by Brian Tracy
Another word that is often used to describe this kind of coincidence is “serendipity.” Serendipity is the facility of making happy discoveries. People who experience serendipity all seem to have one thing in common: They are actively seeking something. They all seem to have very clear goals and the remarkable things they find are all associated with something they want to accomplish.
People are always telling me, after they have started using their superconscious minds, “You won’t believe what happened to me!” I have heard this exclamation a thousand times: “You won’t believe what happened to me!” Other people, even when remarkably coincidental things happen to them, will tend to dismiss these seemingly inexplicable events by calling them “luck,” or by saying that they just happened by accident. But now you will know better.
We live in a universe that is governed by law. Nothing happens by chance. Everything happens as the result of definite laws and principles, even if you don’t know what they are.
In England during the darkest days of World War II, in the fall of 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was urged by members of his cabinet to make peace, to seek some kind of accommodation with Hitler. Churchill refused. He said that something would happen to bring America into the war, and that would change the entire equation. When he was pressed on this point, and asked how he could be so confident, he replied, “Because I study history and history shows that if you hold on long enough, something always happens.”
On December 7, 1941, only a few weeks after this conversation took place, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. When Hitler heard of this, he immediately declared war on the United States. Overnight, everything changed, and the industrial might of America was thrown onto the scales on the side of Britain. The unilateral action of Japan on the other side of the world triggered the chain of events that enabled Churchill to achieve his goal of saving England from being overrun by Nazi Germany.
The more you can hold this mental state of calm, confident expectation, even when buffeted by the storms of life, the more likely it is that you will experience synchronicity and serendipity. They are delightful experiences that always fill you with a feeling of happiness and excitement.
TWO OPERATING CONDITIONS
Your superconscious mind operates best under two conditions. The first is when your conscious mind is concentrating 100 percent on a specific problem or goal. The second is when your conscious mind is busy with something else altogether. You should try both methods on anything you want to accomplish.
Here is a simple, five-step process you can use to bring all the powers of your superconscious mind to bear on a single issue.
Step one: Define the problem or goal clearly, preferably in writing. What is it exactly that you want to achieve, or exactly what is the problem you wish to solve?
Step two: Gather as much information as you can. Read, research, ask questions and actively seek the answer that you need.
Step three: Consciously try to solve the problem by reviewing all the information you have gathered.
Step four: If you still have not been able to solve the problem consciously, turn it over to your superconscious mind. Release it confidently, the way you would release a balloon, and let it float away.
Step five: Get your conscious mind busy elsewhere. Turn your attention away and let your superconscious mind take care of it for you!
Take any problem you are wrestling with right now and try this method on it. You will be amazed at the results.
IT BRINGS YOU THE ANSWERS YOU NEED
Your superconscious mind will bring you exactly the right answer at exactly the right time. When the answer comes, you must act on it immediately. It is “time-dated” material. If you get the urge to telephone someone, or to say something or do something, and it feels exactly right, act in faith and follow your instincts. It will always turn out to be the right thing to do.
If you are having a problem with another person and you get a clear idea of what you should do or say, even if it involves some confrontation or unpleasantness, follow your hunch and carry through with it. The outcome will always be equal to or better than what you could have expected.
As a professional speaker, I will sometimes be unsure about exactly how to structure and begin a talk or a seminar. When I turn it over to my superconscious mind, at a certain point, often as I am walking to the podium, the entire talk will crystallize in my mind and it will turn out to be exactly the right thing to say.
Recently, I was asked to address a corporate audience on the challenges of professional selling in the 1990s. I had prepared for this talk and I was ready to speak on the subject. But as I was introduced, I had this irresistible urge to talk instead about the importance of long-term goals and strategies and having the courage to give up the old and embark in new directions. At the end of the talk, I got a standing ovation.
Later, the president of the company told me that, before my talk, they had had two full days of meetings at which they discussed and debated the future direction of the company. My talk had clarified the issues they were wrestling with and had given them the keys to solving some of their most pressing problems. It turned out that my superconscious mind was guiding me to say the things that their superconscious minds were directing them to learn.
YOUR MENTAL ALARM CLOCK
Your superconscious mind enables you to program yourself so you remember to do things at certain times in the future. For example, you can program your mind to wake you up at any hour, day or night. There are many people, including myself, who never use alarm clocks, and who never oversleep. All you need to do is to decide at what time you want to wake up tomorrow morning. Then forget it. At exactly that time, or a few minutes before, you will come wide awake.
I travel back and forth over several time zones, going to bed and getting up at all hours. And my superconscious mind always wakes me up at exactly the right time. I never oversleep. It’s better than an alarm clock.
