True Self-Leadership occurs through goal-setting
The conscious and subconscious mind
Your brain is a vastly interesting object.
In fact, it is likely one of the most complex things in the universe. However, the brain can ultimately be divided into two distinct yet connected systems – the conscious mind and the subconscious mind.
The conscious mind is your logical mind. It receives information from your five senses. It is where you think and rationalise. Logic rules the day in the conscious mind. However, the conscious mind does not control our actions.
The subconscious mind almost exclusively controls our actions. Emotions and instincts largely rule this mind. Its job is to help us meet our needs and urges – reproduction, food, thirst, safety, intimacy, and many others. It is a potent force. It doesn’t reason or judge, it simply acts, often commanding your actions.
Together, these two minds work to determine your actions. They can bring you success or failure, happiness or anxiety, achievement or frustration. It is all in the way you use them.
You cannot outperform your image of yourself that is stored in the subconscious mind.
This is what often prevents us from succeeding. Have you ever not asked someone on a date for fear of them saying no? Or not applied for a job because you feared failure? This is the subconscious mind at work. If we do not have an image of our success in the unconscious mind, achieving consistent success is practically impossible.
Did you know that your brain is constantly changing? The conscious and subconscious minds are carefully wired together. Old connections are continually breaking and new ones forming. In fact, one of the things that determine how these connections form are your thoughts.
You can use your conscious mind to shape your unconscious mind by overriding it. This is not an easy process. It requires consistency – but it can be done.
How do you rewire your mind for success? The process is quite simple:
1. Decide today what you want in life.
2. Envision yourself as obtaining that goal.
3. Find techniques that work for you, such as meditation and affirmations.
4. Begin moving towards your goals, celebrating your progress along the way.
5. Remember that failures are simply ways to learn, further teaching your mind to pursue success.
Once you begin training your unconscious mind to support your goals and desires, you will be on the way to success. Your brain will start building new connections that empower you to pursue your goals. Your fear and anxiety will diminish. In their place, you’ll find confidence and resolve.
Remember that this must be a continuous, active process. Keep it up, and you’ll reach your dreams!
The conscious mind
Goals affect the conscious mind in two ways.
Firstly, they force you to take the time to define exactly what it is that you want clearly.
Secondly, they help you to consistently focus on what you want long enough to achieve it.
Countless individuals journey through life with only a hazy vision of what they truly want. They never take the time to develop a definite purpose by asking themselves, “what exactly do I want to have, what exactly do I want to do, where exactly do I want to go?”
The challenge with approaching life without a definite purpose is that a hazy vision will, at best, yield mediocre results.
Conversely, when an individual chooses to take the time to crystallise their thoughts about their future, they gain enormous power to enhance their ability to get results. Think of a light bulb; it has a lot of energy but no real power.
This is because it casts its energy in many directions: no focus – no power. A laser beam is nothing more than a finely focused light bulb. Yet a laser can cut through solid steel. Why? A laser beam gains power through focus. These same principles hold for you as you begin to focus your thoughts on what you want to achieve.
The fact that most people find realising their dreams a challenging task is not actually due to a flaw in the power of their minds.
The true challenge lies in their inability to take control of their conscious mind and have it focus on a specific goal. The subconscious mind’s true power is best accessed when the conscious mind focuses on a goal long enough to create a clear picture that the subconscious mind can then act upon. It is precisely for this reason that a person’s productivity is substantially enhanced when they organise and implement a goals program in their life.
A goal program enables a person to give direction to his life. Establishing goals for each major area of life enables you to capture your dreams and arrange them personally. Only when this is accomplished can you harness the real power of the conscious mind?
The 1988 movie, “Rain Man”, clearly illustrates the conscious mind’s ability to develop laser focus.
It is about a real-life character named Raymond Babbitt, who is autistic. In one scene, the waitress in a diner spills most of a box of toothpicks on the floor.
