I must admit that I write these posts working on the assumption that you are working on achieving a goal of some sort, I have a goal that I'm working towards also.

The problem of course though is that if you were to imagine where you are now and where you want to be it's rarely a straight line!  You may have found like me that it's just so easy to be bumped off the path, to perhaps be completely on the wrong track to you goal.

Well, here's something important.  It's only you that put you there and it's only you that can get yourself back on track!  It might be hard to hear, but it's your fault if you aren't on track right now.

It's not that thing that guy said, or that you missed your train, or that you didn't get paid on time.  I struggle with this constantly because it's so easy to blame someone else or something else for where you are in your life.

So how do you fix it?  It takes constant, daily effort.  You need to figure out a way that reminds you of where you are going every single day.  Some ideas:

• Set the background of your computer desktop to a picture that will remind you of your goal.
• Put something small and subtle somewhere you are bound to see it everyday as a reminder (like a red dot on your keys or something)
• Set a reminder on your cell phone for every morning that just says a single word that reminds you of your objective.

There are hundreds of ways that you can remind yourself, what ideas do you have?

It's probably a little unfair of me to talk about persistence with any credibility, as you can see it's been a while since I've posted anything on the blog.  Way too long in fact.

I'm sure I've talked in the past about this story...


You get my point, it's critical to stick with one thing until you achieve it.

The issue has to do with the effort required to achieve your goals.  It takes concentrated, consistent effort and energy to send your vision out to the world and more to the point it takes time for the world (or God or Force) to hear it and respond.  The law of gender says that "every seed has a gestation period" meaning things take time.

Your idea is like a seed planted into the universe and the energy you give to it when ever you can enriches the idea and makes it grow, like watering a seedling.  If you stop watering it what happens?  Well the same applies to your idea and goal seeds, if you stop sending energy to them then they will also die, and in a way you have to start all over again with your idea.

It's only with daily energy applied knowingly and with concentration that your visions and ideas will take physical form.  So with a renewed commitment I will be persisting in blogging more regularly in an effort to help achive and realise my goals.

Are you struggling with your goal?

I discussed recently the fact that what you think about is what guides your results.  In the diagram above your conscious day to day thoughts are in the top part of your mind (where the 1 is in this diagram).  There's a huge problem though, your senses: 

• Sights
• Sounds
• Tastes
• Touches
• Smells

All of these things affect your thoughts.  You see a  bill you don't have the money to pay, you hear someone yelling at someone they should be loving, you feel your tummy that should be flat but isn't.  These are of course things around you that are hard to ignore, but you have to find a way to look past them if you want to achieve your goals.

Easier said than done, but there are a few things you can do to make it easier.  Firstly it takes practice!  You have to actually exercise your imagination, here are some contrasts to the common issues above.

• A bill you don't want to pay.  Last year I went to my Internet banking and took a screen dump of my bank accounts, then I went into photoshop and edited all the number to be what I actually wanted them to be.  I printed that out and stuck it on the wall next to my computer, all I had to do was glance to the side of my screen to see my goal. 
• Hearing Yelling.  This is easy, get some headphones and listen to what you want to be hearing.  Want to be on a tropical island, then download some meditation music with waves and wind blowing through trees.  A quick google search showed plenty of places to get music, try here.
• Tummy not so flat huh?  Touch is a hard one, but I bet there is one part of your tummy you do like.  Maybe just a square inch off to the side.  Here's where you need to be concentrating.

Some people have gone to the trouble of actually going and sitting in the car they want to be driving and getting someone to take their picture!  They then stick this up on their wall at home so it's something they see all the time.

Another trick I learned is to use memory triggers to jolt you back into what you need to be thinking about.  It's really throughout the day to get stuck in the static of seeing the wrong things so you need a way to constantly remind yourself of what you should be thinking about.  A memory trigger is something small that disrupts your vision at regular intervals and reminds you of something.  As an example some people might put a rubber band around their wrist so that every time they feel it or touch is they remind themselves of what they need to be thinking about.

I invested a couple of dollars in some red dots and put them in specific places.  On the top of my computer screen, no the steering wheel of the car and on my keys, on my wallet and on my bathroom mirror.  Places that I found my mind wandering around... but no more.  These are constant triggers that remind me what I'm supposed to be visualizing many times a day.

Now this is a weird part, when you have established a picture in your head of what you want you need to 'pass' this to your subconscious mind.  Now I use the diagram above to visualize my mind, and I know that I need to pass the image of what I want to my subconscious, so what I do is a visualize my subconscious mind as a pool of water in my head, and then I actually visualize the object of my goal sinking into that pool.  It seems to work for me, I know it's a little odd, but hey you do what works.  If you can keep up a habit of doing that dozens or hundreds of times each and every day then you are well on your way to getting your goals.  To be honest the universe has no choice from this point on!

Now last week I talked about the 30 day trial period for a change in your behavior... well I am pleased to tell you that since that day (30th March) where I committed to walking for 30 minutes each and every day and have been able to do it!  It's actually really exciting to know that I am already 10 days into my trial period.  The vision of a thinner person in my head makes it easy.

As always your comments are welcome.

I heard a great idea from Steve Pavlina called the 30 Day Trial.  I'm not sure if you ever download software from the internet but alot of it is called trial-ware.  It's software that you download and install and you get 30 day to see if it'll do what you want.  After those 30 days you can either buy it and keep it forever or uninstall it and try something else.  It's an easy concept and one that Steve Pavlina applies to changing pattern and behaviour.

