The Rider and The Elephant (WT706)

The Rider and The Elephant (WT706)

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WT 706 The Rider and the Elephant

It’s the start of a new year and most of us find ourselves looking forward to a bright sunny year ahead.

Consciously we set intentions or goals for the year ahead and for many of us, soon become disappointed as the year progresses and we have not achieved what we wanted and we give up.

For some, they know this is going to happen so they go straight past the disappointment stage and refuse to set goals, a.k.a. “new year’s resolutions”.

So what does “the rider and the elephant” have to do with setting goals?

As it turns out, everything.

The rider and the elephant is a metaphor used in the book, “Switch” by Dan and Chip Heath. It’s an amazing book that explains the obstacles to and strategies for change.

Imagine a rider sitting on top of the elephant.  The rider guides the elephant in the direction he or she wants to go. Everything goes smoothly, as long as that is the direction the elephant wants to go. If not, the rider does not have enough strength to overpower the elephant and is at the mercy of the elephant.

In their book, Dan and Chip explain that the rider is our willpower and the elephant our emotions/motivation and I’m suggesting, also our unconscious mind.

This helps to explain how come we consciously set goals and yet fail to achieve them. The reason is because our unconscious mind is not in alignment with the goal.

This is really tricky, because by its very nature, unconscious means just that. We are not conscious of what’s going on inside and as Silva Method Facilitator, Jeanine Sciacca says, “our brains are self-correcting machines”.

As an example, say you want to double your current salary. You set the goal. You devise a plan. You start to take action. Your income hasn’t increased. You get discouraged. The reason is because your unconscious wants to keep you safe and protected at your current salary. It self corrects.

In other words, for things to change, they must change in your unconscious first. You must be able to see, hear, feel and act as if the change has already occurred. Personal development guru, Jim Rohn used to say, you need to “become” the type of person that has what you want. He is often quoted as saying, “If someone hands you a million dollars, best you become a millionaire”.

You might have heard, “fake it til you make it” or for children, “play make believe”.

This is exactly what we need to do if we want to achieve what we consciously desire. And just to ram it home, David Bayer explains that most of us think we need a strategy to achieve our goals, but if our beliefs are not in alignment with our goals, we won’t execute properly on the strategy.

If there is something you want to achieve this year, please invest some time to check in with your unconscious and start “acting as if”, so you can rewire your brain so that it is in alignment with what you want.

Extract Those Limiting Beliefs (WT690)

Extract Those Limiting Beliefs (WT690)

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WT 690 Extract those limiting beliefs

The other morning Ross and I were lying in bed and talking.

“I wish I could just reach in and rip out all my limiting beliefs”, I said.

“Even the ones I don’t know I have.”

“Why don’t you?” Ross asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Remember, when we did The Silva Method Course with Jeanine Sciacca and she said, the more outlandish and weird, the quicker things work?”

“Yes.”

“Well, why don’t you go into your mental workshop and have aliens or some other weird way  to extract all your limiting beliefs?”

“Wow! Yes. Thank you Ross. I can do that.”

And I did.

I used the Silva Method to go into my mental workshop and I had my team extract two big “blocks” of limiting beliefs; one from each side of my head, just near the Amygdala.

It felt sooooo good.

The blocks were replaced with what David Bayer calls Empowered Decisions because a limiting belief is a decision we’ve made at some point in time. We know how to make decisions, so let’s make new ones.

My new empowered decisions have all been infused into a beautiful pink love-heart shaped cushion and placed into my mind to replace all the limiting beliefs.

I feel so confident. I feel so grateful. I feel so positive.

We all have limiting beliefs, some of which we are conscious of and others not so.

This week I encourage you to listen to yourself and become aware of your limiting beliefs, and either choose to turn them into empowered decisions or follow my lead and extract them altogether.

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