There are an incredible number of books, articles, videos, and any other kind of media you can imagine selling you “the secret of success”. Most of these methods are questionable… after all, if it were easy, then everyone would be successful, and that’s clearly not the case. There is one thing, however, that IS critical to success… success in ANY field.
That one thing is awareness. There are many kinds of awareness, but there is one kind that has greater impact on your path to success in anything you attempt. That kind is awareness of self… awareness of how you make choices, how you change your subconscious tendencies, and how that determines how you see the world.
We all face an uncountable number of choices each day. With each choice that comes, you have two levels at which it can be made: subconscious or conscious. The default is subconscious, as you can plainly see if you think about it. You don’t consciously choose when (or whether) to breathe, at least not normally. You don’t, generally speaking, choose which letters to read in which order. Your subconscious handles all of these types of decisions…. EXCEPT when you become consciously aware of it.
When you read the paragraph above, you may have suddenly become aware of your breathing, and made a choice to hold your breath, or breathe more deeply. If you did decide to do one of those things, then your conscious mind made the decision to take over that choice temporarily from your subconscious. It will shortly pass the choices back to the subconscious as your awareness of your breathing fades.
When you become aware of a choice your conscious mind has the chance to pick the option that best aligns with your conscious goals, rather than your subconscious goals. That means that you have a much better chance of achieving success in the area where you are aware. Your conscious mind has the ability to prioritize goals much better than your subconscious… for instance, your subconscious will seldom, if ever, decide that something is more important than taking care of hunger. Your conscious mind, on the other hand, can see that going to an interview during your lunch break, and thus missing lunch, will satisfy higher priorities, like getting a better job.
Your subconscious mind makes choices based on the history of how your conscious mind has chosen in situations similar to current circumstances. Any time it doesn’t have enough related decisions, it passes the choice on to your conscious mind by bringing it to your awareness. It also brings things to your awareness that your conscious mind has taught it are important.
You teach your subconscious about what is important to you by giving it your conscious attention. Whenever you think about something, you are giving it importance “points” in your subconscious. That is, if you think about something in passing one time, it will barely register as important, and your subconscious will only bring things to your awareness concerning it if they are huge, and if it’s shortly after the thought. If you are constantly thinking about something, however, your subconscious will interpret that as you telling it that that something is very important, and it will pop even minor things relating to it into your awareness.
Your subconscious is not terribly smart… it’s more like a computer. It does what you tell it to do, but can’t make intelligent decisions on its own. What that ends up meaning is that it takes not only the content of your thoughts when determining what’s important to you, but also the “polarity”. That is, if you think about something in a negative way, it will bring things that relate to that thing in a negative way to your attention. If you think about it in a positive way, it will bring things that relate to that thing in a positive way to your attention.
One example of this is finances. When you think about how little money you have, what things you don’t have, and how you don’t seem to be getting anywhere, that’s what you’re telling your subconscious is important. That means that it will make you aware of things that relate to (and reflect) how little money you have, what things you don’t have, etc. If, on the other hand, what you think about when it comes to your finances is how you can invest time or money to bring added benefit, that is what your subconscious mind will bring into your awareness.
For instance, let’s take a situation and look at it from each perspective. Let’s say a coworker tells you about his new fishing boat. Someone who looks at what they don’t have feels bad, or jealous/envious, that the other guy can afford to buy a boat when they can’t. Someone who looks for opportunities, on the other hand, might see it as a chance to make a friend and go fishing with them, or from a more financial side, might offer to buy the fish the coworker catches for a set rate, knowing that he can sell them for more than that.
That’s the same situation, the coworker with the new boat, and two completely different ways of seeing it. The same thing happens in other areas, too, like relationships. If you think more about what’s wrong with your relationship (or what’s wrong with the other person), your subconscious is going to bring more of that to your attention. If, on the other hand, you think about the positive aspects of the relationship, or positive attributes of the other person, your subconscious will make you aware of things related to that. It’s pretty obvious what a difference that can make in a relationship.
The good news is that you can intentionally choose to think (or not think) about a specific thing, or in a specific way. That is, you can consciously choose to look at your relationship from a positive perspective, and start teaching your subconscious that THAT is what you want brought to your attention. You can turn your thoughts away from what you lack any time they head that direction, and that will make that of less importance, thus bringing less of your lack to your attention.
By doing this, you are choosing what to be aware of. That means that you make choices in that area consciously, thus also setting “the history of how your conscious mind has chosen in situations similar to current circumstances”, and changing how your subconscious handles similar situations in the future when your conscious mind is too busy to deal with it.
You can set the patterns of success consciously, and then your subconscious will automatically reinforce those patterns. You can also set the patterns of failure, and your subconscious will automatically reinforce THOSE patterns. The difference between the two is awareness… when you become aware, you can set the pattern of your choice. That just leaves choosing what success means to you… and focusing your thoughts and awareness on that meaning.
