- We live mostly in a subconscious world

(Extract from Chapter I)

If everything we do is involved in pursuing particular goals, why aren’t we aware of this? It is easy to think of planning to purchase a house or to complete a training course as a goal, but we rarely consider very simple things, such as sitting down or scratching our nose, as goals. How can these be goals if we barely need to think about them? And when you walk, you never think about taking one step at a time, you just walk and take the mechanism behind it for granted, just as you do not need to think about how to hold a pen while writing. Yet all these are goals governed by exactly the same principles as purchasing a house or planning a holiday.

The difference is that when we are pursuing minor goals, we have a powerful ally doing everything for us: our subconscious mind. Imagine somebody throwing a tennis ball to you. Quickly and instinctively you extend your arm and (hopefully) catch the ball in mid-air. But think about it: who placed your body in the right position to intercept the ball, moved the muscles in your arms, hands, and other body parts, and then flexed your grip exactly when the ball reached you? That was your subconscious mind at work. All you did was to have an intention: ‘catch the ball,’ and your subconscious mind did all the rest.

Let’s take another example. Remember when you learned to ride a bicycle or drive a car? At first, you had to be conscious of every movement, but after some practice, it all became more automatic. You developed muscle memory and were then able to ride or drive while attending to other matters.
Your subconscious mind does much of the work for you. Not only is our subconscious mind our best partner, but it also ‘knows better’ than our conscious mind. Consider memory: whether we consciously remember something or not, our inner mind always remembers it better. Experiments investigating brain activity have shown that even if we aren’t aware of having seen a particular object before, the memories of this object are present at a deeper level. Brain scans showing activity levels demonstrated that the imprints of objects previously observed are there in our neuronal circuits even if we cannot consciously remember having seen them (Phillips, 2003b).


"We live primarily in a subconscious world, unaware of what is motivating us, directing our attention or prompting our actions. These inner forces are imbedded in subconscious mental representations, which are responsible for our beliefs, intentions, and behaviors.
This chain of events is primarily influenced by the thoughts we entertain, which means our thoughts are a primary determining force in our achievements.
Whatever we think about persistently, and with emotion, will have a high chance of becoming a reality.
Left untrained, our mind may focus on negative or undesirable thoughts, distracting our natural achieving machinery from our intended goals and redirecting our efforts towards unintended objectives, difficulties or failure."

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