That’s the way of the world; life’s achievers allow positive reasons why ‘they can’ to flood their consciousness, and drown out negative reasons why they can’t.
This attitude to studying is paramount for the student. To successfully complete a training program, an optimistic mindset is the biggest tool in a trainee’s workbox. A positive approach brings about all sorts of possibilities, circumstances, answers and opportunities to achieve. By contrast, a pessimistic outlook blocks our learning receptors and thwarts creativity .
This is because of our Reticular Activation System – a mechanism that automatically tells our brain what to focus on. Over our lives, we’ve experienced a huge number things that no longer remain in the forefront of our minds – the majority of what we’ve learned moves from our conscious mind to our sub-conscious mind, a kind of cupboard that stores all our past beliefs and knowledge.
When we attempt to do something consciously, our Reticular Activation System (RAS) will go through our sub-conscious mind for any associated information it holds, and bring it into focus. As we’re walking down a road, we’re made aware only of things that are relevant to us – anything else is just background noise.
So if our conscious mind has regularly been transferring upbeat, positive messages to our sub-conscious mind, then that’s what will come back. But if our sub-conscious has been fed a bunch of downbeat, defeatist messages, then that’s equally what will come back.
It appears that achievers can manipulate the messages going through to their sub-conscious minds by deliberately programming their RAS, and selecting the exact messages the conscious mind transfers. For achieving goals this makes it an essential tool, because the sub-conscious mind can’t distinguish between real or imaginary events.
In other words, as it believes what it’s told, we need to create a very specific picture of our goal in our conscious mind. The RAS will then pass this on to our subconscious – which will then help us achieve the goal. It does this by bringing to our attention all the relevant information which otherwise might have remained as ‘background noise’.
The writer Napoleon Hill said that we can achieve any realistic goal if we keep focusing on that goal, and stop dwelling on any negative thoughts about it. Obviously, if we keep thinking that we can’t hit a goal, our subconscious will help us not to achieve it.
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