A reader commented that my blog of yesterday (14JAN18) didn’t tell the rest of the story. What can be done to effectively use a double-edged sword to improve your future? For that, I apologize.
Our subconscious mind can be a double-edged sword. It depends on how we control it. Our subconscious mind stores everything we see and hear. If there are more failures than successes, then the subconscious mind will continue to support your future failures.
This sounds silly. Why would your brain program itself for future failure? The prime directive of the subconscious mind is to protect you from injury and embarrassment. It uses your personal history to decide to help or hinder.
Let’s say you went on a diet and succeeded. There is a success that is now planted in your brain’s archive. You go on another diet and succeed. Great, success is stored upon success. The things you are successful at are easy to find and your subconscious mind will support you in future diets.
However, if you failed, your subconscious mind will file it away as a failure. You go on another diet and fail again – another failure is stacked up with the previous one. Over time, you create a history of failures with dieting.
When you really need to lose weight, your subconscious mind will review your historical archives and see that you have always failed when attempting to lose weight. It doesn’t want you to be harmed by the embarrassment trying and failing again, so it undermines your effort to succeed at dieting. Therefore you fail before you ever get started. It is the reverse of always succeeding.
Your subconscious mind has limits. Once you know the limits you can use them to your advantage. It doesn’t know the difference between real or imagined. The real failures are cataloged in your brain. But, if you imagine success, then that success is added to the archive. You may still have overwhelming memories of failure and a single imagination of success. Over time you add more and more positive results to counter your life’s history of failure in this one area. Over time, your accumulated successes will equal your total failures.
At that time, your subconscious mind cannot help nor hinder you. It doesn’t have a true historical perspective of what can help or harm you. Visualization is a great tool to swing the double-edged sword in the positive direction.
Add emotions to your visualizations. Emotional events are stored front and center in your brain’s history. They are easy for your brain to locate. And, the emotion supercharges that event compared to non-emotional. That is why it is difficult with many people suffering trauma to overcome the memories of that trauma.
Add an aroma to your visualization. Smell a lemon, for example, every time you think about a attaining a specific goal. This about the adulation and excitement you will receive from your friends and family when you achieve that goal. Smile when you visualize your goal. Anything to enhance the memory you choose for goal completion amplifies the success of that imagined event.
Vince Poscente used colored dots to remind him of his goal to be an Olympic champion. He strategically placed the dots in places he would see every day. Each time he saw a colored dot, he would stop for a couple of seconds and breathe in the visualization of standing on the Olympic stand receiving his medal.
He would add as much emotion as he could with each visualization – hear the cheers of the audience, the aroma of the crowds, the breezes blowing, the vibrations of the clapping, etc. He would feel his body reacting to receiving the medal, seeing it and holding it. His imagination of winning that medal was played over and over again for months.
Reprogramming your subconscious to work for you is not something described in a thousand words or less. Tomorrow’s blog will continue this theme.
