Day 7: Focus on the Negatives | Using the Power of Our Subconscious Mind
Welcome to Day 7!
I wanted to give your inbox some breathing room for a couple of days so that you could try implementing some of the tips I mentioned.
How was your week? Did you complete all of your To-Dos for the past 5 days? Did you achieve your goal?
Be proud of yourself if you did.
If not, it's okay too. We can try again.
Another tip that my dad gave me was "focusing on the negatives".
Do you remember what you wrote down in the worksheets sent out in Day 2 email on Monday? That's what I'm referring to - the negatives!
Dad said,
“I knew the nationwide no-smoking campaign was on the way and it was just going to become harder and harder to find a place to smoke because most places will soon ban smoking! So I just keep reminding myself of how annoying it would be to continue being addicted to cigarettes, how torturing it is to crave a cigarette when you’re flying long-haul flights, how bad it feels to know that people near you feel disgusted by you because of the smell. Those negatives make me crave it less and less. I knew that once I can push through, I will eventually stop craving it.”
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We all know the negative consequences of our actions. But as easy as it sounds, it's never easy to implement because we usually succumb to our desires the moment they arise.
So how can we psyche ourselves to focus on the negatives of our habit? So much so that it forces us to change?
One thing I learned through understanding the power of our subconscious mind is that if we can do something repeatedly enough and think about something repeatedly, we can trick our mind to become obsessed with it. Once our thoughts are consumed by the thought of something, it becomes easier to take actions that create real change.
It's a little bit of a self-hypnosis technique, except there is no trance music. What I want you to experiment with this week is to start every morning thinking about the negative consequences of the habit you want to change and ending every night thinking about how amazing life would be if you could successfully change your habit.
It is repetitive. But the key to making any change is through repetition. However, when the habit is very sticky, something you've been doing for several years, it's hard to even take a new action even for just 3-4 times. So since it's hard to change our behaviors, we will start with changing our thoughts. We will start by creating new beliefs.
We create new beliefs by thinking about the same thoughts over and over that they eventually go into our subconscious mind. When they're embedded deep in our subconscious mind, that's when our thoughts start driving our behaviors more effortlessly.
So the homework for this week, for the next 7+ days, I want you to focus on cultivating your thoughts. Think about the same thoughts over and over until it feels automatic to think about them... until you are obsessed with them.
Use this worksheet as a guide. Print them out. Click on the image to download.
Feel free to share this with family & friends.
x
Mo Seetubtim
Founder & CEO
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