Self-Sabotage or Self-Preservation?

There is an interesting phenomenon that occurs with many people who decide to “change” their life for the better. They commit very deeply to the process of change – truly believing they will do what ever it takes to make the change become permanent. But just as they are about to “break through” to the next level, they disengage from the process and go back to their old self.

Why is this? Why do they pull-back from change just as things are getting good?

Is it because they changed their minds and don't really believe in their goals anymore? Or because they don't think the process is working for them?

I don't think so!

Even though they may say and "feel" both of these things, I don't believe it to be true. In fact, I think that just the opposite is true. And the longer I coach, the more I see it happen.

You see, up until the point of backing down, most people actively participate in the change process at a conscious level. They make real decisions to be who they want to be. And they are very motivated.

Unfortunately though, change in the early stages isn't permanent - it's just surface changes. Real change takes time and requires a deeper commitment. It requires changing habit patterns which are subconscious thoughts - and these are not as easily changed.

Sure, they get close to making a real difference long term, but they never carry through because of an incredible strong drive to quit and / or destroy everything they've worked for up to this point. And it feels the longer they fight it, the stronger the feeling grows.

It is precisely at this point that most people quit and go back to who they have always been – back to what feels comfortable every day. It is really a shame, because just as the pull becomes strongest is the precise time that you have to find a way to push through – at a conscious level – because your gut (your inner voice) is doing everything it can to hold you back – to keep you from taking that next step.

And it is doing so more out of self-preservation than anything else!

The very survival of everything you have counted on as “truth” depends on you not going any further. In the next couple steps you take, you will begin to see a new truth. Each step is a challenge to what you have always known and will redefine your world image. Your subconscious knows that you are on the verge of breaking free from your comfort zone as it is right now – and reaching a new plateau in your life. And this plateau in your life will leave the past as simply that – your past.

Up until this breakthrough, the tug of your old self grows with each passing day – until you feel like you can't go another step. Do not succumb to these tugs and go back to their comfortable life. If and when you have the strength to step through that invisible barrier, that is your comfort zone, you will no longer feel that ever-increasing tug. You will find a new freedom and drive to keep moving forward.

Don't get me wrong, you will still feel the tug of your old self. But after breakthrough, with each passing day, the tug will get weaker – and your new path will gain strength. The new you will begin to take shape.

It's not that you forget who you were, it's simply that you begin to see yourself as something new – as something re-defined.

So here, if anywhere, is where you need to find someone to support your journey – to encourage you to keep moving forward – to help you find what lies outside your comfort zone.

Sadly, too often, you can't count on your family or your friends of old on this journey. It's not because they don't love and support you or because they don't want what's best for you. Instead, the problem with those who love you so dearly is that from where they stand (usually inside your comfort zone), the pain you will endure is being caused by your efforts to change, not by the struggle to break from your old habits. They want to you be who they have always know you to be, more so than who you can be.

Many people call this process self-sabotage. Honestly, I think the name is wrong. It's not sabotage at all, it's actually self-preservation. To see it as “against” you is, in my opinion, looking at it from the wrong perspective. And this perspective actually makes it more difficult to overcome. Conversely, when you see it as an attempt of preservation of the old you, it is actually easier to step through and overcome.

It's not you trying to sabotage your dreams – it's you trying to save the only YOU that you ever known – the YOU that you've always been.

Here is the simple truth - "You will always be you." And instead of leaving the old you behind, you will add to it. You will learn new things, new tricks and gain new experiences.

As I said in one of my earliest blogs, Be Willing To Give Up Everything To Get What You Want, you have to willing to give up what you currently have in order to create or get what you want. And now you can see, more than anything else, what you have to be willing to give up is what previously defined YOU – and allow something new to grow and become who you are.

Ask Yourself 'Why am I doing this?' - The Secret to Over Coming Self-Sabotage

If we do what we've always done, then we will get what we've always gotten.

Is that what you want - to continue to have what you have right now?

Are you happy with where you are?

Would you like something better?

Do you keep trying to do something different and somehow sabotage yourself every time - long before you ever get it?

Truth is, we rarely question our actions - consciously. We do what we do, because that's what we do - or have always done. You woke up this morning most likely at the time you woke up yesterday morning. You went downstairs, had a cup of coffee, maybe a cigarette, and countless other habits - because you did them yesterday . . . and the day before . . . and the day before that.

