Look below the surface – you’ll be amazed at what you find!

Napoleon Hill suggested that one of the things that successful people do is use their imagination to create a belief that they can have what they desire and to communicate between the conscious the subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind is protected

– which is usually a good thing as it contains all the things we have ever learned and we wouldn’t want to have to re-learn most of them. However, it also contains less useful things that may stop us from achieving all that we might otherwise be capable of. 

Anything that comes to us through our five senses is unlikely to affect the subconscious so how do we reach and change those things that are not useful to us?

Hill suggests (long before NLP was invented) that in order to create the belief that we can have something we must imbue it with emotion, imagine that we already have it and create the experience of already having it.

Vividly imagine having whatever it is you desire and experience how that will feel and what you will see, hear, taste and smell. The emotions and physical reactions caused by these thoughts are generated internally rather than coming to us externally through our senses (and could be described as non-sense) and so are more likely to escape the gatekeeper of the subconscious mind.

There has been vigorous research into how emotions cause physical reactions, how physical sensations trigger emotions and how both emotions and physical reactions can be produced by thought alone. Belief may not move mountains but it can remove limitations and control physical experiences.

One of the most popular sayings arising from these theories is that “Thoughts Become Things” and while it is undoubtedly true that this can be the case, it can also be too simplistic. I have seen already distressed people puzzled and hurt at the implication that they have brought misfortune on themselves because their thoughts are not positive enough. Moreover, if we all got what we focused on most of the time, teenage boys would live in a constant state of bliss!

However, that doesn’t change the fact that we are still discovering amazing things about the power of the mind and by using it to create useful thoughts and emotions there is no doubt that we can make life easier and more satisfying.