By Fern Tausig
On Your Mind
Fern Tausig
Have you set goals and failed to reach them? You know you need to make changes in your habits or attitudes or behaviors, but you don’t follow through. You consciously want to exercise, but you don’t. You want to finish those projects or chores, but you don’t. You are clear on what you should do, but fail to do it.
What is getting in the way of your success?
Your conscious mind has great information and knowledge, but we are driven by feelings. Feelings are the product our unconscious mind. Your unconscious mind is programmed by your past experiences. It has emotional responses to all your experiences programmed into those memories.
When you think of dieting, for example, you immediately begin to think of those things you have to give up. You experience that feeling of being deprived, and your unconscious mind chooses pleasure and comfort over sacrifice and deprivation.
A way to change your unconscious response to wanting to reduce your weight is to recall how you felt when you were trimmer and more active. Focus on what you’re getting, not what you’re giving up.
I had a client who came to me with a feeling of wanting to stop drinking alcohol. He was beginning to feel out of control around alcohol. He was going fishing with some buddies and knew it was going to include drinking. He was afraid to go and was afraid of not being able to drink. I told him he could drink all he wanted, just not alcohol. He brought a case of club soda and had a great time. He was able to focus on the fishing and fun with his friends instead of the alcohol part.
Weight loss isn’t that different. Begin by eliminating the word “diet” from your life. It’s not about dieting or giving up things. It’s about what you are getting: a trim, more attractive body. Focus on how you’re going to look and feel in that body. Remind yourself that nothing tastes as good as trimmer feels. Create new feelings about food and your body and you will find it easier to make the necessary changes without dieting. All your associations with dieting are negative and result in failure.
Your unconscious mind is specifically charged with protecting and comforting you. It is unable to logically realize that some of your comfort beliefs or habits actually make you feel uncomfortable. For instance, weight gain causes an uncomfortable feeling that tight clothes and limited mobility brings with excess fat.
The unconscious mind is focused on protecting your safety, comfort and love based on previous experiences. These feelings are the main focus of the unconscious mind. As you consciously, logically and intellectually create goals, your unconscious mind weighs in and creates an emotional response. If your emotional response is that it threatens your safety, comfort or love, you will then lack the passion and motivation to follow through. Willpower exists in the conscious mind but is ineffective against your emotions.
Learn how to get excited about the result of your goal. Regardless of what it is, by beginning to focus on how the successful completion of your goal will look and feel, you begin to change your emotional response. You can be successful. It’s called self-hypnosis.
Learning how your mind works can empower you to make it work for you instead of against you.