Most of the time, we take our thinking for granted. Let the mind get on with its own quiet business of making sense of the world around us, jumping to conclusions, skipping over some things and zoning in on others. Informing how we act and react. 

 It’s only when something goes seriously wrong with this process (or more so, when we become aware of the fact that something is seriously wrong with it), that we start to view it as a system. 

We see that there’s a blueprint underpinning every thought, connection, presumption and idea. An invisible web, made up of your deepest-rooted ideas: those that have, over time, and shaped by experience, become your truths. Imagine your life is a car: you’re in control, I’m not. I can’t take control for you. You have to do the work yourself. 

All I can do is to give you the tools. That’s why it’s so important to practise the Power Statements. To try to really live them, to take on board the fact that REPETITION IS THE MOTHER OF ALL SKILL and go with it. 

Eventually, you will replace your thinking habits with healither, more productive and more functional ones. It’s a question of perseverance, of putting your faith in the process, even if it feels unnatural at first. Let’s take an in-depth look at the way your brain works. I studied sciences at University and find that in order to understand the way anything works, especially something as complex as the human mind, it helps to have a basic understanding of what’s going on a at a biological level. 

Grasping the mechanics of what’s going on in your mind is the first step to regaining control over it. We touched on the conscious and subconscious mind in chapter one. Stop to consider for a moment what percentage of each is active in any given moment? To what extent is your subconscious mind dictating your thoughts, without you being aware of the fact? 

Most people understand that the subconscious mind holds a bigger sway than the conscious mind, but you might be shocked to hear just how dominant it is. 

 According to developmental biologist Bruce Lipton, along with numerous other experts, the evidence shows that most of the time, around 95% of our brain activity is subconscious, sometimes even more than that. It’s the subconscious mind that’s running the show, dictating our cravings and desires and the conscious mind only operates at a superficial level. 5% Conscious 95% Subconscious The conscious mind is only the tip of the iceberg. 

This is one fact that the experts agree on, although when it comes to a more in-depth understanding of the subconscious, there is still a certain amount of mystery and guesswork involved in our understanding of it. This is the case despite the fact that since Freud popularised the concept in the early 20th Century, numerous studies have been made of it, giving voice to a range of theories on the subject. 

Even today, amongst the psychotherapists, psychologists and the many other talking therapists who deal in the business of the mind’s hinterland, there’s a lot of debate about the subconscious. It is a rich and complex topic. Unlike other aspects of psychology, which might relate to specific conditions, traits and personalities, though, the subconscious is relevant and fascinating for all of us. It is there, operating under the surface, is shaping your behaviour constantly. Sometimes, aspects of your personality might give an outsider a clue as to what might be going on in your invisible depths. 

The people closest to you may have a grasp on it, too, but generally we are unaware of one another’s deepest selves. In order to make changes at the deepest level, which is essential for fundamental behavioural transformation, it’s no good appealing to the surface mind. For example, if you tell an anxious person to “chill out”, “Be positive and you’ll be fine” it doesn’t help because it’s only heard at a conscious level and doesn’t resonate in a deeper way with their blueprint. 

An anxious person won’t believe it because it hasn’t entered the subconscious mind and in turn into the blueprint. So the only way I can help you to make changes at a deeper level, where the blueprint lies is to repeat the Power Statements regularly, by rote. Surround yourself with them, speak them aloud, recite them silently in your head. 

 The power of the human mind is truly boggling when you stop to consider it. Your brain can perform an estimated ten quadrillion actions per second without you being aware of it. Your subconscious mind is a powerhouse, running all of our bodily functions and processes, and the vast majority of our thoughts. 

 But it also has a major fault: the subconscious finds it virtually impossible to distinguish between real events and thoughts. It experiences our thoughts about life as if they were real. In lab tests, scientists who monitor athletes using muscle sensors, then ask them to keep still but imagine they are running, or skiing, have observed that the same muscles fire in the athletes’ bodies as they would if they were exercising for real. 

This incredible phenomenon is a consequence of their thought-triggered neural pathways, which connect to the muscles, being activated. Likewise, thinking ‘I am so anxious about this party, I’m worried I won’t have anyone to talk to or anything to say. I’m so socially awkward….,’ primes your body for threat. 

Your amygdala, a deep, primal part of the brain designed to trigger the release of ‘fight or flight’ hormones: cortisol and adrenaline, is switched on. This process diverts blood away from the brain, which makes thinking, conversation and focus difficult. 

It also leads to an elevated heart rate, sweaty palms, and other symptoms of nervousness. The thought process, as a result of these knock-on physiological effects, becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Nowadays, many people quite unknowingly go through life with their amygdala almost permanently switched on. 

