Why We're All Programmed To Get Stuck
My approach can be summed up with this simple statement: “Without making regular deposits into your bank account, you would see the effects on your account balance.”
Right?
Well, if you’re not making regular deposits into your mind, then your team and your organizations' goals also suffer. And you’ll notice it in your wealth balance. But I’m not just talking about money here.
I’m talking about:
My passion for personal development is underlined by this fundamental approach.
I’ve enjoyed a prosperous and rewarding career as a Chartered Engineer in leadership roles at the highest level of the profession in leading global companies.
However, this is a stark contrast to my life prior to university. I was at best a C grade player and not achieving my potential until I went through a painful and emotional experience during my first year at university.
This had a profound and deep impact on my life that completely changed my perspective and my belief system, but which unexpectedly unlocked my potential.
I became one of the best students, graduated with honors and enjoyed a decade of achievement.
This transformation came from within and was reflected in my external results. But only once I began to study personal development as a subject did I specifically understand what happened to me in the past.
This led me on a journey that eventually brought me to Bob Proctor, a world-renowned speaker, motivational coach, and best-selling author. And when I studied Bob Proctor’s thought leadership it resonated with me on such a deep level I found answers to questions I’d been asking myself since university.
You Beyond Possible
Now I have decided to pursue my passion by helping others the same way, by using the mind as a medium.
This is an area that is commonly neglected because we don't really have an idea of what our minds look like or how they work. We actually use the mind to get results we don't want. We get stuck.
My programme of change, summed up as You Beyond Possible, promotes individual and corporate growth that makes a meaningful difference to individual’s lives.
It encourages positive growth in your life by re-wiring your mindset to impact your performance, your behavior, and your habits. This ultimately leads to the results you want.
A quote that has had a profound impact on my understanding of what success means is this one from author Jim Rohn:
“Your level of success rarely exceeds your level of personal development. Success is something you attract by the person you become.”
Just think about this for a moment. This changes your perception of success, even of who you are.
Success is not what you attain, it is a result of who you are. In order to succeed, first, ou must work on you.
Think about the structure of a tree. The roots have to grow deeper and stronger if the tree is to rise higher and higher above the ground. When a tree wants to expand and grow, a root is activated to provide for more water, nourishment, and stability.
A new branch
We often talk about a person ‘branching out’: doing something new. But if you want to create a new branch for yourself, you need deep roots. New roots. Roots representing who you are as a person.
To enjoy more results in life and put out new branches, we need strong roots first, without which the tree will fall down.
Most people think they know who they are, but often they don’t.
When talking about themselves, the majority of people will think about their name, their physical body, and their brain. But none of that tells you who you are as it doesn't tell you anything about why you behave the way you do.
We must understand that the mind controls the body. The body is only an instrument of the mind and does exactly what the mind tells it to do. Therefore, who you are is about how you've been programmed.
Programming comes in many forms: we’ve been programmed both genetically and environmentally, which is why we share many of the same characteristics as our relatives. However, environmental conditioning is more powerful than hereditary conditioning because it wires us at a deep, organic and subconscious level.
The difference between one person and another is how the brain has been programmed and conditioned. This can be compared to the software in your computer. No matter how powerful the hardware, without the right software, you cannot outperform the software’s programming. Likewise, take our magnificent mind, which has infinite potential.
Yet our beliefs, ideology, who we are, our personality and conditioning sometimes create a mental prison of our own making. We ourselves become an obstruction to our limitless possibilities, yet we are unconscious of it because we do not understand the way the mind works.
We are just not using our mind the way it’s been designed, or to its full potential. Therefore we start to live from the outside-in and let conditions, circumstances, events, and people dictate our thoughts.
So, why we are all programmed to get stuck?
No one teaches the skill of thinking, yet thinking is a skill just like playing the piano.
There are people who are getting results they do not want and do not know how to get out of. This is common amongst many people. I am going to share one of the most significant ideas Bob Proctor has ever come across in his 59 years in the profession.
We all think in images, so think of your mind and body as a picture in which the mind is larger than the body. The body is an instrument of the mind and the mind itself is divided in two parts by a psychic barrier:
1) the conscious mind
2) the subconscious mind
The five senses feed information into our conscious mind from the outside world. Today’s world bombards us with information 24/7. You have to ask if that information is constructive and positive.
But what’s that got to do with results? It is our thoughts and feelings, often expressed automatically through our behavior and actions, which in turn brings us results.
Our thoughts and ideas in our conscious mind are impressed into our subconscious mind, which causes a feeling through our emotional involvement with that thought or idea. This then automatically causes you to act and behave in alignment with those thoughts and feelings. Otherwise, people wouldn't act that way.
When individuals go after goals, many of us have worry and doubt on a conscious level because they are doing something they've probably never done before. Those feelings are being impressed by our subconscious mind. It is just a matter of not knowing, so when you don't know something you start to worry and start to doubt yourself and doubt your ability to get results. You doubt what you’re doing.
That gets translated into fear on a subconscious level that leads to anxiety and stress in the body. This is a natural reaction when change, unpredictability, and unawareness is involved.
This is due to the limbic system of the brain, which has an evolutionary history going back many millions of years compared to other parts of the brain. When survival was relative to stability and predictability we needed this sense of instinctive thinking. Unfortunately, this doesn't help us now because those survival threats aren’t present, yet we still think that way when change and doing something different is involved.
When we are focused on current results and living from the outside-in, what happens is results drive thoughts, feelings and ultimately actions. But this chain feeds poor information into our decision-making process and becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. We let results, conditions, circumstances, events, and people affect and dictate our thoughts in a goal destructive manner, which affects our feelings, which affects our actions and those actions give us the same results because we are looking at the results with the same thoughts and feelings that gave us those same results. This what is referred to as the report card syndrome, or the bank account syndrome. We let current results affect thinking, whereby in order to expect different results you need different actions.
To get different results, you need to start with a new train of thought.
New actions require new feelings which are an expression of thought. Therefore, the primary cause of all results is what you’re thinking.
I mentioned at the start of this article that I was a poor student because I let results affect my thinking. Once I applied myself constructively, the new thinking invoked new feelings and belief and hence new actions and new results. My belief in myself was not wishful thinking, but a conviction that I could and would do it. This then directed me towards my goals. As my results started to change through my thoughts and feelings, I started to believe in myself more and more, and new thoughts and ideas flourished.
If you are getting results you don't like and keep getting them, then you are focusing too much energy on the results and not enough on changing the inputs. How can you expect different results with the same thoughts that created them?
As Albert Einstein said: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
What to do, then?
It’s simple, but not easy. And it takes hard work.
To get new results, you need to originate new thoughts.
You must focus on the positive without any thought to your current conditions. Those new thoughts will invoke new feelings and hence new actions that will lead to new results.
Take the results as a feedback loop. Then iterate and originate new and improved thoughts.
That is real thinking. You are then living from the inside-out.
For most people, thinking has been developed as a by-product of studying. Ask yourself, how did your school teach you to think? You have to take energy and thinking from the infinite intelligence and create new ideas in your mind first to come up with new thoughts.
Put yourself in the same vibration as your goal to get inspired.
As a coaching consultant, my twin goals are:
1. To get you to understand who you really are and how you’ve been mentally programmed.
2. To get you to take ownership of your own mind.
We live in a world where we are subservient to the mind, which feeds information from the outside that can be negative. The need of the hour is for people to master their mind and channel their power and energy in a constructive manner.
You can have more in life when you become more than who you are now. The major key to a better future is you.
Your life is being run on a programme. So change the programme.
