From Stress to Success: 10 Steps to a Relaxed and Happy Life: a unique mind and body plan

• ‘there are more single women around than single men’,

• ‘you can’t make a living as an artist’,

• ‘you can’t rely on other people’,

• ‘if you haven’t been to university you can’t expect to get a good job’,

• ‘it’s impossible to get a job in the current economic climate’.

Again, thinking will make it so. Men do cry, I’ve seen them and so, probably, have you. There are some very well-paid women; there could be more if they believed sufficiently in themselves. You can be a well-paid artist under the right circumstances. There are jobs to be had, even in a depression. These things may happen less often than you would like but they do happen. The point is that while you have these Limiting Beliefs your deeds and actions are likely to contribute to them. Further, these Limiting Beliefs are putting restrictions on your life and you are feeling stressed by them. If you weren’t stressed by them, they wouldn’t come in the Limiting category. A belief like women aren’t violent’ may be stressful if you are a woman and feel like hitting out but think you have to suppress this. But if it makes you feel safe rather than stressed, it is a useful belief to have and not limiting.

Your ultimate negative belief

Your Ultimate Negative Belief has already been referred to. It is the biggie. It is the major stumbling block on your road to a happy and stress-free life. We will discuss it further, but later. If you want to pursue it now, turn to the chapter on Affirmations. There you will learn both how to find your Ultimate Negative Belief and how to antidote it with a Positive Alternative Belief.

Conscious and subconscious

We have talked about conscious thoughts. We have also talked about and alluded to deeper thoughts, thoughts that you perhaps haven’t brought to consciousness for many long years. It’s now time to take a closer look at the conscious and the subconscious minds and to consider their similarities and, more importantly, their differences.

Your conscious mind is where you do all your rational thinking. You plan, you consider, you analyse. You make decisions and you assess their results. With your conscious mind you keep yourself in line with reality, you try to be objective. Most people like to think they are rational human beings who can think and reason logically and act accordingly.

Your subconscious mind is subjective rather than objective. It relates to you personally. It is creative and intuitive. You can think of your subconscious as an entity that has your best interests, as it sees them, at heart, that is responsive to your logical thoughts and that assists you in creating a reality that conforms to your expectations.

If you think you’re going to be late for an appointment you will have the thought going round and round in your mind, ‘I’m going to be late’. Your subconscious picks this up and interprets it, not as a fear but as a statement of fact. Since it has your best interests at heart it then does all it can to make sure that reality works out the way you expect it to be and it makes you late. It may encourage you to do just one more task before leaving home or allow your mind to focus elsewhere so you forget something and have to go back for it, or it may take your conscious mind off where you’re going so you take a wrong turning. All or any of these things can make you late and your subconscious has done its job in making sure that your conscious prediction came true.

If your conscious mind keeps repeating that you’re unpopular and no-one loves you and your friends don’t really want you then your subconscious will make sure that you focus on the events and situations that conform with this view, thus again supporting your conscious mind with its view of reality.

Your subconscious mind will also make you behave in such a way that the outcome conforms to your world view. If you think you are unpopular you are likely to withdraw in social situations and keep to yourself, thus encouraging other people to leave you alone and proving, to you at least, your unpopularity.

The subconscious has little sense of humour. It is also very literal. Be careful of such phases as ‘I’ll die if I don’t get that job’. You just might.

Little Johnnie had just learnt to walk when granny came to stay. He insisted on carrying a plate of cakes to her at teatime. All was going well until granny saw what he was doing and said, in an endeavour to make him more careful, ‘Watch it, Johnnie, you’ll fall.’ He did just that. He watched it and then, as instructed, he fell.

Spend a few days listening to all the messages you feed into your subconscious. Are they serving you? Are they positive? Do you tell yourself you are happy or sad, successful or a failure, liked or disliked, good-looking or a mess, wealthy or poor, healthy or sick? The first step is to become aware of these messages, then to analyse them and then to change them as appropriate.

If you have a spotty face but lovely glossy hair you can either gaze into the mirror and say ‘what a mess’ or ‘how pretty/handsome’. If your subconscious gets the ‘mess’ message you are likely to do a lot of things in the day that will contribute to making you more of a mess. You may slouch, spill things, be careless with things that make your clothes and hands dirty or do a number of other things to increase your look of dishevelment. If, on the other hand, your subconscious gets the ‘pretty/handsome’ message it is likely to encourage you to act more cleanly and do things in such a way that you are neater and more elegant and generally contribute to your overall feeling of looking good.

