Mental Cleanse - Chapter 4

The Power of Autosuggestion

I guess the one thing that stood out for me in this chapter is how unfocused my powers of concentration are. I was all prepared to be able to nod my head in agreement at the brain’s ability to deal with challenges as long as you prep it correctly from the beginning. My mother is a big proponent of this and emphasized this to me while growing up. I have convinced myself numerous times before undergoing an invasive dental treatment or other physically uncomfortable situations to think that I was lounging on the beach or doing something else pleasant. And this worked for me during the majority of my unpleasant visits. I just knew that I had this chapter already under control.

But as with all aspects of life, the universe has a sense of humor. I learned that not only don’t I have this skill under control; I don’t even have the ability to make my imagination work on demand! I have written a goal statement (but I’m unsure if I’ve done it correctly, so that in itself makes it not as effective as it could be) and I have been working on repeating it during the day. But this chapter challenged me to actually visualize the amount of money that I wanted to make – to feel it, see it, smell it and imagine myself using the money for various charities and personal pursuits. And I couldn’t do it.

Now, I have a very overactive imagination and can imagine all kinds of fantastical things, but I couldn’t see the money. My stated goal is $120,000. I tried visualizing it as bags of money – nope too vague. I tried visualizing it in stacks of bills. That was didn’t work. Then I tried to imagine a check with that number on it, but that wasn’t compelling to me and I couldn’t imagine handling it, so that was another blown idea. Finally, I decided to go to Wikipedia and the U.S. Treasury site to find pictures of money to help my ailing imagination fixate on. I found the $100,000 bill with Woodrow Wilson on it (and since I don’t like Woodrow Wilson, that was a whole other form of distraction) and Salmon P. Chase on the $10,000 bill. So, I had my husband print up color copies of the bills for me to place around my work area and other strategic places in our home. But yet again, I can’t hold the pictures in my head because I can’t stand Woodrow Wilson. So, I’m just going to have 12 copies of the $10,000 bank note as inspiration.

What this chapter (and exercise) helped me to appreciate is that I let all kinds of foolish things (e.g., Woodrow Wilson) distract me from my personal goals. I mean, so what Woodrow Wilson was a jerk, what does that have to do with the money I want in my bank account? I can verbalize the silliness, but am having a devil of a time telling my brain to shut up and do the exercise. So, for me, I think I need to schedule some quiet/isolation time to fight with my brain and tell it who’s running this show. In the past, I’ve let it run amuck and now I’m sick and tired of being an unwitting passenger on the twists and turns that live within a blue’s cranium.

So, although we are going on to Chapter 5, I will be working in Chapter 4 for a while longer as I work on following the steps outlined and actually visualizing what needs to be seen in order for me to achieve the level of success that I know is available to me. This has been the most sobering chapter for me so far, but I’m grateful that I’m learning to recognize and address what I never thought of as a problem before.

Respectfully,

Cheryl Henderson-Khalid