5 January 2016

Inner Confidence, Part II: Visualization

by u/champagnehouse

Imagination rules the world.

-Napoleon Bonaparte

Without going out of your door, you can know all things on Earth. … arrive without traveling … see all without looking … do all without doing.

-George Harrison, “The Inner Light”

Today’s inspiration: “The Inner Light” by the Beatles

The Conscious and Subconscious Mind

You have two kinds of experiences:

The daily conscious experience. This is your alertness, this is you looking at the computer screen aware of what I’m writing. In this daily conscious experience, you make choices. You think about things. You watch TV shows, have conversations, drive home from work, etc. This is the way you’ve interacted with the world since you were born, interact with it now, and will interact with it until the day you die. The conscious mind is the sail, the canvas that flutters in the wind.
The subconscious experience. This is the less tangible world of memory and belief, your overall impression of the world based on your thoughts, actions, beliefs, and experiences. It’s the song quietly playing in the background that no one really hears because they’re focusing on something else, but helps shapes and determine what they experience. The subconscious mind is the hull - slower to move than the sail, but ultimately responsible for where you end up.

Before we move on, it’s important to note that your experience of reality is not accurate.

It seems like it is, sure. You can stop reading now, feel the clothes on your body, watch the clock tick, clap your hands to hear a sound if you like. This seems like a complete and stark view of the present moment. But it is not a complete and stark view of reality. None of us has that.

Consider:

Your physical senses are limited. You can’t hear the frequencies a dog can hear, and you can’t see ultraviolet light or infrared light. This looks nothing like seeing a person the way we’re used to seeing, but it’s no less real.
This present moment will pass and be recorded as memory. Memories are notoriously fallible and pliable. Much has been written about the malleability of memory: you can insert false memories, you can change events, etc. What you remember is not reality; it is your impression of past reality.
Your mind fills in gaps and filters out what it considers as less useful. You have a blind spot that exposes just hwo much your brain is lying to you. If a simple “X” on a piece of paper or on a YouTube video can disappear like magic, what else don’t you know?

Whether you believe physical reality bends to our mental wishes or not doesn’t really matter, because our filter of the physical universe and our interpretation of events are so powerful that it doesn’t really matter.

Your Reality Filter

Let’s revisit a well-known phenomenon: the act of buying a car often stimulates the brain to suddenly see that car everywhere on the road. It’s not that you’re making the car suddenly appear through your miraculous powers, but rather than your conscious attention to the new car has convinced your subconscious mind that this kind of car is information relevant to you, and it now stops filtering out of your reality. Subsequently you notice it every time you see it, where before you didn’t give it a second thought.

Your life will change once you realize that this same effect happens everywhere.

Have you ever tried to convince a shy friend that he has a lot going for him? If his subconscious mind is set against you, it will be like talking to a wall. You’ll say, “but you’re tall - women like tall guys.” He’ll say, “yeah, but I’m too scrawny.” You’ll say, “you’re fun to hang around with.” He’ll say, “yeah, but no woman ever seems to notice.”

It’s not that he necessarily wants to feel these things. But because his subconscious mind’s filter is set to “I’m unattractive,” that’s all he’s able to see.

Think about this for a second: have you ever talked to a woman only to later realize she was flirting with you? “D’oh!” You kick yourself. If only you had noticed it sooner. That brain of yours. So slow to notice these things.

Now think about this: do you really think that’s the first time you didn’t notice a woman was attracted to you?

It all depends on what your subconscious mind expects. If it expects no women to be attracted to you, not only will your behaviors and habits become a self-fulfilling prophecy, but you literally will have a tough time noticing it when it does happen.

If you go out into the world expecting it to happen, suddenly you’ll walk a little taller, feel a little more relaxed, and you’ll spot women looking at you left and right. Not only are your behaviors in alignment with a more attractive man, but you’ll notice the women who are attracted to you for the first time, the same way you suddenly notice the same make and model of your car.

The result feels like magic, but it’s really just your mind doing what it always does.

The key?

Changing the filter.

How the Subconscious Mind Works

Your present subconscious mind is the result of past experiences, thoughts, emotions, habits, behaviors, and beliefs. But you can change it when you change the input, just as you can change the quality of your body when you put in better food.