You can remind yourself to call someone at a certain time, or to stop off and pick up something on the way home. At exactly the right time or place, the thought you programmed will leap into your mind. And you can use this power by simply deciding to do so.
You can eventually reach the point where you won’t need to carry a watch. You will always know within a few minutes exactly what time it is.
FINDING PARKING SPACES
Among other things, you can use your superconscious mind to find parking spaces. If you can clearly visualize a parking space, even on a crowded street or a parking lot, when you arrive, the parking space will be waiting for you. If it is especially busy, someone will be holding the space until you arrive. Just as you drive up, no sooner and no later, the other car will pull out to make way for you. My wife, Barbara, has developed this capability to the point where she can plan a whole series of errands and get a parking spot right next to the door of every store or office that she is going to.
Technical people, like engineers and accountants, find this very hard to believe. But I run into people all over the country who tell me they’ve never had a problem finding a parking space since they went through the seminar.
In a recent seminar that we conducted in San Diego, we gave the participants Saturday afternoon off. Two groups of people decided to visit the San Diego Zoo for the afternoon. The first group was made up of four young entrepreneurs. They were positive, optimistic, and fully confident that this method of finding parking spaces would work. The other group was made up of three engineers. They were quite clear that there was no way that you could find parking spaces using visualization and their superconscious minds.
Both groups went separately to the San Diego Zoo. The car full of young entrepreneurs drove straight up to the parking spaces by the front entrance, even though the parking lot was jammed as far as the eye could see. Just as they arrived at the front entrance, the very first parking stall opened up. The car that was in it backed out. They drove right in, laughing, and went on into the zoo
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The engineers, on the other hand, did not believe that it would work. They drove around for a while and then parked on the far side of the parking lot and walked about two blocks to the entrance.
Although this is a simple way to use a powerful force, try it for yourself and see. Remember, the key is your attitude. If you confidently believe that you will find a parking space, you most certainly will. But any trace of doubt or skepticism will short-circuit the process and cause it to fail.
THE LAW OF SUPERCONSCIOUS ACTIVITY
This is the most important of all the laws in this book. It is the summary law that binds them all together. The Law of Superconscious Activity states, “Any thought, plan, goal or idea held continuously in your conscious mind must be brought into reality by your superconscious mind, whether positive or negative.”
Any thought, plan, goal or idea that you can hold continuously and confidently in your conscious mind, whether positive or negative, will eventually be brought into your reality by your superconscious mind. This law explains how you create your world by the thoughts that you allow to dominate your thinking. If you keep your mind on the things that you want, and keep them off the things that you fear, your goals, whatever they are, will eventually materialize and become your realities.
Like all laws, this law is neutral. It is no respecter of persons. It is the highest manifestation of the principle of cause and effect. If you use this power for good, then only good will come into your life. If you use this power negatively, it will bring you illness, unhappiness and financial frustration. The choice is always yours. You are always free to choose the kind of world that you wish to live in. And you choose it every day by the thoughts you think.
A successful life is merely a series of successful days, hours and minutes, minutes during which you think about your goals and your desires, about health and happiness and prosperity, and refuse to dwell on anything that you do not want to see manifested around you.
STIMULATING SUPERCONSCIOUS ACTIVITY
There are several ways to stimulate superconscious activity. The first and most dependable is simply to think about your goals all the time. This alone will keep you happy and focused. It will cause superconscious energies to flow through you in the form of ideas and motivation toward goal attainment.
The second way to stimulate your superconscious mind is through the practice of solitude, “going into the silence.” Men and women begin to become great when they start taking time to be alone with themselves. Solitude is a wonderful tonic that gives balance and clarity to thought. It provides an opportunity for you to reflect on who you are and what is important to you. Most of all, solitude provides the mental medium of calmness and serenity that causes superconscious solutions to spring into your mind full-blown and complete in every detail.
If you have never tried it, the simplest way to practice solitude is to go and sit somewhere, perfectly silently, without moving, for an entire hour. Do not drink coffee, take notes, smoke cigarettes, listen to music or do anything else. Just sit perfectly still for an entire hour.
Most people have never deliberately sat down alone with themselves for any period of time. If this is your first experience with solitude, you will find it excruciatingly difficult. For the first twenty-five to thirty minutes you will have an almost irresistible urge to get up and move around. You will find it almost impossible to sit still. But if you have the self-control to sit without moving for thirty minutes, something remarkable will happen. You will start to feel calm, relaxed and at peace with yourself. You will feel happy and at one with the world.
