#TuesdayTips
Your unconscious mind is very powerful and you can use it help you achieve your goals if you follow a few simple steps. Let’s start by looking at some of the key functions of your unconscious mind.
9 Key Functions of Your Unconscious Mind
- Controls Your Body’s Core Functions (breathing, blinking, swallowing, etc)
- Controls Your Fight or Flight Response to Danger
- Only Processes Positive Commands
- Follows Clear Orders (that’s why visualisation is so powerful)
- Judges Your Thoughts, Words & Actions According to Your Values (conscience)
- Stores Memories;
- Organises Memories;
- Represses Memories associated with unresolved negative emotions;
- Presents Repressed Memories for Resolution;
Your unconscious mind is responsible for all your behaviour, all your learning, and all the information that goes into your brain – it is the control centre of your entire body. If your unconscious mind is not doing it’s job your life suddenly gets much harder – you have to think about how to balance yourself, you have to consciously decide how many times your heart will beat in a minute, and pay attention to how often you need to breath in and out to be comfortable and to blink to keep your eyes lubricated.
All of this would take a lot of effort and you would be so busy making all these decisions moment by moment that you wouldn’t have any energy to spare for higher-level thinking, but your unconscious takes care of it for you and it ‘just happens!
Harnessing The Power of Your Unconscious Mind To Achieve Goals
Imagine what would happen if we could harness the power of our unconscious mind to achieve our goals, instead of just take care of core functions. If you thought about the 9 key functions above, you might notice that numbers 3, 4, and 5 all deal with things we can influence if we choose.
Positive Commands and Clear Orders
We can give our unconscious minds positive commands – for example, “Earn $10,000 per month.” “Weigh 60kg”. These are much more powerful and effective than, “Lose weight.” or “Don’t be poor.” or “Eat less.” This is also why visualisation is such a powerful tool – your unconscious mind takes the picture you feed it of an end result, and helps you turn it into reality. It receives these pictures as a clear command of something you want to be true.
The Importance of Congruity
Because your unconscious mind is a clear and impartial judge it is really important that your thoughts, words, and actions are congruent with your values. Money is often a key area where our desires and values collide because we often have a conflict between what we would like to earn or own, and what we believe we deserve. If you set a goal about your wealth that your conscience tells you is wrong, then you will probably not achieve it. Success in business is another common area of conflict because we are constantly bombarded with stereotypes about ‘evil’ business men.
If we deal with these conflicts and uncover the unconscious beliefs that conflict with our goals our unconscious mind will guide us almost without effort until we achieve those goals. Instead of pulling us away from behaviour that supports our goals it will guide us toward it, so that we are no longer having to discipline ourselves every moment, but rather are willingly taking the necessary actions.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is the study of how your brain processes language and pictures and controls your behaviour, I have found that the insights NLP provides into my unconscious mind has dramatically increased my power to achieve the things I really want in life – from material goods, and opportunities to relationships.
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We all have an unconscious mind, and it is a very powerful tool, but most of us let it go to waste. You can harness your unconscious mind and use it to help you achieve your dreams.
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
“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day.” – Jim Rohn
#TuesdayTips
Do you know that it is the unconscious mind that generates habits? Want to find out the ways to train it to install habits that can make you successful in life?
First, you got to build rapport with your unconscious mind. This is because there exists a disassociation between the conscious and the unconscious mind. Treat it kindly like you do a five-year-old child.
Second, know what you want. You have to give your unconscious mind directions for it to follow you (conscious mind).
Your directions have to be clear and specific and must be something positive. The unconscious mind does not process negatives. An example can be: I want to save a thousand dollars every month starting January 2017.
Then, focus on what you want. Be aware of what you want. Have external reminders of your goal in your bedroom and work area. This will train your mind to see instances everyday where you can meet your goal. It could be in a store as you are shopping for a gift for a friend. Your unconscious mind may tell you in a feeling that that reasonably-priced jacket is perfect for your friend instead of a much rather expensive one.
These feelings would be so subtle; you wouldn’t know it to be your unconscious talking to you. And they would point out other areas in your life where you can manifest your goal. It could be by an increased awareness for other income generating activities that come your way.
