Your mind's in your corner

When I got pregnant with my first child, I experienced a strange phenomenon. Suddenly, it was as if every woman on the planet was pregnant, or had recently given birth.

OK, perhaps that is a bit of an exaggeration, but everywhere I looked there were either expecting moms, or newly created ones. It wasn’t until years later that I discovered the reason for this.

It wasn’t that there was a sudden wave of pregnancies. These women had always been there, I just hadn’t noticed them.

Your mind absorbs far more information than it processes. Anything that doesn’t get processed and sent to your consciousness, stays in your subconscious.

There are many different statistics about the amount of information your mind takes in, versus the amount that gets processed.

For the sake of argument, let’s use 40,000 bits per second get absorbed, but only 400 per second get processed. The numbers may vary depending on the study you read, but every source agrees that we take in far more information than we are ever aware of.

I hadn’t planned to get pregnant, so up until the moment the dot on the stick turned pink, anything that had to do with pregnancy and babies was filed away. I wasn’t interested in such things, so there was no reason to draw my attention to them.

Instead my mind processed the things I was focusing on like marriage, clothes, and school-aged children. The minute I started to think about being pregnant, my mind began to process everything that related to my thoughts.

What you think about is what you notice, but it is important to understand that there is so much more going on that you don’t notice, or become conscious of.

This explains why teachers recommend to students that if they don’t know the answer on a multiple-choice test, to go with their first instinct. There may be relevant information in your subconscious mind that you aren’t aware of.

Your mind likes alignment between your thoughts and your reality, so it strives to give you evidence to support whatever you think about, or believe. The realization that what we focus on is what we notice around us, was such a game changer for me.

If you believe you are living a horrible life, your mind will process any information that supports those thoughts. Anything that might illustrate goodness in your life, will remain filed away.

If you are currently single and would like a relationship, don’t focus on not having a significant other. If you do, you will notice this fact repeatedly throughout your day.

If you don’t like your job and are desperate for a new one, don’t spend your time focusing on all the negative things about your work, and how much you hate it, unless you want to be reminded of this constantly.

Focus on anything, and your mind will work tirelessly to support you.

Now that you are aware of this fact, you can use it to your advantage. It doesn’t take very much to shift your focus just enough to be positive about the things you want to change, rather than negative.

If you want a new relationship, don’t focus on not having one, focus on being ready for one. Think about how perfect you are for the right person. Focus on the optimistic belief that he or she is looking for you too.

If you want a new job, focus on the type of job you are looking for, not the one you want to leave.

It is incredibly easy for us to say what we don’t want in life, but have you taken time to get clear on what you do?

If not, this is a good first step. Ensure your mind processes information that will help you create what you want, not find more of what you don’t want.

Awareness is necessary for transformation. If you want to feel happier about your life, decide what you want to be surrounded by, and let your mind help you prove it to be true.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.