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.
Then, when we have a need to refer to something, our automatic RAS (reticular activation system) goes through our sub conscious to check if we’re holding anything relevant. So when we’re strolling down a road, things that have meaning to us come to our attention, but everything else doesn’t.
Consequently, if we’ve been in the habit of generating positive thoughts and experiences that got fed into our sub conscious mind, those same vibes will be returned. But the sub-conscious can only return what it originally was given. So if it received negative information, it will send negative back.
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, as it believes what it’s told, we need to create a very specific picture of our goal in our conscious mind. The RAS will then pass this on to our sub-conscious – which will then help us achieve the goal. It does this by bringing to our attention all the relevant information which otherwise might have remained as ‘background noise’.
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.
