I’ve already talked about the power of your unconscious mind [Link to Post], and how it influences your behaviour, so today I’d like to take a closer look at how we can become friends with our unconscious mind and use it to help us achieve our goals, rather than blocking them.
Have you ever really listened to the things you say to yourself – the words and tone of voice you use when no-one else is listening? What are you saying? Are you speaking words of encouragement, hope and power, or are you constantly criticising yourself and belittling yourself?
Negative self-talk is one of the most common causes of depression. Therapists know that if they listen carefully to what their patients are saying to themselves they will be able to understand 90% of the problems besetting them. The problem is that often patients get caught up in the rehearsal of these negative conversations, emotions and experiences and they can’t let them go. That’s really where I was, when I struggled through my depression – every week when I met with my therapist we would go over the same ground, and I’d feel worse. He would try to help me see the lies I was telling myself, but somehow I missed the road out until I went to the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) training.
One of things I love about Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is that it propels you forward. It doesn’t leave you wallowing in your misery but offers you a clear choice.
We can either be ‘At Cause’ in our lives, or we can be ‘At Effect’ – the creators, or the victims of our circumstances. I don’t know about you, but the idea of being a victim doesn’t appeal to me … on the other hand sometimes I’m not all that keen about taking responsibility for things either. And that is where we can call on our unconscious mind to help us.
We can’t turn back the clock and undo the things that we’ve experienced, but we can always choose the direction we’ll take moving forward.
Once you become aware of your unconscious mind, you will start to hear what it is saying to you. If it is encouraging you to keep moving forward, to stick your neck out and take some risks, and feeding you positive thoughts and emotions then you’re probably in pretty good shape. But maybe things are not quite so rosy and your unconscious mind is tearing you down with negative ideas and feedback. Don’t worry, you’ve taken an important first step – now you know that the part of you which should be your biggest cheerleader is letting you down.
You spend a lot of time listening to your unconscious mind, so you need to feed it positive thoughts, ideas, emotions and images – because whatever you feed it, it will send back to you quietly and without making a fuss. That’s why we need to choose our mental diet at least as carefully as we choose the food we eat. A lot of people take great care about the food they consume, but they fill their minds with random programs from the TV, radio, or magazines.
Your thoughts shape your future just as surely as the food you eat shapes your body – so take time to consider what you are putting into your unconscious mind. They say we become like the five people we spend most time with – that time could be spent with them in person, or via TV, CD or books. Who are your 5 top influencers?
Meta Description: Our unconscious mind is a very powerful influence, but we can use it help us achieve everything that we are looking for in our personal and professional lives.
By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales
“90% of your life is controlled by your unconscious mind, And only 10% of your life is lived consciously!”
When you think about it, that’s a scary statistic!
You may think that you are in control of your life, but the reality is that the way you process information and respond to situations is mostly done on autopilot. If you’ve ever been in a situation and responded instinctively – or had someone respond to you and thought, “Where on earth did that come from?” you’ve seen the unconscious mind in action.
It might be a strong reaction to some sound or smell that is totally out of proportion to the cause – like the feeling of sadness that wells up when you hear a song that your memory links to time of sadness or stress. On the surface it seems like a totally irrational response, but the reality is that it is a deeply-rooted and natural outcome of a habit, belief, or experience that may be so deeply buried in your unconscious mind that you don’t even remember it.
In fact, while many people are aware that they have an unconscious mind they are usually unaware that the unconscious mind controls 90% of their lives. That means that we are only consciously controlling 10% of our lives, the rest is directed by our unconscious mind – by the habits we form, and the attitudes we learn either deliberately or by chance.
When a baby learns to walk, a child learns to read, an adolescent learns to drive, or you learn a new skill, at first it demands all your concentration and you need to work really hard at it. As time goes by most of those actions sink into your unconscious mind and you do them almost on autopilot. That is why it’s so important to start out with good habits, and why your first lessons in any new skill are the most important.
We see it in top tennis players like Roger Federer – despite his very successful record he realised that he needed to make some changes in his game to stay at the top, so he changed his tennis racquet, and his coach, and developed a more aggressive playing style. That didn’t come easily, and under stress he was still reverting to his former style at this year’s Australian Open – but it illustrates the point I’m making. We can change our deeply engrained habits!
We can change our deeply engrained habits … but it takes conscious planning and some effort.
On the other hand, if the unconscious behaviours and habits you have are no longer working for you (even our worst habits usually worked for us at some time) then isn’t it worth the effort to change?
I don’t know about you, but I’m a firm believer in the saying that: “Doing the same things you’ve always done, and expecting different results is insanity.” If I’m doing something that isn’t working I want to find an alternative that will work for me, and help me get the outcome I desire. That’s why I studied Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and became a Master Trainer – because I wanted to change my life, and help other people change theirs.
Facilitating that change through group training, and individual and corporate coaching is what gets me out of bed each morning. It’s just so exciting to watch people go from one level of achievement to another as they retrain their unconscious mind and get it working for them, rather than against them.
Meta Description: The idea that you are not really in control of your actions and thoughts is pretty scary. Most of us like to think that we are in the driver’s seat when really we’re operating on instinct. Can we change that?
By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales
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