Then, at a certain point, you will feel a river of creative energy flowing through you. You will start to have ideas and insights you can apply immediately to be happier and more effective. At exactly the right moment for you, the answer that you need to your most pressing problem will emerge in your mind. You will recognize it immediately. When you get up from your period of solitude and go out and implement the solution that came to you, you will find that it was exactly the right thing to do. It is almost as if this ideal answer had been brought to you by a force from far beyond, which, of course, it has.
The third way to trigger superconscious activity is to visualize your goal as realized. Create a clear mental picture of exactly the goal or outcome you want. Dwell on this picture repeatedly until it is accepted as a command by your subconscious mind and is passed on to your superconscious mind for realization.
Superconscious activity usually happens when you are making as little effort as possible. Releasing your problem or goal completely often stimulates ideas of tremendous value. Letting it go with complete confidence and getting your mind busy elsewhere is often the trigger that unlocks your hidden powers.
Many people find that daydreaming or relaxing on a park bench triggers superconscious activity. Listening to classical music, alone or in the company of people you enjoy, will often cause wonderful ideas to spring into your mind.
Perhaps one of the most enjoyable ways to turn on your super-conscious powers is to go for a walk or to commune with nature in some way. The sounds of the ocean on the seashore seem to have a powerful impact on the superconscious, as do those of any running water or natural environment. Any form of deep relaxation or meditation also stimulates your superconscious mind.
One good superconscious insight or idea can save you months, even years, of hard work. You must resist the temptation to procrastinate on trying one or more of these methods on the most pressing issues facing you. It is exactly when you are too busy that you most urgently need to listen to your inner voice.
THE SUPERCONSCIOUS SOLUTION
A superconscious solution will come to you from one of three sources. The first and most frequent source is from intuition. Sometimes this inner voice will be so loud you will be unable to think of anything else. The answer will be so clear and obvious that you will know this is exactly the right thing for you to do. It will not only be right, it will feel right as well.
Always trust your intuition; never go against it. Your intuition is your direct pipeline to your superconscious mind and to infinite intelligence. All successful and happy men and women listen closely to their intuitions and to the feel of a situation. Most of the problems you’ve had and mistakes you’ve made in life have been the result of ignoring your “gut feelings.”
The second source of superconscious solutions is chance encounters with other people or information. Once you have a clear goal, or a problem to solve on the way to your goal, you will unexpectedly run into people who can help you. Often they will be strangers you meet traveling or in social situations. You will come across books, magazines and articles that contain exactly the information you need. You will hear the solution you’re looking for on an audiotape. The information will seem to be drawn to you in exactly the form you require it at the time.
A friend of mine, a famous photographer, was wrestling with a personal problem one evening at home when he had the urge to walk across his living room and get a book from the shelf. As he moved toward the book, it fell off the shelf onto the floor, face down and open. When he bent over and picked up the book, the first paragraph contained exactly the answer he was looking for. He had just been through our seminar, and he recognized immediately that he had experienced a superconscious solution. He implemented it the next morning and it turned out to be exactly the right thing to do.
Earlier I encouraged you to start off each morning by saying, “I believe something wonderful is going to happen to me today.” If you go through your day believing that something wonderful is about to happen to you, you will meet people and come across information that will make your expectation a reality. You will get super-conscious solutions to your problems in the most surprising ways.
The third source of superconscious solutions is unpredictable events. Peter Drucker writes in his book Innovation and Entrepreneurship that the primary source of innovation in business is the unexpected success or the unexpected failu
re. It is often the completely unanticipated event that contains the superconscious solution that you are seeking. And the unexpected event that contains the answer you need can often appear to be a major setback or failure.
Sir Alexander Fleming was conducting experiments on bacteria in his laboratory in London when some mold flew onto his culture dishes and killed the bacteria, thereby ruining the experiment. As he was about to throw away the culture medium and begin again, he noticed the mold that had killed the bacteria. He began to study the mold very carefully, and the result was the discovery of penicillin, which won him a Nobel prize in medicine and saved the lives of millions during World War II.
Norman Vincent Peale says that whenever God wants to send you a gift, he wraps it up in a problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the gift. Is the glass half empty or is the glass half full? Successful, happy people make a habit of looking into even the most difficult situation for something positive, something they can learn or some way they can benefit. And this very attitude often triggers a superconscious insight or solution to their problem.
CHARACTERISTICS OF A SUPERCONSCIOUS SOLUTION
A superconscious solution has three characteristics. First of all, when it comes, it is 100 percent complete, and deals with every aspect of the problem. It is always within your resources and capabilities at the time. It is always simple and fairly easy to implement.
