The main problem of "positive thinking" is the underlying belief. Let's say you expect something bad to happen but you are then told to think positive. What you'll do is this: Try to create conscious thoughts for a positive result, while in reality you'll be subconsciously bracing for impact. It's the subconscious admission of the negative outcome that overrules the conscious one. In most cases positive thinking is "I know that the bad outcome will come but let's pretend that it won't in case it might not". That's the root of the problem and why positive thinking and creating / programming one's reality doesn't work. It's due to subconscious admissions that go wrong. I've written an article on the subconscious observer which is loosely related to the same issue: https://steemit.com/subconscious/@alexgr/the-subconscious-observer-and-its-effect-on-our-life-and-human-potential
Agree with you on the subconscious part. It is, so to type, improbable that you can 'force' your subconsious through your conscious of so called 'positive' thinking.
Have become more of a realist I guess.
Will read your item, thank you for sharing your insights.
Yes, you can't really "force it". You can tell the outcome in advance by posting the following question to yourself: "If I look deep down and I'm honest with myself, what do I think that will happen in the X situation?" That answer is your true belief and what will manifest. What matters -in terms of manifestation- at any given point is what you secretly believe that will happen. Visualization can help because it blurs fiction and reality in the mind, and thus fiction can come closer to reality - the mind is more ready for these envisioned possibilities.
Yes, what your deeper convictions are will determine the 'outcome', no matter what one is trying to enforce.
Visualization will set 'filters' that in effect could create a path, recognition to the subconsious, that what fits the goal.
Do not know if you are familiair with the works of Edward the Bono, but he has some very interesting and provocative ideas in line with this subject.
http://www.edwdebono.com/
No, I'm reading it now. He kind of mentions the brain a lot - in my understanding, the brain is like a "radio" which transmits information from the non-physical mind. Still the concepts can have merit (haven't analysed them).
Some mindboggling thoughts, that the mind is mere a transceiver. Not even storing information, but it is timelessly 'stored' in 'the essence' (Or what many know under many different names.) All that was, is and ever will be, in the now 'void'. Which is something that is hard for us to grasp. Just like 'nil' or 'zero', we name it, but do not know what void really is. But that is a different approach from the one that Edward the Bono uses.
Jelly Brain
Memory like jelly, pour water on it and it will form canals. The next time water is poured on it, the water will prefer the allready available paths. And even deepen them, so the next time water is poured on the surface it will follow the discriminating preformed path. Deepening it even more.
This then would work as a response trigger, at the same time it also acts as a filter to what 'the jelly brain' allready has in canals. When you take this theorem further you can add the factor temperature of the water as being chemical storms in the body. Or what we might recognise as 'feelings'. Hot water, analogue to intense extreme emotions, one might imagine, would have an enormous impact on the jelly surface.
And, in effect, any time new water 'experiences' are added from the outside, even cold water would follow the most dominant path formed. Even reinforcing the way information would be filtered.
As I see it, the threshold of the water temperature is not connected to good or bad, it is just about the intensity of the growth of the patterns and the affirmation. The pattern path is always 'right' because it is the most dominant one.
This concept got me to more understand things like human 'addiction'. Seeing that we, as humans, are somehow pattern hooked beings. So we probably are very bad at chaos, until we are able to fit it into patterns again. It could be considered a burden and blessing at the same time.
This interpretation of the working of the mind, helped me to quit smoking, long ago. It is in understading that they are just patterns that got interconnected with anything. They do not go away, normally, but it can be mastered by creating new, and more dominant patterns, so to type. At first this is a conscious proces, takes some visualizing too. And a warning that the original pattern is still there, but in time the other patterns will get dominant and will be prefered. (Filtering function also.)
What I miss in the analogy of the brain jelly is that after a while, untriggered braincells get less important/dominant. But this could maybe be seen as jelly moved out from the newly enforced paths will fill the previous ones, but not completely.
And in 'addiction' the 'reward' in alowing a pattern to dominate gets dumbed down in releasing chemicals that give a 'wanted' sensation. In effect meaning that it would need more water and hotter in temperature to create the same result in reward.
All of this it is still open for the mind to wander and wonder about. Anyway, a bit off topic perhaps, or a sidestep, but this is what triggered reading work of Edward de Bono for me.