(12 of 16) CREATING YOUR LIFE: What You Shouldve Learned as a Teen, Book 1 (complete text continued...formatting not preserved in Facebook) CHAPTER 10 OPENING WINDOWS OF OPPORTUNITY If you can dream it, you can do it. Walt Disney You may not know the story of Pygmalion. Pygmalion was a gifted sculptor from Cyprus who one day found a large, flawless piece of ivory. He sculpted a beautiful woman and found it so lovely he became obsessed with the statue, thinking it his ideal woman. He went to the temple of Aphrodite to plead for a wife who would be as perfect as his statue. When Aphrodite visited the studio of the sculptor while he was away, she was flattered to find that the image was of herself. Aphrodite brought the statue to life, and when Pygmalion returned to his home, he found his ideal had come alive. In 1968 a study was done by two researchers, Rosenthal and Jacobson that demonstrated what they called the “Pygmalion Effect.” They told teachers that the researchers would test the intelligence of children aged six to twelve years, all drawn from the same school. They then randomly assigned children to two groups. Their teachers were told that the children in one group were “high achievers” even though they were randomly chosen. At the end of the school year, these children showed significant test gains, despite the random allocation to a group. In short the researchers discovered that the teachers’ expectations manifested in the children. We can uncritically accept subconsciously pictures other people hold of us. The subconscious repository stores our picture of ourselves. When we are young, that picture is influenced and reinforced by how other people picture us. Their pictures of us affect how they talk and behave around us. This leads to a couple of interesting ideas: The Pygmalion Effect can work both ways. First, you hold pictures of other people. Consider being very careful about the negative thoughts you hold of others, especially what you are sure is true about others. Not only do you create blind spots about others in yourself that screen out anything that does not match your stored truths about them, you may also actually transfer your negative images to them in a way that they may adopt. Second, be very careful about accepting as “true” any negative thoughts from others about you. Watch your own thoughts to screen out negative characterizations you may have accepted from others that may be holding you back, creating a negative, limiting picture of yourself. Other people’s opinions of you are no longer any of your business. We often carry multiple pictures of ourselves based on our current associations. In other words, different people may have given you different pictures of yourself, which can be triggered when you are with them. Or the pictures can be triggered in a situation similar to one you remember. For example: Do you find that when you visit your parents, you become their child again, feeling how their image of you puts you in a box of behaviors that reinforce their picture of you? Do you find that you are a different person—more confident, more capable, more articulate, wittier—around one group of people, and much less confident and capable and articulate and witty around another? Do you find that when you return to old friends you haven’t seen in years you fall into old picture-patterns that you had forgotten about? Do you recall being known as a klutz or awkward in high school, and then after many years being a non-klutz away from those acquaintances, when you go back to them, you are suddenly that klutz again? Have you ever been with someone, a spouse perhaps, who seems to undergo a personality change when around his or her parents or old friends? Have you noticed how you change when you are with your church group, your drinking-poker buddies or shopping friends, your coworkers, your neighbors, your political group, your military pals? Few of us maintain a single, consistent picture of ourselves as we move from peer group to peer group, or person to person. However, over time, you can develop a strong, consistent self-image that does not change significantly when your environment changes. Restrictive Motivation Once you understand the picture-power of individuals, you can understand how manipulative people can “program” into you a picture of yourself designed to get in the way of you seeing the truth. How? By implanting in you emotional trigger points, which cause you to be reactive and therefore avoid what they don’t want you to know. First, here is an example where you can be programmed by a method called “Restrictive Motivation.” Restrictive motivation is simple to illustrate. Suppose as a child you had a stepmother who got violent whenever you were late. You’re told to be home by 9:00 pm and you walk in at 9:15 and your stepmother yells at you and breaks things. The next time you’re late, she yells and slaps you hard. The next time you’re late after that she slaps you harder and locks you in the closet. The next time after