Raymond looks down at the pile and can use his mind to count the exact number of toothpicks on the floor in a matter of moments. Raymond’s particular type of autism enabled him to perform what can be construed as a “superhuman feat.”
However, the actual secret to this super ability is that it is a part of his autism. People with this type of autism can focus their conscious mind on certain minute details because most other stimuli are blocked out of their conscious thoughts.
They have an immense capacity to concentrate on details. In other words, these special people can focus their conscious mind on a specific stimulus in such a clear manner that they can immediately access some of the awesome powers of the subconscious mind.
One psychologist who has dedicated his career to studying this phenomenon has concluded that the only difference between autistic and other people is their ability to concentrate.
The subconscious mind
Earlier in the program, we described the subconscious mind as a goal-seeking mechanism. It is an unpretentious and unbiased part of the mind. Most importantly, it is capable of achieving anything you clearly instruct it to.
When the subconscious mind is given vivid instructions of what to achieve, it immediately begins accessing and assimilating all past experiences stored in the memory banks and all current feedback experienced by your senses to create a plan of action.
When you take the time to construct a goal plan for your life, you enable the conscious mind to communicate goals to the subconscious mind in a clean, orderly, and prioritised fashion.
This clarity of thought enables the subconscious mind to increase its effectiveness significantly. Hazy goals will, at best, yield hazy results. However, crystal clear goals will enable you to gain the power to achieve the specific results you desire.
Self-image
The third component of the human mind is self-image. As described earlier, the self-image is the Software System of the mind. It is the part of the mind that was developed very early in life and serves as the interpreter for all that you experience in life.
The self-image interprets all feedback and properly stores each new experience in the subconscious mind.
As such, it sets the playing field for all that you will do, have or become. With the controlling powers of the self-image, no goal can be set and achieved unless the self-image aligns with the goal.
By consciously establishing a clear goal direction for your life, you can assess whether the goals you are pursuing are within your current self-belief level or whether they are at odds.
This awareness is essential to your success because only when your self-image is in line with the goals you pursue, are you truly capable of accessing your full potential to bring your goals to fruition.
Therefore, learning to nurture and grow the self-image is an integral part of achieving many of the goals you will set in life.
By developing a goals program for your life, you can approach each day with a clarity of purpose that outlines not only exactly what you want, but exactly who you will need to become to achieve your goals.
A guide to getting your goal plans started.
You will want to begin the goal-setting process by establishing goals in three critical areas:
Your personal life
These goals represent your reason for being alive. They are what drive you every day to strive to be your best.
Goals in your personal life may include things that might include:
- Building great relationships with your spouse, children, and friends
- Achieving a certain weight or gaining a specific level of physical fitness
- Your desire to coach the Little League team
- Take a dream vacation to Paris
- Owning a red Ferrari
- Learning to play the piano
- Having a certain amount of money in investments
- Building your dream home, running a marathon
- Fly fishing in Alaska
- And so much more!
Your personal goals should represent whatever it is that you want to achieve in your personal life.
Your professional life
The second area where you will want to set goals is regarding your career.
The reason career goals are important is that many of your personal goals require financial success. Therefore, you will be able to realise many of your personal goals by excelling in your career.
Some examples of career goals might include the income level you desire to make the position within your organisation you would like to hold, the level of sales production you want to achieve, and so forth.
Your own self-improvement
The vast majority of the goals you will set for your life will require you to develop certain core fundamental skills to succeed. As you have learned throughout this program: before you can have – you must become.
Setting goals for the improvement of your skills represents an integral part of the process of becoming.
Examples of fundamental skill improvement goals may include learning to utilise your time more productively, improving your listening skills, enhancing your writing and verbal communication skills.
You will also want to pair the above-mentioned skills with those that are specific to your job.
For example, mastering the ability to conduct a sales interview if you are in a sales-related position, learning to read blueprints if you are in the construction field, learning how to inspire and motivate students to learn if you are a teacher, and again – so much more.