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KEY 1

CLARIFY YOUR OUTCOME

THE EMOTIONAL BRAIN

DOES it bother you that, despite your extensive knowledge of what you need to do and feel to win – gained from several books on the topic, online research, or even training sessions that you have attended – you still haven’t reached the place where you want to be?

The answer is that logic and knowledge have very little to do with breaking through limitations. In fact, buying books and trying to understand the logic of what it takes to overcome your limitations and where you’re going wrong is part of the problem. Your thinking patterns are a big reason that you don’t get the outcomes you desire.

Logic has very little to do with bringing about change to your emotional brain. The emotional brain and the logical brain operate by two different sets of rules. Understanding and working with the logical brain won’t give you control of the emotional part of your brain. When it comes to being able to master your limitations, it’s the emotional part that you need to learn to manage.

Let me give you an analogy so you can appreciate and understand the difference between the two parts of your brain.

Think of road plates, those strong and solid sheets of metal, about five feet wide by ten feet long, that construction crews use to cover openings in the road. They are so strong, cars can drive over them safely.

Now, if I were to put one of them on a sidewalk, most people wouldn’t hesitate to walk on it, because, safety-wise, it’s the equivalent of a regular sidewalk. But what if I were to just change one variable? What if I placed the road plate outside the eightieth floor of the Empire State Building and across to the building on the other side of the street and asked you to walk across?

If you’re like most people, you would balk at the very idea. If I were to ask you why, you most likely would say, “Because it’s dangerous.”

Let’s say I then introduced logic to explain why it’s totally safe, telling you, “This road plate was put in place by the same engineering team that built the famed Verrazano Bridge, and they have confirmed that it is equally as safe.”

If I asked you whether you would stand on it now, what would you say? Chances are your answer would still be a resounding no.

You might say, “Maybe the weather’s going to be windy.”

I might respond by saying, “What if the entire team of meteorologists from radio station WCBS 880 vouched that the weather was totally fine and there wasn’t going to be any wind? Would you walk on it then?”

“I’m not feeling well,” you might say. “I couldn’t possibly try it.”

If I brought a team of doctors in to attest that you were perfectly healthy, would that do the trick? Not likely.

Logically, I showed you that walking on the plate eighty floors up is as safe as walking on it on the sidewalk below. But the reason logic has no sway over you is that you are accessing something a lot deeper than logic – your imagination.

You would look down at the road plate sticking out of the eightieth floor and down at the scene below, and ask, “What are those little rectangles moving around?”

And I would answer, “Those are buses.”

“And what are those smaller rectangles?”

“Oh, those are cars.”

“And what are those dots?”

“Oh, those are people.”

And in your mind’s eye – in your imagination – you would see a little red dot on the ground, and that would be you after you’ve fallen.

Logic goes out the window when imagination kicks in.

You could be assured a thousand times that you’re going to be okay and it’s totally safe, but you still wouldn’t be able to bring yourself to do it. Because when you imagine something bad happening, all the logical explanations and assurances disappear.

This is why we get frustrated when someone tries to reason with us about doing something that scares us. Their logic doesn’t help, because we can’t get past our limiting thoughts. To get the results we want, therefore, we must alter our imagination. If we can do that, we can put a process of change in motion that will positively impact what we accomplish in life.

It Starts with Your Imagination

If you change your imagination	→ then →	you change how you feel
If you change how you feel	→ then →	you change what you’re going to do
If you change what you’re going to do	→ then →	you change what you can accomplish
If you change what you accomplish	→ then →	you change your life

IMAGINE THE GOOD

Controlling Your Imagination

Let’s talk about how to take control of the part of your brain where imagination resides so you can use and control the creativity and sensitivity that G-d has given you.

After all, it is simply patterns of thought that have kept you stuck – self-limiting patterns.

If you were to interview ten thousand people with limitations, you would see that they share similar patterns of thought. And if you were to interview ten thousand people who live their dreams, you would see that they, too, share similar patterns of thought.

Imagine that two people are about to board an aircraft. One is nervous and the other calm. There’s no biological difference between them other than what’s happening in their brains. The nervous one is imagining that the plane is going to crash and he’s about to meet his death. The calm person is imagining that he’s arriving at his favorite vacation destination, excited about the great time he’s going to have.

If we were to switch their thinking patterns, whereby the person who is calm is now imagining that he’s going to die in an hour and the person who’s nervous is imagining that he’s going on his favorite vacation, their feelings would change.

It’s all about imagination. If you imagine that something bad is going to happen and things aren’t going to pan out the way you want, you’re going to be stressed, despite any facts that your logical brain knows that may refute this.

Don’t get me wrong. Logic serves a very powerful purpose. It keeps you in check so you don’t imagine things that make no sense or are totally outside reality. You’re not going to imagine walking through a street safely when there are cars coming at you at ninety miles an hour.

Yet you have the choice to always imagine that good things are going to happen, that things are going to pan out the way you want. If that’s how you imagine things will be, that’s how you’re going to feel, regardless of what logic dictates.

