What do you want?

We live in a world of possibilities but something in our minds may stop us from reaching them- the negative thinking we can all indulge in that can change our behaviour and our emotions and our outcomes.

Our unconscious mind is the storehouse of all our memories, emotions, habits and imagination. The use and misuse of our imagination can have the most powerful impact on what happens to us. Think for example of a placebo. We know it works. Numerous studies have proved that when a useless sugar pill or whatever was administered as a placebo, it can effect a cure or relieve some quite severe symptoms or illnesses. How do we do that? The imagination and the belief come together to determine our outcome.

And of course it can work in a negative way too and bring us to our knees. Highly depressed people have great imaginations and use that repeatedly to create their black clouds. When we think negatively, we create negative consequences in our lives and if we want to change, we have to do something different. We have to get clear about what it is that we want and then to create an internal representation of that thing. Not what we don’t want or we will get more of that. You can’t not think about what you don’t want to think about! For example “I don’t want to feel afraid” or “I don’t want to feel anxious” invite in the very thing we think we don’t want to happen.

So is the answer to start thinking positively? Do positive affirmations work? There are different schools of thought about this, that on the one hand they don’t work if we are doing them consciously and we have to do something different with them, and on the other hand that we have to become very focussed and repetitive with our affirmations for them to work. I will look at this in another blog.

For now know that it works much better to be very SMART about what we want.
S Specific and very clear about the who, what, when, why, how of our goals

M Meaningful – We have to know why we want it; what its going to do for us. Having a bag of money is all fine and dandy but what is the purpose behind this desire? We have to think beyond the goal and have a vision of what it’s going to do for us.

A As if NOW. Think of successfully achieving the goal Now. The HOW comes later

R Responsible (not Realistic-that just can cripple us and limit our thinking) However we do have to take personal responsibility – its not our granny, our husbands, the system, the economy. The great thing about taking responsibility is that if things do go wrong, you also do have the capacity to take action to change things and that’s very empowering.

T Timed. When you set your goal the unconscious mind says “Great. Let me know when you want to start!” The unconscious mind takes everything literally so for example if you ask for more money in the future, a penny more than you’ve got now 10 years away is a wish fulfilled.

“Describing your vision should make you excited and proud. What does yours look like?” Loral Langemeier