Since realizing that I was unconsciously “programming” my little niece, I’ve been pretty wary about how I’m interacting with her. Young children are just like sponges and will absorb almost anything we feed into them. They don’t have the filters to differentiate what’s right and wrong and having to correct those improper ones when they’re grown up can be quite an excruciating experience. Not to mention the embarrassment at times.
I used to have this University ex-hostel mate. A brilliant straight-As student. When she was still in junior high school, she got this impression – most likely from her parents - that if a boy and a girl “slept together”, the girl would be pregnant. Well, theoretically she was right, wasn’t she? But apparently her parents omitted the “important prerequisite” for the pregnancy. One day when she went to a school camp, she was so worried the whole night if she would be pregnant the next day that she didn’t sleep well! The whole class of boys and girls slept in the same vacated classroom! Ha ha!
Not many people can be so upfront with their improper beliefs like she did. Talk about it to her friends. Laugh it off as a joke. And develop new beliefs to replace it. Most chose to ignore and let the issue snowball. Some, like my sister, wasn’t even aware of it.
In my opinion, revamping our deep seated negative beliefs and thoughts is necessary. But what’s even more important, is to curb the inflow of lack programming. Otherwise, no matter how much correction you do, you’ll constantly find yourself in a continuous, never ending truckload of negativity & lack.
So what else can you do besides watching what you say or do, censoring your information sources, reviewing your habits and be mindful of the people you hang around with? Here are some other ideas.
(1) Anchoring
This is the same approach I’ve used to condition my niece. It associates a stimuli – either an action or sense – with a particular thought or emotion. In the case of my niece, my rummaging in the bag is a stimuli. The lingering sweet taste of the candy is the thought. In the 1890s, Nobel Laurette, Ivan Pavlov did a similar experiment. He rang a bell as some dogs were given food laced with chilli powder and the moment the dogs saw it, they salivated. After a couple of repeated actions, Pavlov was able to induce the dogs to salivate just by ringing the bell alone!
Now, if anchoring has the power to make my niece run across the hallway for an imaginary piece of candy, chances are you can create your own feel good designer anchors and activate them whenever you want. Especially if you’re in need of a positive boost.
Let’s use an example. Assuming you want to recreate the rush-in-the-adrenaline “ah ha” feeling you often get after reading an inspirational story,
- First, decide on an anchor to activate this feeling. Such as clutching your fingers into a tight fist.
- Refresh your memory of the “ah ha” feeling. If you have problems recalling it, pick up an inspirational story book and re-read it.
- As the sensation gets vivid and reaches its peak, immediately clutch your fingers
- Then release the tension on your fingers as it begins to wear down. Otherwise, you may be also associating the anchor to a draining adrenaline loss if you keep holding on to the tension.
- Once the feeling is totally gone, relax in a count of 10.
- Repeat the steps above to make sure the anchoring stays.
- Test it out!
I was giving this anchoring method a test drive at the point of writing this article. During the anchoring process, I was constantly practicing it with my right hand and it works wonderfully. When I tried the same using my left hand, hey but I don’t get the same feeling at all. Interesting.
Go ahead. Give it a try.
(2) Affirmations or Positive Self Talk
By constantly repeating a positive statement to yourself everyday, you hammer a thought, condition or feeling into your subconscious mind, inducing it to believe as true. To do this, you need a piece of paper, a dash of creativity and not to forget, a continuous flow of emotions and persistence :
- Write down the phrase “I am so happy “ on the paper.
- Continue writing the condition or feelings you want to achieve. Something like this :
“I am so happy that I am now achieving total success in every aspect of my life. Good health, true happiness and money flows into my life in an easy, relaxed and positive way.” - Feel free to add your goals into the statement if you want. Some people gets very positive vibes whenever they dream or talk about their goals. You may be one of them.
- Take out this piece of paper and read the statement to yourself loudly and emotionally every morning and evening
I had a chance to play around with affirmations many years ago and frankly, I didn’t have had much good results with it. Reading the statement out loud every night felt like a chore as I wasn’t able to summon strong emotions and feel for the words. Sometimes, I even forget to read them! Spicing up the process by listening to motivational music helped, but over the course of the year, I’ve found an easier and more effective way to work with affirmations. That is, reading it via Dr Lens’ approach, also known as the Hoponopono method. I’ve briefly mentioned this method in a previous article.
Through the use of 4 simple phrases during my daily chanting prayers, I was often able to invoke positive emotions pretty easily. I guess reciting the phrases towards someone with a spiritual connection allows me to take accountability for my problems, seek forgiveness, express gratitude & love at the same time, all of which are pretty powerful sensations. There were times when I could literally feel a shudder running through my spine. You’ll feel as if you’ve just confided in someone, letting go of the truckloads of negative emotions within you to make way for the positive ones. And yes, I usually get pumped up and reinvigorated afterwards.
