Writing Down the Urgent Stuff

Last week I wrote about how important it was to write down your goals, your intentions, your dreams, and your to do lists. Why do that? Because if you do, the odds that you will follow through and complete those tasks and dreams increases big time.

There are many other benefits to writing. If you commit your dreams to paper, or on a document in your computer, for some strange reason, the act of writing your fears and negative thoughts down helps you  deal with those bad thoughts and then you can more easily  overcome them.

So, getting into the habit of not only writing your good dreams and goals down but also those fears and negative feelings we all have, can become a huge asset in your life.

Here’s 17 questions from a list in Ilchi Lee’s wonderful book I’ve Decided to Live 120 Years. Ask yourself these questions and write down the answers.

1. What things have I achieved in my life?
2. When was I most joyful?
3. When were things most trying?
4. How did I overcome hardship in those trying moments, and what did I learn through them?
5. What moments in my life do I regret?
6. When did I do things that made me feel proud and that I found rewarding?
7. What momentary choices became opportunities that changed my life?
8. What values did I try to remain true to throughout my life?
9. What goals have I had so far?
10. What motivated me to establish those goals?
11. Which of my goals have I had so far?
12. Which of my goals have I achieved?
13. Which goals have I failed to achieve?
14. Who has had the greatest impact on my life?
15. With whom have I shared my gratitude?
16. With whom do I have emotional issues that I need to resolve?
17. Which of my habits do I want to keep and develop?

Lee goes on to say, “If possible, write down your thoughts about these questions. Organizing them in writing and not just thinking about them will help you unravel the tangle of thoughts rolling around in your head.”

Like Mr. Lee’s book, Henriette Klauser’s book, Write It down, Make It Happen, makes some of the same points. Klauser likewise emphasizes how absolutely critical it is to get into the habit of writing your goals and dreams down, explaining how, “putting it on paper alerts the part of the brain known as the reticular activating system to join in the play.”

She goes on to explain this mechanism. “At the base of the brain, about the size of a little finger, is a group of cells whose job it is to sort and evaluate incoming data. This control center is known as the reticular activating system (RAS}. The RAS sends the urgent stuff to the active part of your brain and sends the nonurgent to the subconscious. The RAS awakens the brain to consciousness and keeps it alert.”  So, if you write something down, then it becomes the urgent stuff and your brain will keep it accessible to the active part of your mind.

Hope I’m not getting too scientific but knowing all about the RAS and what good it does all of us should be good motivation to keep writing our goals and dreams down. So now we know, when it comes to bad feelings, ideas, or worries, paper is a good place to park those negative mind games.

In the Blink of an Eye

I’m sure that we’ve all had moments in our life when suddenly our brains provide an answer to a question we’ve been struggling with. Maybe it was as simple as a name of a person that we couldn’t remember or a great creative or business investment idea that popped into our head when we were thinking about something totally different. It can happen in the blink of an eye.

How about when you meet someone new and in that blink of an eye you know and feel in that instant that this new person is not a good person.  I will never forget being told by a friend that a guy he’s known for years had a great investment opportunity that I needed to get into. Then, wow, when I met the guy I knew, within a blink of an eye, that he couldn’t be trusted. Sure enough, my friend and several others lost hundreds of thousands of dollars as this guy, that my brain told me couldn’t be trusted, took off with their money.  The only good part of all of that was that the guy was caught later in a foreign country and is now sitting in a California prison and will be for many years to come.

In a great little book titled Blink, Malcolm Gladwell makes a very convincing case that our subconscious brains are so very good at giving us instant, and often times, very accurate feedback to all kinds of life, business and personal situations. Gladwell says, “The part of the brain that leaps to conclusions like this is called the ‘adaptive unconscious’, and the study of this kind of decision making is one of the most important new fields in psychology.  The adaptive unconscious is not to be confused with the unconscious described by Sigmund Freud.”

Next week I want to talk more about the great power of listening to the instant feedback that our adaptive unconscious gives us. I’ll give you some of the details concerning a 10-million-dollar deal that long, hard expert research said was a good and genuine opportunity but that the adaptive unconscious of several people indicated it was a phony deal, and they were right. In the meantime, don’t forget to “trust your gut” because most of the time your gut gets it right in the “blink of an eye”.