That's what a habit is.

So let me ask you, "Why are you doing these things?"

Do you want to?

Do you mean to?

Are these things helping you reach your goals?

If the answer is yes - then keep doing them. And don't sweat it.

But if you don't know why you are doing them, except to just do them, then I challenge you to stop doing them . . . and start doing something that will help you achieve your goals.

Every client I work with, before we do anything else, I ask them to sit down and figure out what they want - what they want for their business as well as their personal life - to include taking care of themselves and those that they care most about. It is a struggle sometimes, but most pick it up eventually and actually begin to embrace the idea that they can create the life they choose.

That's the easy part.

Next I ask them to start looking at what they do each and every day, and figure out how those things either directly or indirectly contribute to their goals - to their happiness or what ever it is they want from their life. This can be tough, but once you do it a couple times, you begin to look at everything you do, a little bit differently.

Now, it's not to say that you can't or shouldn't do things that have no purpose or that can't be tied to a goal. In fact quite the opposite is true. It's always nice to have some things that you just do . . . because.

However, most people have unconscious goals - goals that are driving their actions each and every day "unconsciously". The idea here is to help you figure out what you are doing and why you are doing it so that you may actually begin to control it at a conscious level and start living the life you want - as opposed to the life that just seems to be happening to you.

Literally, I ask my clients to think about their actions - before they do them. I don't ask them because I think they should change what they are doing - that is their choice. I do, however, ask them so they can choose behaviors (or not) that will result in the life that they say they want consciously instead of always doing what they've always done and continuing to get what they have always gotten - unconsciously. It is about starting to figure out how and why each of their actions are either taking them closer to or further from their goals.

For example, if one of your goals (life time goals) is to show your wife how much you love her, then it's very easy to see a direct correlation between buying her flowers and taking her out to dinner to that goal.

But what if you don't have a goal to make sure she knows how much you love her? What if you are just buying the flowers for the sake of buying the flowers? Or what if you are dong it to make up for a fight that you had with her last night?

"Why" doesn't matter! I don't care why you do things. However "understanding why" you are doing things does matter! And the difference is profound.

"Understanding Why" matters because it isn't until you understand why you take actions, that will be able to take control of the action and change it into something better - to help you achieve your goal faster . . . more efficiently . . . or more effectively.

Think about it. . . spend some time today, tomorrow, and the next day and think about what it is that you are doing, and why you are doing it.

Are you doing it for no reason? If so, then ask yourself, "Why do I keep wasting my time and energy on this?"

Are you doing it to achieve a conscious goal - a goal that you are fully aware of? Great. That's what you want! And then ask yourself, "Is this the best way to work towards achieving my goal, or is there something else I could be doing?"

Or are you doing it to achieve an unconscious goal, like maintaining the "status quo" - a goal that you really don't want but it has always been what you did so you keep on doing it? If so, then ask yourself, "Is there any reason that I can't give this up - it isn't helping me achieve what I really want?"

In these questions are the answers to taking control of your future and over coming self-sabotage. They questions may feel simple . . . but the answers may be more difficult to face than you think.

The Power Of Your Subconscious Mind, Part III

In the past two days, I have been discussing the Power of the Subconscious Mind – both from a stand point of understanding what it does and doesn't do for you as well as explain how it does it. Today, I will close the three part series with a couple examples of how others leverage this power and how you can as well.

There are many ways to leverage the power of the subconscious mind, but I'm going to discuss two very specific ones, and give some examples of how these tools are helping people all over the world - right now. And I will show you can use them yourself in your everyday life. The two methods are Briefing and Visualizing.

My background, as you may or may not know, is in Naval Aviation. For nearly 20 years, I flew FA-18s for the US Navy. This is a dangerous community, that unfortunately has written most of its "lessons learned" in the blood of lost Aviators. But it's also a community that does everything it can to prevent making the same mistakes more than once. It is for that reason that Naval Aviation began to formalize it's Briefing process to help Aviators prepare for missions and minimize the tragedies that were so costly in the early years of Carrier Aviation.

The Brief has two purposes. The first, not as relevant to this discussion, is to assign responsibilities during the flight and to make sure everyone knows what they are supposed to do when. The second, which is directly related to this discussion is to cue the memories of the pilots and flight officers of what they are going to do, before they are put into the position of having to do it.

