OTHER E-BOOKS IN THIS SERIES
‘How to achieve what you want, when you want’
7 powerful principles of successful thinking for work, life and everything
by Andy Gilbert, this FREE 33 page e-book is packed with ideas and tips on the 7 principles of successful thinking. It contains 8 top tips to help you define your goals, 5 steps to help you plan your priorities and yet more tips on strengthening your self-belief, how to involve others more successfully and how to make choices. Put into action immediately these ideas will greatly increase your probability of achieving what you want, when you want.
Each of our powerful principles of successful thinking are also the subject of a separate e-book, giving more detail and more tips to help you.
To obtain your copy of this FREE e-book simply visit www.gomadthinking.com
THINKING PRINCIPLE ONE
‘How to develop a personal passion’
Practical tips to increase your motivation to achieve
by Andy Gilbert & Annagail Davies, explains thinking principle one of our Solution Focused ThinkingTM System in greater depth. As well as discovering how to avoid blaming others, you’ll also get great tips on how to increase your motivation to achieve and save yourself considerable time in the process!
THINKING PRINCIPLE TWO
‘How to determine what you want and when you want it’
Pragmatic steps to leaping into the top 5% of goal definers
by Andy Gilbert & Rob Smith, gives you tips on defining exactly what it is you want to achieve, as well as helping to increase your self-belief that you can achieve it. It will make your task of deciding priorities, which we cover in this e-book, really easy!
THINKING PRINCIPLE THREE
‘How to produce plentiful possibilities, pressing priorities and perfect plans’
Quick and easy tips to plan your success and get you started
by Andy Gilbert & Ken Hudson, gives you some quick and easy steps to plan your success and get you started. With tips to eliminate time wasting, generate loads of ideas and produce a plan that will work for you, it will help you make your goal come to life and stay alive!
THINKING PRINCIPLE FIVE
‘How to get others on your side’
Definitive guidelines on involving others to achieve what you want
by Andy Gilbert & Caron Lindley, gives an explanation of the five types of people that you can involve to help you achieve your goal. Research has shown that the bigger your goal, the better your chances of success if you involve others to help. If you only ever involve the people closest to you, then this e-book is for you!
THINKING PRINCIPLE SIX
‘How to make personal choices and take responsibility’
Insightful ideas to help you own your thoughts and actions
by Andy Gilbert & Ken Hudson, takes a hard look at responsibility and its consequences. Personal Responsibility lies at the heart of our Solution Focused ThinkingTM System. Without it the system collapses. Without it, you are missing out on success, respect and leadership. It even promises to be liberating!
THINKING PRINCIPLE SEVEN
‘How to guarantee success’
Clear and simple tips on taking action and measuring results
by Andy Gilbert & Rob Smith, is a hard-hitting finale to the seven key principles of Solution Focused ThinkingTM. As well as challenging your thinking, and challenging you to put it all into practice, there is valuable advice on measuring goals, especially difficult-to-measure things like ‘confidence’. Plus an invitation for you to choose to make a difference.
‘The Making A Difference Workbook’
30 activities and exercises for successful thinking about work, life and everything
by the Go MAD Team, is an essential guide to help you put into practice successful thinking. The workbook is structured to allow you to think through key issues and turn them into practical applications that you can put to use immediately. It will help you take a step closer to what you want to achieve.
To order any of the above e-books, simply visit www.gomadthinking.com
CONTENTS
Page
Introduction 5
- 5 ways that this e-book will help you
1. Answer two questions 6
It’s all in the mind 7
- A reminder of the workings of the conscious and
subconscious minds
3. Create a positive self-image 9
4. Be your own best friend 10
- Recognise negative or positive self-talk
5. Learn to like yourself even more 10
6. Create your own advert 11
- Sell yourself to yourself
7. Understand how you can play tricks on yourself 11
Sub-goals and self-belief 12
- Take small steps to increase self-belief
My story and the mind game 13
- Change thinking to achieve goals
How to write affirmations 14
- Programme your mind
11. Reap what you sow 14
12. Create your own reality 15
Where do your limiting beliefs come from? 16
- Recognise how your helpful thinking is created
Keep your dreams alive 17
- Avoid dream stealers
Just imagine… 17
- Make your goals real
16. Whose footsteps might I follow? 18
17. Choose your thoughts 18
18. Self-belief and the link with personal responsibility 19
- Choose to develop your abilities
How to release unnecessary fears 20
- An exercise to help
20. Choose to eliminate failure 21
21. Look for solutions 21
22. Twenty tips to maintain or increase your options 22
23. It’s those two questions again 23
24. Learning summary 23
25. Where to go from here 24
Liability disclaimer
The material contained in this e-book is general and is not intended as advice on any particular matter. Go MAD Research & Consulting Group and the author expressly disclaim all and any liability to any person whatsoever in respect of anything done by any person in reliance, whether in whole or in part, on this e-book. Please take appropriate legal advice before acting on any information in this e-book.
