Reprogramming The Mind For Success

As you attempt to venture into a new world such as success, a world that has so far eluded you but a world that you know exists because you see other’s living it; at some point you are going to have to experience a significant Ah-ha moment; a moment when you become aware of something that is going on within you.

To help explain this I am going to tell you of one of my Ah-ha moments, a moment back in time when I realized I was addicted to negative thinking. That’s right, I realized I was ‘addicted’ to negative thinking and knew there and then that this was something occurring from within which meant I could change it, at the time though I just didn’t know how.

I was in my early stages of learning techniques such as meditation and visualization, and in fact was using an aid called ‘guided visualization’ where you are listening to an instructor guide you through the process of visualizing the things you want in life. It was really great at times, but I also noticed at other times some really shocking pictures or scenes would appear in my mind.

To give you a graphic example, one of the scenes I was visualizing was me sitting in my nice big boat, a cross between a luxury boat and a fishing boat, as I love to fish, anchored in a really nice bay where the fish are plentiful, the sun is warm, the breeze is slight but cool and the sea is calm.

As my mouth widens to a smile, I all of a sudden start seeing other images which seem to come from nowhere; images of my son falling overboard, a shark bumping into the boat, a big wave coming out of nowhere and capsizing us! And I’m thinking to myself, what on earth is going on here? Why am I seeing these horrific pictures?

It wasn’t isolated to just the boat either. Another of my visualizations was I’d be waiting in the bank to speak to my bank manager, and then she would call me in where I’d sit down in front of her and we’d discuss all the new found wealth I had and not only how I made it but what I planned to do with it.

But some of the times I wouldn’t even get into her office, instead while I was waiting some bank robber would come running in and start wielding a knife or a gun! (Do you notice how the negative scenes are very similar to the sorts of things that happen in the movies or on the news?) It only took me a few days of going through this each and every time to realize that somehow I was addicted to these negative thoughts; I knew this because they seemed and ‘felt’ very real.

My brain did not like the new positive thoughts, not because they were positive as such but because the thoughts were themselves releasing new chemicals which the body was not used to. To counteract this, the body needed to command the brain to release chemicals it ‘was’ used to.

Negative thinking releases the same chemicals; it doesn’t matter what the thoughts are about, if they are negative the same cocktail of chemicals are being created in your brains pharmacy and pumped through the blood into every living cell in your body. The more this happens, the more addicted the body becomes to these chemicals and the more displeasure it experiences when you try and replace them with a new chemical, i.e. a chemical associated with success.

So how can you tell if you are addicted to negative thinking?

This is very simple. Close your eyes and visualize something you really want but believe you can not have, and do this for as long as you possibly can. You may not see graphic scenes like I did, it may be that I watched too much TV as a kid; but even subtle feelings and inner voices of doubt will creep in. It doesn’t matter, either way, whether you see things that you don’t like, feel feelings of doubt, or hear your inner voice saying ‘no’ to you, all of these are addictions to negative thinking and beliefs.

So how do you stop being addicted to negative thinking?

Part of the reprogramming of the mind process is the need for you to become aware of yourself. This may sound odd to some, but it’s not. If you did the exercise above than you have already started this process. Becoming aware of your thoughts is the first step in understanding how your whole mind works, and once you understand how it works, you can then change it for the better.

I’ll give you an exercise. The next time you have a shower commentate to yourself the whole time, as if you are broadcasting to the world and explain every single thing you are doing as you shower. This will show you how automated we have become with such things as showering because you’ll find commentating every action very strange to do.

This will also demonstrate how the same automation processes are going on throughout our whole day with almost everything we do from driving a car, to reacting to something we see! This is one of our biggest problems; we are running on autopilot and are not aware of our own thoughts or reactions most of the time.

The more you do this exercise, not just for showering but for many of things you do throughout the day, the more conditioned you’ll become at being aware. Awareness is the first and probably the most significant step to reprogramming your mind for success because awareness alerts you to the negative thought or reaction as it is just starting to happen giving you the ideal time in which to stop it in its tracks!

Habits are formed by the mapping of neural-nets in our brain. The neural-nets join certain associations together to create a belief, habit, idea, thought etc. An example is a basketball, where by in order for you to know that you are looking at a basketball, at some time in your past the associations of orange, round, ball, skin, etc were joined together to create a neural-net map, and this map processes the input from your senses and tells you it’s a basketball.

Habits as we know them, are automatic behaviours and thought processes. For example, smoking is a habit, and so is shaking your head at something you don’t like. The more automated the habit, i.e. the more you do it without conscious awareness, which for most people is most of the time, the stronger the neural-net mapping (or programming as I like to call it) of that habit.

However contrary to popular belief, a habit can be broken in an instant, it just needs a jolt. For example, a smoker who tries to quit may struggle for an eternity without success and then one day something happens that jolts him in such a way that he quits on the spot. I’m sure you know of people who have done this. I know I did. This can also occur for negative habits such as bad spending habits, putting yourself down, negative thoughts and so on.

To demonstrate this, I am going to go back in time to 1966 when The Beatles wrote and recorded Strawberry Fields Forever. It was such a great song that it is still well known today 40 plus years later. However most people, including those that were young back in 1966 are unaware that the song was recorded in two styles and the two styles were then merged.

The story goes like this. The Beatles recorded the song first with guitars and drums, and then second without guitars and drums but rather with stringed instruments like cellos and violins with the help of the producer George Martin. Not knowing which he liked best John Lennon went away and later came back to George and said, “I like both songs, can you merge the two together, can you make the first part guitars and the second part strings?”

The point at which the song splits from guitars to strings is during the second time John sings, ‘Let me take you down ‘cause I’m going to….’. I need to warn you now; once you listen for the point where the song splits from guitars to strings, you will never hear the song the same way again.

And this is my point, and this is what I refer to as a jolt. If you have ever listened to this song before and even liked it, your whole neural net map will be completely rewired in an instant, and you will forever know Strawberry Fields Forever as the song with two parts.

So how about our undesirable habits? In order to remove a bad habit you must in fact replace it with a good habit, this is how the process of neural-net programming works.

The secret then to changing is to be completely aware of the bad habit when it occurs (just like you are now aware of the two parts to Strawberry Fields). When you are aware you are open. Being open is what allows you to change. People with closed minds are unable to change because their Reticular Formation (an organ that is part of the brain), will filter out any information that is not inline with their belief systems.

So if you want to change a bad habit to a good habit, such as negative reactions, negative thoughts, bad spending habits etc, be aware of the bad habit occurring, be open to the possibility you can change it to something far more desirable, and like a jolt the answer or method that will reprogram your neural-nets in an instant will come to you. The level at which the jolt will come will be a direct result of your awareness to your bad habits and the openness of your mind.

Sometimes something as simple as becoming aware that you even have an undesirable habit or behaviour is all the jolt you need……