Positive Focus Vs Negative Focus

Posted by | Posted on 1:12 AM

By Jason Kendall

A glance at any Best Seller list in bookshops today, will reveal a multitude of autobiographies of the rich and famous. From footballers to glamour models to empire builders, they all have their own story to tell, but each has a common theme - they overcame adversity by focusing on the positives.

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.

This attitude to studying is paramount for the student. To successfully complete a training program, an optimistic mindset is the biggest tool in a trainee's workbox. A positive approach brings about all sorts of possibilities, circumstances, answers and opportunities to achieve. By contrast, a pessimistic outlook blocks our learning receptors and thwarts creativity .

This is because of our Reticular Activation System - a mechanism that automatically tells our brain what to focus on. Over our lives, we've experienced a huge number things that no longer remain in the forefront of our minds - the majority of what we've learned moves from our conscious mind to our sub-conscious mind, a kind of cupboard that stores all our past beliefs and knowledge.

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.

Therefore, if our conscious mind has generally been transferring positive, upbeat messages to our sub-conscious mind, then that's what it will send back. But if our sub-conscious has been fed a bunch of defeatist, downbeat messages, then equally that's also what will come back.

It appears that achievers can manipulate the messages going through to their sub-conscious minds by deliberately programming their RAS, and selecting the exact messages the conscious mind transfers. For achieving goals this makes it an essential tool, because the sub-conscious mind can't distinguish between real or imaginary events.

So, as it believes what it's told, we must create a really specific picture of our goal in our conscious mind. This will then pass on to our subconscious via the RAS - which will then help us to achieve our goal. This is done by bringing to our attention all the meaningful information which might otherwise have remained as 'background noise'.

The writer Napoleon Hill said that we can achieve any realistic goal if we keep focusing on that goal, and stop dwelling on any negative thoughts about it. Obviously, if we keep thinking that we can't hit a goal, our subconscious will help us not to achieve it.

About the Author:

Comments (0)