It is not simply a question of focusing on the more positive aspects of your appearance, although this is a powerful tool in decreasing the stress you might otherwise feel about it. It is also important to encourage the unconscious actions and decisions you make that contribute to the desired end result of looking good rather than the unconscious actions that make you look dowdy.

It is valuable to know that the power of this subconscious mind, which is enormous, is yours for the asking. You don’t have to plead with it, pray to it, or bully and cajole it into doing what you want. All you have to do is recognize its capacity and programme it correctly and you will get the desired result.

The limiting factor in all this is yourself. If you choose to you can use the power of your subconscious to your own advantage. Equally, if you choose, you can use the power of your subconscious to keep you where you are and encourage all the things you fear. Which course will have you less stressed? Obviously the former course is the one that will lead to less stress. It is sad that so few people choose to use it. I repeat, the limiting factor is yourself. It is up to you what you choose to do and how you choose to think.

Fear of failure

So many people behave as if it is easier to predict failure and make that come true than to predict success and bring that about. The very notion of ‘touching wood’ tells us that we’re afraid our successes will be taken away from us, we’re afraid we’ll fail. There is a common fear that if you predict that something good is going to happen you are jeopardizing the positive outcome by even mentioning it; ‘touching wood’ is, in some way, supposed to undo the harm that could be caused by making the prediction.

It seems that in our society it is thought better not to predict success or a good time for yourself than to predict it and then not get it. It is more acceptable to predict that you have failed an exam and then be bashfully grateful when you have passed than to predict success. Many have a fear that if they predict and expect something good to happen and it doesn’t, people will think much less of them than if they had predicted a poor outcome initially. The saying ‘Pride goes before a fall’ says it all. Why not be proud? Why not be positive and hopeful?

Betty told me that she was always afraid of doing badly in the exams at school even though she was a good scholar and usually came in the top third of the class. While some of her close friends, who were also in the top third, were saying the work was easy and that they felt they’d done enough study, she couldn’t admit to them, or to herself, that she had done enough or that she was confident. Her greatest fear was appearing confident and then finding the result was worse than she had anticipated.

Even at the times when she felt she did know her work well she still couldn’t leave her books alone, fearing she’d overlooked something. She’d get into last-minute panics and rush back to check on facts. She’d create in her mind exam questions that she couldn’t answer and she’d get very stressed and tense in the days leading up to the exams. Even afterwards she would focus on all the things she hadn’t included in her answer. She hated hanging around with people discussing the papers and hearing the things they had put in and that she had omitted or done differently, fearing that they were right and she was wrong. She’d then tell people she was sure she’d failed. The results, when they finally came out, were an anticlimax. Invariably she had done well.

Her mother had brought her in to see me because Betty’s major school exams were looming at the end of the following year and she was afraid that the stress would be too much for her. I pointed out to Betty that it was fine to study hard. It was indeed silly to assume she knew everything she needed to know and to stop studying too early, but that it was also counter-productive to get over-stressed by focusing on the things she didn’t know.

During the tests and exams of the coming year she was to work just as hard as ever at her books, but she was gradually to start focusing on all the things she did know and to start assuring herself she could learn all her work in time and that she would do well in the exams as a result of her diligent efforts. In the few hours before each test or exam, when further study was impossible, she was told to start affirming to herself that she knew all she needed to know, that she had done her work well and that she would do well in the exam.

Note that she was not told simply to assume she had done enough work and that all would be well. She was not told to stop trying. The aim was to create a situation where she did study hard but where the extra, non-productive stress was removed from the situation.

The results were interesting. Both she and her mother reported that she was indeed less stressed. There were two added benefits that she had not foreseen. Firstly, she told me, study was becoming easier as she kept telling herself she was capable of learning and understanding all she needed. Secondly, she said that when it came to the actual exam she was able to answer the questions better both because she remembered more and because she was less stressed and was able to relax and think more clearly and formulate her answers better.

The period between doing the exams and getting the results had always been a trial for all the family. They were tense because Betty was tense; they were also tense because they kept hearing her say she had done badly. She was told to start affirming to herself, from the moment that she walked out of the exam room, that she had done well.

‘But what if I haven’t, what if I’m wrong?’ Her greatest fear raised its head again.

