What do you want?

Robert Plank has a great post about how our subconscious mind cannot process the negative, so if write “don’t delay” your users will only focus on “delay”.  Don’t read this post!

Also, Eben Pagan talked about the same concept in his Wake Up Productive program.   He used the example of people who are trying to quit smoking.  They repeatedly say to themselves, “Don’t Smoke, Don’t Smoke” but all their brain hears is “Smoke, Smoke”.

You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. –James Allen

This lead me to start thinking about the power of positiving thinking and/or the Law of Attraction, or whatever you prefer to call it.  There’s no doubt that focusing on what you want (instead of what you don’t) works.     But now it makes a bit more sense to me why it works.   Your brain doesn’t hear the negative.   Stop saying to yourself things like, “I have to stop procrastinating” and replace those thoughts with “I will get more done today”.

What you focus on, what you think about, is what you bring into your life.