Fulfilling our potential and creating the life we want takes a bit of work.
Work on understanding ourselves, and how we relate to others. Work that might not be easy. It takes dedication and practice.
But we have the power to create the life we want. For the power is all in our mind….
“It’s all in your head”…
This is something often said to dismiss lots of things — like intuition and imagination, psychosomatic illness, and the fascinating phenomenon that is the placebo effect.
And yes some things can be “all in our mind”… There lies the opportunity.
Watch this mesmerising experiment by Derren Brown that beautifully demonstrates the power of the mind. This isn’t magic. It’s the power of subliminal suggestion, near-invisible cues, body language, and the power of will and belief.
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What we believe, imagine, feel and what we will to be, all affect our outcomes in life. These are all things that are “just in your head”.
Which is why identifying what you want and what’s holding you back is all-important.
Much of what goes on in our brain we are unaware of.
Say a word to two different people and they will instantly come up with different associations. For example
It is our unconscious that creates the difference in our perceptions.
Unconscious signals and beliefs have real influence in life. They can be used in the here and now, and they were wired into our brain before we could talk — hence these influences become a deeper part of us. We forget, and things become automatic.
Such is the power of the mind that we are starting to learn how it impacts the body. The scientific evidence for the link between the mind and the body is compelling; it can both heal and make it sick.
Fabrizio Benedetti, a neuroscientist at the University of Turin School of Medicine and who runs the most advanced placebo research lab in the world, demonstrated this in an experiment with Parkinson’s patients.
Placebos are “dummy” medicine. He showed that Parkinson’s patients’ tremors were reduced merely by placebo injections.
The Nocebo effect creates the experience of pain in our brain; the placebo effect takes it away.
Placebos have been shown to work as well as painkillers. Viagra is called Viagra (not Floppy) for a reason… (to conjure images of Niagara, in case you’re wondering). And the vagus nerve, which connects our brain to our body, has been shown to be connected to cancer progression — high vagus nerve activity is linked to lower cancer progression.
And how do we increase our vagus nerve activity? Exercise, yoga, meditation and practising compassion… That is, through the power of the mind.
Our subconscious can be revealed through various methods. Subconscious brain activity happens when the brain is at rest — brain scans show that when we daydream or switch off, quiet parts of the brain come to life — so it’s useful to see what comes up for us during:
Subconscious brain activity also emerges when we are alert through:
These are areas we explore in therapy.
Unconscious automatic behaviours – our “fight/flight” response – are created by our autonomic nervous system. This is a finely tuned system that responds instantly to threat to keep us safe.
Our nervous system responds to threats in various forms. They can be:
Often our powerful subconscious mind hijacks our reason, and triggers our historic survival responses that were wired into our brain long ago in response to our experiences as a child — and we respond accordingly.
Sometimes this is not to our benefit. In this way our subconscious limits us.
We apply our conscious thoughts (thoughts we are aware of), logic and reason, every day. These are quite easily identified and controlled.
Our subconscious beliefs and our forgotten emotions are harder to identify — and so harder to either heed or ignore.
Imagine what we can do if we harness all our faculties of our mind – both conscious and subconscious. Our limits start to fall away.
Luckily, where there’s a will there’s a way. We can tap into and use our subconscious through…
Though these methods we can let the unconscious beliefs at work in our brain and in our life gradually emerge – and start releasing the power of our entire mind.
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So, what’s really going on in your mind? And what do you will to be?
Are you ready to find out?
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