‘Then at least you’ll have spent the intervening time feeling happy rather than stressed,’ was my answer.

‘That’s like living in a fool’s paradise,’ she said anxiously.

‘Better than living in a fool’s hell as you do now, worrying when you have no need to.’ With this she agreed, albeit reluctantly.

As a result of harnessing her subconscious, by programming it for success rather than failure, she was not only less stressed but more successful too. She still found it hard to tell people she was sure she had done well, but at least she was able to stop bewailing how badly she had done.

It is worth repeating one important aspect of this. Notice one very important thing about the way Betty reprogrammed her subconscious. She did not go into the study period saying ‘I know enough. I know I’ll pass and do well.’ She included in all her affirmations both the concept that she was working hard and well and the concept that as a result she would do well in the exams.

In this she was in sharp contrast to Edward.

Edward had gone to a new and progressive university where the students were encouraged to set their own study patterns. He had been at a strict school and the new freedom was going to his head. Further, he had joined friends who were familiar with affirmations and their use and who spoke glibly about the power of the subconscious without really understanding it. He decided to copy them. His affirmations included ‘the work is easy’, ‘I am good and will pass all my exams’, ‘I’m tops, I’m successful and I’m competent’, and ‘when I need to remember what we did in class it will all come back to me simply and easily’.

On the face of it these are all very positive and empowering affirmations. Perhaps, when the power of his mind becomes strong enough, they will become sufficient to see him through the challenges of his life. However, in this instance they took the form of being relatively trivial thoughts and became an excuse not to study. He was surprised when he failed badly at the end of the first term, but he had learnt a valuable lesson about the subconscious.

Use the power of positive thoughts and your subconscious mind in combination with your conscious endeavours. Don’t dump the responsibility on to your subconscious and mess around.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_e1ee1b73-7969-51f6-8195-90cde0a2d025)

Past Programming (#ulink_e1ee1b73-7969-51f6-8195-90cde0a2d025)

If you were placed on the Earth for the very first time at this moment how would you feel? Would you know what was safe and what threatened you? Would you know you should be wary of snakes or could rejoice in a sunset? Would you worry about money if you had not heard of it before? Would you know what sort of person you could trust and who you could ask for help? Of course you would not. You only know these things when you have had a previous experience on which to base your judgement.

These past experiences may be helpful in the way you form your new judgement or they may be a hindrance. If you grew up in England and knew you could ask a policeman for help any time you were in trouble you might get a surprise when you approached the armed officer of some country in which the police were feared. If, as a woman, you were used to the considerate behaviour of men you might not be sufficiently careful in a situation where any lone woman was at risk. If you come from a warm and loving home you may be inappropriately trusting in other similar situations.

It can work the other way too. If a dog that seemed friendly suddenly turned and bit you some time in the past you are unlikely to trust dogs in the future. If you have always been beaten when things went wrong you may still cringe and feel stressed anytime a voice is raised, even if it is not in anger. If your mother died or left home when you were young and your first girlfriend walks out on you, you may never learn to relax and trust your wife, fearing at any slight or possible sign of her interest in another man, however casual, that she is about to leave you.

Your view of the world and your expectations of the future, immediate or distant, are based on your experiences in the past. It is on the basis of these past experiences that you make your decisions of today. This, at one level, is so obvious that it may seem unnecessary to stress the fact. Yet few people take in the full implications of this. For it means that if you came to inappropriate conclusions in the past your whole assessment of the present may be equally inaccurate or inappropriate. It also means that if you once learnt to filter, to delete, to generalize or to distort in the past, you are likely to continue developing this habit. It is by exploring the past and assessing the relevance to the present of the conclusions you reached then, that you can significantly reduce many of the stresses of the present and the future.

Early experiences

The major conclusions you come to are usually based on your earliest experiences. This means that the nature of your first few hours and of your early and formative years is likely to have a major impact on the way you assess events and situations. However, new learning experiences throughout childhood and into adulthood can also influence how you interpret future situations. They are likely to be less important, however, as you develop an increasing perspective with the years. If you were left on your own (abandoned) for 10 minutes after birth when everything was new and strange to you, this would have been much more traumatic than if you were left alone for an hour when you were five years old. By the age of five you have learnt that Mummy comes back to wake you after your nap; at a few minutes old you do not have such memories to call upon.