Teaching Your Unconscious Mind to Work for You.

 A friend asked me recently how I manage to do so many things – and not appear to get stressed.  Good question… How do I do that?  Maybe I always have done lots of things.. maybe I suit it?  Or maybe I have learnt how to do lots.. easily.

Getting Your Unconscious Mind to Work for You.

A great way to manage lots of things to do is to prime your mind to work on them unconsciously for you when you are doing other things.. A bit like having a virtual assistant helping you each day.

If I have a list of deadlines.. I begin the work and then let it go for a while.  I might start a file and put down what is needed, some initial ideas and the deadline then close it for a few days.  An then not think about it.

 This way my unconscious mind can keep working on it while I am doing other things.. This way I come back to it with ideas and more clarity.

 This works because our unconscious mind likes to make sense of things, and behind the scenes will work on confusion, foggy thinking and ideas until some sense is made of it.  Coming back to things gives time for that to be sorted out.. and suddenly the floodgates can open and ideas can pour out. When stressing about ideas or needing clarity – walk away.. then come back later.

 Another Way of Looking At it….

I also love lots of variety, and I love interruptions.  So it appears that I am not stressed by these things.  It is all about learning what your personal programmes are – i.e. Your personality preferences and default positions and working to them. This decreases stress, increases pleasure and makes what we do flow better.  

So, if the opposite is happening in your life, and you are stressed by lots of variety, and hate interruptions, then maybe the job you are doing is not right for you… alternatively you can learn to move towards the other programme sort – by practicing it more.

These are the sort of things most of us don’t know about ourselves. How we see time, how we deal with change, how we filter information, what we naturally do and what we naturally don’t do.

Here is an example of how people filter information differently:

A group of friends and I go for coffee each week.  Sometimes someone comes in with a new haircut, or new glasses or new shoes or have just had their teeth whitened! .. and there are people who notice these things and those who don’t.  Those who do notice – have a natural propensity to notice difference.. first. Those who don’t notice changes have a natural default position of noticing sameness.  Neither is right or wrong. Its just the way it is.   

To expand the natural default position, takes intention and self awareness.

To learn more about these types of programmes, what makes you the individual you are, or to find other ways of doing things or saying things or seeing things then NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) courses can help with extending your experience.

Zoe Wilkinson is a Master Practitioner in NLP, Trainer, Coach and Therapist - and teaches NLP Classes at Tauranga Boys College, New Zealand each term.  In 2007 she was awarded an Exceptional Adult Educator Commendation for this work.  Contact Zoe on zoew@xtra.co.nz