In my post entitled As the Winter Solstice Approaches, I mentioned that one of the questions I was posing to myself was “What do I want more of?”
As we consider what we want to be different in the coming year, we sometimes think about things we don’t want to do or things we want to do less of, but posing our questions and stating our goals in the right way is important because it helps our brain help us.
Let me lay the groundwork for this for a moment.
Have you ever been driving somewhere that you go often, such as work, and you suddenly find yourself in the parking lot and have no memory of the drive there? Your mind was wandering somewhere else. But your subconscious mind was in full control, getting you safely to work.
On the other hand, have you ever been heading somewhere and suddenly find yourself going another route, perhaps taking a route that you frequently take? Again, your subconscious mind took over, but this time it wasn’t so helpful, taking you the wrong direction.
Both examples show how powerful the subconscious mind is. It can be harnessed to help us meet our goals if we learn how to formulate our goals in ways that our subconscious mind understands more easily.
Our subconscious mind:
- Does not process negation as well as positive statements.
- Understands images better than words.
So asking yourself what you want more of leads to positive statements that are more easily understood by the subconscious mind. And associating images with those goals will engage our subconscious mind even further.
Maybe you’ve already written goals for 2022. It’s not too late to rewrite them with this in mind.
- State what you want to do instead of what you don’t want.
- Be very specific.
- Create an image connected to your goals.
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
Peter Drucker