Each flight, pilots, whether flying alone or with others, review everything they expect to encounter on the forthcoming flight from standard checklists to emergency situations that they are most likely to encounter during the flight.

Specifically, there is one Immediate Action Emergencies (as we called them – because the procedures had to memorized verbatim) that comes to mind. It is our “Settle Off The Catapult Procedures” - what you do if you get to the end of the catapult shot off the front of the carrier and you don't have enough speed to actually go flying safely. These procedures are probably the most time critical procedures that any pilot must learn, because reaction time for survival is often seconds at most (and often tenths of seconds in the worst cases).

*** Click here to watch a quick video showing these dangers. ***

If the situation occurs that the pilot must go through these procedures, there is little time to figure out what to do, it is pure reaction. And it often requires responses faster than you have time to consciously process – literally, you must rely on your subconscious inputs. As such, every flight, that launches from the carrier, briefs these procedures so that they are refreshed into the forefront of the Pilot's subconscious mind. This has been proven time and again to save lives by ensuring the pilot's subconscious mind is prepared to draw from the right procedures very quickly.

In fact, I know many pilots (including myself when I flew) that would make sure to go through the procedures one last time while taxiing into position just before all night catapult shots. They would literally touch gently each button or handle that is part of the procedure – so as not to forget EXACTLY where they are – cuing there mind one last time. And it works!

Briefing and mentally preparing works because your subconscious mind has prepared itself for likely situations it will face. So where else, besides aviation, is this technique used?

Just about everywhere you see consistent success.

Most often people do it somewhat informally – and they see good results. But if they were to just start formalizing the practice, they would generate considerably better results in every endeavor of their lives.

For example, game preparation for any sporting event is about going over the game plan and the plays that you expect to use – and how the opponent may react. It involves reviewing in your mind what you are going to do, when, and how - thinking through at some level all the differing problems you might face and what actions you would like to take when they happen.

It's important to note, that this is in no way a guarantee that you take the planned actions. You may choose to do something different, real time, given the situation. But by briefing all contingencies, you have a higher probability of success.

Additionally, you see this in business teams (as well as individual efforts). As an example, think about Sales Teams. The Sales Team that briefs how they are going to follow their system before making calls (cold or hot) is prepared for all contingencies. They will be more prepared to handle each situation that the perspective customer could throw at them – even before they encounter it, because the response will be “top of mind” for them. This improves consistency and reduces individual errors. And these teams that brief are far more likely to make their target goals, as they are able to recognize resistance from the customer quicker, often responding to it, even before the customers feels it consciously themselves.

And there is no reason that it can't apply to everyone on a personal level as well. No matter what your daily activities involve, you can better prepare yourself to handle the situations, at a much higher level of success, simply by reviewing what you are going to do and how you are going to do it, minutes or hours before hand.

The other technique that I wanted to discuss was visualization – visualization of both short term desire and long term goals.

Although, you can use visualization techniques during briefing, what I'm referring to goes a bit further than just leveraging the power of visualization in preparation for a planned situation. The visualization I'm referring to is about first creating what you desire in your mind – and then creating it in the real world.

Truth is, before anything can be created in reality, it must first be an idea or thought in your mind. And when you create a new idea or desire a new outcome, you subconscious mind looks at this as a problem to be solved – which it LOVES to do.

Whether it is a short term desired outcome or a long term goal, it will go through the same process. First it will look through file structure already in your mind - the solutions from your past. But in the absence of a good solution, it will begin to rapidly blend pre-existing solutions, as well as look for external (outside) opportunities to try to come up with a solution. The stronger your visualization of the desired outcome, the higher the probability of it finding a solution that will solve the problem.

In the case of visualizing short term solutions, you are most often tapping into your own ability to create a solution from internal blends of pre-existing solutions. This is often called “thinking on your feet” – coming up with creative blends of situations that you may or not have seen in the past. And because the subconscious can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy, it may create solutions then blend your own experiences with those that you have read about or even dreamed of. Some are better than others at this. But not because they are better thinkers or more creative. Instead people who are better at "thinking on their feet" tend to be those that have a larger database of solutions to pull from – based on their past. And that requires prep work - practice.