Ultra stressful, high pressured jobs, constant multitasking and the technological expectation to be always ‘on,’ with constant interruptions, demands, and requests, means a non-stop drip feed of digital prompts keeps us on our toes the whole time. At an even deeper level, what’s going on in your subconscious mind creates an internal landscape that leads you to be drawn towards particular people and situations into your life. 

The alarming thing about this is that if your subconscious is ruled by negativity, feelings of inadequacy, insecurity and low self worth, the relationships and situations you find yourself drawn towards will be those that confirm your negative feelings. 

 The liberating and exciting flipside to this is that when you make deep shifts in what’s going on underneath the surface for you, you will change your life, and the things you attract into it. This is a consequence of discovering a deep, unshakable confidence in yourself. Such confidence isn’t to be mistaken with the sort of confidence that classic extroverts exhibit: of being smooth in company, adept at public speaking, or assertive in meetings (although most of us might like to have a bit more of all of these traits sometimes, too). 

We’ve all heard people say: ‘He seems so confident on the outside, but on the inside he’s a mess,’ or something similar. We all know people who put a front on for other people. They create a mask that they show the world, but inside they are different people altogether. They may appear confident on the outside, but when you get to know them they aren’t really that confident after all. What I’m talking about a deep sense of feeling at ease with and at peace with yourself. 

A sense of intrinsic worth that has nothing to do with status, success or accomplishment. What you’re striving for, with Blueprint Therapy, runs far deeper than external personality traits. It isn’t fake or ‘put on,’ and it’s not something you ‘show’ to the outside world in any deliberate sense. True confidence is being comfortable in your own skin. 

Some confident people are loud and outgoing, others are quieter and more reserved. That’s the way they are: it doesn’t mean they aren’t confident. Being confident has nothing to do with being loud or being noticed when you enter a room. The loudest person in the room is rarely the most confident. Let’s work backwards of the Blueprint theory in order to understand the way we, and the people around us, behave: A behaviour, say shouting at your partner, is triggered by feelings (say anger and fear) that are triggered by deep subconscious thoughts lodged in your blueprint. 

This might be something along the lines of a deep-held belief that disagreements in relationships are dangerous as they can lead to abandonment. This is obviously one isolated example, plucked from an infinite variety of possible equivalents. 

 At the root of all behaviour is your blueprint. Blueprint → Think → Feel → Act/Behave/React Two people could do the same thing (looking out the window, and seeing a mother and child playing), have similar thoughts, but react in totally different ways, because they have deepheld beliefs that are unique to them. 

 With this in mind, I’d like to think about the reaction part of the Blueprint chain of action, outlined above. I like to call it your: Response – ability Simply put, this is your ability to respond to any given moment to whatever life throws up. If you respond badly, it will reinforce negative beliefs within yourself, and you may also feel frustrated, aware that somebody else would have reacted in a more constructive, positive, wise, or calm way to exactly the same stimulus. 

 For example, if you’ve cursed the weather because it’s raining, your response was negative, whereas if your response was: “I’m ok, it’s dry and it’s not affecting me”, then your reaction was positive, or neutral. If you follow the recommendations in this book, your reactions and responses will change. The same old situations that used to rile you, make you feel inadequate, or recall memories of past hurts, won’t have the same effect on you any more. 

Your ability to respond differently is your responsibility; I can only give you the tools in which to do so. Feel the fear and…..FREEZE Lets return to the motoring metaphor we touched on earlier. If the fuel in the fuel tank is your energy. What do you think the handbrake is? 

The mechanism by in one sharp move, you can halt your progress immediately. It’s your fears. Remember what we said about the amygdala, the little almond-sized AMYGDALA, a small part of the brain, linked to your fear responses. Have you ever heard of self-sabotage? Here are some examples of how it can manifest itself: You’re are invited to a party and you decline by making excuses of not feeling well to get out of it. You decide against applying for a new job for fear of not being good enough. You go on a third date and sabotage it by thinking: “It’s not going to work out, so why bother?” You talk yourself out of doing things you want to do for fear of being hurt or rejected. In all of these instances, you talk yourself out of the situation by yourself. No one forces you to make those decisions. 

The dialogue you have with yourself can determine whether you will take those risks or not. Remember thinking is a series of questions and answers you have with yourself. If you ask yourself negative questions, then the outcome would be to protect yourself from getting hurt. Your fear of rejection, embarrassment, hurt etc will prevent us from moving forward. It’s plain to see that as a result, not only are you ducking out of potentially tricky emotions, you are also preventing yourself from experiencing all sorts of things that could bring you joy, satisfaction, challenge, purpose, achievement, intellectual stimulation, love, self-confidence and more. 

