The power of the negative pt1

You have within you the power to do anything that you set your mind to as long as you focus on moving toward what you want and not getting away from what it is that you do not want. What does this mean?

Let's look for an answer in the findings of an interview that was done with one of the most successful women in history, Oprah Winfrey. This is a simplified version of what happened. She was asked why she worked and her reply was that she loved what she does for a living. She gets great joy out of being in service to others. When asked why she works out she said to avoid having a big butt.

If you think about it in terms of a line graph how has her career been? It's pretty much a diagonal line, starting at nowhere and ending up with her on top of the world, not a lot of starts and stops just consistent improvement over time. Now let's do the same thing for her issues with weight over the past couple of decades. This starts to look more like a roller coaster with lots of ups and downs.  Why is this?

It's simple really. When focused on something we love there is a constant drive to improve and better oneself. On the contrary, when we are attempting to get away from something, being fat for example, we work really hard until we start to see results and then we tend to breathe a sigh of relief, relax and stop focusing so much on it. What comes next is a return to the habits and patterns that caused the thing that we were struggling to get away from in the first place.  It is part of how we are programmed. But through conscious decisions we can choose to act in such a way as to change the programming.

Loss is perceived by our brain as a negative thing. When you lose something what do you automatically tend to do about it? You look for the thing that is lost. So when you lose weight your subconscious tendency is to "find" it again. Avoid this by moving towards being healthy and in shape rather than moving away from being fat or unhealthy.

If you get out of a relationship with someone that has a whole lot of traits that you don't enjoy, it is more empowering to seek out someone that has good traits than it is to focus on not getting someone with the same bad traits the previous person had. In fact, if you focus on NOT ending up with someone that has those undesirable traits, you almost certainly will get the exact same type of person you were with before.

When you make a list of things that you do not want you are actually telling your mind that you do want them and setting yourself up to have the same results you had before. So perhaps you would be better served by simply making a list of the things that you do want in your life and striving to achieve them

Let's try a couple of fun examples. First take a couple of deep breaths. Then as hard as you possibly can, do not imagine a flying purple hamster. Next do not imagine a pink elephant on roller skates. Then do not imagine yourself seated in first class on a Boeing 747 .  And finally, do not imagine yourself surrounded by a huge pile of money.

I bet you failed to not think of those things. In fact if you are playing along and being completely honest with yourself, I am sure of it. That's okay though. It just goes to show that your mind really does tend to ignore the word not.