a goal to try to make every one of his students a better person. He would share his knowledge so that we would use it. Not only to help ourselves, but other people as well. I don't think it was a goal of his and he probably didn't realize it, but he was doing his part to make a better world. What he was really saying is that what you say to people and how you treat them will affect what they do and how they act. He wanted us to treat people like human beings and give them the respect that they deserve. He wanted us to stand up for ourselves in an appropriate manner.

He explained it like this, "If you want someone to change a habit or improve a skill, such as baseball (he always used baseball as an example, he was obsessed with it), eighty-five percent of what you say to that person has to be about what they are doing right. Because how you talk to them affects what they think." In other words, you want to make that person feel good about themselves, if you want them to change. He always knew how to get people to do what he wanted them to do. It sounds kind of manipulative, but that's not what he meant it for. It's all in how you use the information.

He told us that no one can make you feel angry or sad or happy or anything else. That it is your choice on how you react to a situation. You choose how you feel. It's kind of a contradiction to the first thing he told us, but I see it a different way. If how I think affects how I feel and how I feel affects how I perform, then I should change my thinking. If I decide nothing is going to get me down and follow through with it, then nothing will get me down. It is very hard to live by that standard and I know that I don't always, but trying to is what's important. The pure and simple truth about it is that the truth is never pure and rarely simple.

The information he passed on changed me a lot. I understand more about human behavior. I understand how to treat people. I'm not perfect and I will be the first to admit it. I do not always consider how my words will affect the person receiving them, but I do try harder to watch what I say. I try to not let other people affect how I feel and how I react to things. It's my life and my responsibility. Just like your life is your responsibility. Society needs to take responsibility for their actions and stop letting other people decide their mood or how they think. I wish that my school had taught more about that. Their major concern was academics when it should've been about life and people. Academics can only take you so far, it's up to you to do this rest to succeed in this world.

I learned a lot of irreplaceable information in that history class. Sure I don't remember when this war took place or who the king of each country in Europe was, but I do remember the important stuff. I remember that Mr. Dickey helped me find my own person and his words helped mold me into an even better one. I choose how I feel and how I think, because how I think affects how I feel and how I feel affects how I perform. I try to perform well.