What the mind can perceive, and believe, it can achieve say the psychologists — which includes helping you transform your body
During an initial interview with a potential client, I ask them to tell me what their goals and expectations are. Often they’ll say: “I don’t want to be big and muscled, and I don’t want to be too gaunt.” To which I reply: “Don’t worry, you will remain exactly the way you are, as you are focusing on what you don’t want and not what you do want.”
Earl Nightingale’s The Strangest Secret sold over one million copies in the 1960s and the main message was that we become what we think about most of the time.
Metaphysics and brain science are merging to prove what you think can literally turn into the events you experience, the material things you possess, and, more importantly, the health of your body. It’s no longer considered new-age fluff.
Following the launch of the movie The Secret many of its so-called mind experts, such as Bob Proctor, John Assaraf, Jack Canfield and John Demartini, were asked to shed light on the mental laws that reveal why goal-setting, the law of attraction and positive thinking all work.
Attention
They explained that scientists have identified specific parts of the brain. One such part is the reticular activating system (RAS), which works with the visual parts of our brain to focus our attention on our goals and filter out those things that are unimportant.
The RAS is activated by programming goals into our subconscious minds. Our subconscious is the power centre and this is the mechanism that explains why goal-setting and positive thinking are now being accepted as scientific methods for change.
The problem is that the subconscious mind is completely impartial — it will carry out any instructions you give it. If you are running negative programmes you picked up as a child or from influential friends — like, for example, I can’t be lean, I’ve tried everything, it’s my genetics etc — the repetition is programming your subconscious mind to maintain these beliefs.
To change your results, you must install positive new programming into your subconscious. This can be achieved through such techniques as written goal-setting, positive self-talk, known as affirmations, and visualisation.
For years athletes have known about the power of positive visualisation, whether this is the surface of the ground, the first tackle, or how the final minutes will play out.
So if you are getting the same negative results in your life, with health problems, or when you lose weight and it returns, then you are probably unconsciously running old negative programmes.
Neural pathways are like grooves in a record, if you struggle with the same health-related behaviours, you are playing the old records over and over again. You need to write down your goals, visualise and focus on what ideally you would like your body to look like.
What the mind can perceive, and believe, it can achieve. Psychologists estimate that it takes 21 to 30 days to establish a habit or pattern in your brain. You need to practice and repeat these thought patterns as whatever you are thinking and picturing in your mind repeatedly, on a daily basis, is already on its way to you.
The fact is, you can think yourself thin and healthy or obese and ill. Maybe not in the literal sense but certainly as the critical part in the chain of causation.
Sceptics
Some people will remain sceptics, while others may think that they can sit around meditating and visualising, then expect magic to kick in. Positive thinking can reprogramme your brain, which in turn can create new behaviours that move you forward to whatever you have been focusing on.
So success is achieved through positive thinking and then positive doing, or attraction plus action.
There are two sides to every coin and you must pay attention to both. If you want to transform your body or any other aspect of your life, you have to change on the inside first and then everything else will follow.