INTRODUCTION
We’re already on principle four of our Solution Focused ThinkingTM System. You’ve possibly already started on some action, or you’re looking at this because perhaps you think your self-belief is not as high as it should be.
If you’ve read some of the other e-books in this series you will possibly have looked at the ‘reason why’ you want to make a difference. You will possibly also have considered the ‘what’ and possibly the ‘how’ you can achieve your goal. However, if you haven’t read any of the others in the series – don’t worry! This book will still provoke some thoughts around maintaining or increasing self-belief.
Solution Focused Thinking is the result of over 4000 hours of research into how people make a difference in their lives. It is a success system. Each time you read a bit more about one of the principles in Solution Focused ThinkingTM, then not only are you helping yourself think more clearly, more creatively and more quickly, but you are also helping yourself become more successful.
This e-book is aimed at anyone who at anytime finds their self-belief wobble. It can happen to the best of us and can be due to a whole range of circumstances. This book can also provide a maintenance programme for those who regularly have high belief in what they can achieve.
Take
Action
Self
Belief Personal Responsibility Involve
Others
Plan Priorities Define
Goal Reason
Why
Go MAD Framework
This e-book will help you:
Understand how your self-belief can make or break your success
Plan a self-belief maintenance programme
Increase your self-belief in your ability to achieve
Release fears
Recognise the source of your beliefs.
So, if you would like to have some ideas on dealing with those self-belief wobbles, then keep reading!
Your answers to the following questions will reveal much about your current level of self-belief.
What do you believe is the realistic probability of you achieving the things you want?
To what extent do you see yourself as having the necessary ability and confidence to succeed?
How
achievable is my goal? Do
I have what it takes?
How
strong is my motivation?
Pictured above are three of the principles in the Go MAD Solution Focused ThinkingTM System. All of the thinking principles are interlinked. If your thinking or actions impact on one principle, then you’re going to affect the others, either adversely or positively.
Self-belief is important in making a difference; it generates energy and helps you to build on your strong reason why, to maintain momentum. Even if your reason why is strong, if you haven’t strong self-belief in your ability to make it happen, then the chances are that it won’t. It is also essential when involving others – this is the next thinking principle, number five, which we have already touched on when talking about generating ideas in the e-book about thinking principle three (‘How to produce plentiful possibilities, pressing priorities and perfect plans’). If you don’t believe in yourself, how can you expect others to? When you believe in your ability to achieve what you want, your mind uses its creative powers and becomes solution focused.
“And above all things, never think that you’re not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.”
Anthony Trollope
It’s all in the mind – in fact, it’s mainly about what you think and say to yourself. Hence, the following paragraphs are aimed at helping you to understand ways of controlling what you think and say to yourself.
An elderly Cherokee Native American was teaching his grandchildren about life…
He said to them “A fight is going on inside me, it is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One wolf is evil – he is fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, competition, superiority, and ego.
The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.
“This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too.”
They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The Elder simply replied, “The one you feed”.
As retold in The Impeccable Warrior of Light by Peace Mother Geeta Sacred Song
I talked briefly about your subconscious mind in the e-book on thinking principle two ‘How to determine what you want and when you want it’. Here is a brief reminder for those that read it, and an introduction for those that didn’t.
Part of your mind can be programmed automatically to ensure your goals are achieved successfully. Most people go their whole lives without knowing how to use the greatest success mechanism at their immediate disposal. By understanding and developing your ability to apply this information, you will dramatically increase your ability to achieve what you want. Here is how it happens:
You have two minds; your conscious and your subconscious. The conscious mind is the one you use to think with. Its functions include decision-making, logic, forming judgements and deliberate thinking. However, the conscious mind cannot cope with being aware of everything going on (most people can focus on only 5-9 things happening at the same time) so the majority of information is filtered into the subconscious mind.
Your subconscious mind stores all information it receives from sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. It also records everything you do, including your words, thoughts, actions and feelings. All this information is stored in your memory, even if sometimes it appears that your conscious mind cannot remember something.
The working of your conscious mind is influenced by the subconscious and the information stored in it. For example, if you have had lots of negative thoughts about a situation, and feel unhappy about it, these will have been stored away and are likely to influence your conscious decisions in the future.
