A glance in any book shop today is bound to reveal a ton of autobiographies. Successful people explaining how they made it in life. From glamour models to empire builders, they all have a different story to tell. But each has a common thread – they overcame adversity by focusing on the positives. This is the only way to achieve anything we’re aiming for. We have to consume ourselves with positive beliefs, and not allow negative a foot-hold!
And so for someone attempting to reduce their weight, a positive mind-set is fundamental. You can only do it if you think you can! An up-beat, affirmative viewpoint harnesses the right results. On the other hand, a negative outlook blocks us and numbs our ‘can-do’ receptors.
It’s all down to our mental apparatus – something called the reticular activation system that automatically prompts our thoughts. Think of how many things that were key issues in the past have now become distance memories – that’s because thoughts that are no longer pressing are moved to our sub conscious mind.
When we consciously attempt to do anything, our Reticular Activation System (RAS) will search the sub-conscious mind for any relevant information it holds, and bring it to our attention. If we’re walking down a street, we’re only made aware of things that have meaning to us – the rest is just background noise.
This means that if we’ve been regularly sending messages that are positive to our sub-conscious mind, then that’s what it will transfer back. However, we can only expect unhelpful, depressing thoughts to be returned if that’s what was originally sown.
We have an element of control over this. Successful people have generally worked on their attitude and restricted the amount of negative being stored. And so the reticular activation system emerges as a brilliant mechanism for fulfilling our dreams. The sub conscious has no way of knowing whether information sent to it is imaginary or not.
In other words, we need to build a very detailed picture of our goal in our conscious mind. Dutifully, our RAS will then store that image sub consciously, ready to assist us with our objectives. Because when we need to retrieve our old information on losing weight, the message is that it’s a done deal!
The writer Napoleon Hill said that we can achieve any realistic goal if stop dwelling on negative thoughts about it. We must keep a positive focus. Naturally, if we’ve bombarded our thinking with negative and defeat, we can expect exactly that.
