A story from back in August 2013 that I think is worth sharing as it is a great example of how simple advice helped change someone’s life.

Several years back I met an old acquaintance purely by chance at a party we weren’t even meant to be going to. This guy had been experiencing awful life threatening anxiety attacks and he confided in me that he had recently been in hospital with a suspected heart attack, which was later traced to an extreme anxiety attack. This was solely down to the fact he is an over thinker and giving too much of his thoughts to extremely negative assumptions. Like I used to, he worried far too much … about everything, especially things out with his control!

After he shared his story he asked for any advice or help I could offer and I obviously obliged, sharing the life changing information that at that time I had just learned and mastered myself.

He was focusing on money worries, expecting terrible outcomes for him and his family at every turn and worrying about all the bad news stories shown every day on TV.

I let him know what set me free:

• Turn off the news – everything they show is negative.
• Don’t get involved in complaining – it just fills your head with negativity.
• Look at the good already in your life – start a daily gratitude list and highlight all your successes from each day.
• Take responsibility – stop sharing negative information with your mind (news/social media etc) and choose to share only good things.
• Take control – you are the captain of this ship. Make everything you share with your mind positive, meaningful and start making things happen.
• Monitor your self-talk – make sure you are talking kindly to yourself and making positive assumptions instead of negative ones. If you catch yourself talking negatively you have to stop yourself and switch to positive.
• Set targets – now you are in control tell your mind what you want to achieve. Set yourself positive plans for doing things you enjoy and start taking responsibility for your own happiness.

I reminded him that the news is full of negative stories, every single day. People being killed, murdered, raped, kids being tortured, abuse, the lot. He admitted it was something he watched every day and even knew himself it was one of the main causes for his worries. I told him to turn it off. It was clearly dragging him down.

Then I explained that the only person who can dictate how you feel and think is you, so you need to take charge here. Don’t let excuses or other people’s priorities set how you live – you can set your own standards and choose what you feed your mind.

And finally, and probably the most important, determine how you live. Your subconscious is like a computer that is in control of your actions at least 95% of the time. If you choose to fill it full of negative information it will undoubtedly bring negative results. You have to change the input and start to attract positive results and feelings into your life.

Programme your mind to expect good things instead of bad. When you hear yourself saying “I hope the traffics not terrible again” replace that with “I’m sure the roads will be quiet“. Change “Knowing my bad luck… ” to “I’m lucky, I’ll probably win this“.

Every negative statement you make in your mind, whatever it is, has a positive alternative that you need to start switching to. It’s subtle little changes but it will build up over the day, and the week, and the year and all of sudden your subconscious will have switched from worrying about bad things to actually expecting and attracting good things.

You can also give it some precise direction on where you want to go – set goals, targets and aspirations. If you start setting these goals all of sudden opportunities that match up to them will appear, your subconscious mind can help guide you there. It is working while you are doing other stuff, it picks up on the signs and opportunities that fit the direction you’ve given it … but you need to give it the direction so that it know what you want and where to help get you to.

As proven by myself, and my old friend, if you tell yourself you are struggling for money you will, undoubtedly, struggle for money. Your subconscious hears this as fact and makes sure you have enough outgoings to feel skint. As soon as you believe you are comfortable and start thinking that you have enough you will gradually prove to your mind that this is true, and the sooner money will come into your life as well. It is the same for everything, if you want success – tell yourself you have all the abilities you need to get the success you deserve and I fully believe if you’ve worked for it it’ll come your way.

Your subconscious really is just like a computer so you have to program it with the right beliefs – whatever you tell the back part of your mind (your subconscious) it will believe to be true. If you tell it all about how good you are enough times and with enough conviction it will start to believe it, no questions asked. It will log it in its own special system how great you are. If you tell it you are a loser who can’t do anything right it will believe that instead and going to make sure you struggle to do anything. You will go from one negative slump to the next.

The front part of your mind is the thought process, the back part is what makes basic things like driving to work an automatic result. You can programme the back part of your mind to be whatever you want it to be. Make the back positive, tell it anything is possible. Programme your mind to think that you are unstoppable and the rest of you will follow … but you have to believe it yourself. You have to step in to the automatic processes and say, here’s who I am and here’s how well I can do things!

I gave all this advice to my old school friend to help him see that life can be better … but that’s only if he starts looking for the positives, starts replacing his worrying thoughts with positive statements over and over, and through my techniques starts taking ownership of his own thoughts and finding the positives all around him.

He couldn’t have been more happy with what I had told him. He said he felt an instant weight and pressure lifted from his shoulders and a fresh hope that his anxieties could be eased. He understood my logic and could clearly see how it could impact his life. I could see the change he wanted and needed actually start happening right in front of me.

Several months later I met the same guy and he thanked me again, saying it is the best advice he has ever received. He still practices it today.

If you feel you could do with the same change in your mind, just use these simple steps:

• Remove negative input – you don’t need to be exposed to that every day.
• Focus on all the good things in your life – you’ll find an endless list of things if you just start looking.
• Take control of what you want, go after it and expect to get it.
• Believe you can achieve anything – set achievable goals and if you truly want then you can make it happen.
• Programme your sub conscious better by feeding it positive statements and happier inputs all day every day.
• Go after the things that you enjoy and that excite you.
• Replace your worrying thoughts by thinking or saying over and over a better outcome.

If anyone reading doesn’t quite follow what I’ve said please comment or let me know and I will try to explain how it works even more. Being the master of your own sub-conscious will change your life!