Have you ever looked at something and seen completely the opposite to others?
What they say is clearly obvious, you can’t see at all?
Well, you are not weird. Or alone. It’s a well developed human characteristic of the mind. The mind together with the brain learn. As we grow and age they are fed information. Some of which is advice, a lot though is opinion and influence from people beyond us, even conjecture. The media, and increasingly, social media have become rich sources for our thoughts and beliefs.
All of this data gets added to the mental banks and an individual viewpoint of life and the world is formed. That gets set and from now on we will only see through the lens of that mental imprint.
And what we see can be very far from the truth.
No accident at all.
Every time a disaster or shocking event occurs, our mental projections above kick in.
In November 2020 the A46 motorway in the West Midlands in the UK was shut due to a ferocious car fire. Luckily the inhabitants made it out fairly unscathed. The very same morning a driver who was passing as the fire took hold, shared a picture they snapped to a local Facebook group (this is the header picture of this blog post) soon after.
Within minutes certain members began focusing on one part of the picture. They were sure that there was a human face within the raging inferno. Egged on by this, others joined the conversation stating it was unmistakeable. Not long after, fuelled by this obvious evidence, all manner of spirit and ghost theories were put forwards. Incredibly some began inventing a previous fatal crash near the spot that killed a young man and it must have been him coming back to help. And similar. There has been no such car smash there before.
Now, of course, as you are reading this there may be a few of you who can see a face. Others ‘might’ possibly see one. And plenty who see only a car fire. Who is right? Are the face watchers spotting what the majority seemed to miss? Or are they simply joining dots that aren’t there? Maybe they are just deluded??
The truth is it’s more pareidolia rather than paranoia.
I see what you are believing.
You have probably heard of the phrase people often say, ‘I see what you are saying’.
Change that for, ‘I see what you are believing’.
For example –
Someone who is religious and experiences some unexpected good luck or has a narrow miss from an accident, may tend to see that as their chosen God’s hand at work saving their life from above.
Another person who is a staunch supporter of a political party will elect to see everything wrong with the country if they are not in power, or working hard and fixing things when their party is the ruling Government.
And let’s not forget the good old sport supporters who decide their team are being fouled all the time while they are making no fouls in return.
In each scenario our pre-set mindset witnesses what it has a pre-loaded bias for. Whether it’s UFO’s in the sky or we are a good driver while most others need lessons. If it’s in the mind, it gets projected out into the world of vision including weird and wonderful curious cases we can suddenly explain.
Which brings me back to the photo at the top and the face (or no face).
And the psychological tendency to see patterns, shapes, faces, and more in random images. Otherwise known as pareidolia.
Buildings on Mars anyone?
We’ve seen it all before.
The well known saying tells that ‘there is nothing new under the sun’.
The phrase refers to the fact that history repeats itself, just in different forms, but remains the same theme as ever. We do and see repeat things in restyled ways. A contemporary financial scheme is actually an echo of others that went belly up in the past. The great new trend is merely the modern version from sixty years ago. Stupid little wars always erupting out of pride or self inflated desire to be powerful.
You get my drift?
Turn to the picture and employ the theory. Is there a face? A real face? Or are those who believe in the spirit realms finding what they need to keep their beliefs alive? Because that’s what we all do in what we see through our mind. Keeping our beliefs alive when we look at the world and life.
Belief that God or a spirit guide had favoured us. Belief that our politics are what everyone requires. Or belief that referees are deliberately preventing our side winning because they know they are the best.
So, next time you cast a look over a situation or story or picture of an eruption with a Devil’s evil look peering out, ask yourself what your mind, not your eyes, is not only wanting to see, but expecting to see,
Because your mind has the best eyesight you could ever imagine!!
Are you seeking a breakthrough somewhere in your life?
Especially if you want to achieve something with who you are?
It’s easy to get stuck. We get so used to acting and thinking a certain way that nothing will really change because we are not changing those. As the famous phrase by Henry Ford goes, ‘If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always got’.