The way people can walk on a tightrope, or over fire, is by using their imagination. Once they logically recognize that there’s a way to do it safely and they have the skill, then all they need to do is imagine themselves on the other side safely.

That’s right – success in a seemingly over-the-top endeavor is primarily about controlling your imagination.

Remember: When you control your imagination, you control your feelings. And when you control your feelings, you control the direction your life will take.

UNDERSTAND YOUR FOUR-PART BRAIN

Let me give you a model to help you understand your brain so you can make changes to your imagination and get started right away on getting what you really want.

The following model shows the four parts of your brain: the unconscious mind, the subconscious mind, the critical filter, and the conscious mind.

Part 1 – Your Unconscious Mind

The job of the unconscious part of your brain is to control your heartbeat, your digestive system, your temperature, the blinking of your eyes, all the automatic processes. And it is under lock and key from G-d – and there’s very little you can do to control that part of your experience.

Part 2 – Your Subconscious Mind

The subconscious mind is divided into two components.

Component A is the filing cabinet that stores every single memory you have ever experienced. According to researchers, we start storing information from the moment we’re conceived. Even when we are in our mother’s womb, we not only store information but can also access it. Some people believe that, through hypnosis, we can retrieve information from that time – that we can go back to our earliest experiences before and after birth and recall events. Even though we never experienced this time consciously, it was being recorded.

This component of the brain can store unlimited amounts of information.

Component B consists of our images of who we are and what we are. These are locked into our subconscious mind. They aren’t easily accessible, and for good reason! If we were affected and changed by anything anyone ever told us about ourselves, life would be quite a roller-coaster ride for us. That’s why these images are under lock and key.

Here’s an example to help you understand this concept better. You see yourself as a healthy person with a healthy heart. Because this is locked into your subconscious mind, if you walk down the street and somebody tells you you’re sick, it’s not going to affect you. You know you’re healthy.

Part of your job in achieving the life you desire is to make some changes to this part of your mind. But for now it suffices for you to know that this is part of your subconscious mind.

Part 3 – Your Conscious Mind

Your conscious mind is where you experience the thoughts you’re aware of. The conscious mind is very limited! For example, scientists claim that it can hold only seven to nine bits of information at a time.

But it also serves a very important function. It is the doorway to the subconscious mind. Anything that your senses experience passes through your conscious mind on the way to your subconscious mind.

Part 4 – Your Critical Filter

If we experience something through our senses, why is it that we don’t process everything consciously? Why are we not affected by everything we experience? The answer lies in the part of the brain called the critical filter, which is between your conscious mind and subconscious mind. It decides:

• which experiences will go in to the component of the subconscious mind that is just concerned with memory (it can be accessed at a later time without our even being aware that it was stored there), and

• which experiences in our conscious mind will reinforce those images we have of ourselves.

Going back to the example of your beliefs about your health, let’s suppose we’re friends and I tell you that your heart is weak. My statement would likely have no effect on you. It would go through your conscious mind and be funneled into the memory side of your subconscious mind. You’re going to remember that I said it, but it’s not going to affect the picture you have of yourself.

What would happen, though, if a cardiologist in a white coat made this statement to you? The information would go into the component of your subconscious mind that maintains the image of who you are, and it would affect that image. In no time at all you would see yourself as a person with a weak heart.

BYPASS THE CRITICAL FILTER

Let’s understand how the critical filter works so you can see that you can sidestep it and create the changes you desire.

The critical filter refutes information based on old knowledge.

Children don’t yet have a lot of information, so they have a very slight critical filter. They are easily affected by their parents’ statements of what is right or wrong. Their impressionability can work for good or ill.

When parents tell children something about themselves – good or bad – they will accept it, because they don’t have enough information to refute it. Children borrow their parents’ critical filter in order to make judgment calls.

As children mature, their own critical filter becomes stronger and stronger. But certain things will still bypass it, such as information from an authority, as in my example above. That’s one of the rules of the critical filter – that you don’t refute an authority.

Let’s say you have developed some negative views of yourself, of the world, or of certain situations, views that are now on the inside, having gotten past the critical filter. You now associate certain people, situations, yourself, and your life with these negative views. The connections between feelings and events are locked in and protected by your subconscious mind, on the other side of your critical filter, and your life runs accordingly.

By reading this book, you may have decided that it’s time to go in and change these negative feelings. Your challenge is going to be to bypass the critical filter to see the changes that are needed and to make them.

Taking Control of Your Imagination

Again, the secret lies in your imagination.

The reason is simple. If you imagine something, and you can identify with it, you thereby utilize your conscious mind. To add the feelings you want to experience, you access the emotions that are locked away in your subconscious mind.

By attaching the feelings that you choose to attach, you can circumvent the critical filter. Over time, you can get good at this. You can start to slowly but surely change associations in your mind and give yourself feelings of calmness, security, safety, or confidence. Then you can begin to associate these feelings with various events and situations in your life as you see fit.

MAKE IT REAL

How Would You Like Your Life to Look?