Your subconscious mind automatically responds to instructions given to it by your conscious mind, it cannot act on its own initiative. It has to be given goals to achieve, or problems to solve, before it can provide useful information. Hence, no goals – no functioning. Having goals increases the alertness of your mind so that you become consciously aware of information that is relevant to what you want. This information might already be stored in your memory. If it isn’t, your subconscious mind will raise the awareness of your conscious mind to go out and find it. The purpose of the subconscious mind is to achieve the goals and problems you define.
So your subconscious mind records all the information you receive and think about, even as you read this book. Repetition of positive messages to yourself is a fundamental way of increasing your self-belief. So, as you continue to read about how to make a difference and achieve what you want, keep reminding yourself, ‘I can make a difference; I will achieve what I want; I am already achieving some of my goals; I make a difference’.
“It’s a lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself.”
Muhammad Ali
You have the ability to leave a lasting impression in your own mind. Make it a positive one; an enabling self-belief.
Recently there was a television programme about young people and bullying. One of the young people referred to the saying “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”. They were saying that this isn’t true. If you get physically hurt, yes, there is some pain but it goes away. The things people say are the things that really hurt because you can hear them inside, take them to heart, dwell on them and start to believe them. By building a strong positive self-belief we become better at dealing with any ‘name-calling’, being able to filter out the stuff that isn’t true.
To what extent are you positive about yourself? If you see yourself as a successful person with the ability and confidence to succeed: you will succeed. This mental picture you have of yourself is sometimes referred to as your self-image. Your self-image influences everything you do. When your self-image is in line with your goals; your goals will be achieved.
People tend not to believe what they see.
Instead, they see what they believe.
Think about this quote. For example, you might hear about a child who is constantly naughty. When you meet that child you are already looking for the naughty things he or she does to reinforce the message that your subconscious mind has been given. You will probably filter out the good things and not notice them. If you apply this to yourself and how you see yourself it follows that if you believe yourself to be successful you will see the things around you that will help to re-enforce this.
The opinion you have of yourself creates your self-image. It is formed by what you say to yourself and whether or not you accept what others say about you. This opinion, plus your abilities, will cause you to feel either confident or insecure. Your behaviour and actions will start to reflect what you believe about yourself, and this will impact on what happens.
Many people have a poor self-image and opinion of themselves. Very often, this is continually reinforced by the internal repetitious messages they give themselves:
“I’m no good at…”
“I’m hopeless at…”
“I can’t do…”
“I’m awful at…”
“I’m clumsy; stupid; thick, etc.”
“I’m useless at…”
“I’ll never do it.”
Imagine your best friend spoke to you out loud in the same way as you speak to yourself, would he, or she, be saying:
|
“You’re really good at…” “You’re fantastic at…” “You’re so talented at…” “You’re confident at…” |
Or |
“You’re no good at…” “You’re hopeless at…” “You’ll never do it…” “You’re clumsy, stupid, thick, etc.” |
You probably wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who always gave you such negative messages. Your best friend would soon become your ex-friend. So the question is how much of a friend are you to yourself. You might not recognise that your self-talk is negative and therefore having a negative impact on you and the things you want to achieve. You can take the opportunity to consistently give yourself positive messages. As highlighted earlier your subconscious mind will accept and believe this positive self-talk as it passes through your conscious mind.
It might be worth considering if up until now, have you been your own best friend, or your own worst enemy? What have you been saying to yourself about you?
Write down some of the messages that you have been giving yourself. What might you possibly say to yourself that would be more positive?
Start by recognising what you like about yourself. What are your good points; your personal qualities and attributes that will enable you to achieve what you want!
Find a piece of paper and make a list of them.
What makes you special?
What do you like about yourself?
What do others appreciate in you?
What are your strengths?
What do you do well?
If you had to design an advert for yourself that described your skills, abilities, talents and achievements, what would it say?
Notice your own self-talk relating to the previous sentence. What are you telling yourself about yourself? How positive is it? What are the implications?
“Your self-talk affects your beliefs,
Your beliefs affect your capability,
Your capability affects your actions,
Your actions affect your results.”
Andy Gilbert
Whatever your reaction to this exercise, be very aware that your subconscious mind is recording it. If you choose to take time and design an advert for yourself, here are a few tips:
Develop an initial list of your skills, abilities, talents and achievements
Select several that you want to describe in more detail
Blow your own trumpet, and make them sound great
Have fun, and lavish praise upon yourself in your description
Read the advert to yourself – not to other people!
This is something you can use to remind yourself about all your good points and what you have got going for you.