Us humans are, by genetics, predisposed to living by the norm. Otherwise known as convention. It’s a survival reaction instinct. If we do what everyone else is doing we increase our chances of staying alive, and perhaps even thriving. It’s why every time a trend develops (coffee shops, internet marketing, yep Bitcoin too etc), people pile on the bandwagon and it all becomes saturated.
It seems a sensible behaviour, but it’s those who break with convention who often breakthrough into a far more memorable life.
And that’s as true in history as now.
What’s in a name?
With billions of humans on Earth, how truly different is a different name.
Where everyone used to be called Martin or Megan, parents today are trying to outdo each other with more bizarre names for their offspring like Glade, or Magenta or Meteor. They may sound cool, but this very rarely creates anything notable by having the snazzy name alone.
But one person who DID make a mark through her name was Lucy Stone.
I can guarantee virtually no-one will have heard of her, but she made a huge ground shift in what she did with her surname. A shift that millions of females have followed since without ever knowing about her pioneering stance.
So what was so unconventional about her?
It’s the mid 1840’s in the USA and it’s very much a man’s world. But not for independent Lucy. As an advocate and promoter of women’s rights when she got married she did something no other woman had ever been known to have done. What do you think it was?
The answer – she refused to take her husband’s surname and continued to be known as her maiden name. She wanted to stand as a individual rather than be hidden behind her male partner’s title. She broke the mould and went on to win the rights for women to divorce abusive husbands and that wives could earn independent income that was theirs rather than belonging to their husband as tradition dictated.
Lucy Stone made a stand with her own name and broke convention to further women in the world.
Forget what they say.
Fancy a beer? A craft beer?
They are pretty popular these days. Go to any town or city and you can find a pub or bar with a quality ale available. But it wasn’t always that way. Just ask Martyn Hillier.
In 2005 he saw a gap in the market no-one else saw. Or even believed existed. In the small village of Herne in Kent, UK, he decided to open a micropub at The Butcher’s Arms, the old butchers shop. The term micropub still isn’t that widespread today. Twenty years ago it didn’t exist at all. It did in Martyn’s mind.
His concept was to start a small pub with seating for just 12 people where you could only buy cask ales. That was it. No lager or other beer types. He also banned live music, jukeboxes, serving any food, and no TV’s showing sport. In fact the only two things you could get there was a fabulous real ale and conversation due to the intimate nature of the size of the pub. That was against all trends, and everyone’s advice not least the bank manager.
The Butchers Arms has just celebrated its 20th anniversary and is still going strong. It’s now firmly on the beer tour for ale aficionados with drinkers coming from all round the country for a simple pint in quaint surroundings and happy chat with others.
Martyn broke with the typical convention about the size of a pub and what it serves. It succeeded and so did he as he was awarded an MBE in the 2024 Honours List for services to business and hospitality. Today there are over 500 micropubs in the UK. He didn’t break the mould, he made it.
Like Lucy Stone, Martyn Hiller knew his mind, the unconventional one.
The Alternative Approach.
The world hasn’t been chocked full of people breaking with convention.
Those that have done so though have furthered their lives in very visible and incredibly unforeseen beneficial ways.
They faced the blocks and opinions and restrictions that signposted they should follow the usual routes and actions. The same ones that had left them precisely where they were to begin with. Stuck. Unfulfilled. Not honouring themselves.
And that’s your cue. If things haven’t quite worked out for you maybe it’s time to breakthrough those imagined limitations and do something avant-garde, braver, or plain opposite to the norm.
Hey, maybe the only alternative you really ever needed was to take the alternative approach all along.
Because the biggest breakthrough just needs to be in your mind.
References – Wikipedia – Lucy Stone.
TamaraWhite.com – Lucy Stone.
Micropubadventures.co.uk – herne-the-first-micropub.
The Sun Newspaper – Thurs Oct 23rd – Ale’s Well That Ends Well.
Photo attribution – Free to use under the Pixabay Content License by Vika_Glitter.
We all have a mind. And we all use a mind.
But, the majority of us are using our mind wrongly in ways we don’t realise. That’s because we do it every single day as an unconscious habit so that we barely notice it. Thinking that has developed into an unhealthy pattern.