Let’s bring this discussion down to the practical level. As just discussed, the first part of creating emotional change is being able to imagine your desired outcome. If you can imagine something, you can slowly but surely begin to create the feelings to go with it. Attaching the feelings you want to attach requires you to bypass the critical filter. This is what will enable you to change the associations and the feelings connected in your subconscious mind. And by changing them, you change the way you feel and experience the world.

EXERCISE

Imagining How You Would Like Your Life to Look

List ten vivid images of situations you want to experience in which all your limitations have disappeared. As you envision a situation, also imagine the new, more positive feelings you want to associate with this new reality. Be clear on the emotions associated with each one. For example:

I get up in the morning (situation)

and

I feel strong and confident (emotions).

All ten should be written and expressed in this way.

To help you get started, consider the following situations that many people say they would like to change.

• I speak in public and I feel…

• I am sitting at my desk and I feel…

• I talk to prospects and I feel…

• I get up in the morning and I feel…

• I am doing a sales presentation and I feel…

The entire exercise should take you five to ten minutes. The best way to do it is to spend somewhere between thirty to sixty seconds on each of these images, with your eyes closed. Studies show that when you close your eyes, it’s much easier for your mind to create its imagery work. This approach will help you to successfully bypass the critical filter and see these associations taking root in your life.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Your goal is to be so clear about where you’re heading that you can get past any obstacles that might block you from moving forward.

Working with Your Imagination and Brain

We all carry emotions that we’re not aware of.

Someone might touch us on the shoulder the way someone touched us when we were sad, and all of a sudden we experience sadness. It has nothing to do with what we’re doing; it’s just an outside connection that was developed at one time.

Someone may look at us the way another person looked at us when we were feeling bad and – boom – we feel bad.

It’s extremely important to be focused and know where you want to go in order not to be derailed by these obstacles.

When you’re asleep at night, your critical filter relaxes. That’s why you can dream about doing things that don’t make logical sense. There’s no filter saying, “That doesn’t make any sense.” By the same token, when you’re awake, closing your eyes is a way you can tap in to that benefit and put the filter to sleep. It will strengthen your ability to imagine and heighten your ability to access your emotions.

If your goal is to wake up calm in the morning, then, before bedtime, spend thirty to sixty seconds imagining yourself getting up and being calm. Really juice your senses. See it as real, with color, sound, feeling, and smell. After thirty to sixty seconds of doing this, move on to your next picture until you have completed all ten.

At first, you may not see or feel things too clearly. With time, it will get better. This is how you start to take control of your imagination and your brain, and move in the direction you want to move.

As you proceed through the program, you’re going to develop the skill and take control of the imagination part of your brain so you can access all the amazing feelings you already have within yourself on a day-to-day basis.

In my clinical work, when I initially ask people to do this, 99.9% formulate their intentions this way: I do x and I don’t feel anxious.

That doesn’t work. That’s the equivalent of getting into the taxi and saying, “Don’t take me here; don’t take me there.” This isn’t language the brain can understand. You’re not telling the brain where you want to go. It’s like giving your brain the instruction, “Don’t think of the color blue.” We all know that will make us think of the color blue. We can’t “not” think of something. What the brain interprets this to mean is to think of the color blue with an X over it.

That’s not what you want. You don’t want to feel anxious with an X sign over to it; you want to be calm and not anxious at all. So when you do this exercise, go over your list again. Be clear that you’re saying where you do want to go, not where you don’t want to go.

The brain is literal. It doesn’t reinterpret. It doesn’t change “I don’t want to” into an understanding of what you do want. Clear and direct instructions are a language that your brain does understand.

I find that almost everyone can tell me what they don’t want. It’s not surprising for people to have been in therapy for years and still not know what they want; they simply have never thought about it.

It’s important for you to know that you’re never going to get beyond your limitations in that way. When people struggle to come up with an answer as to what the life of their dreams would look like, I say, “That’s why you don’t have it yet. You can’t have something if you don’t know what it looks like.” It’s as if they’re standing in the street crying. I ask, “Why are you crying?” And they say, “Because I didn’t get there yet.” And I say, “Where?” And they say, “I don’t know.”

The Law of Attraction

In simple terms the Law of Attraction means you get what you think about, what you focus on, what you talk about, and what you believe. The question is: Is your balance of thought, communication, and belief more on the side of what you want or the side of what you don’t want in your life?

Most people can articulate vividly and emotionally and in great detail all of the things that aren’t going right in their lives. They are completely clear about who caused it and why they are so miserable and constantly tell anyone who will listen all about it. Do you know someone like this…perhaps you? Is it any wonder that they…or you…would continue to attract the same problems and situations over and over again?

Where your attention goes, energy flows!

What shows up in your life has less to do with where you were born, how you were raised, or what you look like than with what you focus on. Such factors do play a part in your expectations, but at any point along the way you can change your focus and stop using your past, your looks, and who you know as your excuse to not be living the life you really want for yourself.

If you want something to change, you have to change something!