By Tony Ussery
Instagram @the_fitness_game
When it comes to success you will hear a lot of ideals about how you can achieve it. Some people believe you must envision it happening and it will (i.e. the law of attraction). Others will tell you that you must have a great plan or have set excellent goals. Others will say you must not give up and have a high level of will power. Still others will tell you, you must be action driven.
When looking at all these ideals they all have a ray or two of truth. But none of these is more important than the other. There is one thing that you must have before any of these things can consistently work for you. That one thing that you must have is called State Control.
State Control is the state of mind that your identity puts you in. Your Identity tells you who you think you are and what you think you are worth. So, if you think highly of yourself, then your State Control will be one of success. But, if you think little of yourself then State Control will not be in a place of success and no matter what you do to be successful it will usually fall short.
An example of this: Have you ever had someone trying to sell you something and he is telling you all about the benefits of the product and how good it is, but you see in him that he either doesn’t believe in the product or himself. How many times did you buy that object? Most of the time we didn’t, unless we really, really wanted before he gave us the sales pitch.
What happened? The person that was selling you had bad State Control so when they tried to get you to sync with them you did, but not how they wanted you to. They wanted you to listen to their words, but you synced to their feelings of disbelief or doubt and it was louder and more persuasive than their words.
The problem is a lot of time what we consciously think of ourselves and what we unconsciously think of ourselves do not match. It all boils down to how our brain works. You see we have three brains: The Neo Cortex, Limbic System and The Reptilian Brain.
The youngest part of the brain is the Neo Cortex. It is responsible for such things as processing the written language, complex thinking, calculating, and rationalizing your decision. The Limbic System of the brain processes emotional responses. It gives you a gut feeling on your decision. The oldest part of the brain is the reptilian area. It is responsible for instinct and survival. Its main focus is to avoid pain. This area is what makes our decisions.
When we start to examine ourselves on the surface we usually do it through the lens of the Neo Cortex. It rationalizes our actions to the rest of the world why we do what we do, to make us acceptable. It will also at times determine who we are by the actions we take.
For example: If we procrastinate a few times, it may label us a procrastinator (an identity statement). So every time we go to do something of significance, our brain tells us since we are a procrastinator that is what we are going to do.
The truth is that the reason we put stuff off might not have anything to do with us being a procrastinator but because we have a fear of failure. Remember the Reptilian Brain is the decision maker and it would do everything it can to keep us from pain. In this circumstance, not doing the action keeps us safe through the Reptilian Brains lens.
How many of you have put something off that you know you should do but didn’t do it and later justified it with calling yourself a procrastinator. So, we consciously set our State Control as a procrastinator, and when we go to achieve a goal or act, we sabotage ourselves.
To compound the situation, our Limbic System attaches a feeling to that belief and it intensifies the situation. For example, we don’t do something and we get angry or disappointed in ourselves.
You see we start to confuse the things we do to who we are. A problem occurs if we think that we are dealing with the problem when it is only the symptom. If we get rid of the symptom, but not the problem, most of the time the symptom will come back.
Have you ever tried to lose weight and you did, only to have something happen in your life and you gained the weight back? The problem is not that you are overweight, the problem is that there is something under the surface that has you feeling that the weight is necessary. It could be a dramatic situation that happen in your life that the weight is protecting you from or making you feel that you deserve to be where you are.
To change your State Control, you must change the things that are holding you down in your identity. The key is identifying the true issues and then making the changes. Once you do that, then all those things that you heard will help you be successful can now work in your life.
So, the million-dollar question is how do I make the changes in my identity so I can have great State Control? There is a series of things you can do to make the changes:
- Identify the real problem
- Relabel the real problems and symptoms
- Reattribute the real problems and symptoms
- Refocus the real problems and symptoms
- Revalue the real problems and symptoms
In the next article, I will break down the above series and show you how to utilize them to create change. By the way, there is a quicker way to change and that is through hypnosis or NLP.