Some limit us very little. Personal trains of thought that can be annoying or quirky but do no overall harm. There are others though that change everything. They kill our hopes, depress our moods, and redefine our life to the negative. Of these, there are 3 keys ways we use our mind wrongly that keep us stuck on the floor rather than climbing much higher.
So, read on and see if you too use the trouble making three in your mind.
Like most people, chances are you do.
1. They believe their thoughts.
It is a modern myth that thoughts can’t be stopped.
The belief (a thought in itself) is that the thoughts are created by the mind which is formulating them all on its own. It’s like a ghost in the machine and out of control. The result are thoughts we don’t like or agree with but have to accept. We are victim to them rather than the owner of them.
That idea couldn’t be more wrong.
Thoughts are generated from our own patterns of thinking. Over time this develops strong neural pathways across areas of the brain like a trail worn away through the woods due to regular use. Without realising every time we have a negative or dismissive or despondent thought, the neural pathway is triggered to fly these to our conscious awareness. The response to this trigger are thoughts that seem to come from nowhere we believe we don’t want. Except we effectively delivered them in the first place.
The good news therefore means as we started the whole ball rolling, we don’t have to believe them at all. We might have changed our viewpoint since we constructed our previous neural messages or circumstances may have changed from when they were initially formed. Or perhaps we have just matured up. We can always change what we want back again. Simply keep telling yourself when a thought pops in that you don’t like, ‘I don’t believe that, I believe this’, and add the new thought then and there in its place. Replace, renew, reinstall.
You will be on your way to building new neural pathways with every new thought you have like adding a brick to a sturdy wall.
2. They use them to fear rather than to imagine.
The future hasn’t happened yet, so what will happen?
A question first encountered by our neanderthal ancestors as they fumbled their way through early Earth. For them though there was a very real prehistoric threat that they would end up as some creatures dinner. It’s pretty obvious we don’t live in such times anymore. Well, not physically, but mentally many people still do.
Modern mindsets remain in threat mode on a virtual permanent basis. They have become overstimulated due to 24 hour news, the negative media, fake social media posts, constant world issues that now effect local lives, and a general worry about where life is going. Fear has become their not very good friend. The one their mind spends far too much time in the company of.
Remember, the mind can be directed.
It obeys what we use it to look for. And it’s looking for not the very best. With constant everyday use at seeking the wrong, the worrying, the dangerous, and the problematic, it has become skilful at finding them. Or to be more exact, finding them when they are not even there. Thus we live in a mindset of vague concern and background trepidation forever anticipating some downfall is coming. We hear T-Rex’s hunting for us.
The mind needs to be reversed. If we can see all manner of potential harm it can also be switched to finding all manner of possible good fortune. It’s only a matter of guiding the mind to see where the sun could shine and not where the dark clouds could gather. They are one and the same just the other way round.
Let the mind wander to imagine the best and beneficial, the fantastic and the fantasy.
It’s good for our health, good for our mind, and very good for our future.
3. They use it for the trivial.
We typically have 30,000 thoughts a day.
That’s a lot. It seems a lot more when you consider that at least 75% of those thoughts are often of the same variety. And that variety, when not relating to concerns as mentioned above, are usually centred around the unimportant and trivial.
We waste our head space with thinking that just doesn’t matter to our lives.
You know the sort. Hey, you may have the sort. Frustrated with traffic. Down about the weather. Work colleagues being annoying. Our sports teams performances. Politicians we don’t like. A favourite TV show has changed times on the schedule. Busy at the supermarket on the days we are free.
In the big scheme of things (having a better life), they are basic and negligible for ruining our future. They mind wind us up, but they ae hardly earth shattering. Everyday pains rather than major hurdles to happier life.
We focus our minds so much on the trivial it hasn’t got time or a chance to start contemplating something different. Something like following up our ideas for a business, working on investing to retire early, writing the book or the music we always wanted to, and other various good life building actions.
The mind can’t work well when it’s held prisoner by minor nothings. It works best and most potently when it’s free to fly to greater possibilities.
