When it comes to success we’ve covered 10 previous essentials for its accomplishment:
- Desire (knowing what you want)
- Faith (believing you can get it)
- Autosuggestion (rote learning or repetition)
- Specialized Knowledge (being or becoming an expert in what you want to be successful at)
- Imagination (your higher faculty that creates new ideas)
- Organized Planning (the ability to convert these new ideas into activity)
- Decision – being able to initiate these plans
- Persistence (the quality of being patient and being able to carry through your plans)
- The Master Mind – getting input from others who co-operate and assist you with your goals.
- Sex Energy Transmutation or sublimation (diversion of physical energy into activity that creates success)
The 11th Essential For Success is to be able to control and program the Subconscious Mind.
Pierre Janet (left) and Sigmund Freud (right)
The ‘subconscious’ mind was first described by the French psychologist Pierre Janet in the 1880’s, and further expanded upon by Sigmund Freud in 1893. He defined it as the associations and impulses that are not accessible to consciousness.
What we know of the subconscious thus reflects well over 130 years of progress during that time. We know that of all mental activity, only 4% of it is conscious. The rest is unconscious.
For instance, we know that we can ‘talk’ to your subconscious to make it do something.
People say affirmations each day such as
‘I am happy and grateful I now have $1 million in my bank account.’
The subconscious mind represents our hidden desires and also affects our conscious behavior. Saying an affirmation regularly directs our subconscious mind to create behaviors that are required to get us what we want.
The theory behind such techniques as hypnosis, subliminal messaging and NLP rests on their ability to open up the subconscious mind to suggestion and modification. In hypnosis, for instance, your conscious state is moved to a state of fixed attention that makes it more ‘suggestible.’ Often it is claimed that we have a ‘gatekeeper’ that is our ‘mini-me’ or the ‘little voice’. Techniques like hypnosis are claimed to bypass the gatekeeper and go straight to the subconscious mind.
The current thinking behind this, is that the subconscious mind does not make any judgement about the thoughts supplied to it. In other words, it follows the ‘GIGO’ principle – ‘Garbage In, Garbage Out.’
If we consistently think (consciously) negative thoughts, we will inevitably experience negative outcomes. And vice versa.
So if you want to feel happy, consciously think happy thoughts. Focus on the positive and you will experience the positive.
You can also affect your experience of outcomes that you didn’t want. For instance if you tried a certain procedure that didn’t work, then you can ‘reframe’ it by asking yourself ‘what did I learn from this experience?’ Given that most people regard learning a positive experience, see how we just flipped from negative to positive!
As Earl Nightingale said:
“Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality.”