This the first in a group of articles that will help you and your life.
Please ask any questions once done by emailing him (address is listed
below.

Conditioning

I know the boy who took a gun to school and shot and killed three
classmates while they prayed before school. I know another boy from the
same school whose family was so poor that they had to ship some of their
eleven children to relatives. He became the governor of Kentucky. These
two boys started off the same. How did they end up so different? I'll
tell you about both of them in the next few weeks.

Hi, my name is Donnie, and today I want to begin telling you a few
things you've probably never heard anywhere else. I know that you're
right in the middle of the most perplexing time of your life, trying to
figure out who you are and where you're going and how you're going to
get there. You have many questions. What is it that makes people happy?
What do you want out of life? How can you accomplish great things?

Why do you feel lonely & depressed? How do you even know where you want
to go in life, much less how to get there? Why are you different? Maybe
I can help you find the answers to these questions. I've worked with
teens for the past twenty-five years, and I've seen it all. You can
choose which direction you want to go in your own life (no kidding).

I know this from experience. I'm going to tell you the simple secret
that propelled Stephen Curtis Chapman, another young man I know, to be
the top Christian music artist - there can only be one #1, and he's it.
You can do the same thing. I'm going to show you how.

Each of us possesses the ability to be whomever we want to be and do
whatever we want to do in life. I've studied hundreds of highly
successful, famous and wealthy people. Successful people all have the
same traits.

Those traits aren't randomly received at birth - they can be learned.
And, they aren't all that complicated. In fact, it is so simple that
it's astonishing to me that there is so much unhappiness and misery in
the world. If you will stick with me for the next few weeks, I'll show
you how to start putting these principles to work in your life. I'll
show you how to design your own life. That sounds like fun, doesn't it?

Well, that's enough sales hype! I just wanted to get your attention to
sucker you into the hard work. Now, lets get started on the first
principle that will change your life - understanding human conditioning
and how it affects your life. I apologize for this first session being a
little "text-bookie", but a basic understanding of human conditioning is
an essential building block for your understanding of why the other
principles work. We'll have more fun and do more activities in the next
few sessions.

I think the easiest way to understand human conditioning is to think of
your brain as a super computer that is bigger and faster than Bill
Gate's wildest dream. Here's Secret #1: Everything you have ever seen or
heard or smelled or tasted or felt is stored on your hard drive. Your
memory works by association; i.e., every time you smell or touch or see
or taste or hear something, it is not only stored on your hard drive,
but also associated with other "data" or memories that you have already
stored, along with all the things that are happening around you at the
time you stored each of them.

Your subconscious mind records things of which you aren't even
consciously aware. You store data while you sleep. You store data while
you eat. Right now, you're storing these words, along with the sounds
and the odors and what's in your peripheral vision and how the computer
keys feels, etc. On top of that, you're relating this new information to
things you already "know" and creating visual images of what you're
interpreting the words to mean. Busy, aren't you? If your brain was a
man-made computer, you would have to upgrade it on a weekly basis
because of the vast amount of date you're storing on your hard drive.
It's mind-boggling! (o.k., no more bad puns)

People don't have the limits of a computer. When you store a document on
your PC (your regular one), it's simply data. When you open the document
later, it's still the same document.

It would be pretty scary if you found it changed! The fact is, the data
on your human "hard drive" or your subconscious mind can be modified
continually and you don't even know it's happening. Now, I don't mean
that it changes "facts" exactly. If you learn that you were born in
"1976" and store that data away, it's still going to be "1976" the next
time you think about it. However, most of the stuff we "learn" isn't
factual at all.

It's a perception or a feeling about something. As our minds amass and
synthesize more and more information, the way we see old information
changes. Your perception of something even as simple as "1976" changes
every year of your life, for instance, and "1976" means something
different when you're six than it does when you're sixteen. These
perceptions and feelings end up determining how we see ourselves. Are
you beginning to see where we're going with this?

Have you heard of Pavlov's experiment with his dog? That's a good
illustration of how your "robot" subconscious mind works. Pavlov simply
rang a bell every time the dog started to eat. Sounds kind of like one
of those pieces of data that you might store on your hard drive without
even thinking about it, doesn't it?

It's hard to know what a dog thinks about, but I'll bet Pavlov's dog was
thinking about that Alpo, and how wonderful that combination of
horsemeat other meat byproducts tasted. He probably didn't even notice
the ringing of the bell that his sense of hearing was recording onto his
hard drive (without conscious thought) while he was eating. He probably
didn't even know he had a hard drive!

So, I guess that means we're smarter than dogs. After a while, Pavlov
could ring the bell without any Alpo in sight, and the dog's mouth would
start watering. The silly dog was slobbering all over himself and he
didn't even know why!

That's an autonomic, or conditioned, response. Now, think about all the
millions of bits of data that your own senses of sight, sound, smell,
touch and taste have fed into your hard drive during your life thus far.
Your "robot" subconscious mind works even while you are sleeping. That's
where your dreams come from.

Are you starting to get a picture of what you have stored in there?
Close your eyes for a second, and get a mental image of yourself
slobbering every time a bell rings. Scary, isn't it? But, that's exactly
what we do. The sad part is, we don't even know what kinds of "bells"
have been rung in our lives and stored on our hard drives.

But you can change. You can learn how to effect the information you
synthesize. Here are some interesting facts. Most people don't know what
they want to do in life, and they aren't happy or fulfilled. 85% of all
people working are unhappy in their jobs. When they reach the age to
retire, only 5% of the people can support themselves financially. Do we
need to go on?

And, to top that off, half the people in the world are BELOW AVERAGE (I
was just checking to see if you were paying attention). Remember this if
nothing else, most people are NEGATIVE. If we allow OTHER PEOPLE to
program our lives by sticking data on our hard drives, if we let OTHER
PEOPLE form our thinking, we will end up like OTHER PEOPLE. Not a pretty
picture, is it? Do you want to end up like OTHER PEOPLE? I don't! Yet,
most of us let OTHER PEOPLE determine who we are. Our minds soak up
information like sponges.

When you are born, your sponge is empty. By the time you are five years
old, your mind has soaked up so much information from just a few people
and much of your personality has been established. That means that while
you were just a little tyke, just learning to walk and talk, a lot of
your future was being established by the input from OTHER PEOPLE. This
is YOUR life we're talking about! Hmmm. I don't think I want my life
determined by OTHER PEOPLE. Do you?

Don't get too depressed - I'm going to show you how to change that
faulty input over the next few weeks. Your first assignment for this
week is to simply let this new data soak into your subconscious mind.
Read over what I said one more time and make sure you understand what
I'm talking about. Then, this week when you find yourself thinking
something negative about yourself, ask yourself why. Where did that
thought originate? You'll often find that it didn't come from you.
You've allowed someone else to define who you are and what you think.
Scary, isn't it?

Just imagine much in you life could change if you program yourself with
your goals and dreams rather than letting someone else define your
future. Just make a note of any of these things you notice this week.
Next week, I'll help you understand what they mean and how they affect
your life.


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(If you have any specific questions about this discussion or suggestions
for topics you want covered, feel free to contact me -
donnie@... )