that, she kicks you in the stomach. After a while, the idea of being late causes you emotional anxiety. You learn to flinch at the thought of being late. You’re motivated to do everything possible to be home on time because you know what will happen when you’re late. Years later when your stepmother is no longer around, you will drive through red lights rather than be late for an appointment. Even though the actual punishment is no longer present, your subconscious has taken in the habit, the pattern, the imprint of associating being late with punishment and pain. But there is more... Not only will you suffer this anxiety and flinch when you are late, you’ll experience it when others are late as well. You become a kind of controller of others when they are late. In order to relieve your own anxiety, you will go overboard faulting others for being late. Why? Because deep down a part of you knows that something bad will happen if anyone is late. You export your anxiety and try to control everyone around you in order to alleviate your anxiety. Imagine having a boss or a friend who acts this way. Imagine that you act this way. Now for a more directly manipulative example. If I’m an accomplished political operative, I can program restrictive motivation in you. If I know that you avoid thinking deeply about hateful people, all I have to do is implant the picture that the people who are against my goals are hateful people. You can recognize this kind of restrictive motivational programming whenever you experience a kind of knee-jerk, reactive emotional trigger. When your “buttons are being pushed.” It’s a kind of reactive twitch that pushes you to avoid whatever is causing the twitch. Try an experiment: For the next couple of weeks, take note of anything that causes a knee-jerk negative reaction in you. What kinds of things do you react to? And is it possible these reactions were programmed into you? Kitchen Remodeling One of the things that the Power of Positive Thinking crowd often fails to mention is that whenever you try to make a big change in your life, your life can sometimes enter a stage where it seems everything is falling apart. When you want to take your airplane to a new altitude, put on your seatbelt because you may experience some turbulence on the way up. Making a major change in yourself or your life is like kitchen remodeling. You have your old kitchen. You’re content with it out of sheer habit. Then one day you visit a friend who has remodeled their kitchen. New granite counter tops, fresh matching appliances, new tile floor. You decide to remodel your kitchen. Unfortunately, the transition to the new vision or goal is not immediate. There is a dismantling period where your kitchen must be removed. You have a less than functional kitchen. You enter a kind of Dark Night of the Soul. A less-functional or gutted kitchen means hard times. And there is always danger that if the new vision hasn’t fully taken hold, you will hang on to the old kitchen rather than move forward into the new kitchen. The new vision has to be stronger than the current picture to get you to act. This happens whenever you set a vision or goal and work to make it happen. The key again is that whatever goal you set, you must hold it strongly in mind. If you hold the goal strongly in mind, if you daydream about it and feel it, you are more likely to achieve your goal. Your enthusiasm for the new vision carries you through the tough transition. You inspire yourself with it continually, and sustain the vision and energy through the rough times. Your old “anchor points,” those fixed pictures that anchor your vision of reality, will get pulled up to make room for the new vision. You hold the vision in order to have the energy to carry your goal through to completion. You want to become a chemical engineer. You are not one right now. But you know some chemical engineers, and their work fascinates you. You think you can be good at it and have fun with that kind of work. So you hold a new vision of yourself that does not match your current picture. What do you do? You motivate yourself to go to school, do the work, get the degree, search for a job, go to interviews, accept a job offer, learn the job, grow in your new role. The vision manifests. You have given up your old picture and adopted a new, more professional and experienced one. The mind is easily distracted. Therefore, one has to work hard to keep the mind focused and disciplined. This is why people work with positive statements and affirmations. Remember, to make a change, do the 15 Times Exercise. I get a notepad, and every morning before I begin my day, I write a positive, changing statement 15 times. Currently, because my work has me sitting in front of a computer so much, I am writing, “I delight in physical activity and healthy exercise.” I know that “delight in” sounds funny, but there are several rules about the 15 Times Exercise that you must apply if it’s going to work: 1) Write every day. 2) Use the first person present verb form, like “I am...” 3) Be positive. Say what you are doing, not what you are not wanting to do. 4) Use active, striking language. 