Remember these two things were:
1. Find them out – the very first thing you must do is identify these negative expectations and face them.

2. Drive them out – the best way to drive out these negative traitors is by displacement. How? By focusing your mind on the things you DO want and by immersing yourself in self development. (This means reading, listening to and watching challenging, motivational and inspirational material which will help you develop the champion in you).

3. Keep them out – how?

Here are some things that work for me. In fact the following is an extension of the daily action plan that I mentioned in the previous article.

Warning, this is not a short term commitment. Learning and growing (discipleship) is a life time activity.

1. Your daily self development plan of action:
Every day you read at least a chapter in a non fiction book, plus listen to a motivational or inspirational mp3 or mp4 (of course a DVD or CD is fine too).

2. What stands out today:
As you read or listen make notes of what stands out to you from what you are learning.

Notice: I did not say “take notes”, but rather I said “make notes”. What is the difference?

The phrase “take notes” simply means you copy down certain sentences or phrases that stand out to you, usually word for word.

The phrase “make notes” means you write down these comments that stand out to you using your own words.

Do you see the difference? When you rewrite something in your own words, it becomes YOURS. It will mean so much more to you, and be easier to apply to your life.

3: One main thought:
Look for one main thought from your notes that relates to the expectation you are displacing, and write it out on an index card.

4. Write out a positive affirmation:
Take this thought that you focusing on today and turn it into a positive affirmation. If you find you have decided that business just does not work for you, start affirming that you ARE born to succeed.

5. Placement of this card:
Put this card in a conspicuous place where you can read it (preferably aloud) every time you see it.

Above all, don’t ever lose sight of this fact:

Photo credit

In fact they can be like a bomb hiding in our subconscious minds ready to explode when certain pressures come into our lives. It is imperative that we identify these intruders (find them out) and drive them out.

Just to make sure you are clear on exactly what a negative expectation is, lets look at the following scenario.

This illustrates how one is created and then reinforced in your subconscious mind.

Let’s suppose you decide that you want to try working yet another business opportunity.

You have tried several times before, but you are sure that this one IS going to work. So with great enthusiasm you dive into this new project.

Then the inevitable happens. An obstacle crosses your path, an unexpected difficulty or simply you see no immediate results and start wondering when something will happen.

So discouragement starts to play with your mind. You agree with those thoughts that are plaguing you.

It IS taking too long, and the difficulties encountered ARE more than you expected to have to deal with and WHAM discouragement starts to sets in.

Finally you give up saying to yourself:
“I don’t seem to have what it takes to build a business”

OR

“It seems like these opportunities just don’t work”

OR

“Well it looks like this is not meant to be”
This latter one is a classic. I have heard this SO many times over the years I want to almost scream every time I hear it again. It reveals such a passive – “what will be will be” attitude.

So now you have strengthened a negative expectation that was already lodged in the depths of your mind. How so?

You had tried this once before and gave up. When you gave up, you had made a decision which was archived in your subconscious mind in the category “negative expectation”.

As soon as you encountered a measure of discouragement with this latest attempt, the old file came zooming up to the forefront of your mind to challenge you.

Don’t you remember? (You say to yourself)
No business opportunity ever has worked for you.

You remember and agree

So now that negative expectation is stronger.

So let’s drive it out this negative expectation now that we have found it out.
(Remember Step 1 was “Find Them Out).

2. Drive Them Out.

Yes, but how? I have discovered that the very best way to get rid of any undesirable thinking pattern in my life is to displace it.

Yes – drive it out by displacement.

What is displacement? If you take a glass filled with dirty water and place something heavy in the same glass, what happens to the water? Right, it is displaced.

And if you run that same glass under a tap of fresh clear water, what happens to the dirty water? Right, the clear water takes its place, right? The more clean water that is poured into the glass, the more the dirty water is displaced.

In this illustration it is obvious that the dirty water represents the negative expectations.

So what represents the clean water that will do the displacing?

The 3 main ingredients of this “clean water” plan:

1. This is war!
The first thing to do is to recognize that you are declaring war these hidden roots in your mind.

The declaration of war is a very positive, definite and determined decision.

Have you made this decision? Are you determined to win?

2. Write down:
You were born to make a difference in the lives of others. This is the center of the reason you are here on this planet, this is your “WHY”.

Your WHY is the reason you will continue to fight to win when the war becomes strong and tiring.

Write down the names of the people (or group of people) in who’s lives you want to make a difference.

Put these names on your vision board, together with pictures.

3. Daily action plan:
Write out a daily action plan of war. This plan will commit you to at least 30 minutes a day of focused reading, listening to cds or watching dvds of motivational and inspirational teachings. You need to immerse yourself in all that is positive.

Some suggestions for reading:
The Bible
Success Principles (How to get from where you are to where you want to be) by Jack Canfield
The Everyday Visionary – Focus Your Thoughts Change Your Life by Jesse Du Plantis
Champions Are Born, Losers Are Made by John Di Lemme.

Your daily action plan is your commitment to fight to win! Act on it every day, and never forget that:

Recommended: Download these free mp3s and mp4s and add them to your daily battle plan of action.

Disclosure: The author has an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to many of the providers of goods and services mentioned in this message and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.

I don’t have to tell you that life can have its ups and downs.

When everything is running smoothly, it is easy to maintain a positive attitude and keep your thoughts focused. Right?

It is also so much easier to keep up the discipline of your daily program of self development, right eating and exercise when everything around you is going well.

Setbacks do happen
But as you well know, no matter how well we plan our goals and strategies setbacks do happen. These are the times when we find out just how positive our mindset is and how determined to win we really are.