As an example, in golf, one of my favorite sports, Phil Mickelson is the master at this. No one is more creative in coming up with “off the wall” shots to save a horrible lie. As you watch him, it almost seems like he is inventing the shots as he goes. But as it turns out, that's not the case. I've seen him in interviews discuss how he tries hundreds of different types of shots in practice because he knows he's going to find himself in weird situation during a tournament.

So when Phil Mickelson has a horrible lie and can't see the hole that he is aiming for because of a big tree in his way, he stops, visualizes what he wants to do and leaves the rest to his subconscious mind to come up with a solution. Does he know this is happening? Probably not, but that doesn't matter. It happens because that's the way our mind works. He sees the shot he wants to make and his subconscious mind retrieves the method he used to do it in practice. Then it's all “muscle memory” that puts the shot in place.

Visualization of long term goals is a little different.

I'm guessing you've heard ideas about the Law of Attraction or “asking the Universe” for what you want as taught through the Teachings of Abraham and The Secret. The concepts are that if you simply think about what you want, and ask the universe, the energy of the thoughts alone will attract to your your desires and actually turn them into reality. In one way, I believe in these ideas, but not because of some cosmic energy creates it. Instead I believe it is YOU that creates the solution – your subconscious mind – not an external force over which you have no direct control.

When you “visualize” a problem for your subconscious mind that it cannot solve immediately, it doesn't quit looking - it continues to look for answers until you direct it elsewhere. If there are no answers within your memories to the solution, you subconscious mind tries to find a solution outside externally. It listens more intently, watches your surroundings closer, and does what it can to manipulate your thoughts to attract you to situations that it believes will most likely provide answers.

Let's say you are looking to surround yourself with people who are truly happy. As long as you can visualize that happiness in a powerful way and do so again and again, your subconscious mind will feed your conscious mind with thousands of thoughts steering you away from negativity in others and towards people that bring happiness to you. Its not that these people magically come into your life – they are going about their own life, seeking the things they are seeking. What has happened is that your subconscious mind has gone through all your existing patterns and steered you towards taking actions that will increase the likelihood of you meeting and engaging with these positive people.

And you recognize these happy people easier – because your sense are tuned to their presence. As opposed to the presence of negativity. You subconscious mind doesn't create their happiness nor does the universe bring them to you. Instead, you change your habits (as controlled by your subconscious) to give you a better chance of meeting these people and building a relationship with them.

The same thing can happen with wealth. If there is a specific goal that you want to create - and you commit to that goal as a priority - your subconscious mind will first look for a solution internal to your past experiences. But in the absence of a solution, it will look elsewhere - external to your own memories and experiences. It will lead you down new paths - meeting new people, reading new books, and living new experiences - all of which it thinks will supply you with the solution.

What is the difference between believing it is your subconscious mind is creating your world and some powerful universal force? Simple – in one situation, you are at the will of some outside (external force), giving you an excuse when it fails. And the other is completely controlled by you and you alone. And you have no excuses any more - for the situation you are in.

Bottomline, the power to create your world is within YOU not with some outside force. But in order to create the world you want, you can't just continue to do what you have always done, you must to accept that you do have the power and learn how to leverage it.

You must learn how to leverage the Power of Your Subconscious Mind!

The Power Of Your Subconscious Mind, Part II

The power of the human experience is truly limitless – and I believe the key to that power rests in the ability to unlock and leverage the energies and capabilities of the subconscious mind. In Part I of this three part series, I endeavored to explain what the subconscious mind does and how it interacts with our conscious thoughts. And in this part, Part II, I intend to further expand on the ability of the subconscious mind by discussing how it can be distracted and let you down during times that you need it most, how you can leverage the power of your existing file structures and finally how you can start to change your patterns of thinking and begin to take control of your subconscious mind.

First, let's talk about the why and how the subconscious mind can be distracted and let you down in times that you often need it the most. As I discussed in first part of this series, the subconscious mind is constantly absorbing information from all around you – through your senses that you are both focusing attention on and the ones that you aren't. It is recording all the information in your memory – including that which you aren't even consciously aware of. It does this constantly. But that's not all it is doing.

Another major task that your subconscious mind is constantly working on is to find solutions to the problems that you have in your life. It is constantly going through its existing file structure (using the computer analogy) again, looking for the answers to questions that you have posed to it. Some of these questions have simple answers, but some are much more complex.