The subconscious mind cannot distinguish between real and imagined events, or truth and untruth; that is the job of the conscious mind. The subconscious mind just accepts the information it receives. Therefore, it is possible to trick your subconscious into recording information, deliberately passed by your conscious mind, which is untrue. This can be really helpful if you want to develop a belief that you currently do not have.
“You have to believe in yourself, that’s the secret.
Even when I was in the orphanage, when I was roaming the street trying to find enough to eat, even then I thought of myself as the greatest actor in the world.”
Charlie Chaplin
When I decided to make a difference about my health and fitness, I obviously applied Solution Focused ThinkingTM. When I looked at my self-belief, I realised I needed to do two things. Firstly, I needed to break my longer-term end goal down into small sub-goals that I believed were achievable. Secondly, I spotted a belief that would get in the way of me succeeding, unless I changed it.
Sub-goals are important to help your self-belief. Imagine a novice climber who wanted to climb Everest. Climbing Everest appeared such a colossal task; his self-belief that he could do it was very low. Nevertheless, he set out on his climbing career, breaking down his climbing to a series of progressively higher mountains. At the peak of each mountain, he could see the peak of a slightly higher one, and he said to himself, “If I can climb this mountain, then I’m sure that I can climb that one”. As the peak was only a small bit higher, his self-belief that it was possible was much higher than climbing the ultimate goal of Everest.
Having broken it down like this, there eventually came a time when the peak of Everest came into view, and his self-belief in achieving the ultimate goal increased dramatically, and the ultimate goal was achieved.
Some people do this subconsciously in their career. They start out in lowly positions after school or college and the senior management positions seem a world away. Self-belief that they might one day get there could be quite low. However, they work their way up the promotion ladder, until their eventual desired position comes into view, and self-belief that it is possible rises.
If we do this consciously with large goals, then we can significantly increase our self-belief that the large goal is achievable, as well as getting to the large goal more quickly. Our self-belief that we can achieve the next sub-goal will probably be substantially higher than the large overall goal.
Going back to my health and fitness goal – I realised that the belief that would limit my ability to achieve what I wanted, was that I enjoyed eating big portions of food. Ironically, I had not developed this belief through a love of food. Instead, I had allowed it to develop in my subconscious mind through my sense of humour.
Let me explain. As I regularly work away from home, running training courses, I often eat in restaurants. At mealtimes, I am invariably with a group of people and as the menu is discussed, someone usually asks, “What are you having to eat?” to which my standard reply was, “Big portions!” Over the years, I had said this phrase so many times that it had become a belief: a belief that had become a reality. It needed to be changed if I was to make a difference.
“What a man thinks of himself, that is what determines, or rather indicates his fate”.
David Thoreau
I started to reprogramme my mind with two new messages that I considered healthier and in line with achieving my goal:
“I enjoy eating healthy food.”
“I am getting slimmer and slimmer every day.”
It is important to note that three months previously I did not believe either of these statements to be true. However, I understood how the subconscious mind would help me and that repetition was the key. I deliberately used both statements as often as I could to start with. I said them to myself as self-talk whenever I thought about food and also said them out loud.
Instead of giving myself reasons why I can’t,
I give myself reasons why I can.
After about three weeks, I noticed that I was consciously saying these statements less often. However, by now I actually believed them. By this time, I must have said each statement at least 100 times; I was enjoying eating healthy food, and I was getting slimmer. I now had the self-belief that would enable me to achieve my end goal.
You cannot short-circuit your self-belief when seeking to make a difference. In other words, you cannot programme your subconscious mind with goals if your conscious mind does not believe they are possible to achieve. Any thoughts or feelings of self-doubt will, of course, also be recognised and recorded by the subconscious mind. Affirmation statements, like the ones I used to help me achieve my health and fitness goal, said consciously, are a good step in programming your self-conscious.
The following tips will help you to use affirmation statements effectively:
Phrase your statement in the present tense as if it is already happening, e.g. “I am…” or, “I always…”
Put emotion into your statement e.g. “I feel great exercising twice weekly.”
Start with easy affirmations to get used to using them.
Write your affirmations on small cards and use them as a reminder.
Review them in the morning, throughout the day and at night.
Remember that affirmations are not always true when you start using them. The mind only has to believe that they can become true.
Replace them with new ones, once they have served their purpose.
If you use carefully worded affirmation statements for 21-30 days, and review them three times daily, you will notice the difference.
Think of your mind as a fertile patch of earth where you can choose what to plant. Sow positive thoughts and reap positive results; sow negative thoughts and reap negative results. You can choose what thoughts you sow. You can also choose what you read; what you watch on television, and what music you listen to.