Reprogramming The Mind For Success

So lets look at an example and see how it all works.
Think of a fear that you may have. Lets say it’s ‘Investing in the stockmarket’. Perhaps you gained this fear from a bad experience in the past because you lost some money. Perhaps it’s simply your Self Image that you are not an investor. Either way, you have instilled a belief in your subconscious mind that produces a chemical reaction and produces that fear every time you think about ‘investing in the stock market’.

A series of events occurs.
First, your psycho cybernetic mechanism recognizes that you have created a thought process that is in direct conflict with your beliefs. In other words, you have briefly imagined yourself investing in the stockmarket. Your PCM sees this as a diversion from your usual course and sends a message to your Amygdala. In turn, it releases chemicals into your body, creating feelings of fear, doubt and anxiety.

However, lets say you meet someone who has done quite well from the stockmarket and says that he will help you, but first of all you need to come up with £20,000.

Straight away your first thoughts are going to be of what it would feel like to lose that £20k. Fear and anxiety take over and you hear yourself making excuses as to why you can’t come up with the money. It’s fight or flight and your survival instinct has naturally pulled you away from the situation to protect you and return you to your comfort zone.

Yours sincerely,

Stuart Ginbey

The Psycho-Cybernetic Mechanism (PCM) is our brain’s version of a thermostat. Just like the one found in an airconditioning system, it’s role is to measure the deviation from setpoint and produce an output that will return the temperature back to it’s original settting. Our brain’s PCM is very similar, but it’s not only associated with temperature. It is more concerned with our Comfort Zone and when we find ourselves in an uncomfortable situation, it will trigger a series of events to naturally bring us back to our happy medium. This function actually plays a very important role in our survival. To do this, the PCM employs the role of the Amygdala.

The Amygdala is an almond shaped set of nuclei in the brain. It is most commonly associated with emotions such as fear, anxiety, doubt and depression. This Amygdala is actually the circuit that is triggered by the PCM when it senses you are out of your comfort zone. It releases the chemicals that cause you to feel doubt, fear and anxiety.

Stay tune for part 2 and we’ll find out what this all means.

Yours sincerely,

Stuart Ginbey

Inside our brain stem is a mass known as The Reticular Formation. It is the connection point for the millions of different neural pathways between the various parts of our brain and the rest of our body. This whole system was named ‘The Reticular Activation System (RAS)’ by physiologist H. W. Magoun, who discovered that by stimulating it, he could wake someone from their sleep. Every second, 10-11million bits of information pass through this system and it’s the role of the Reticular Formation to process everything. However, because our conscious mind cannot cope with this much information, it acts as a ‘Filter’, according to our beliefs, habits and self image. Therefore out of all the information the we receive every day, the only parts that will actually make it to our brain is the information that lines up with what we believe. This is why two people can attend the same event yet have completely different memories of the experience.

But the point is this: You have complete control over the way you think!

If you believe that making money is hard; if you believe becoming slim is hard; if you believe finding the right partner is hard; if you believe investing is hard; guess what, it’s going to be hard!
Your neural pathways are only doing their job. They are taking the emotional attachment,  linking it to the action and joining them together. ‘Loose weight’-‘This is hard’ or ‘Start Investing’ – Too hard’. The more you say it, think it, feel it and apply emotions to it, the stronger the neural pathways between these two associations become. Your RAS then picks this up and finds it a priority to use in the filtering process. All of a  sudden you have talked yourself into a bad habit that will be difficult to break. Your brain has an emotional hook associated with what you want to achieve and you will never be able to do it.
Of course, the next question we must ask is, ‘What happens when we contest a belief, raise our own self-image or try and break a habit? Why is that so hard to do?’

Yours sincerely,

Stuart Ginbey

Imagine yourself; quietly sitting somewhere in a nice park, relaxing and watching a stream of ants do their thing, also noticing a sense of urgency in them, the sort of urgency that usually precedes a storm or rain. You watch in wonder, their strength, their knowingness, their loyalty, their co-operation and co-ordination, wondering how on earth such simple creatures create the cohesion they do.

Then you think of how the ability to sense rain or a storm serves such a grand purpose, not only for the ants but for the keen observer too, and in this case, you. If you had been wondering what you were going to do this weekend, the mere observation of the urgent ants will make you think twice about taking the boat out for a spot of fishing, or playing a round of golf with your buddies, or taking the family out for a picnic.

