Don’t read this page if your life is good enough as it is, and can’t improve. Seriously.

Any Psycho-the-rapist will tell you this is reverse psychology... it is, but not quite.

You see, the mind doesn’t understand negative suggestions like you would expect it to.

If I say to you, don’t notice your blinking rate, you inevitably start noticing it. This is because your mind first needs to process the thing it’s not supposed to process before it can then make a conscious decision to start thinking about other things. And the first step is to think about the blinking rate, before it can move on to something else. This is the basis for what is known as negative suggestion (an unconscious message framed in a negative way).

Unfortunately, we are constantly bombarded by negative suggestion that we don’t want... Some are dumber than others and can be very funny to observe like...  

“Addiction Centre”... really? Hearing that name makes me wanna go there to develop addictive behaviour? 

Or “Smokers Clinic”... is that a clinic full of doctors who happen to be smokers?

Or the old classic “Don’t drink and drive”, especially useless after a couple of drinks when conscious decision making goes out the window.

We can however, do two things to help our unconscious mind.

This first being, changing your day to day language to frame positive thoughts in a positive way. So for instance, instead of thinking, I “don’t want to smoke”, think “I want healthier lungs”. (I just want to make it clear that I don’t endorse people who quit smoking, because I never like quitters, but I guess “each to his own”). Here are some other examples...

“I want to lose weight” becomes “I want to be healthier/slim/more attractive”

“I’m sick of losers hitting on me in bars”, becomes “I want to attract smart/confident/whatever with ease”

The other thing you can do, is use negative suggestion in a positive way. So you can stop thinking about how confident you are. Which is great, because not only did you just give yourself a boost of confidence, but you also convinced your unconscious mind that you are indeed confident (why else would you need to stop thinking about it).

So here’s a few to get you started...

Try not to smile for the next 10 seconds.

Try harder not to think about the last time you really felt motivated.

And if you can do the first two things, you can stop thinking that I’m one of the best bloggers you’ve come across in a while ;-)