How many times has a name, date, or other significant thought suddenly popped into your head minutes or even hours after you tried remembering the fact – even when you weren't consciously thinking of the question? Believe it or not, this is your subconscious mind diligently going through all of the files in your brain looking for the answer. The more recently the file had been accessed, the easier it is to find.

These efforts to find solutions to your problems would seem to be a very good thing (and it is very useful), but it can be costly as well.

You see, even though, your subconscious mind is very powerful, capable of handling, storing and retrieving, millions of bits of data, it does have it's limitations. The more you burden your subconscious mind with difficult problems to solve, the less processor time it has to spend on some of its normal, every day work – absorbing and analyzing incoming data from the senses, and feeding insight and recommendations to the conscious mind given its comparison of current situations to past circumstances of your life. Literally, the processor is overloaded and like your computer it will slow down and even lock-up.

How does this affect you? Believe it or not, the impact could be dramatic. As an example, during the car accident rates for normally safe driving adults spike during time periods around a divorce (plus or minus 6 months). And the reason is simple.

During a divorce, we are experiencing more complex and unique problems than we have ever faced before. This causes the subconscious mind to work overtime to try to solve these very complex problems (day and night). As it is spending so much “processor time” trying to solve your marital problems as well as find ways of binning all the new information that is coming in, it is not supporting your daily life activities by monitoring your surroundings through the senses that you aren't paying attention to. So when your conscious mind is distracted by a ringing telephone, a song that comes on the radio, or the driver that just cut you off, the normal support you get from your subconscious mind isn't there, and your likelihood of an accident goes up dramatically.

Now, before you panic about the “low level stress” (as I like to call it) that distracts your subconscious mind from supporting you in your daily activities, please note there is something you can do about it. First, be aware of the “stress” in your life. The fights that you are having with love ones, the bills that aren't getting paid, a love one that is terribly ill or has recently passed away and anything else that would normally keep you up at night are all things that will distract your subconscious mind. And when you see them beginning to develop, stop. Assess your life and simply be aware. Take your time with your daily activities – noting that your best will be slightly compromised on these days. And the more these things are bothering you, the more pronounced your decreased performance will be.

Some have a skill called “compartmentalizing”. This is where you can separate circumstances from one part of your life from affecting another – so as to not allow them to interfere with each other. An example is a fight at home that you manage to leave at home to as to not allow it to interfere with your job performance. This is a very powerful skill, but it primarily focuses around conscious thought – and has only limited control over the subconscious mind. The key is noting that when these things occur, you may not be at your best, unless you take some actions to do something about it. We will talk about this more in tomorrow's Part III of the blog.

Now that I've discussed one of the dangers of the depending on the subconscious mind, let's talk about how to leverage the power of the existing file structures that lie within your subconscious mind.

Just about everything in your life has been recorded in the annals of your mind – including many things that you weren't even aware of at the time. These things can be leveraged to help you perform at peaks levels in every aspect of your life.

You see, as I stated yesterday, your subconscious mind is believed to work 1000-3000 times faster than your conscious mind. It is analyzing your existing conditions and comparing them to past situations (your old files) to find the best response to every situation you find yourself in.

So, the question is, how can you leverage your subconscious mind to become the best you can be?

Well, it is believed the best way to do this is to actually “cue” up the files you want your subconscious mind to access, before you need them and make sure that it is pulling from experiences and ideas that will benefit you when you need them rather than those that will harm you.

But how do you do that? Even though it sounds quite complex, it's actually quite simple. You access the files right before you need them, so that they are “top of mind” when a situation that is going to require them comes up. This is the essence of “visualization”.

Frankly, as good as the subconscious mind is at accepting inputs from the five senses, it has no way of telling the difference between reality and fantasy. Whether you are watching a movie, dreaming, or living your life, it tends to take in those events and bin them the same. As your subconscious mind experiences each of these situations, it stores the memories in the files that they relate to, based on your existing file structure – which is why every one experiences things and remembers them just a little bit differently – they are stored in ways that match the individuals personal experience.

Now in a stressful event, or just going through every day life for that matter, your subconscious mind will usually look first in the file folders that have been most recently accessed to compare your current situation to and to find solutions to problems that arise. This occurs, even when there may be a better file to assist you in the situation. So, although you can't directly control what files your subconscious pulls from, you can increase the likelihood that it will pull from the files that will increase your success.

