Goal Setting Article by Brian Tracy

The Secret of Your Subconscious
Brian Tracy

One Thought At A Time
The incredible thing about your subconscious mind is that it cannot tell the difference between something that you vividly imagine-such as a goal, a hope or a dream-and a real experience. For example, if you go to an automobile dealership and take your dream car for a drive, and, as you drive along, you imagine you already own that car, and you create the feeling of enjoyment that would accompany your being the proud possessor of that beautiful machine, your subconscious mind simply accepts that the car belongs to you. It doesn’t argue; it doesn’t complain; it doesn’t try to change your instructions. It simply tries to make your instructions a reality.

Visualize What You Really Want
Think of your subconscious mind as a photo lab and your conscious mind as a camera, or a photographer. Your conscious mind takes pictures of what you want and passes the film to the photo lab, your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind then develops the pictures and passes them back up to your reality. The photo lab doesn’t argue with you over the content of the film that you sent to it. It simply develops the photographs exactly as you saw them through the lens of your mind’s eye.

Design Your Dream Home
Does visualization work? Well, here’s an exercise that has worked for me and might work for you.

Everyone I know wants to have his “dream home.” The first problem with obtaining a dream home is that most people have never even sat down to think about what it would look like.

Many years ago, when my wife, Barbara, and I were going through financial difficulties, we began putting together a composite of our dream home. We subscribed to magazines full of beautiful pictures and descriptions of lovely homes for sale. We cut out pictures and descriptions that were consistent with what we were looking for. We discussed our dream home at great length. We went to open houses in the best neighborhoods in the city. We looked at beautiful, expensive homes and at the details and furnishings in them. We read Architectural Digest and House Beautiful. We eventually came up with a mutually agreed on composite of what our dream home would look like.

Take Action On Your Dreams
Within a year after beginning this exercise, we moved from a rented home to a beautiful home that we had purchased. It wasn’t quite what we had in mind, but we both recognized at the time that it was merely a stepping-stone to what we really wanted. A year later, after looking at 150 houses in different cities, we walked into a home that was for sale, took one look around and, without speaking, both knew that we had found it. This was the home that we had been looking for.

Be Prepared To Pay The Price
It cost twice as much as we ever had imagined paying for a house, and it required a good deal of renovation to make it conform to the mental pictures we had developed. Nonetheless, we bought it, renovated it, repainted it, furnished it and landscaped the grounds exactly as we had imagined. And it all began to come together after we had carefully crafted a clear mental picture of what it would look like when it was done.

Be Clear About What You Want
What is your mental picture of your dream house or dream car, or dream vacation or relationship? When you are clear, your subconscious will bring it into your life.

Action Exercises
Here are three things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:

First, begin today to design your dream house. Be crystal clear about every detail and keep feeding the picture into your subconscious mind every day until it becomes a reality.

Second, refuse to imagine or visualize a problem or situation that you don’t want to come true. Your subconscious mind develops whatever pictures you supply it - so be careful.

Third, cut out pictures of things you want in your life and look at these pictures carefully, taking in every detail. You’ll be amazed at what starts to happen.