"5 STEPS TO A MORE FULFILLING LIFE"

Welcome to Lesson Three:

Directing "The Theatre of Your Mind"

Welcome to lesson three of “5 Steps to a More Fulfilling Life”

You are half way through already! If you have been truly following through with the exercises from days one and two you will already be noticing how easy it is to generate a more positive experience of life simply by using the greatest resource you have. Your brain!

Today’s lesson all about recognising that the way you are using your brain today determines the results that will show up for you in your future. This is going to sound like another one of my bold claims, but as you read on think about how it might be true for you.

Everything that you are experiencing in your life right now is the result of how you earlier imagined it would be.

Whoa!! A lot of people resist this statement to begin with, and if you are finding it hard to swallow right now then that is absolutely fine. This might be a new idea to you; one that may be counter intuitive to how you have been thinking about your life up until now. But when you scratch below the surface of your automatic response, we can start to see how the statement could be true.

Let’s say for example that, generally, you find your job boring. In the beginning it may be hard to accept that you experience it this way because you have previously imagined that it would be boring. But if you were to honestly think about when you wake up on a typical work day, what kind of thoughts would be going through your mind about the 24 hours ahead? Probably not “Yippee! Another glorious day in the office!” It is more likely that you would lay there in bed and say to yourself in a totally unmotivated tone of voice “here we go again” while mentally creating dull and uninspiring pictures of you slouching in your chair at another pointless, tedious meeting.

Unless something really exciting or out of the ordinary happens that day you’ll more than likely be proved right in your prediction. This is because your unconscious mind relies on your imagined expectations to tell it what to pay attention to in life. In this case you have effectively been giving a command to that ‘automatic’ part of your mind to “go find all the evidence that supports my belief that my job is really boring”.

As Maxwell Maltz puts it, your unconscious mind is a goal striving machine, just like a heat seeking missile; its job is simply to follow the coordinates you give it and hit its target. It is completely indiscriminate about what that target is and couldn’t care less if what you tell it aim for is something that, actually, you really don’t want to happen.

In the fields of NLP and Positive Psychology we have a saying that goes “you always get more of what you focus on”. This is really referring to the idea that what you consistently imagine becomes real for you. It is simply cause and effect. How you imagine things to be determines your behaviour, which, in turn, influences what shows up in your life.

Dr Stephen Covey (author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) says:

"All things are created twice; First in the imagination, then in reality"

 

PICTURE THIS

So, how can you create a more fulfilling life through the use of your imagination? Well the first thing is to realise that there are a couple of simple rules to do with how your unconscious mind processes the information it receives from your imagination, and it is important to be aware of how these apply whenever you think about your future goals.

The first rule is:

What you picture in your mind has a far greater influence on your behaviour than what you say to yourself.

 

Have you ever wondered why it is that some people have such a hard time sticking to a diet? The reason is because their internal dialogue is inconsistent with the mental imagery they are experiencing. At the same time as telling themselves “I must resist chocolate cake” they create a big colourful picture of a delicious wedge of triple chocolate fudge gateaux glistening with a huge dollop of fresh whipped cream. This imagery stimulates their nervous system in a way that triggers a craving for chocolate cake and it hangs around for as long as the thought is held by that person’s attention. Before long the urge is so irresistible that they cave in!

In order for you know what it is that you don’t want to happen you first have to see that thing happening in your imagination.

DON’T THINK ABOUT A PINK ELEPHANT !!

See what I mean?

Consider this: If your unconscious mind accepts the pictures you create in your imagination as targets to aim for, and if in order for you to know what it is that you don’t want you have to make a picture of it, then isn’t it now easy to understand why we often end up getting the very things that we’d rather not have in our lives?

The second principle is:

Your mind cannot tell the difference between a real event and that one that is vividly imagined.

 

Sometimes on my workshops I will get my students to close their eyes and imagine that they are in their kitchen. I encourage them to fully associate into the scene, seeing it through their own eyes, and take in as much of the detail as possible. Then I ask them to imagine walking over to the work surface where they find a nice bright yellow lemon. They have to pick it up and get a really good sense of what it feels like in their hand: The weight, the shape, the coolness, the texture, etc. Then I have them pick up a sharp knife and slice the lemon in two, watching the juice ooze out onto the worktop. They’ll then pick up one of the halves and lift it up to their nose to take a long deep sniff of that lemony fragrance. I then get them to open their mouths and sink their teeth into the flesh and give it a really big suck.

