by Jason Kendall

Look at any Best Seller list in bookshops today, and it’ll
be populated with autobiographies of the rich and famous.
From glamour models to footballers 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.

That’s the way of the world; life’s achievers allow positive
reasons why ‘they can’ to flood their consciousness, and
drown out negative reasons why they 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.

Achievers, it appears, are able to manipulate the messages
streamimg through to their sub-conscious minds. They do this
by choosing the exact messages the conscious mind sends and
deliberately programming their RAS. As such, it’s an
essential tool for achieving goals, as the sub-conscious
mind can’t tell the difference between real or imaginary
events.

In other words, we need to create a very specific picture of
our goal in our conscious mind. The RAS will then pass this
on to our subconscious – which, as it believes everything
it’s told, will then help us achieve the goal. It does this
by making us aware of all the relevant information which
otherwise might have stayed 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.