Ben Lumley is a Motivational Speaker and Trainer from the UK who writes about personal development at 6aliens.com. Why not connect with him on Twitter @6aliens or if you liked this article then why not subscribe to his RSS Feed?
Our minds are wonderful things. They give us the ability to create and manifest amazing experiences in our lives while also having the power to destroy our every effort and bring about nothing but failure.
The human brain works in two ways.
The conscious mind equates for around 20% of thinking and is the part we are very aware of. All of our higher order thinking and reasoning is usually done here. But the rest of our mind (80%) is deep down within us and controls a massive amount of what we do and think.
Over time and through repetitive action, we submit things to our subconscious which are then automated in our lives.
For example when we learn to ride a bike it’s a very conscious act. You need to think about peddling, balancing, and steering all at the same which can often be too much for us to focus on and we ultimately fall off. But over time and through repetitive action, we drive the ability to ride our bike into our subconscious which then allows us to ride without thinking about it. Now when you get on a bike you don’t need to think about it, the actions are all performed by your subconscious.
The same process is also true of opinions and attitudes. Over time and with repetitive action we drive thoughts, feelings, attitudes and opinions into our subconscious so that when we are confronted with a situation we automatically respond without thinking. This can be a problem though because if they are all negative, we can automatically respond to something negatively.
I was always rubbish at Maths at school. These days, when faced with anything to do with Maths, I automatically begin to think that I’m rubbish with numbers and that I can’t do it, even though I haven’t even tried to solve the problem yet.
One thing the subconscious is good at is driving us in particular directions based on the information it has to work with. So if I say I’m bad at Maths and I force that in to my subconscious it will find things in my environment to continually reinforce my failure with numbers. This powerful part of your mind doesn’t like to have a difference in the perceptions you have with the environment around you.
So if we were you to create a positive and exciting outlook for the future, visualising what you want to happen, over time and through repetitive action you would place this in to your subconscious. This would create an internal conflict in your mind so strong that your subconscious would want to find ways to bring it into reality, actually helping you to bring about the changes you want to see in your life.
So be mindful of your thoughts because they can literally make your success or bring about your failures.
Thanks for the chance to guest post again James.
Ben,
This is great stuff because it speaks to the self-confidence issues that people perceive to have when really there is no backing for it. Like telling yourself you are not good in crowds or that writing isn’t your thing. When really you just have practiced enough… What’s the saying 10,000 hours to master your craft?
The book Think and Grow Rich speaks to this idea quite a bit…
Great Stuff Ben Thanks!
Ryan H., http://www.ryanhanley.com
.-= Ryan Hanley´s last blog ..3 Misconceptions About Home-based Business =-.
Hi Ryan
Yeah I think the saying is about 10,000 to master a skill.
Self confidence is so important because a lack of it can really hinder your ability to be successful
Ryan funny you should mention the 10,000 hrs thing me and my wife have been thinking and talking about that lately, think I’m up to over a 1,000 hrs on this site so far
Yep, Ben, you have to trick your mind/brain in order fill that gap.
Leave out all the garbage and imagine your future – with all the stuff you want to experience !
BTW, I sucked at math too, and I get still nightmares about me failing a math tests. It’s scary as heck !!
.-= Mars Dorian´s last blog ..How to become Productive like a Jedi ! =-.
Focus is the key isn’t it Mars? As you say get rid of the garbage and focus on the positive.
Visualization…ahh what a wonderful thing. If you want success in your future, think about nothing else, by this I mean debt, negative outcomes, etc. All I see if a bountiful future for myself, I don’t even know anything else because of how much I have repeated it in my head.
.-= Alex Monroe´s last blog ..Finding Balance =-.
Nice to hear from you Alex
Visualisation is definitely a great skill to acquire. I actually have the privilege of teaching it to young people in my workshops. They absolutely love it.
Deciding you want success so that your mind can then understand and allow you to act on things that will bring you success is something very powerful.