(3) Self Hypnosis
Even though I’ve yet to achieve great results with self hypnosis, many people have reported huge success with it. They use it to lose weight, quit smoking and some even use it to increase their self esteem! Sounds incredible, isn’t it?
Self hypnosis can be pretty similar to affirmations in that you run suggestions and positive statements through your mind everyday. The difference is, you do it in a sleepy or trance like state often conducted via the hypnotist’s voice in a tape. It’s believed that the mind is less likely to resist the suggestions during a semi conscious state, making it easier to alter one’s consciousness.
Sometimes, the hypnosis can also put you into an imaginary setting so that you’re able to draw certain observations from your interaction with the situation. For example, I remembered listening to a hypnosis tape to help me predict how I would fare 10 years’ later. The speaker led me into an imaginary woods to locate a house and asked me to describe it to myself. “The house will be your home in the future” he said. I was subsequently asked to step into the house to greet the future “me” and my family.
And you know what I saw? I saw myself dressed in a house dress with my “husband”. Gee, I thought I really looked like a housewife. The other funny thing was, the guy who was supposed to be my “husband” looked like someone I was admiring at that time! Ha ha. Though I can’t imagine myself being a housewife and the “husband” whom I was supposed to be with is now happily attached to someone else, the whole self hypnosis experience was quite fun.
However, it’s important to note that no one can be “hypnotized” against his own will. That means, if you’ve bought a self hypnosis tape thinking that it wouldn’t help, chances are, it wouldn’t. Because, the effect of hypnosis really depends on your motivation, willingness and faith to make it work for you.
If you’re interested to learn more about self hypnosis and find out if it works for you, try signing up for this free 5 day online eCourse to get free hypnosis lessons, audio samples, worksheets and even a trance script in your email.
(4) Profiling
I’m sure you’ve heard of this. If you want to be successful, emulate the ones who are there because success leaves clues. That’s the principle behind profiling. Say you want to play tennis as well as Roger Federer, you can read his autobiography, watch his every matches, analyze his strokes and factor them into your own practice. While reading and watching more about him, you begin to adopt as many of the habits that lead to his success as an accomplished tennis player. In other words, you play copycat.
Profiling can be a rather powerful programming technique. But like all approaches described, it’s also a double edge sword. Drawing a line between picking up only the good habits versus idol worshipping can be a challenge for people who constantly like to use profiling to program themselves. I know that’s ironical but it’s true. For example, haven’t you seen young people smoking pot because their glamourous celebrities in Hollywood do it as well? Or young achievers sinking into complacency because their idols fall for it too?
(5) Vision Board
Many people thought Vision Boards are just for physical goals. But if you recall my Vision Board experiment, positive emotions can also be included in it as well. For example, under the Health & Fitness section of my Vision Board, I’ve used a picture of a man jumping into the air to signify the vitality associated with good sleep and regular exercise. To make that feeling even more obvious, I attached the affirmation “I Feel Healthy and Energetic After Sleeping Well and Exercising Regularly” to that.
I’ve personally derived a lot of fun from my Vision Board experiment and would strongly recommend this approach to anyone who’s keen to give add a little positivity in your life without losing all the joy. Do refer to one my earlier articles How I Create My Vision Board – Revealed! if you need help with creating your own Vision Board.
(6) Gratitude Journaling
Do you know that being grateful for the little things you possess in life can actually increase your happiness level by 25%? In an exclusive interview with Sharpbrains.com, Professor Robert Emmons revealed this finding in his 2003 paper.
In his research, more than a hundred people were asked to keep a journal and subsequently separated into 3 different groups. The first group was asked to write about anything they felt grateful about. The second, on issues that they felt disturbing and irritating. And the last, on matters that had a great impact on them. After 3 rounds of experiments and analysis, people in the 1st group were concluded to enjoy a higher level of general well being than the other 2 groups! They slept better, exercised more and had better expectations of the week ahead.
On hindsight, it’s not difficult to understand why. When one’s always complaining, he’s constantly engaging his mind to think of how life has been unjust to him, totally clouding the possibility that he can breakthrough this with a bit of effort. Sometimes, sticking your head out for a breath of fresh air by just focusing on your “haves” rather than your “don’t haves” will let you see things in a totally different perspective. Remember, when you start changing what you see, the things you see change.
I don’t keep a personal gratitude journal but am seriously tempted to do so now!
(7) Masterminding
When I first wrote The Beginner’s Guide To Mastermind Groups, I belong to 2 teams which were more of the open and communicative style. One was structured as a members only forum and whoever has a question, can raise it to the floor. The other was confined to email correspondences. Even though both groups were very much dormant now, during the times when they were active, one of the first things I would do everyday was to login to the forum or my email to check if there were any new ideas or case studies reported by the teams.
It was very inspiring to hear of any successes. Especially those that came about as a result of the group. Because it proved one thing. If they could do it, so could I. The only question was, how? And my mind would be so focused on brainstorming the followup strategies that I didn’t have much bandwidth left for brooding over negative stuff.
** Photo By Derrick T