You can actually see a great example of this in Football (and in all sports for that matter). By watching hours and hours of tapes on their opponents, players and coaches can actually begin to program their subconscious mind to see how their opposition will most likely respond given certain situations. And if done properly, the players can actually increase the likelihood that their subconscious mind will notice a given formation and play before the conscious mind will even see it. This gives the player the feeling that they are inside the mind of their opponent – literally seeing their moves before they make them – at an unconscious level. And I know you've heard the term, “He's unconscious.” when referring to a player that is playing at a level far and above normal skill level.

So the key hear is making sure the information you want to access is “top of mind” for the subconscious mind to draw from before the event occurs. There are many ways to accomplish this goal, but the most common being visualization techniques, briefing, and even “warming up” before the event.

They all work, but what is most important is that you find one that works for you – and that you use it.

Finally, in Part II of this blog, I want to discuss, at least at a cursory level how to begin to take control of your subconscious mind and shape it to assist you even more to achieve your desired goals.

You've heard people say that if you want to change a habit, it takes 21 days of consistent practice. The time frame is arguable, but the concept is absolutely true – if you want to change the way your subconscious mind supports and controls your life, you have to create new file folders from which it will draw information and feed it to your mind.

As I said before, our subconscious mind loves repetition. In fact, it tries to bin everything that comes in to your mind into pre-existing file folders. Partly, because it's the easiest thing to do, and partly because it knows that you conscious mind is quite random – always chasing new ideas and new fads.

Over time it has seen thousands of new ideas come in. And nearly everyone of those ideas has died on the vine – eventually forgotten before it really gained any ground. Your subconscious knows that if it kept a file folder for everyone of those ideas, it would make it VERY hard to find the files that it really needed in a timely fashion – just as you have trouble finding files on your computer if you don't manage your file folders in an organized fashion.

This means that if you want to create a new way of thinking, and generate support from your subconscious mind to help you perpetuate that thought process, you have to be both focused and diligent. You have to do everything you can, every day, to make sure that you are emphasizing this new way of thinking and drive these thoughts repeatedly into your subconscious.

For example, if you have new goals that you want to create – read them out loud, so that you are using your sight, your speech, and your listening all at the same time – and do this at least once a day. For the first couple of days, they feel powerful to your conscious mind, but not so much to the subconscious. Mostly because the subconscious doesn't know what to make of them – they don't really fit into your existing model of thinking. But over time, you start to make a dent into the way the subconscious views these goals – it starts to look that them as real problems that need to be solved. And instead of trying to bin them in already existing file folders, it tries to figure out a “new way” to resolve the situation.

It is at this moment, that you have your first level of break though into making these goals a reality. Precisely when your subconscious recognizes that there are no old paradigms or methods of solving / binning these goals, it begins to look at the problems differently – it begins to seek new solutions. And it creates new file folders that it can access regularly to solve this and other problems like it.

And finally, as this occurs, you are unleashing the most powerful tool in our personal arsenal – your subconscious mind.

Tomorrow, in the final part of this blog series, I will give you some powerful tools that you can apply to your life as well as some powerful examples of people that have leveraged the power of their subconscious mind. I hope you are enjoying this series and I am looking for any and all feedback and comments you might have on it.

The Power Of Your Subconscious Mind, Part I

Have you ever driven somewhere, and when you arrived wondered how you got there safely - thinking to yourself, "How did I not kill myself, I wasn't even paying attention?"

Have you ever felt like you were "in the zone" playing a sport,where everything seemed to just be easier – you could see he ball better, you were two steps ahead of your opponent, and / or it just felt like you knew what was going to happen, before it did?

Or have you ever struggled because no matter how bad you think you want something, you seem never be able to make it happen - and it often feels like you sabotage your own efforts?

The reason these things happen is because of a little understood power that each and everyone of us within us - called our sub-conscious mind.

This blog is the first of a three part blog that will help you understand why these things happen and hopefully give you a tool or two to help you leverage and unleash the power of your subconscious mind.

Frankly, and I think most of will agree with me, no matter how hard we try to change our behaviors and to create the world we want, we tend to end up in the same place we started. Why is that?

Believe it or not, the answer is simple to answer, but complex to rectify. But, I will tell you that those who have mastered it have an unlimited power to create the world they want.

