Create a State of Mind Reflex

Russian Nobel Prize winner Ivan Pavlov stumbled upon something amazing back in the early 1900s. He was working with dogs in his lab and noticed something peculiar. Every time the dogs were around the lab technician that fed them they started drooling. The dogs' brains were connecting the lab technician to the tasty food they were eating. Pavlov noticed this and tried an experiment by ringing a bell every time the dogs were presented with food. After some time, when the bell was rung without food the dogs still drooled! Its kind of like this episode of The Office:




The cool thing is that you can use this discovery to your advantage. Rather than drooling at the sound of a bell you can become any state of mind that you want. Have a difficult test coming up? Just ring a bell and go into a super focused state of mind before class. You can create a reflex for being focused, calm, alert, enthusiastic, or just about any state of mind you can think of. And best of all, its easy!

How To

1. First you need to decide what type of response you want. Do you want to be calm? Or maybe excited and energetic? Whatever state of mind you want, you can have. For an example, I want a calm state of mind.

2. Next you need to sit down, relax, and clear your mind. This may take a few minutes.

3. Now as your mind is clear and you are relaxed, recall the last time you felt the state of mind you want. So for example I think back to a time when I was very calm which would be in nature listening to a clear stream of water surrounded by the lush forest because I remember being very calm then.

4. Now you want to choose a stimulus. It can be a made up word, a hand gesture, a mental picture, or even a bell like Pavlov's dogs. I will choose to use a hand gesture by crossing my pinky and ring finger. Make sure you choose something that you never normally do or hear. I never cross my pinky and ring finger so it will be perfect.

5. Use the stimulus. At the height of your experience, when you feel the state of mind the strongest, ring the bell or whatever stimulus you chose. For me, once I feel the calmest, I will make my hand gesture. Then as soon as the feeling or state of mind starts to decrease, immediately stop using the stimulus. This technique will only work if you use the stimulus at the height of your experience.

6. Finally, repeat the process 5-10 times. Make sure that the next time you naturally experience the state of mind you desire, use the stimulus to further cement it into your reflexes. If you want to make it even stronger then repeat the process over the next few days.

Use it!

Now that you understand how to make a state of mind reflex, go and try it out! To use it is easy, all you need to do is use your stimulus. So when I want to use my calm reflex all I need to do is cross my pinky and ring finger for a couple seconds.

Richard Bandler

"Brains aren't designed to get results, they go in directions. If you know how the brain works you can set your own directions. If you don't, then someone else will." -R. Bandler

Emily Dickinson

"The Brain—is wider than the Sky" -Emily Dickinson

Mental Image Tasks

Mental Image Tasks (MITs) are used by successful people all around the world every day. You can use them to supercharge your productivity in anything. With MITs you can improve anything you want about yourself. Want better grades, body, friends, life, or world? Then learn how to use MITs. Here is a great example of how to use a mental image task to improve a grade. If you want to ace a test then picture yourself receiving an A+ on it. What this does is tell your subconscious supercomputer to pull out all the stops it can to get you an A+ on your test. Arnold Schwarzenegger used to talk about how he pictured himself being famous and the best bodybuilder ever. Look at him now, he is known across the world and also won the title Mr. Olympia time after time! Your imagination is so powerful that Albert Einstein said "Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions." He understood the power of the imagination, do you?

I have been testing MITs on just about anything and everything possible. Last week I was running about 20 minutes late for work and I had to eat, shower, groom, etc. I pictured myself pulling in to the parking lot right on time. After making this mental image task, I ate, showered, groomed, and somehow arrived at work early! I was utterly shocked. Something that I noticed right after creating that MIT was that everything I was doing was very smooth and consciously effortless. If, instead, I did not use that MIT and thought about how I was going to be so late to work then I would have probably been clumsy, slow, and late.

Another personal example is from a drawing I finished the other day. I was looking through some old National Geographic magazines and found a cool picture that I wanted to draw. I turned each detail on the magazine into a MIT so I basically imagined each detail already being drawn out on my paper perfectly and then drew it. The picture turned out great and my friends complimented me on it a lot! Here it is so you can see what I'm talking about:

Napoleon Hill

Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve. -Napoleon Hill

Subconscious Blueprints

The subconscious takes in images either from your imagination or your surroundings. Mental images have been called blueprints for the subconscious. Your subconscious is always working, whether you know it or not. If you are walking a tight-rope then you do not want to imagine yourself falling down while you are walking across, instead you would rather imagine yourself getting across the rope safely. This is exactly what movie stars and professional athletes do to improve their performance. They picture, in their minds, exactly what they want and then do it. Bruce Lee used to train inside his mind while he meditated. This works because your brain's neural network actually becomes activated from thoughts and imagination so if you think about flexing your bicep then you are already activating parts of your brain as well as bicep.

What is a subconscious blueprint? It is a mental image that you create. The stronger the mental image the stronger the results. If you have known some one that is extremely lucky and always finds money and great opportunities it is because they have a good subconscious blueprint. To make your own blueprint all you need to do is create a mental image of what you want and then charge it up with emotion. The more you go over the image the stronger it becomes because your neural network is becoming strengthened. Your subconscious thinks that whatever you are imagining is real so by going over a mental image, you are telling your subconscious that it is real. Attach a good emotion with the mental image and your subconscious will work towards the goal of the mental image. It is now a Subconscious Blueprint.

I am going to create my own blueprint and log my results here. The college life has my sleeping schedule all messed up. Last week I was going to sleep around 4 or 5am every night and then hitting the snooze button to get as many extra minutes of sleep as possible before work. I want to completely flip that schedule using subconscious blueprints. 5am is going to be the time that I wake up instead of the time that I go to sleep.

My Blueprint
Image: I'm going to imagine myself waking up at 5am and getting out of bed to get ready.

Emotion: The best emotion to attach to this image would be a good sense of well being. Feeling great and accomplished will work well. Tying the image in with these emotions will tell my subconscious that I feel great and accomplished when I wake up at 5am.

Auto-Pilot for the Subconscious

So I just found out the subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between imagination and reality. Its starting to make sense why hypnotists always use guided visualizations, the subconscious does not understand that it is just a visualization. It takes in the images from the real world or imagination, then the emotions attached to those images and creates kind of an auto-pilot function.

For example, have you ever been looking for peanut butter or cereal in the pantry but can't find it? You think to yourself "This always happens to me!" Well, the reason why it happens is because you are telling yourself that you will not find what you are looking for. You have set up an auto-pilot type function that will subconsciously make you delete the item you are looking for from your conscious attention. So how do you change that bad habit or make your own auto-pilot functions for your subconscious to follow?

Auto-Pilot for the Subconscious
1. Relax, sit back, and clear your mind so that you can use your imagination.

2. Imagine that your desired outcome has already happened. If you are looking for an item in the pantry, pretend that you already found it.

3. Build up a positive emotion towards the desired outcome, this will tell your subconscious that it is a good thing to find what you are looking for.

4. Relax your mind and go out to do whatever it is that you imagined. Look for that item in the pantry and find it with ease. Trust yourself, your mind is a powerful tool and this is one way to use it.