The Power of Your Mind and How to use it | Development Psychology
The Power of Your Mind and How to use it.
There is a basic law that likes. That which you mentally project reproduces in kind and negative thoughts definitely attract negative results. Conversely, if a person thinks optimistically and hopefully, he activates life around him positively and therapy attracts to himself positive results. His positive thinking sets in motion creative forces, and success instead of eluding him flows toward him.
- Norman Vincent Peale
Throughout the ages, people have explored the mysteries of their minds using a variety of methods such as meditation, prayer, and more psychological techniques. Experience and science have greatly increased our knowledge of how to heal our minds, and therapeutic techniques have been refined enough to be easily understood and used by most people. Today’s psychotherapy is far more effective than older methods in helping us to know ourselves, by revealing the subconscious feelings, memories, and patterns that keep us from using the infinite power of our minds and experiencing happiness.
How past experiences affect you now.
Some people say we only use 3 to 15 percent of our minds. That’s like saying your mind is a huge hotel but you only use three or four of the rooms. Nature creates new capacities for immediate needs, not to anticipate possible future circumstances, scientists studying the course of evolution discovered that animals survived by adapting to new conditions and that their brain capacity and other functions grew to meet new challenges. It is closer to the truth to say that only use 3 to 15 percent of your brain consciously; most of your brain functions outside of your conscious awareness, and scientists have only begun to understand its infinite power.
Our heads contain a bio–computer more complex than any electronic computer yet devised. According to neurobiologists, our brains are made up of more than ten billion neurons that analyze, interpret, compare, associate, store, and transmit information from the world around us. The conscious part of our minds is unable to process all this input it can only deal with information from one or two senses at a time. But our subconscious handles millions of bits of information every second even though we are not consciously aware of this activity. Your subconscious is constantly recording all of your experiences. Thoughts, and emotions and this input become the program that determines your reactions and behavior.
You Can Change Your Personality.
Misconceptions abound about how the human mind works and why people act the way they do. Some people believe they were born with a certain personality that can’t be changed: “That’s just the way I am.” The truth is that you can change any facet of your personality or behavior. What you think of as your “personality” is not an immutable set of characteristics. Rather, it is a set of reaction patterns shaped by past responses to painful events. Once these patterns are established in your brain, you repeat them automatically when presented with situations that are similar to past events. But these patterns can be changed.
A child who loses a parent to death or abandonment may develop an intense fear of abandonment and as an adult may not be able to form intimate relationships for fear of losing loved ones. Or, that person may experience a pattern of relationships where he or she is abandoned.
We learn from experience. If an infant is given a toy ball and told it is a ball, that infant will eventually begin to associate roundness with the word “ball” and call all round objects, such as oranges, “balls” But, once a child tastes an orange, new information is added through this experience. The child’s mind will begin to differentiate between a toy ball and an orange. However, an event such as the loss or abandonment of a parent is so painful that information about this event is sent to a subconscious part of the brain that is isolated and does not receive new information. If the child concludes that loved ones will leave, or that the child is responsible and unlovable, those subconscious beliefs remain unchanged no matter how often the child may be told otherwise later in life. When the child begins to feel love as an adult, feelings of love are associated with the lost parent, triggering old feelings and old beliefs. We are able to add new information and adjust our beliefs consciously if the basic information is conscious. But our old beliefs are subconscious, he knew information will not reach them. Old beliefs will continue to control our reactions.