Dump the dump thinking, harness the higher mindset.
Three to be free.
There’s your three to be free.
Three antidotes to bad mental activity. Three keys to developing a mind that’s going to help you, not hold you back. Get your head back in the good game by using your mind for what it’s meant for. Potential, advancement, and progress. There’s another three, the three you will end up with if you get started today and using the mind right.
Why wait, your future will only be waiting if you do.
Photo attribute – free to use under the Pixabay content license by martymaine.
Would you like to change your life?
Change it like you have never done before?
Well, you can. It only takes a change of mind first. That change is in your subconscious mind.
Being honest, I’d say you have probably heard of your subconscious but have no idea how it operates in your head or even if it operates at all. Well, let me tell you, it’s very real and alive and working in your background all the time.
And mostly it’s working to undermine you by spreading bad news in your head.
So, let’s bring it out in the open and turn it into a confidence booster rather than a party pooper.
The Bad Voice.
I want you to think of your subconscious as a voice in your head.
It’s that one that whispers the kind of crappy advice such as, ‘Be careful, it will all go wrong’, or ‘Don’t bother, you could never do that’, and general doom and gloom messages. In other words, it’s very subtle like a thief in the night, but it’s also very skilful at doing what it does. That’s because all those dreams and plans you never followed through with, or the ideas you still have that you talk yourself out of, have therefore been the subconscious influencing you. Persuading you NOT to go ahead or give it a go.
Alternatively, it also grabs you in a pincer movement. It pumps you full of fears and negatives in general about the world, predicting that almost everything could be a threat and that either you or your life might meet some downfall. Recognise either? Or both?
Firstly, you may now be thinking how does it do it? And secondly, that’s because you are not truly aware of how it’s stopping you.
Ok, consider something you want to achieve. Be a successful lawyer. Win the heart of that girl/guy in accounts. Run a half marathon. Become a retro 1960’s dress designer. Open a specialist ice cream parlour. The type of future where you will better yourself for yourself.
The first thoughts you have of your aspiration will be based on what it would be like; how good it would feel, yourself being fulfilled, popular or well off, and the like. The normal conscious thoughts.
Then naughty subconscious interjects like a nervous parent. It reminds you of anything and everything that could be a pitfall. Except it turns them into a likelihood. And guess what goes through your mind? The guy or girl rejects you in front of everyone or you won’t run more than a mile and people will point and laugh at you. Your ice cream sucks and you lose a fortune.
It happens in the blink of an eye!
Millisecond madness.
The trouble is all this above occurs a millisecond after your initial idea/imagination of what you want. It jumps into your mind and hijacks your feelings and beliefs. As a result, after that happens a number of times you give up, convinced it’s all a waste of time and you the biggest waste of all. However my friend, it’s YOUR subconscious mind so you have one task up your sleeve to prevent it ruining things….
You have to retrain it!
You see your subconscious is part of you that’s been left to run amok unchecked. A bit like teenagers having a house party without supervision. It’s got out of control because it only remembers all the times when situations turned against you. It’s a guard dog that reads everyone as a danger. It requires retraining.
As it’s yours, you are the one who is boss. The leader of your mental pack that tells it to heel, sit down, and obey. Naturally, only in a nice way though.
Act with belief and begin communicating with your subconscious. Upon finishing this post pay attention to your subconscious. Wake it up. Imagine something better for yourself. WAY better. Scale it up in your mind. Make it the top outcome, a brilliant ending. As you begin your subconscious will stir like a sleeping lion and bite back.
It will bear it’s killer teeth by pushing every bad scenario at you. But, you are now prepared. Here is your moment of truth.
You are going to fight back.
Fight the good fight.
Some fights are worth winning. This one 100% is!
The moment you spot those poor predictions and bad feelings rising you are going to replace them.
Firstly, when the initial negative thought hits, you are going to firmly state, ‘NO, that is not true. This is..’
