Are Scotomas Sabotaging Your Success?

How to program your brain for greater personal and professional results   Have you ever looked in the pantry trying to find something and tell yourself, “It’s not here, I can’t find it,” then the person who lives with you sticks their hand right in front of your eyeballs and magically grabs the very thing you were searching for? No, of course, it’s not really magic. It’s called a ‘scotoma’ or ‘blind spot’. Your brain is like an obedient savant child. Our default meta neural programming is to find answers to our questions.  We also gather evidence (or hide it) to prove our statements true. For example, if we are staring in the pantry stating “the Vegemite is not here,” our brain literally creates a scotoma so we actually cannot see the Vegemite that is in front of our eyes.  Our brain is for us!  It wants to prove us right! If we ask ourselves questions after making a mistake, like “why am I such an idiot”, our obedient and brilliant brain will come up with the answers.  The emotional results of which may be far from pleasant! We not only do this in our personal lives; it can also create havoc in our professional or business lives. Imagine the answers one might get if one pondered questions in the work environment such as, “Why am I surrounded by simpletons?” Statements such as “I’m never going to make budget”, or “we keep losing profits” will again create blind spots to the very keys that can fix these situations. Take a moment to think about the prevalent problems you mentally chew on.  What questions and statements are common in your internal vocabulary?  It is such an eye-opening exercise to literally take 10 minutes to contemplate this and journal your honest answers. The resolution to this global epidemic is really quite simple: We just need to reframe our questions and statements into the positive. Such questions: “how can I work with my colleges to get the best results”, “how can I make budget”, “how can we maintain our profits?”; or statements like: “I will make budget”, “we are now maintaining and increasing our bottom line”; will open our eyes to the possibilities to do so instead of blocking them out. Although it may seem a little simple and obvious, I recommend taking stock every now and then as we can occasionally fall into negative statements and questions especially when the grind and pressures wear us down. Reduce stress and frustration whilst giving yourself permission to achieve greater success. Quality questions give you quality results!  You can have your vegemite and eat it.