As you go through your life installing habits of success like saving and investing, your unconscious mind may become your best friend. It will support you to meet your goals and it will attract people and events that are in the direction/congruent with your dominant thoughts. Your dominant thoughts being your unconscious mind geared towards success.
Know more about your unconscious mind and how you can harness its powers in our NLP Training. Look up dates in this website and reserve your slot now.
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
Most people in my community may be surprised to know that I am not a huge fan of “positive thinking. Before you get too carried away, let me tell you how I think about this and where it takes me. If I have a “positive thinking mindset”, I might say something along the lines of … “I really want to be well and I’m really healthy.” This is great IF I am healthy and well, on the other hand if someone suffering with some kind of major disease that has lots of physiological symptoms says that, it might be bring on some conflicts at the unconscious level.
#TuesdayTips
I believe that when you are ‘thinking positively” or doing affirmations about something you don’t really believe, you set yourself up for a lot of fake realization and or disappointments. Basically, thinking positively has no value when the “itty-bitty-shitty committee” is sitting on your shoulder and saying things like… “Well, that’s really not very true!” especially if the person is faced with this symptomology on a daily basis.
This thinking was sparked by a conversation with a prospect when we sat down to have a chat about some of the challenges he had been experiencing in his life.
There happened to be a glass of water on the table. He said to me, “You know, I am a glass half-full kind of person and I’ve been reading a book about positive affirmations and positive thinking which frames the idea of the glass being half full rather than half empty.”
I was thinking about what he said and came to a really, really interesting realization. At that moment I replied, “It doesn’t really matter whether the glass is half full or half empty because in reality sometimes the glass IS half empty.” That started me thinking about the notion of half full and half empty and whether it is valid?
Suddenly I realised it doesn’t really matter whether the glass is half full or half empty. The important this is what you do with the information.” Maybe you’ve received some news that you’re not excited about that you have to swallow. Perhaps, you’ve experienced a sense of loss, and maybe there is NO positive re-frame for you as you process the grief of losing someone who was very special to you.
If you find that the glass IS half empty, the most important thing to consider is what are you telling yourself about the fact that it is half empty? And what is your ability to the respond to the fact that some of those circumstances are beyond your control?
So, the question is not necessarily whether the glass is half full or half empty. It’s actually a question of whether or not you can face the fact that it is empty.
What actions will you take today or tomorrow that will make a difference in terms of how you deal with the fact that it’s half empty?
Here’s my 3 tips for approaching a half empty glass:-
Ask myself how do I want it? This changes my state of mind to moving toward a good outcome and in the absence of focusing on the problem I may see a solution I didn’t see before.
What can I learn from the situation that will assist me or others in the future? Commit these ideas to paper.
Write it down without attempting to make sense of it. (Free associated writing) Carl Jung believed that when our unconscious mind communicated or made conscious a problem that it would cease to exist. In doing free associated writing you can sometimes make realisations you wouldn’t have by analysing/just thinking about the problem.
Finally, in order to have a new glass with new content, sometimes you have to tip it upside-down, wash it out and fill it up again with some new, fresh, clean water.
Be well and Be Empowered!
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
The secret of effective sales lies, like so much else, in your unconscious mind. We have a deeply engrained response to selling and salesmen that we take along with us whenever we go out to sell to others. If you haven’t won the battle in your mind, then you’ll have serious difficulty actually making a ‘confident close’ no matter how much your product or service is going to help another person.
Your unconscious mind is always judging your thoughts, words, and actions. So as long as it is telling you that selling is bad, you’ll communicate that to the people you talk to. What this means, is that you need to retrain your unconscious mind at a very deep level, and the best way to do this is to ensure that what you are selling is really going to help your prospect.
One of the things that I learned from Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is that you don’t really win unless everyone who is involved wins. Shortly after I completed my training I was hired to lead a corporate sales team and in the first 6 months our business grew by 400%. Apart from me there were no changes in the team, but because the team’s focus shifted from simply selling our product, to discovering if it was the best solution for our prospects we had enormous success.
Don’t Try To Cheat Your Unconscious Mind!
You see, you can’t cheat your unconscious mind. No matter how deeply buried your reservations are about the product or service you are selling your unconscious mind knows about them. If you want to be successful in your selling, then you need to teach you unconscious mind about the value of the thing you sell.