The simple answer is the power of our subconscious mind. It is the part of our mind that loves to perpetuate life as we know it - and is the primary reason we resist change. But it is the also the part of the brain that has tremendous power to solve our problems and unlock our limitless potential.

To better understand the subconscious mind, I want you to give you an over-simplification metaphor of the subconscious mind as I understand it.

Lets just for a moment, imagine that our mind is actually two different computers – one of those computers is a Commodore 64 * (circa 1983) and the other an Apple PowerBook (circa 2009). And these two computers are networked through a complex direct cable interface.

Now, imagine that the Powerbook has stored in it every memory you have ever had of every situation you've ever been in. And because of amazing new technologies (that we still can quite duplicate), the Powerbook has the ability to capture everything going on around you - all the sites, sounds, smells, tastes constantly – even the ones that you aren't really paying attention to.

Unfortunately, you would think that life would be easier if we had direct access to the Powerbook – to store and retrieve what we want, when we want. But to be honest, if you think about it, you would probably go crazy from the rapid fire of thoughts in and out of your conscious mind. So instead, you are stuck providing inputs and drawing responses to all the stored information of your life through the old, slow Commodore 64 and the keyboard that comes with it.

Even though you have control of what goes through the Commodore 64 to the Powerbook, you are only one input into the supercomputer – as it is perceiving and storing everything that is going on around you. So while you are typing just what you see, hear, taste, smell, and feel, consciously, the Powerbook is also absorbing and storing all the rest of what it is coming in through your senses that you aren't consciously aware of – at a rate estimated to be 3000 times faster than you can type. Scary, when you think about it.

To make matters worse, the Powerbook has a predetermined file structure – it stores all the information it receives in folders that are nearly as old as you are. Those file folders are built in your childhood, based on the feeds that came in during your formidable years. In your infancy, file folders are constantly being built – with little regard to any form of organization. Then as you go through your adolescence, the Powerbook, begins to bin the information and re-organize your file structure for optimized use.

It is this file structure, and contents of your file folders that determines how you will react in most situations. In fact, the older you get, the more difficult it is (taking a lot of time and effort) to create new folders for the storage of information. So much so, the Powerbook, (your subconscious mind) only creates new folders when it finds things becoming VERY regular – until they appear to be a new habitual behavior.

So regardless of how situations change, your Powerbook continues to bin all the information the same way it always did – until it sees that a long term change has occurred, and it isn't changing back.

Unfortunately, this means that as much as you may try to enter in new ideas, new goals, new ways of doing things through the keyboard into the Commodore 64, you aren't changing the way the Powerbook stores and retrieves thoughts - right away. Truth be known, your new thoughts are hardly a ripple in all the terabytes of information that is already stored and coming in daily.

So what does this all mean to you and how you behave and act in life?

This is the truly amazing part.

When things happen to you (often even before you are able to consciously recognize them) your Powerbook (through feeds from your senses), recognizes a situation developing and begins finding the file folder on that situation. It opens the folder and immediately starts to bombard the Commodore 64 with how you handled the situation in the past. In the case where you are driving and not paying attention, this is good, because your subconscious mind is keeping you alive – making sure you make the correct turns and not speeding (too much). However, in the case of you wanting to change who you are, this is not so beneficial, because those feeds from the Powerbook to the Commodore 64 are both faster and more consistent than anything you can type into the keyboard – so you tend to follow your old path -in spite of your real desires.

Sure, YOU have the power to manipulate the Powerbook's processes and information feeds, but it is a lot harder than you might think. Which is why so many fail to actually pull it off.

In the next day, dwell on these ideas and look at how and what you do, a little bit differently. Think about different situations where your subconscious mind has both helped you and hindered your efforts to accomplish the goals you strive to achieve.

Tomorrow, in part two of this blog series, I will go a bit further into how your subconscious mind can be distracted and let you down during times that you need it most, how you can leverage the power of your existing file structures and finally how you can start to change your patterns of thinking and begin to take control of your subconscious mind.

And finally, in part three of my three part blog series, I will give you some powerful tools that you can apply to your life as well as some real world examples of people that have leveraged the power of their subconscious mind.

*For those of you who don't know what a Commodore 64 is, just accept that it is one of the very first home computers – and it had very little power or speed.