There are a few ways that you currently send information to your subconscious mind:

Thoughts and affirmations. You’re already doing this to yourself all day long, you just do it on autopilot so it’s not as easy to see. When two people laugh two offices down and you think “they’re probably laughing at me,” that’s an interpretation your subconscious mind will “hear.” When you think about applying to a specific job but you first think, “I’ll never land that kind of money,” your subconscious mind complies. Think of the subconscious mind as a robot that will do whatever you say, good or ill. You say “I’m experiencing X,” and it says, “Yes you are. Let me organize your memories and thoughts to coincide with X.”
Visualization. Daydreaming. You do this all the time when you picture the worst-case scenario. Or you fail to do it at all, and you don’t see what a positive outcome could even look like. As usual, your subconscious mind says “Okay, that’s our experience? Then that’s what I’ll prepare for.”
Writing and talking. When you write a message or tell a friend something, you’re also telling it to yourself. “I suck with women” is not just a message you send to someone else, it’s a message you send to your subconscious mind, because your subconscious mind is always listening. “Yeah, I suck with women,” it says, because it doesn’t know any better. It just goes off of what it experiences, and the experiences you’re giving it aren’t that good.

There is also a degree to which your subconscious mind filters reality. Some thoughts have a higher “volume” to your subconscious than others. Here are two ways you can adjust the volume:

Relevance to beliefs. If you interpret a rejection as an implication on your self-worth, then you’ll remember the pain of that rejection so long as you’re willing to carry it. If, however, you’re in the moment and you simply pull a James Bond, you’re instantly dismissing the relevance of this event to your beliefs. Your subconscious mind says “Oh, the conscious mind doesn’t give a shit? Then I don’t have to, either.” You’ll actually forget it as if it never happened. The subconscious mind is powerful.
Emotional relevance. You have more choice over your emotions than you know, and when you take a harsh rejection with a stunned blow to your pride, that’s a sting that you’ll carry with you. But you’ll also remember intense points of joy; a sibling’s wedding, a child’s birth, etc. Experiencing strong emotions tells your subconscious mind that something is relevant and needs to be retained in memory, and that your beliefs need to coincide with your experience.

Now that you know how your conscious mind interacts with your subconscious mind, and vice versa, it’s time to get to the first tool for changing your subconscious beliefs and therefore your experience with reality itself. It’s time to give yourself some new experiences via visualization.

Visualization: As Good As Physical Experience

Note: the following anecdotes were first found in Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz.

In 1960, a study at the University of Chicago divided up people into three groups: one group would practice free throws, another would visualize free throws, and the third group would do nothing. After thirty days, the first two groups improved by 24% and 23% respectively. Their conclusion? Invisible practice still gets results.

Charles B. Roth tells us in an old book on sales that one particularly successful group of men in Detroit would learn how to sell by “role-playing,” by taking on any possible objection a customer might have by first rehearsing it in their mind.

Artur Schnabel, the concert pianist, insisted that he mostly hated the physical keyboard of the piano and only practiced in his head.

Golfer Ben Hogan said he doesn’t take a shot until he first sees and feels it in his head.

One thing is clear: as far as the subconscious mind is concerned, even the imagined experienced is legitimate so long as it is vivid. Because your experiences and your thoughts are two of the most powerful ways in which you influence your subconscious mind, and because your subconscious mind clearly does not distinguish actual events from vividly-imagined events, visualization is one of the most powerful tools you have for changing what you expect to experience.

This is the exact method through which I mentally rehearsed having women dance with me, having people buy me drinks, etc.

Start getting used to the idea of yourself as a confident man.

Start experiencing it before you experience it.

A List of Visualization Tools

Your imagination:

You can have everything you want right now, if you’re willing to put in the effort to make it vivid and real. You can choose to close your eyes and experience the imagination version of whatever you want. This is a power we all have, yet how many of us refuse to enjoy it?

Maxwell Maltz recommends taking some 30 minutes daily to rehearse through a scenario where you can mentally rehearse yourself in the following ways:

Vividness. You need to feel, smell, and see everything about the scenario. Make it as real as possible.
Your ideal self. Live through the scenario and watch yourself play through it in the most ideal way possible. For example, you might imagine yourself moving through a party with total ease and relaxation. Don’t put any of this off to the future. Choose to experience it - and the feeling - now. You’re giving yourself an experience, not a hope.
Feel good. Give the experience emotional relevance so that not only it feels good, but that your subconscious mind says “oh, this is relevant input. I’ll change my expectations and beliefs accordingly.”

Mind movies:

Inspirational movies with affirmations, pictures, videos, etc. I like to make my own, which takes a lot of effort, but you can find many on YouTube.

Pictures:

I download a lot of pictures of what I want. Any time I come across a cool living room or something like that, I save it to a thumb drive so I can always refer to it later. Many people print out pictures and hang a vision board above their desk so they can see the same images over and over.

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