 Do you think that when you were born you were born with fear of not being good enough? Were you born with the fear of being rejected or humiliated? Did you enter this world with fear of the future? 

Of course not. 

Something happened in your life to produce those fears. I was travelling on an aeroplane back from a holiday recently and there was a lady sitting next to me who had a fear of taking off and of landing. Was she born like that? No, but she had the that fear now, as an adult. It didn’t stop her from flying, but it made her feel very uncomfortable. For some people, such fear would stop them from flying all together. I talked to that lady on the plane. She told me about her fear: how it makes her heart race with anxiousness. She starts to sweat. She grabs onto the handle of the seat or her boyfriend’s hand for comfort. She hasn’t consciously ‘told’ her body to behave in this way, it’s an automatic reaction triggered by the activation of the fear. I asked her what she thought the reason for the anxiety was, and she replied she didn’t know. I asked her how she was feeling inside and she said she felt that she wasn’t in control. So I asked her if she normally liked to be in control and she said simply, ‘always.’ She went on to explain that if she and her boyfriend travel by car anywhere, she needs to drive. She has to feel in control of the car. She would rather not drink at a party for example, to ensure she will always be the driver. I asked her when was the last time was that she felt that she was in control. She replied: “Never”. I asked her, “Are you sure? There must have been a time in your life that you felt that you were in control?” She dismissed it and said, “It must be a result of something in my childhood”. So I probed further and asked her why. 

 She went on to tell me that when she was growing up, her mother was seriously ill and she felt she didn’t have any control over what was happening. She didn’t feel that she could help her mother. That event in her childhood at the age of about 11, when her mother had cancer made her feel that she had no control over anything. She felt helpless. The feeling of not being in control went into her Blueprint and it caused her to crave a sense of control throughout her life. 

After that early, formative and traumatic experience, she tried to control events and people so that she didn’t feel out of control again. As a result, when she is on a runway, she starts to feel out of control and it makes her body react. She needs to constantly feel that she is in control and when she is in a situation that makes her feel the opposite, she gets severely anxious. She doesn’t get on the plane and think to herself: “I’m going to feel out of control today”, her subconscious takes over and her body reacts to the emotion in a physical way. 

 There are hundreds of fears, but here are the most common fears. See how many you recognise: • Fear of not being good enough • Fear of dying • Fear of being alone • Fear of being ill • Fear of being laughed at • Fear of not having enough • Fear of being poor • Fear of being a failure • Fear of the future • Fear of the past repeating itself • Fear of missing out • Fear of being exposed • Fear of being judged • Fear of change LEAVE SPACE TO ADD A FEW OF YOUR OWN? 

 Some people wouldn’t do what I’m doing (public speaking) for fear of being laughed at, for fear of feeling exposed or fear of not being good enough. We all have a fear of something and we pull on the handbrake in order to stop ourselves feeling that fear. 

At its most extreme, some people’s fears become so debilitating that they may even stop ‘driving’ altogether. Fears keep you stuck, they send you back into a negative feedback loop, where your blueprint’s most unhelpful and distorted preoccupations get reinforced. They don’t serve you in any way. 

The first step towards breaking through your fears is to take a long, honest look at what they are, and what’s behind them. Not everyone is aware of what they fear until they stop to think about it. If you don’t bring it to your conscious mind it, will stay under the surface in your subconscious and it won’t change. 

 Have you been practicing the Power Statements? 

The more you engage in this discipline, the faster it will sink in. It’s something you need to practice every day, because otherwise they won’t sink down to the deepest level of your subconscious. Remember when someone learns to drive a car, they are consciously incompetent. They haven’t a clue and they know they are nervous about whether they’ll be able to learn. A few weeks later, they are driving down the road, and getting to grips with it. There may be a backlog of traffic behind them because they are driving a bit cautiously. They are focused on the road. They are concentrating on the gears, the pedals, the mirrors etc, and all their focus is on driving the car not on the traffic build up behind them. They are focusing on “mirror, signal, and manoeuvre” and changing gears. 

But after practicing over and over again they become more competent and when they drive, they may be thinking about what they’re doing on the weekend, what they are having for dinner later. Who’s driving the car? Their subconscious. So, you should be patient with this process, too. The information in this book, and the power statements will take a while to sink into your subconscious. If you were to stop doing the practise today, you would forget it quite quickly. I cannot stress enough that even after the course, you need to keep practicing the statements until they become automatic, ingrained parts of your blueprint.   

Next Chapter: Chapter 4