“Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people” – Eleanor Roosevelt
Over a quarter of a century ago, I was looking through my parents’ bookcase for something to read, and I found a book called Superlearning by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. I didn’t read the book from cover to cover, but the main idea was that it is possible to learn new information quickly (and fully retain this new information) so long as the circumstances while learning are right. The focus was on learning while listening to baroque music (since baroque music has a beat that closely resembles our internal beats).
I browsed through most of the book, but somewhere towards the end of the book there was a chapter on Autogenics, which I read several times. Autogenics is basically a relaxation technique whereby you use your conscious mind to tell your body (which is controlled by your sub-conscious mind) to go forth and relax itself. I won’t go into further details here, but if you are interested, you can find more information at WikiPedia, and the full training programme (ostensibly as it appeared in the Superlearning book) can be found at this website.
The idea fascinated me, so for fun I decided I would try it out. After following the training programme for a couple of days I realised that it was working. I was able to make my right arm feel heavy, just by using my mind. After following through the full programme (a few months of daily training), I reached a point where I could achieve complete relaxation within a couple of minutes.
“To see a thing clearly in the mind makes it begin to take form” – Henry Ford
Let’s just take a step back and see why this works. Our subconscious mind takes care of everything that needs to happen automatically – like digesting food or breathing. Our conscious mind is intelligent and can make decisions – like choosing what food to eat. To all intents and purposes, our subconscious mind is not very clever – simply because there is no need for it to be. It will do what it is told, and it will operate within the framework it is given. Having said that, it should be noted that the very fact that our subconscious mind is not very smart, is the main reason we potentially have so much control over our own lives.
I the case of autogenics, the idea is to consciously feed a new program for relaxation to our subconscious mind. By repeating the program over and over again, we reach a point where the program is perfectly learned, and it will never be forgotten. I don’t make a habit of daily relaxation, but I know that any time I want to relax completely, I can do it within a matter of minutes.
It does get a lot better, however. Our subconscious minds have no concept of what is real and what isn’t, and the concept of time is somewhat blurry. If I say something like “In six weeks I will be rich”, it will most likely be interpreted as “I will be rich” (which is a future non-deterministic statement) and it will be ignored. If I instead say “I earn $2,000 per day”, it will be interpreted exactly as I say it. The point isn’t whether it is true or not. The point is whether I want it to be true or not. If I want it to be true, I have to consciously program my subconscious mind to believe that it is already true. Only then will I be in a situation to see the opportunities that present themselves to me, allowing me to align my reality with the reality I have programmed into my subconscious mind.
By the same token, if I constantly complain about my life, I am really only making it impossible for anything to improve. I will be reinforcing to my subconscious mind that I am a miserable person. My life will accordingly be arranged so that I miss any opportunities that could potentially drive things in a more positive direction.
We all have the ability to have full control over our lives. We have to consciously choose to make our lives fulfilling or miserable, but in the end no-one else has any say in the matter. We can also fall back on an argument that states that we are ruled by a higher force, and we have to accept what happens to us. I don’t dispute that being a valid argument, but I offer that the higher force (as it were) is actually in tune with our subconscious mind, which still rules our lives, but we have the power to control it.
Being positive and having unrealistic dreams doesn’t hurt – especially if we end up happier and our dreams come true. Success and good fortune doesn’t just happen – we have to consciously make a decision that this is what we want. Sometimes these decisions are a lot easier to make when you have positive people supporting you. If you are interested in finding out more, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
I have not read the book (perhaps I should!), however, I have read other books with more or less the same message. We create our own reality and, of course, we create it in our mind. The idea of our subconscious mind absorbing all these positive messages and forming our reality on the basis of them, is really very exciting. Negativity, in all its forms, is negative and that is hardly worth striving after. It is very interesting to notice that as soon as someone says, ‘I can’t do that!’, then they can’t; it is possible that they would like to, but they have already locked the door. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and observations.
Thank you. The other way to look at this is that when someone insists that they “can’t” do something, they are really saying that they “don’t want to be able to, because they are afraid of the consequences”. Our society is still so much more understanding (unfortunately) with respect to underachievers, than it is to those who climb above the rest.
Yes, I think you may be right there. It is, after all, easier to say that you ‘can’t’ do something than to say that you ‘don’t want to’ do something. We tend to be more sympathetic toward the person, who can’t do something than toward the person, who stubbornly refuses.