Setbacks reveal what you and I are REALLY made of
When an unexpected failure or setback crosses your path you may suddenly find yourself saying (or thinking) things like, “why did this have to happen now” or even “why do these things keep happening?”.

Wait a minute! What happened? Where did that come from? What happened to my positive mindset (you might be thinking)?

Worse still, the impact of the situation may be so strong that you totally lose your cool and the positive mindset you have been working so hard to create seems to have gone out the window.

Does this mean you have lost your way on the road to success? Of course not.

But it DOES mean that you need to take notice of what is happening, and deal with the root so that it will not be able to sabotage your success.

So where do reactions like this come from?

There are still some archives in your subconscious mind that need to be cleaned out.

No, they are not memories. They are decisions you made in the past when you faced a severe discouragement or were disillusioned over something that happened.

Your mind’s filing cabinet needs a clean out.
These decisions were stored in your subconscious mind under the heading: Negative Expectations. They are there waiting to “ambush you” when things get tough.

Every day you and I make multiple decisions. Some are conscious, and other times we may be so busy reacting to a situation, we don’t even realize we made a decision. But nevertheless these conclusions are stored away in our subconscious mind.

You may have thought or said something like this:

1. Well, that does not work!
(What you really mean is that it has not worked for you …. yet. Perhaps you gave up too early).

2. It seems like success is just not for me!
(What you really mean is that you have not achieved your goal …. yet. So why are you giving up so quickly?)

These declarations you spoke or thought were stored away in your mind as facts, and they became filters for future experiences.

These filters are the hidden negative expectations that can jump you at any given moment when the pressure is on. They are the motivating energy behind those negative words that come flying out of your mouth when something discouraging happens.

If you allow these expectations to stay in your mind, you are in danger of having your success sabotaged.

One thing you can do TODAY that will help you to start dismissing every negative expectation from your mind and free you to push and reach your dreams of success in life.

Look for the root! – Find Them Out!

Identify and face the negative decisions that caused the expectation. Discover the root! Find it out! How?

1. Recognize that the negative words that “jumped you” when you were ambushed by a setback of some kind actually came from YOUR subconscious mind.

The first step to turning around ANY negative habit, is to identify its existence and face it.

When you face a weakness or anything negative in your life, it loses its power over you. Why? Because the negative works in the dark. The positive works in the light!

2. Take note of the actual words you spoke. They will help you remember the moment you made a decision which empowered these words.

3. Now you can start making a conscious effort to reprogram that area of your mind.

So there are three main things you can do to eliminate these negative expectations from your life.
1. Find them out. (We looked at today)
2. Drive them out. What you can do to completely expel these attitudes from your life.
3. Keep them out. How you can keep these thought patterns from coming back.

Look for the next in this series on Tuesday, 19th Jan.

and don’t forget:

Photo by Photo Belkins on Flickr

These archives in our mind were created across the years by our experiences, our reactions to them and the decisions we made as a result of these experiences.

What? Your belief and value system was not created by your environment, by your parents or by people in your life?

Nope. They were created by your reactions to that environment and the people you have been around across the years. YOU created the foundation that resides in your subconscious mind.

So who’s to blame?
Do you see something here. So many people blame outside circumstances and other people for the way they are today. But it is no one else’s fault but yours and mine. You and I are who we are because of the way we reacted to or responded to the many influences on our lives.

Sure, some folk had a kick start because of early strong positive influences in their lives. But they still had to allow those influences to directly influence them positively. They had to make a decision to let those influences take a part in creating their value system.

Every time you come in contact with a person or a circumstance in your life that impacts you either negatively or positively, you do one of three things.

Assimilate it and store it away.
There are times when a daily event (or events) causes such an impact on you, that you spend some conscious time thinking about it. You may rehearse an experience (whether it be a good one or a bad one) for some time after the event.

Of course if it was a bad experience, then the emotions that keep coming back as you go over and over the situation in your mind will be negative.

If you allow these rehearsals to continue in your mind, the emotions you felt when the event happened will be stored away along with the memory. Then every time something similar happens in your future, those negative emotions will appear without control.

If it was a good experience, that same will happen, but in reverse. The experience will be stored in your mind as a positive memory and will be attached to a good emotional experience.

Ignore it or filter it out.
Perhaps you have already been training your brain to stay on the positive. This will mean that you are already learning to filter out the negative impressions. You will not allow them to go into your subconscious mind and contaminate your belief and value system.

Of course this means that you will be always on the alert. There IS a war going on.

You are born a champion. You were born to conquer. But there is an enemy that is constantly attempting to pull you into the negative realm. To fight this war and win, you need to stay alert. Your mind needs to be ACTIVE.

Now ignoring a situation is not the same as filtering it out. If you do not filter it out ACTIVELY, then simply ignoring the event will not be sufficient to stop it from reaching your subconscious mind. It will enter slip into into your value system unnoticed and be there to influence your reactions in the future.

Make a decision based on the encounter.
This decision goes into your subconscious mind and becomes a part of your value system and also creates prejudices.

• This decision is going to enter your subconscious mind and affect your value and belief system.
• This decision will influence future decisions in your life.
• This is another reason that the decision to forgive (where there has been a negative encounter with another person) is so important. This decision will affect YOU more than it will affect the other person.
• The decision you make will add to or take away from the foundation of beliefs and values that are already stored in your subconscious.
• I am sure you can see that the decision you make needs to be a positive one. Make sure you note your decision in your journal. This will help you to commit yourself to the firm decision you made.

Yes you CAN train your brain. You CAN change your belief and value system into one that will allow you to be the champion you were born to be. To do this you need to be alert and active in your mind.

I know you will stay active and alert because