But then you decide to become on of the ants. All of sudden you are in a new world, a world of urgency, order and fear. You must serve the queen and her lava, you must perform your tasks, constantly communicating with other ants; you must be weary of any prey, and then attack anything that stands in your way. Phew! what it must be like to be an ant!

It may not be like that for the ant at all. They just do what they do, and maybe they have no awareness of this way of living for they have nothing to compare it to. But we do, we always have the ability to compare, to assess and to choose based on what we experience.

We all know we are emotional creatures; however what we may not understand is that our emotions serve a purpose, the purpose of allowing us to assess and make decisions based on what we are feeling, but from the observers point of view, not from the point of view of the ant; and this is exactly what most of us are doing. We live our lives, reacting to our emotions from the ants’ point of view and not the observers’ point of view.

To illustrate this, one of my pet emotional reactions is my reaction to arguing children. I don’t mind sharing this with you because I want you to feel as if we are all friends here. When children argue, especially my own, it can raise the hair on my neck! Why, because it is a reaction. At that moment in time I am the ant, thinking I have to defend myself from the noise or hysterics. But in reality, when I am able to distance myself and observe, all I am really experiencing is noise, and although I don’t like it, because it is irritating, I am able to deal with it more calmly and offer solutions.

The key difference here, and this difference can only be determined once someone becomes an observer, is that one is an automatic reaction, and the other is a calculated response. The ant reacts to its stimulus automatically, it never questions for it has no ability to, only doing what it is created to do. Humans on the other hand have the ability to choose a response to a stimulus, but only if they become aware that an emotion has become triggered within them.

Emotions therefore serve a very important purpose for people. They alert us to the fact that something is happening that is offering us a chance to question what is going on, and to choose our response. Much like the observer noticing the urgency in the ants, decides what may be and what may not be an appropriate activity in the next day or two, the person who notices an emotion he or she does not like can choose if the normal reaction is appropriate for all involved; and in most cases, if the normal reaction is automatic, it will not, and a new and more beneficial response can be employed. When this occurs and the person chooses a new and more beneficial response, much against the inner urge to react their normal way, the person would have moved out of their current comfort zone…..and this is called ‘growth’.

To succeed in anything in life you must grow!

To your success

Dean Whittingham

The complete step by step guide to Reprogramming your Mind for Success

So what is the subconcious and what do we mean by association? Lets look at it like this. Our mind is made up of millions and millions of highways called Neural Pathways. These neural pathways join parts of the brain that associate certain memories to stimulus to form a picture or idea. Basically, we use our senses to pick up and read an event. This information is then sent to the brain to be processed and reaches our subconcious via these neural paths. We then respond in a certain way and it is mapped and recorded, should the occurrence ever happen again. Can you see where we are heading with this…

Over time, the more you act, think, and speak in a certain way, the more you strengthen the very neural pathways that fire this behaviour, to the point where you can do it unconsciously. This is the same as forming a habit. Habits are automatic behaviours that occur due to very strong neural pathways.
Every second of our existence, our subconscious processes, facilitates and creates between 10 billion-400 billion actions (neural transmissions). It also controls between 96-98% of our perception and behaviour. What was once thought a waste of space (i.e. the myth that we only use a small amount of our brain) is in fact our control center and is the most important part of us.

However, the thing about the subconscious mind is that it cannot tell the difference between what is true and what is not. It simply does what it is told.  This is where your conscious comes in to play.
Put simply:

Your conscious mind has a job. Its job is to tell the subconscious mind what to do. The role of your subconscious mind is to do what it is instructed. This could be from either conscious thought or external influences.

However, there is a very important point to be aware of and it’s this….

The subconcious mind CANNOT destinguish between right and wrong or good and bad. For example, if you keep saying to yourself, ‘I’m not going to smoke while I’m at work‘, then all the subconscious mind hears is ‘ smoke while at work’. Your body will then automatically retreat to it’s comfort zone and make it harder for you to quit smoking at work.

Once you recognize this pertinent point you can actually start to use it to your advantage. We will talk about this some more later, but for now, just listen to the way that you talk to yourself in your mind. These simple conversations can have a dramatic effect on the results that you are achieving.

Yours sincerely,

Stuart Ginbey