And at that point reiterate in your mind that you will succeed. Add self-confident thoughts and sayings. Examples could be, ‘This is me as I am meant to be’, or, ‘This is what I want, and I fully deserve all of it’. Make the effort to feel good emotions about your aims and desires so that they will link to the thoughts and vision. Connect them all up. One new set of subconscious instructions. The new mindset norm.
Secondly…KEEP AT IT!!
This is not a one day or once a day or week exercise. Persist. Repeat. Day after multi-day. IT IS GOING TO WORK!!
Soon (a few weeks maybe, slightly longer for the majority) your subconscious will start acting in a confident manner. It will start to encourage and drive you. Optimism and excitement surges and increasingly bursts through. You feel good about the future. The lion is turning into a pussy cat.
And if you never let up doing this, you will be a super subconscious capable of anything. God, imagine where you could be in a year from now?? So, do it!!
Set your mind to it, your subconscious mind.
Create that mega confidence in there and ride the new mental wave to somewhere very new.
Photo attribution – free to use under the Pixabay Content License by messaoudmessaoud043.
Have you ever seen the movie, ‘Sliding Doors’?
It’s a film about a sudden twist of fate.
PR girl Helen is leaving work after getting fired. She drops an earring and in a split second she misses her London Tube train. But, in a parallel universe she makes the train. That subtle difference alters the whole trajectory and future of her life.
When she didn’t make the train she didn’t find her partner cheating on her when she got home. Having lost her job she had to take two part time jobs, found out she was pregnant and eventually realised her boyfriend’s infidelity and meets a sad and tragic end.
In the twist option – she gets on the train and meets a kind guy who finds her earring and they get chatting. After discovering her other half with his secret lover she splits from him but gets closer to the man she met on the Underground. Despite being in a serious accident, love conquers all and there is a happy ending.
I’m sure you are now asking what that has got to do with your mind.
Everything!
Subtle change = Big change.
Slight changes lead to a whole new direction.
Let’s say there are two airplanes flying from San Francisco to Los Angeles. If one of them changed their course by only one degree, it would miss the intended airport by 6 miles. If the flight was between Washington DC and Europe, it would end up in a completely different country than the first plane.
This is the compound effect of a slight change multiplied mile after mile. The magnitude of deviation, as it’s called, becomes greater and greater after each mile.
Now think thoughts and days instead of miles.
One current person down on his or her luck with a friend who is in the same boat. Apply the One Degree principle. Person one aims for happy times but carries on thinking and doing the same as always. Their friend doesn’t. They begin amending their thinking, gradually taking on their limiting beliefs, and generally improving their mindset.
In one year good old No.1 hasn’t gone anywhere. Their fixed lower thoughts have kept them in a fixed lower life circumstances. Not so their pal. They have begun to move in different circles. Their upgraded mindset got them more determined, more active, trying out new things, reaching and connecting more. Their life, day after day, has grown out of all proportion. They now live in a vastly, and more progressive world.
A subtle change repeated becomes a big change experienced.
Opening the doors to your future.
You won’t need sliding doors to open the doors to your future.
You only have to open your mind. That’s where your fate lies. In your own head.
It’s akin to taking one step onto a completely different, but brighter road, with every better thought and belief you have. In the end, just like in Sliding Doors, you will find yourself in a new reality with a totally unexpected, but massively positive, outcome.
Billy Joel trained as a classical pianist and had an ambition to create classical music as a composer. One day though he sat down to watch the Ed Sullivan show. His guests that week were The Beatles. Hearing and watching them he was both moved and transfixed in one. Right then and there he vowed to write more popular music and created a new style. His mind effectively put him on another plane (deliberate pun) so he would land in another music world from the one he had been existing in.
That’s for you too. You can jump worlds from one to another and fly into a very different future by changing your mindset.
‘What I want’, becomes, ‘What I am doing’.
‘Where I have been’, becomes, ‘Where I am going’.
Or profoundly, ‘Who I thought I might be’, becomes, ‘Who I know I am and always will be’.
And even, ‘What I feared’, now becomes, ‘What I am determined to do’.
So slide on into new thoughts, bigger beliefs, and an upgraded vision of what matters to you and what fires you up inside, and open doors everywhere for yourself to go. You have that imaginative power to form a brand new life soon down the line.
