Picking Up The Messages

Close your eyes (clearly you're going to have to read the rest of this first!).  Imagine an 80 year old man or woman (depending on what sex you are) in front of you.  What does she look like?  Does he have grey hair?  Is her skin wrinkled and marked?  Does he look 100 rather than 80?  Is she bent over in an awkward hunch or standing up straight?  Does he speak slowly with a laboured thought process or does he speak freely and easily?  Is she using a walking stick, is she incapable of walking altogether?!!

Stop reading and do this simple exercise before reading on.

Done?  OK, read on... 

The image you saw is how your subconscious expects you to look when you're 80!  That is actually the way you believe you will look, even if you've never consciously thought about it before.  And because your brain believes in that image, it will do whatever it takes to ensure you end up like that.  That will either  please you or worry you depending on what you saw.  If you're like me then you will be worried as the first time I did this exercise in a Tony Robbins event, I saw a very frail and pathetic old person!

So how did that image get in my mind?  The thing is, if you don't consciously decide on something, others will decide it for you, which reminds me of a Jim Rohn quote:

"If you don't make your own plans, you'll have to fit in with other people's plans.  And what have they got planned for you?  Not much!"

He's exactly right but, if it wasn't me, who am I saying has decided I will look like that person I saw?  The answer to that is that I don't know, all I know is it wasn't me!  It was an image that has been constructed in my head based on all the advertising I've seen, the TV I've watched, the magazines I've read, the people I've talked to, the people I see daily and the news I watched.

For example, take a look at the road sign at the start of this post.  Originally this sign was to warn motorists of frail pedestrians crossing the road ahead but now has been adjusted to warn of old people!  Who decided that old people are frail?  If you don't actually think about that sign when you see it, it is sending a picture to your subconscious that old people are always bent over and have walking sticks.  Think I'm reading too much into this? Jason Vale calls it the Derren Brown' effect, based on a 'trick' Derren did with 2 advertising guys.  Derren arranged for them to have a taxi ride to an office in London and carefully bombarded them with images along the way.  He then successfully predicted the advertising campaign (pictures and words) that they would come up with for a brief he had set them.

It's not the things that you notice that effect you, it's the things that you don't notice that go into your subconscious that you should watch out for.  Still sceptical that you're being programmed?  Watch this!!!