Reprogramming the Elephant

I recently listened to a talk about the concept of the subconscious vs. the conscious mind. In the speech by Orrin Woodward, he refers to the book The Ant and the Elephant: Leadership For the Self by Vince Poscente. I have yet to read the book but it is definitely on the must-read list.

The basic idea is that as humans, we have so much untapped potential in our subconscious minds. The subconscious mind fires something like 4 billion neurons per second while the conscious mind fires approximately 2,000 neurons per second. The author compares the subconscious with all this activity to an elephant while the conscious mind is likened to an ant.

How do we tap into that powerful potential of our elephants? When you think about how much an elephant eats compared to an ant, you can easily understand that our elephants eat everyday, whether or not WE feed it. Our minds are constantly being programmed with images, ideas, scripting, etc. Take for example watching the television. Images are constantly flashing on our mind's eye with words and ideas. Just the thought makes me feel vulnerable.

I remember after serving a mission for my church, some friends took me to a movie. It was one of the "Mission Impossible" movies and I just remember feeling assaulted. It was an overload of visual chaos to me after not having watched any kind of show for almost 2 years.

Media is not the only food we feed our elephants. Each of us has a script running through our minds. We are constantly creating our story by the way we think of ourselves, our relationships and surroundings, etc. Have you ever stopped to think, "What am I thinking?"

In order to tap into the power of the elephant and get him to do what our ant wants, we need to reprogram him. Positive affirmations are one way we can do this. I pay attention to my negative scripting and then rewrite my story according to what I really want. Then I read them to myself at least once a day.

My husband and I also have a HUGE vision board on the wall in our room with images that show our affirmations. We started writing things on our mirror 10 years ago when we wanted to move back to the west to be near my father-in-law who was in poor health. We posted a map with stickers on the cities we would like to live and we wrote on it: "We are back in the west by Oct. 2003". Within a month of that date we were moving into our new house in one of the cities with a sticker on it.

Reprogramming the elephant really works. I want to be in charge of what I put into my mind! Imagine what we can do if the elephant and the ant worked together to accomplish our personal purposes while we are here on earth. I can see the ant riding the elephant right now...I got another image for my vision board!