Try this exercise to help you clarify things:
- List all the reasons why someone would find your product/service valuable – make it as comprehensive and detailed as possible.
- List all the reasons why someone would be better choosing a different option -make this list as comprehensive and detailed as possible too.
Think of 2 or 3 questions you can ask a prospect to find our whether they fall into Category 1 or Category 2.
Now you have some clear guidelines to help you discover whether you are talking to someone who will benefit from your product or service or not. If they are in Category 1 you know that it’s in their best interests to buy your product and you have the freedom to sell as persuasively as possible. If they’re in Category 2, then you can thank them for their time, and move on – or you can suggest where they might find a more suitable solution for their needs. Either way, you’ve got your unconscious mind working for you, and you’ve found a win-win solution.
Why Do We Really Hate Sales People?
The real reason we hate sales people is that they always seem to be trying to sell us things we neither need nor want. That’s why walking into an Apple Store is so refreshing. Their sales people always have plenty of time to help you and give you the advice you need, and they’re just as likely to tell you that you don’t need something as they are to upsell you. That builds trust, and it means that when they do suggest that I need an expensive add-on I’ll usually listen to them – and in any case, they don’t just say, “Oh, you’ll also want X. Here it is.” They say, “You’ll probably want X because …” and give me the reasons why I should buy it.
This is the secret of power-selling – you’re not just trying to make a sale, you’re trying to solve your prospect’s problems – and your unconscious mind knows that so every part of your physiognomy, not just your words, move them towards the sale.
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
I talk to a lot people who have been setting goals for years, and who think it’s a nice exercise, but not really important. That’s because their goals never really affect their lives. They’re either so mundane that it doesn’t take any effort to reach them, so abstract that you’d never know whether you had reached them or not, or so impossible that you can’t possibly reach them anyway.
You can read about the techniques of S.M.A.R.T. Goal-setting here, but this post is about using your unconscious mind to keep you on track.
One of the things that often stops people from reaching their goals is the amount of deliberate effort it takes to stay focused. If you harness your unconscious mind and give it clear instructions about what you are trying to achieve then you relieve your conscious mind of that task. This gives you more energy to apply to actually working towards the goal, so it’s a really powerful tool.
I’m really passionate about the power of goal-setting, but I think it comes with a caution. If you really can’t visualise your goal, you probably should ask some questions about whether you can get yourself there. On the other hand, once you have a clear picture of your goal, you can give your unconscious mind all the help it needs to carry you forward until you achieve them.
What Kind of Goals Do You Have?
People are different. They are genuinely motivated by different things. For some people it’s the car they drive, or the house they live in, or the clothes/jewellery they wear. For others it’s about charitable causes or relationships.
I don’t know what you really want, but if you can figure that out and write down your goals to incorporate sensory information – visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, olfactory, gustatory and emotional information they will intensify your image of the goal, and send a clear picture to your unconscious mind.
So, now you’ve given your unconscious mind a vivid picture of where you want to be, you work through the milestones you need to achieve them and send that to your unconscious mind as well.
Say you’re publishing a book (something I’ve recently been working on). My final goal, was to hold that book in my hand and be able to say, “I’ve done it!” Early in the process I created a mock-up of the cover so that I could focus my unconscious mind on what the finished product would look like (in the end I even changed the title and cover, but all the way through I had a picture in my mind of me holding the book).
Along the way there were many things I had to do:- writing the book, getting it edited, working with my graphic designer and printer etc. At every stage, I had a clear picture in my mind, and I could feed that to my unconscious mind so that I stayed focused and kept moving forward. I still had to make decisions, and put in the effort, but my unconscious mind kept prodding me into action.
Using Physical Prompts to Help Out
Your unconscious mind is very busy moving you forward, whether you’re aware of it or not. How much more effective it is to use your unconscious mind to take you where you want to go, rather than simply letting it keep you up at night – but you need to give it some help.
This is where physical prompts like lists, posters and white boards come in. My computer desktop usually contains visual prompts to keep my primary goals top of mind. That way, every time I open my computer I am reminding myself both consciously and unconsciously about the goals I’m working towards.
I also have a vision board on my bedroom wall just to keep me focused. Many days I don’t consciously notice it, but it’s always there as an unconscious prompt.
Try it for yourself – you’ll be surprised how far it takes you.
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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