Posts Tagged ‘desires’
Goals – How Can I Really Achieve What I Want to in Life?
August 9, 2010Subconscious Mind – The Double-Edge Sword of Success or Demise
March 18, 2010Our subconscious mind is the most powerful weapon you have in your arsenal to succeed or fail in life. It is a true double-edged sword. A double-edged sword can help or hurt the sword holder. A single-edged sword is generally used for slashing and cutting – there is only one direction in which to cut or to slash. The double-edged sword can be swung with equal devastation from one side to the other. Theoretically, it could do twice the damage compared to the single-edged sword.
Most people don’t realize the power their subconscious mind has over their life. They think that their conscious mind is in charge. The best description that I have heard comparing the two comes from Vincent Pocente. He tells a story in which your conscious brain is equivalent to a mouse sitting on the back of an elephant, which represents your subconscious mind. The mouse is trying to tell the elephant where to go and how to get there. The elephant does not understand the mouse’s language, nor can it even feel the mouse running around on its back.
You know what you want, what you desire and what you need. These words describe the language of your conscious mind. However, your conscious mind does not control you future. You future is controlled by expectations – not wants, desires and needs. Your future is controlled by your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind has been filled with every thought, word, feeling, vision and aroma since you were born. It has an enormous storage capability – and, a colossal retrieval capacity. Given enough time it can retrieve just about anything you ever put into it.
How is it a double-edged sword? If you use it to help you get ahead, to achieve goals, to develop your self-esteem, to protect you from additional failure, etc., it is the productive edge of the sword – cutting and slashing away the obstacles preventing you from attaining what you seek – and, there are a lot of barriers, impediments, obstructions, hurdles and complications to get through to declare victory. If you use it as most people do – they ignore it and allow it to run their lives of autopilot, then you get status quo or less in life and maybe a cozy comfort zone for most of their lives.
The prime directive of your subconscious mind is to defend you against failure and embarrassment. It will do everything it can to uphold that directive. Let’s pick something simple – you want to learn to play an instrument or learn a new language. You begin and find it difficult. You have never done something like this before and your subconscious cannot decide if this is good or bad for you. There is not enough historical data to make a decision to support or thwart you. As you progress you build a history. If the history is success – you learned to play an instrument well, or learned to be proficient in a foreign language; your subconscious will continue to help you with additional instruments or languages. You have built a history of success. But, if you gave it up because it was too hard or any other reason, you are creating a history of failure.
Most of us have been programmed since birth by our parents, siblings, relatives, friends, schools, work-mates, television, newspapers, magazines, etc. to fail. Not intentionally, but we have been programmed to fail. The average eighteen year old has been told NO at least 80,000 times. Your subconscious doesn’t have to experience failure to store failure in its data banks. Your parents can tell you that you will fail if you do that – that statement is equal to you doing it and failing. You can see someone else fail and it can be imprinted into your neurons that you will fail if you do the same thing. Once you start sliding down the negative side of the mountain it is difficult to climb back up and cover up those failure moments.
From a double-edged perspective, we might begin to improve our self-esteem or our self-image by saying affirmations aloud. That’s good. Your subconscious mind has rules that you might not know about. It doesn’t understand negative or future. It operates in the present. If you say, I’m not going to eat dessert – your subconscious mind hears, I’m going to eat dessert – you’ve done it before and it makes sense, so let’s support you eating dessert. The negative in your thought or statement was cutting your progress, like the back edge of the blade. When you add a disaffirmation to your affirmation, you achieve nearly the same thing – I would eat less, but… Your subconscious is confused because it doesn’t understand the connection word ‘but.’ Every time during the day you think you can’t do something, you are right – you can’t do it and you have reinforced failure into your subconscious mind – you can’t do it.
You have to understand what rules to play by when you are attempting to reprogram your subconscious mind. The rules are simple and easy to do, but if you waver, the blade comes back and whacks off any progress you might have made. Get rid of the negative environment around you – your friends, if necessary – television – and any other sources of negativity. Begin talking to yourself with empowering and positive affirmations – I believe, I accept, I know, I am learning, I am becoming, I have, I possess, I own, I am thankful, I appreciate, etc. Let’s assume that your subconscious is a large crater filled with your years of failure – real or imagined. Each affirmation is equivalent to a small stone thrown into the middle of the crater. It takes a while to fill it up. Once the crater in front of you is filled in and level, then you can begin building the positive mound of energy that you can draw on to succeed at anything you choose in life.
Choices have consequences. Your Prosperity Professor, Red O’Laughlin