I have thoughts going through my head all the time thinking about whether or not I can monetize my blog and actually help people by doing so and then I stop and think, even though I don’t have any sure fire plan just yet, why couldn’t I?
I know it takes time. I know I need to have some kind of product or way to help people improve themselves or give them a good reason to buy what I’m selling and then I think of the ultimate question: What would “I” buy to help improve myself or take me further in life.
Besides the making money blogging thing with your mind, creating ideas and actually keeping at them is powerful because you start to understand that you can make many amazing things happen if you just think of it and act on it repeatedly until you finally get it.
I like these posts a lot and it was a great read!
.-= Eric´s last blog ..The Power Of A Lie, Is It True? =-.
Thanks Eric.
Yeah you’ve got to focus your mind on what you want. Lots of us don’t think we can but as soon as we do that we are actually focusing our minds, just on the negative stuff instead.
I personally grew up believing I was not a very social person and I’m comfortable keeping to myself. I thought this way of thinking was okay, but in certain aspects, it was really affecting my life and how I interacted with other people, including the ones that were close to me. It’s a long process but I’m trying to change that way of thinking. Even the smallest negative thoughts can indeed affect a major part of our lives.
.-= Julius´s last blog ..How Accessible is the iPad to Persons With Disabilities? =-.
Julius,
I still get knocked by people putting me down. I had a family member say only the other day that he thought what I did was “crap” and it’s still sitting with me now.
All I do in times like that is go back to my personal mission statement that says who I am, what I stand for and who I want to become. This then instantly refocuses my mind and gets me back on the right mental path.
I always ask people if the one thing they believed to be true, wasn’t true, then what would they do? For instance, if you believed you were terrible at public speaking but then thought about what you’d do if you weren’t terrible, then how would the speach go?
It’s a great way to get around limiting beliefs.
Great post Ben.
The funny thing about limiting beliefs Matthew is that they are always based on opinion or make belief. They are never based on facts but instead our internalising of a past experience.
Great post Ben.
One of my favourite sayings and we should all have this tattooed on our inner arms really, is…
“We are what we think, eternal vigilance of thought is needed.”
No idea where I first saw that, but it stuck.
Nice post, real truths.
.-= rob sellen´s last blog ..My first real month on WordPress =-.
That’s a really nice quote Rob.
One of my favourites is along similar lines.
What we can or cannot do,what we consider possible or impossible,is rarely a function of our true capability ~ Tony Robbins
Hi Ben,
Yeah i thought so too…
Another which struck a chord was by Bertrand Russell ~ People would rather die, than think… in fact they do.
That’s saying alot.
.-= rob sellen´s last blog ..Commentluv, more than links, comments, traffic, and why you should use it =-.
Nice post.
I did the exact same the with writing, I used to tell myself that I couldn’t write and then somehow conjured up the idea in my mind that I had a learning difficulty. Because of this negative “self talk” I found it hard to string a sentence together. The amount of anxiety I beat myself up with, was astonishing. As you can see now, I can string a sentence together just fine. It was all in my mind, and the use of negative thought.
.-= Simone´s last blog ..What I learnt from starting an online business that I was not passionate about. =-.
Those are some really nice sentences Simone, well done.
Negative self talk can have such a massive impact on us as individuals. The funny thing is so can positive self talk.
Very true Ben! I have to admit I sometimes forget the power of positive self talk.
.-= simone´s last blog ..What I learnt from starting an online business that I was not passionate about. =-.
You hit on a very important issue here, my friend! And I love the elegance with which you do so.
I think the core of personal development work, which for me is pretty much a lifelong process, is in understanding exactly what rules about life we have “buried”, along with their attaching emotions, and decide what we want to believe and how we want to feel about it.
Beliefs are so important to success aren’t they Christine? It doesn’t matter what kind of success you want or to what degree, limiting beliefs can hold you back from any endeavour.