I must admit that I've heard many different theories that relate to changing a habit, normally it involves the amount of time you need to work it at before it's broken or introduced.  Some people say 7 days, some say 90 days, however I think 30 days works for me.

Here's the catch though... if you try something new for 30 days but skip day 12 and days 18 through 24 then guess what?  It doesn't work!  It's like reading the instructions to setting your VCR but skipping step 6 and then wondering why it doesn't do what you want.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said "Of what use to make heroic vows of amendment if the same old law breaker is to keep them?"

The real question is why though isn't it?   You see your mind acts like an autopilot.  An autopilot is a piece of technology that allows a captain to let the airplane get from A to B.  The captain sets the destination and then the plane monitors things like altitude, weather, air pressure and wind and then continually makes minor adjustments (sometimes hundreds per second) to guide the plane to the destination.  Your mind works in the same way which is both good and bad.

In this case though it's all about the destination.  As an example if a student starts a school year with results from the last year fresh in their head then it's a good bet that they'll end this new year in the same way.  If the student is a B average student and they THINK they are a B average student then guess what's going to happen throughout the year?  They'll get Bs!   However if you were to tell the student that they can get an A, and they were to visualise it and then implement some changes in behaviour then I guarentee they'll get an A.

You see... unless we actually change our behaviour then our mind is going to automatically keep us on track for our expected results.  Here's another example: let's say you are a sales person and you sell $100,000 every year.  You go to a sales seminar and you get all excited, new energy, new ideas and for a short time (perhaps 2 weeks) you make a bunch of new sales.  Well unless you actually change your behaviour then your mind's autopilot will kick and correct that behaviour for you, setting you back on a path of selling $100,000.

So how do you break the behaviour?  Two things:

1. Set a new destination
2. Do a 30 Day Trial of a new behaviour

The new destination is easy, and really that's what this whole blog is about.  How do you achieve the goal you really want in life.  The 30 Day Trial is a bit tougher, but that's why it's only 30 days.

You can do anything for 30 days can't you?  What could you change about your behaviour for just 30 days if you knew it would help.  I love this question too... "If you knew you couldn't fail at something, then what would you really want to be doing with your life?"

Me?  Well what can I change for 30 Days?  I need to change my exercise behaviour so I think this will be my 30 day trial: Walk on the treadmill for 30 minutes each day.  I'll let you know how I go.

So what are you going to do?

One of the things I used to struggle with was the concept of actually what the mind is.  If I ask you to think about your house you get picture in your head, if I ask you to think about your car you get a picture in your head.  But if I say to think about your mind what do you get?

Originally my thoughts were of my brain, but there's two problems with that.  1) It's not really the most attractive thing to visualize and 2) It's no more your mind than your foot is.  Bob Proctor then introduced me to a tool called "the stick person".  And oddly enough it looks like a stick person, it's just a simple drawing but it is incredibly powerful.

Here's the stick person:


The big circle at the top represents your head, the smaller circle underneath being your body.  However what's more important is what the stick person represents.  You see your mind has both a conscious element and an subconscious element.  The conscious element is where you visualize things, this is typically where we 'see' things in our minds eye and where we believe most of our thinking takes place.  The cool thing is that your conscious mind can be fed with information in 2 different ways:

• What's going on around you.
• Thoughts and images you think up yourself.

Importantly you have the ablility to choose to either accept or reject anything that comes into your conscious mind.  If you don't like the thoughts in your conscious mind then you can change them in a flash!  It's just a matter of thinking about something else.

Your subconscious mind however doesn't have the luxury of choice, it simply accepts anything that it's given and in the moment instantly and automatically starts to bring those results into your life.

There is in fact a chain of events that occur through us as individuals and most of us don't even know it's going on.  It's really simple too...

1. You think in your consious mind
2. This then gets passed to your subconsiouc mind
3. Which then brings about changes in your physical world and subsequently the results you get

In the diagram above the C stands for your conscious mind and the S for your subconsious.  I tend to visualize my own head rather than the stick person and virtually split my head in half at about where my eyes are.  Everything above my eyes in conscious and everything below is subconscious.

So let me just repeat something quickly... you think in your conscious mind, your subconscious has no choice to accept it, and then the results are seen around you.  So if you are consistently thinking about how little money you have, or how lonely you are or how sick you are then that's what getting passed to your subconscious mind, and that's the results you are getting.

Now here's the hard part.  Like I said at the beginning of the post you have the ability to choose what you want to think in your conscious mind.  So if you have the ability to replace the thoughts of an empty bank account with one full of what you need, or of you surrounded by loving and caring friends or healthy and active then this is what gets passed to your subconcious (remember it doesn't have a choice) and that leads to the results in your life.

Here's the same diagram with a few extra things added:





Your senses act like antenna that feed information to your conscious mind and they allow us to see things around us and hear our world etc.  But like I said before the challenge is being able to ignore what's going on around you and originate your own thoughts.  If you continually think about an empty bank account then the laws of the universe will automatically make that happen for you, but if you think about having all the money you need to live the life you want to lead then the same laws apply.

In a previous post I gave you an exercise in using your imagination.  I hope that by now you've done that a few times because it's critical that you have the ability to visualize what you want to achieve before you can actually have it.  In the above diagram the three steps to your results are clearly identified.

1. Build in your head the image of what you want to achieve, remember to ignore your senses.
2. Pass that image on to your subconcious mind.
3. The laws of the universe will bring the results that you desire into your life.

The next few posts are going to concentrate of these steps in more detail, so come back soon to get some more details.  Also if you are working on a specific goal then feel free to share it with us in the comments below... I know you'll get nothing but the support you need to make it happen here.