How to reprogram your brain

We are all good at something!

 We rarely question the things we are good at. We take them on faith, hardly noticing them at all. Over time, we have told ourselves we are good at these things. Other people may have even commented us on our abilities, further ensuring that we are indeed “good” at them.

Perhaps we are good at a musical instrument, good at art, have great a great memory for names and faces…anything like that. Without our even realizing it, we have programed our brains to believe we are good at these thing.

What if we are not good?

 Just as we rarely question the things we are good at, we likewise never think to question the things we believe we are not good at. If we have a bad memory for peoples names, for example, we have likewise programed ourselves to believe this as well. Did we want to become bad at certain things at some point? Did we somehow ask for this to be the case? Of course not. But we have programed our brains to believe we are bad none the less, and our brains have done exactly what we asked it to do.

• I’m terrible with math
• My spelling is horrible
• I can’t remember names
• I can’t play this instrument
• I can’t do this…it’s not for me
• I’m not good enough to…

Identify negativity

If we have programed our brains to believe we are terrible at something, our brains found a way to prove it to us. In my own case, I always told myself, “I’m terrible with names.”

I realized I had a problem when I tested myself with one of my favorite television shows.

I have seen eight full seasons of a particular show, and set out to see just where my memory with names stood. I wanted to recall at least ten of the names of the characters on the show. Since I had always told myself how bad with names I was, predictably, I could only name the three main characters.

It’s almost as if I could hear my brain saying “You’ve always told me how bad with names you were. I’m only proving what you have told me to prove.”

Replace “I’m bad” with “I’m good”

Affirmations are the key here. How else are we ever going to change things if we continue to drive home our short comings? It’s easy. Only when we continue to replace our negative programing with positive programing, can we ever hope to change certain aspects in our lives.

In my case, I went to work on remembering peoples names. But before that, I repeated over and over the following affirmations:

“I’m great at remembering names.”

“I used to be terrible at remembering names but now I’m good at it.”

What was my result?

First off, as I performed this new programing, it felt 100% like I was just fooling myself. I continued to forget names just like I always did.

Over time, sometimes much faster than we would ever believe possible, we can tell our brains what we want. We can replace the negative programing with positive programing. After all, how are we ever going to change unless we face the issue head on?

Are you just fooling yourself?

It depends on how you look at it. If I forget a name, I immediately say to myself, “I am great with names.” It’s easy to deny my positive statement about how good I am with names after having just forgotten one. But again, it doesn’t matter that I’m still bad with names. It’s only the reprogramming process that matters. This was something that always bothered me about affirmations. They felt fake to me. Only when I was able to stop looking at my affirmations as being true or false did I embrace the programing aspect of it. If you want to change something, you have to reprogram your brain to change.

Simply suspend your judgment about right and wrong and you will be fine here. You are looking at reprogramming your brain to follow a particular set of orders. You are good at certain things because you have programed yourself to be good at them. It only stands to reason that you must reverse the process from negative to positive on the things we wish to change.

It makes no difference whatsoever if you are actually good at something or not. If we reprogram our brains to become good at something then we will, over time, become good at it. Our brains will always do what we tell them to.

Parting Advice

If you are trying to reprogram yourself to be good at something you have always considered yourself to be bad at, learn to ignore that feeling of doubt which will naturally arise. You are simply moving away from what you don’t want and moving towards what you do want. Everything you know, or ever will know is the result of the input that has been fed to the brain.This is no different.

When you say “I am good at…” and your brain says “But you have always told me you are bad at…” then simply say. “That doesn’t matter.”

You don’t need anything in order for affirmations to work.

You don’t need will power

You don’t need to become a beacon of faith

You don’t even need to believe what you are saying

By simply continuing to issue your brain a new program, your brain will pick up the ball and run for you. You just have to tell it what to do.