Recently I went to a very stimulating seminar called Blockage Buster, presented by Paul Blackburn of Beyond Success.

One of the things he talked about was how information is transferred from the conscious to the subconscious mind.

Most of what we know about life is about looking backwards rather than looking forwards.

What does that mean?

Listen to the 4.29 minute AUDIO if you prefer.

That means that if you are making a conscious effort not to do something that your parents have done, for example, and you say: “Not that”, you are going backwards and becoming more of “that” because you emphasizing “that”. 

Does that make sense?

For example, if you say: “I’m not going to do what my father did and yell when (my child) does something wrong”, you actually will ‘yell’, because that is what you are focusing on and emphasizing.

The subconscious mind does not understand the negative concept, which means that every time you say: “I am not hungry, your subconscious mind hears: “I am hungry.”
In other words say it the way you mean it: “I’m fine.  I’ll eat later.”

This is also known as using ‘toward-language’.

Is this getting clearer?

So back to the example above, when you say that you will not ‘yell’ at your child, you are actually reinforcing that you will.

This is what is meant by going backwards or using ‘away-from language’ rather than ‘toward-language’.

Going forwards, that is making a deliberate decision to turn right around to the other direction, you would replace the ‘yell’ sentence with: “When my child does something wrong, I am going to calmly speak to him.”

 What this really means is that, as you turn forwards, you are looking for new possibilities in the situation and not getting bogged down in old behavioural patterns.

Once you have turned forwards you will know whether your new behavioural pattern will be the right one, if it feels ‘authentic’ to you.

Doing the above can put you out of your comfort zone, but you have to dare to hope for the magic of your new way of thinking.

By the way, this is not about believing in yourself, as you have no track record of that new behaviour being right for you, so how can you believe in it.

You hope and you commit.

My saying ‘you hope’ is not the same as ‘hopefully it will work’. 

This latter expression suggests a safety net in case it doesn’t work, and that is a cop-out.

What I’m talking about is the pure essence of a HOPE, ie believing in the possibility not just in yourself.

Many of us feel that by denying the usefulness of something, we are breaking new ground. 

In actual fact, you are emphasizing what you are wanting to get rid of, and therefore, giving it power and longevity.

Spend a day or so really listening to and monitoring how you say things.

You’ll find that, the more do this, the more you’ll modify what you are going to say before you actually articulate it.

It’s really a lot of fun.

Ps: Some of you might recognise this concept for turning from backwards to forwards/away-from language and toward language as the first of the Meta Programs in NLP.