Positive vs Negative Focus

Look in any bookshop at their Best Seller list today, and you’ll see a mass of autobiographies of the rich and famous. From empire builders to glamour models to footballers, they all tell a different story, but each has a thread in common – they focused on the positives and overcame adversity.

This is the way the world works; to be achievers in life we must encourage positive reasons why ‘we can’ to flood our consciousness, and drown out negative excuses why we can’t.

For the trainee, this attitude to studying is vital. To complete a training program successfully, the biggest tool in a student’s workbox is a positive mindset. An optimistic outlook brings about all sorts of circumstances, possibilities, answers and opportunities to achieve. On the other hand, a negative outlook blocks creativity and numbs our learning receptors.

This is due to our Reticular Activation System, which is a mechanism in our brain that automatically tells us what to focus on. We’ve experienced many things throughout our lives that no longer stay in the forefront of our minds – most of what we’ve learned moves from our conscious mind to our sub-conscious mind, a sort of store cupboard stocked up with all our past knowledge and beliefs.

When we attempt to do something consciously, our Reticular Activation System (RAS) will go through our sub-conscious mind for any associated information it holds, and bring it into focus. As we’re walking down a road, we’re made aware only of things that are relevant to us – anything else is just background noise.

This means that if our conscious mind has been regularly sending messages that are upbeat and positive to our sub-conscious mind, then that’s what it will transfer back. But if our sub-conscious has been given loads of downbeat and defeatist messages, then that’s equally what will be sent back.

It seems that achievers are able to manipulate the messages filtered through to their sub-conscious minds by deliberately programming their RAS and choosing the exact messages the conscious mind sends. This makes it an essential tool for achieving goals, as the sub-conscious mind can’t distinguish between real or imaginary events.

In other words, as it believes what it’s told, we need to create a very specific picture of our goal in our conscious mind. The RAS will then pass this on to our subconscious – which will then help us achieve the goal. It does this by bringing to our attention all the relevant information which otherwise might have remained as ‘background noise’.

Napoleon Hill once wrote that we can attain any realistic goal if we keep that goal clearly in our mind, and stop allowing any negative thoughts about it. If we keep thinking that we can’t achieve a goal, of course, our subconscious will help us not to achieve it.

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