SuperMinds use The Sliding Doors mindset to open up destinations they weren’t going before.
Photo attribution – free for use under the Pixabay Content License by Schaferle.
Have you ever heard of mind assocation?
Probably not, but you should definitely get to know it because it’s been running your life for years!
Even though you have little idea what the phrase means, that doesn’t prevent it from being a constant in your life. In fact, in virtually all the thoughts and beliefs you have every single day, mind association is at work. At work and running the show.
What is mind association?
Well, to answer that before we move on, let me ask you a question.
What does money mean to you?
And there it is! In your response.
The Mind Associates, You Respond.
What was your answer to the question?
I could have added others such as what money is for and the biggee, on who it is for. But, that one question is usually enough. The second you heard the question, your mind association kicked in. The mind linked what you have been taught to believe about money or been influenced by your environment. And even the relationship you had with it when growing up all led to your mind associating a specific opinion, or certain beliefs and feelings, about it.
That could be (in the voice in your mind)…
‘Money makes people greedy, they become selfish and arrogant’.
‘I’m sure money isn’t for the likes of me, I will never have any in my life’.
‘Money is definitely all freedom and fun. It makes life more of a pleasure’.
And so on. The mind has associated x (money) with y (what it means) and put the two together to create a viewpoint in your head. Often a very fixed viewpoint you never waiver from. Try telling someone who has experienced damaging affects in family or relationships caused by money (fall outs, tightfistedness, debt from overspending) that money is a positive tool in life. Or another from a wealthy family that it’s a scarce resource.
These effects are hard to dislodge. Even harder is that until I showed you how it’s operating like this, you were completely unware of its presence in your life. You just believed what you believe. Or thought you did.
But that belief was mind association.
Unexplored Thinking.
We never question what we believe and why.
We simply take it as read and react accordingly. No enquiry, no self questioning.
If I told you that if you did you could free yourself from some of your long held problems, you might think again.
There are some very famous MA examples you’ve most likely heard of.
‘All men are a waste of time and can’t be trusted’.
‘Immigrants are usually criminals or here for an easy ride at our expense’.
‘I’m from a working class background, people like me are meant to just be the workers, not success stories’.
In most cases we are beaten before we are started. The end goal/positive outcome is never allowed to see the light of day due to mind association. When an important life area comes to mind (love, success. money, good place to live) the mind immediately fires a negative association as above and shuts the whole shebang right down, right there.
We accept that belief without ever thinking, ‘Hang on a minute, is that really true?’. Our thinking is never explored to seek out the source of those thoughts. One bad guy killed your chance for love but not all men are the same. After all some of your best friends have awesome husbands. The news only features bad immigrants but there are plenty around you who are great law abiding, tax paying citizens.
You get my drift.
Mind association is often a culprit not a good companion.
Time to Think Again.
It could be you need a rethink. Are you game?
If you are committed grab a piece of paper and a pen. We’re going to play the association game.
Write down some of the key areas of your life you are experiencing issues, especially long standing ones. Then simply scribble one or two words you associate with that situation. For example, a girl I was very close to had married young and was very scared at getting seriously involved again after a bitter divorce. Her nickname for me, someone she knew loved her? Pain!
For years in relation to money I would use the word ‘struggle’ (it became so). And on my own list next to ‘Home’ I wrote, ‘basic’ (I only owned a small apartment for 20 years).
Your turn. Be honest, don’t filter out answers. Take the first one/couple that you sense first. Be brave. Braver still ask a good friend or family member to write down some situations from your life (career, family etc) without your prior knowledge. It will be interesting what you associate with them in your answers with no prompts in advance.
It’s eye watering stuff I can tell you. It reveals so much of what is going on behind the scenes in you that’s blocking your happy path ahead. What the mind associates with, is what you experience. Or stop yourself from.
And you badly need to find out so you can get your best prospects back.
Because mind association is running, and quite possibly, ruining your life.
Photo attribution – free for use under the Pixabay Content License by nicolagiordano.
