Grant Leboff: Brian, one of the things that you speak about in the book, which I think is really important – especially for entrepreneurs and those working on their own – is this idea of self belief. I think when you’ve got a business idea or you go on that journey and you start a business as I have done and you have done, it’s quite easy for self doubt to creep in very quickly, especially if it doesn’t go according to plan straightaway. So how does someone get that self-belief and then maintain it as well?
Brian Mayne All self-belief is, is a set of brain cell connections – bottom line. Brain cells are fired together – wired together. If you imagine yourself… if you tell yourself that you are going to do something, every time you imagine it / tell yourself – that fires a brain cell connection. You keep that up over a period of days, the connection becomes established. Once the connection is established that’s a belief. The belief is then a constant command to your subconscious. So my goal mapping system helps people to establish that brain cell connection which leads them to their belief.
I learnt this 20 years ago. I come from a gypsy background, so I left school at 13, I didn’t learn to read or write until I was 30 and I learnt to read and write by setting a goal. It was my start place on personal development, back when I was a sales person. So every day I would tell myself I can read, I can read, I can read.
Now my brain was screaming NO YOU CAN’T!!
But free will is an amazing thing, and if you exercise that free will, the latest neurology science is showing that your brain cells, literally, start to form connections to support you in achieving the goal and gradually, as I formed some new brain cell connections, the words come into focus, I overcome my learning difficulties and learnt to read. That’s what started me on the journey of wanting to understand more about how belief works, how positive thinking can help you to achieve things but in particular, goal setting, and I’ve never looked back.
Grant Leboff: That’s really interesting because one of the things that you talk about, it’s almost in the title, goal mapping, but it’s about stating your goals and the importance of stating your goals, and you are suggesting that simply by stating them, in itself, you are more likely to achieve them.
Brian Mayne You’re making a statement, you’re making a stand, you’re holding the thoughts in your mind and whatever you think about starts a psychological process where your subconscious – which works like your own little personal autopilot – starts moving you towards the goal.
Your subconscious is enormously powerful, there is tremendous research going on around the world into how your subconscious can do what it does. It’s got tremendous abilities, but the one thing it cannot do is make choices. It simply follows your strongest thought, so when you hold a goal that gives a target for your subconscious to follow but if you don’t hold the goal, then you’re thinking about this one day, you’re thinking about something else the next day, and you end up pulling yourself in different directions and you dissipate your power. Unfortunately, people who don’t have self belief tend to have quite a lot of self-doubt and when you have self-doubt, that means you are picturing yourself failing not succeeding, and your subconscious moves you into the failure – self sabotage.
Grant Leboff: So is that the importance of reprogramming sometimes? Of course people get into downward spirals don’t they, in anything, I suppose sport is the obvious thing, but it can happen in business too. Sales certainly it can happen in, can’t it?
Brian Mayne I work with top salespeople, I work with top sports people, I am currently coaching the world champion kickboxer – it’s the same for all of them – what ever you focus on, your subconscious moves towards it. Top salespeople, like top sports people, will have a down day every so often and the more they picture themselves getting it wrong – guess what – the more they get it wrong. It becomes a downward spiral because in that picturing, they are literally commanding their self-conscious to help them mess up in some way; mess up the deal, mess up the fight, mess up the shot, hook. They’re thinking I don’t want to hook, I don’t want to hook I don’t want to hook – but the picture in their head is hook – and so that’s what their subconscious gives them.
So it’s really important that people picture what they want to achieve and that’s what goal setting does, it helps people hold the thought in their mind, of success, and so it keeps the subconscious moving towards it.
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