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Home > Articles > Personal Development > How to program your mind for success
How to program your mind for success
Posted: March 1st, 2010 @ 7:22pm
Your brain is incapable of telling the difference between what it experiences and what it visualizes. Visualization is a technique in which you see or feel yourself doing the actual activity, and practice it mentally. When the time comes to do it actively, you follow your inner script easily and smoothly.
Why does it work? The answer lies in the brain and how it functions. When you visualize an event, 80% of the neurons are firing, just as when you are actually doing it. In visualization, you are literally establishing new patterns in your brain. At the same time, you are setting up your brain to do what is called a preferred scenario (the result you want to achieve).
In his remarkable book, The Living Company, Arie de Geus describes the work of neurobiologist David Ingvar of Sweden. Ingvar had demonstrated that "the human brain is constantly attempting to make sense of the future. Every moment of our lives, we instinctively create action plans and programs for the future - anticipating the moment at hand, the next minutes, the emerging hours, the following days, the ongoing weeks, and the anticipated years to come - in one part of our mind."
Here's the neat part. You do preferred scenarios automatically. When you get up to start the day, you begin this planning process, and you modify your preferred scenarios according to whatever happens throughout the day.
This is why you can drive on the freeway with the radio playing and pay no attention to it. Meanwhile, in the background, the traffic report mentions a pile-up ahead. Suddenly your brain is alert, picking up the information, and you begin planning a detour. You make your appointment on time because your brain was scanning for any obstacle or opportunity that would affect its preferred scenario.
This has nothing to do with using a crystal ball. Arie de Geus notes that "These are not predictions. They do not pretend to tell what will happen. They are time paths into an anticipated future." This is why it's better to program your brain with a positive attitude as opposed to one that is negative. You get the information for which your brain is constantly scanning.
Arie de Geus notes, "The message from this research is clear. We will not perceive a signal from the outside world unless it is relevant to an option for the future that we have already worked out in our imaginations. The more 'memories of the future' we develop, the more open and receptive we will be to signals from the outside world."
This function is hard-wired into your brain to deal with the constant information overload that your senses experience. The process acts as a filter while your brain scans the environment, selecting only what is pertinent or relevant.
When this happens in a series of crucial events, it is called synchronicity. You meet the right person at a critical time, and coincidence seems commonplace.
On a larger scale, preferred scenarios can become personal visions of your life and work. New Age proponents call this the Theory of Abundance, and claim that the universe gives what you ask. Scientists, on the other hand, say that you create your own perception and reality.
Finding a sense of purpose or meaning in your life and work programs your brain to scan for opportunities that otherwise you would have missed.
I believe the one thing that keeps me, and others I know, centered and able to deal with anything that life hands us is a profound commitment to a personal vision. In the event that you feel that you don't have a sense of vision in your life, it is imperative that you find at least a sense of purpose.
Better still, do what I did long ago. Take the advice of the great mythologist Joseph Campbell. Follow your bliss. Find work that you love, and you will never have to work another day in your life.
"When you're falling - dive!"
- Joseph Campbell
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