5) Visualize and feel the statement as if it were a reality. 6) Remember the Change Formula: Imagine Vividly with Feeling results in Change. When you do this imaginative exercise every day for months, once you make it a habit, you will notice changes take hold in your consciousness. I recommend you start by doing imaginative exercises every day for 100 days. You will also notice that remodeling your consciousness is like remodeling your kitchen. When you hold a new vision, everything in you that contradicts that vision will come up. You will have to look at it and decide to either a) let it go, or b) take it back and not change. Beware. Something will happen to try to interrupt your efforts. Something will try to get you to go back to your old habits. When it comes, don’t let it get to you. Hang in there doing your affirmations, hold to the new vision, until the new kitchen gets installed. After 30 years I had to give up caffeine in all forms. No coffee, tea, or soft drinks. Since I didn’t want to be the kind of person anymore who was attached to caffeine, I began writing: “I love being caffeine-free; I enjoy drinking water, juices, and healthy drinks.” When I gave up daily coffee, tea, and soft drinks, I held to that vision, even through the headaches and body changes and low energy days. People tried to buy me those drinks. I hung in there. Now my body feels better than ever with more energy and more restful sleep. You don’t get what you want in life; you get what you picture. Is your life more a comedy or a tragedy? Do you feel you have the ability to create your life, or does it seem like your life creates you? One thing is clear. The mind is a good slave but a poor master. Now you know that the mind tends to operate on a kind of habitual autopilot, generating thoughts and pictures of “the Truth,” most of which we now recognize as being limited or limiting. You now have some techniques to help you take charge of your mind and whip it into shape, rather than let it drive you every day. What have you learned so far? — We do not act according to the whole truth; we act according to “the Truth” as we believe it to be. — When you lock onto a “Truth,” it gets stored subconsciously and your mind begins working automatically to build blind spots to anything that contradicts that stored “Truth.” — Just because you cannot see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. — You have all kinds of blind spots to the truth, to reality, right now, and there is a way to overcome those blind spots. — High-performance thinkers recognize they have blind spots, and consequently strive to overcome them. — To grow personally is not always a matter of working harder; it’s often a matter of thinking differently, of thinking more effectively. — Effective thinkers believe in their own ability to make things happen. — Effective thinkers do not blame things outside of themselves; they feel their center of control inside themselves, not in external people or forces. — The way we talk to ourselves can keep us fixed, or enable us to grow. — You must become an End-Result Thinker to overcome blind spots. Once you set a goal, then your Reticular Activating System (RAS) and your Adaptive Unconscious (AU) lets through the information you need to achieve your goal. They also begin supplying energy to achieve the goal. Remember: Picture the End Result as if it were Now; your imagination invents the way to achieve your goal. One note on setting goals: Be specific and clear about the actual end result. Imagine a coach for a pro baseball team setting the goal for the team to get to the World Series. Sounds good, right? Wrong. What happens when they get to the World Series? The goal is achieved and the creative energy and motivation goes out of the team. The coach should set the goal for the team to WIN the World Series. Getting to the World Series is one picture. Winning the World Series is a completely different picture. The AU regulates according to the picture given to it. Once the picture is achieved, the AU’s work is complete. This explains why you deflate after work or when you get to the weekend. If your goal is simply to get through the day or to the weekend, the energy goes out. But when you set another goal, imagine something exciting to do, the energy comes back. If you doubt this, imagine after a day of work you are home, deflated. Then a great friend that you haven’t seen for years calls, saying he or she is in town and wants to get together. Suddenly, you’re energized, right? Goals create energy and motivation. Imagination creates goals. Be sure to craft your goals precisely. And then you can begin to sculpt yourself more consciously. ************ Buy ebooks as gifts for Christmas! markandrealexander/books/
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 00:17:41 +0000
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