If, on the other hand, the New Year’s resolution can be set deeply into the subconscious mind, and if the information in the subconscious mind is in agreement with the conscious mind, there will be a high chance of success for the resolution.
The important part of the process is to get both the conscious mind and the subconscious mind thinking and working in the same direction. It is typical that, when a person uses only the conscious mind to achieve an objective, the person’s actions are characterised by the exercise of strong self discipline and feats of willpower. These concepts of discipline and willpower are only required when one part of the mind has to overcome or dominate the other. Willpower is only required when the conscious mind has to subdue the rebellious tendencies of the subconscious mind.
If you are only working with willpower to achieve a goal, forcing yourself, and relying on an agony of self control, discipline and constant rejection of temptation, you are likely to fail in the long run. This is because the idea of using willpower is an idea of using only the conscious mind. You could call the idea of willpower alone, ‘conscious mind imperialism’ where your aim is to use the power of the conscious mind to overrule and subjugate the desires and prompting of the subconscious mind. Willpower alone can not work because the subconscious mind will resist it. What will the subconscious mind do when faced with a conflict of the conscious and subconscious mind? It will identify a change and change is scary. It may set up self sabotage.
By trying to use pure willpower the subconscious mind is not going to help you at all, it’s actually going to work against you. That’s the way it works.
So what do we need to do? We can use the subconscious mind to make it easier to change. We can actually achieve the change inside the subconscious mind first. Once this is done there will be no need to exercise strong willpower because there will be no need to subjugate the desire of the subconscious mind. We need to achieve the change using the subconscious mind techniques. Loosely I’m talking about the CALM techniques. One fantastic fact that really helps us is that the subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between imagination and reality. What we can do is pretend achievement (if that’s the goal) and the subconscious mind still helps.
These techniques will allow you to make the change inside the subconscious mind first. So, when the subconscious mind, the 88% part of the mind, has accepted the change, it is going to work along with you instead of sabotaging you. That’s when you have a much greater chance to make things happen for you the conscious mind and the subconscious mind working 100% together. That’s our objective and that’s when you will start to achieve your intended purposes.
Chapter 2
Square Peg, Round Hole?
It’s a well known image. “You can’t fit a square peg into a round hole” ... or so the saying goes. And there’s a ring of truth to it, but of course in real life, we all know that you can fit a square peg into a round hole. It’s all a matter of how much trimming of the edges you do to the square peg or how much distortion that you make to the round hole. It also depends on how hard you are just simply prepared to push and shove. Eventually, if you use enough force, you will get it there; the square peg will fit into the round hole.
But is this what our lives are all about? Being pushed and shoved into some mould which is just not really us? How can it be possible to achieve happiness intentionally in these circumstances?
Not only is it true in life that we can fit the square peg into the round hole, it is true that we do fit the square peg into the round hole. And the tragic truth is that, in modern society, it happens every day. It happens to people all around us. Worst of all, it might be happening to you! It might be happening right now! How can this be so in a supposedly free society?
There are subtle demands on us all the time to change what we want to do into what somebody else wants us to do. It is not necessarily a bad thing to make compromises in a society which, after all, requires teamwork and cooperation between its members to work. It becomes bad when our own value system becomes mismatched with what society at large may want from us. Regardless of the need for cooperation and teamwork within society, there still exists the basic concept of the freedom of the individual. And I believe that it is the individual’s ability to see and grasp the potential of that freedom that is one of the main ingredients to happiness.
How can we reconcile the difference between what society’s value system might be and what our own value system might be? Let me give an example of how the two value systems can be in conflict. Generally society assigns value to an individual based on the economic value of that person in the economic system. The remuneration that people receive, the status they hold, is usually related to the economic benefits that they provide to society. This is not necessarily wrong, but it can lead to endless hardship where people come to believe that therefore all their efforts must be directed towards the achievement of society’s value system.
Nothing could be more guaranteed to work against personal happiness.
The existence of this conflict between the world’s value system and a person’s value system can be seen in the life of Mother Theresa of Calcutta. Mother Theresa had almost no economic value in terms of what she made or produced. She didn’t grow any wheat, manufacture any cars or ship any coal. But her Life’s Purpose was dramatic, profound and compelling. In choosing her Life’s Purpose Mother Theresa clearly identified that it was something different from her economic value to society. Many people, including many reading this book, are caught up in the stressful situation where they cannot reconcile these two conflicting tensions in the same way that Mother Theresa did. They equate the two Worldly value equals Purpose in Life. This is utterly wrong.
We all really know it is wrong but it is communicated to us subtly in a host of ways all the time. We can’t always identify the subtlety in the message. Take the example of newspaper and television reporting of the unemployment situation. How many times have you seen the following words used to identify the unemployed ‘Lost Generation’ ... ‘Without a Future’ .... ‘Hopelessness’ ... ‘Youth Suicide’? The implication of these emotive terms is that if you are unemployed you are of no value and therefore can have no self esteem. Notice that I used the word ‘situation’ rather than ‘problem’ when I introduced the topic of unemployment. This is an example of the first level of distinction in the clash between society’s value system and what our own value system might be. Unemployment, by itself, is a neutral statement about a person’s role in the economic system of production and distribution of goods and services. Whenever the media tag this neutral word with the emotive word ‘problem’ the unemployed are told by society that they are a problem. Some of the unemployed will believe this and who can therefore be surprised when some unemployed people experience low self esteem. But true self esteem flows from knowing that you are following your Life’s Purpose not the economic purpose that society has set upon