Even just reading this you may be able to understand why the students feel compelled to screw their faces up in reaction to the intense sourness of the lemon. Of course when they open their eyes they often feel a little silly having had such a strong response to a fruit that doesn’t even exist!

The point is, if the students experience such a significant behavioural response in relation to their imagination of biting a lemon, what is the behavioural response likely to be of another imagined thought such as “I’ll never be good enough to do that”?

The truth of the matter is when you think negatively about yourself or your situation your unconscious mind will make you behave in a way that is consistent with that reality. As you think, so you become.

Having a good understanding of how these two principles can determine the quality of the results you experience in your life gives you the information you need to set your thinking up for success. Here’s what you need to do:

Always focus on what you DO want to achieve and then let your mind fantasise in great detail about how wonderful it is going to be once you’ve achieved it.

 

This is so simple, and it makes a massive positive difference to your ability to get what you want.

When you read through the biographies of successful people you see there is a common theme that most of them were gripped by a very specific dream, and they knew exactly what they wanted out of life. Even the ones who appear to have stumbled on success clearly demonstrated the kind of ‘possibility thinking’ I’m talking about here by recognising and running with the opportunities that came their way.

There are so many rags to riches stories, each shouting out the same lesson - you’ll never get to where you want to go all the time you are focused on what you are running away from. You have to see exactly what you want and then invest emotionally into your vision. When you do this repeatedly and with great intensity you create a ‘future memory’ of success that gives your unconscious mind great material to work with. It creates a robust feedback mechanism that reliably lets you know when you are getting close to your goals or when you need to change your approach to get back on track. And the best part is that most of the effort you’ll put into driving yourself towards your desired outcome will happen outside of your conscious awareness.

The way you think, talk and act in the world is always consistent with what you unconsciously believe, and practicing vivid visualisations of your goals creates the expectations your unconscious mind needs to guide your automatic behaviour towards their accomplishment.

Set aside at least ten minutes everyday where you can find a quite place to close your eyes, go within yourself and place your order with your wise and wonderful unconscious mind. Then relax and enjoy the journey!

If you follow these simple visualisation rules you’ll be well on your way to the kind of life fulfilment you deserve:

1. Create a movie of your desired outcome: Know exactly what it is that you DO want to happen and then imagine that it has already been achieved. Be as specific as possible. If it is more money you want, how much exactly? If you want to achieve your perfect body weight and shape, what exactly does that have to be? If this was the movie of your success what would it look like?

2. See it through your own eyes: If, as you picture the movie, you are looking at yourself from a third person perspective, step into your body so that you experience everything with your own senses, like it is happening right now.

3. Notice as much detail as possible: As you imagine yourself living this future success pay attention to everything that is going on around you. Where are you? What are you doing? What do you see that is symbolic of your achievement? Is anyone else there with you, and if so what are they saying to you? What are you saying to yourself? If it’s important, what are you wearing? Get a really good sense of how it feels, physically, to be in this situation, enjoying your success.

4. Pay close attention to your feelings: What emotions do you experience in relation to this achievement? Let yourself be fully present with them and let them radiate through every cell in your body.

5. Intensify: See what you see and make the image as colourful, bright and focused as you possibly can. Increase the size of the picture so that it is larger than life and surrounds you on all sides. Hear what you hear and make the sounds loud and crisp. Then take the wonderful feeling and turn it right up, as if you have a volume dial for your emotions. Crank it as far as it will go. Send the emotions up to the top of your head and back down to the tips of your toes. Make this experience real and vibrant in your mind.

 

One of my favourite stories is about a reporter who went to the opening of the original Disney World in Florida. At the press conference he said to Roy Disney, Walt’s brother, “This place is incredible, it’s such a shame that Walt didn’t get to see it before he died”. Without missing a beat Roy turned to the reported and said “It’s because Walt did see it that you are getting to see it today”.

Practice directing the theatre of your mind everyday, because no matter what it is you want to achieve, you’ll see when you believe it.

Until next time, have a wonderful week.