Hi, Rishan here.
Hopefully you’ve had a chance to read through
and digest my last email…I talked about a
realization that led to a big shift in my
thinking…and why I believe this is the next
evolution in the conscious creation of success
and happiness.
You can find a copy of that email posted here
on my blog:
http://alltoosimple.com/322/happy-holidays-and-a-very-important-announcement-our-focus-has-evolved-big-time/
In this email I’m going to investigate a study
that was done on obese middle aged women
entering a weight loss program…and the
rather unexpected discovery that came with it.
We all know and accept, that belief in
your ability to succeed, is probably the best
indicator of how much success you will actually
achieve.
That has been proven to be true in many high
quality experiments over and over again.
However, there’s a rather big twist in the tale.
In this study of obese women, the researcher
asked these women how likely they felt they were
to reach their weight reduction goals.
She found that those women who were confident
that they would succeed lost twenty-six pounds
more than those who doubted themselves…that’s
pretty much what we expect right?
Here’s the interesting part…
The researcher also asked these women whether
they expected it to be easy or challenging to
achieve their weight loss target.
…and here’s what she found…
The women who believed they would succeed easily,
lost 24 pounds LESS than those who thought
their weight-loss journey would be difficult.
That’s an amazing finding…and it’s been
replicated over and over again.
Similar studies with minor tweaks have also been
conducted and all the results tell us this:
“Focussing on and acknowledging challenges and
obstacles and then actively preparing for them,
significantly increases your chances of success.”
Expecting the journey to be difficult makes it
MORE likely that you’ll actually succeed.
Now you may be thinking that you already kind of
knew that, right? But…
This advice completely opposite to what 99% of
Law of Attraction “experts” will tell you…
Instead they’ll tell you to AVOID focussing on
the possible challenges or you’ll attract more
of them into your life.
But…thanks to modern research we know that they
are flat out wrong.
In the light of the evidence, it’s fairly safe to
conclude that, their strategy is closer to a
receipe for failure.
Now that science has illuminated the truth, you
can feel 100% confident to go with your gut feeling
of what you always knew was true:
“Anticipate and prepare for obstacles and
challenges.”
And I’ll be blantantly honest…I too bought in
to the idea of not focussing on the negatives…
…but thanks to the desire to constantly refine
my methodologies and techniques, I was able
to learn better, admit I was wrong and change
the way I do things.
By the way, this concept is called
“Realistic Optimism”…
…and it’s just one of a handful of enlightening
discoveries science has made about success.
Look out for next mail on Monday where I’ll reveal
another.
HAPPY NEW YEAR 
Rishan
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Are you kidding me? You mean I was “doing it right” all along? I had learned from my military training to anticipate obstacles or opposition and plan for how to work around them or bust through them.
And I stopped doing that once all this Attraction business started popping up. Sure seemed to make sense at the time – believe there are no obstacles and there aren’t.
BUT – there is just no arguing with cold hard facts. Believe there will be obstacles, plan how you’ll deal with them, and you’ll move past them and grow stronger and more resilient in the process. Wow!
Thanks for another great one Rishan.
Thanks for the kind words Greg.
Life is not fair, so what?… Make your positive dreams a reality anyway!
Hi Rishan,
This is very interesting. Do you have a pointer to the actual study? I’d like to take a look at it.
This fits perfectly with what Jesus taught about faith, i.e. that “mountains” (difficulties) will appear, but that we can face them, overcome them, and that, ultimately, there is no limit to what faith can accomplish (Mark 11:22-24).
Thanks,
Rob
Hi Rob,
Here’s a link to an academic review of a couple studies showing the same result:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12416922
and here’s a link to the exact study I mentioned above:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/t27160qpqp184131/
Enjoy!
Rishan
Hi Rishan
I do agree with you. I think there is much confusion amongst people involved in modern personal development when it comes to the concept of being stuck and unable to take action. Of course, to be able to enter a positive and powerful emotional state is very important in being able to take action instead of remaining for years in the comfort zone. But the quality of the action that results can be vastly improved if the person can build in the skill of critical thinking and problem solving rather than relying on the emotional ‘high’ of inspiration and optimism alone to drive them.
I often think of the pioneer of lateral thinking, Edward de Bono. He devised methods and wrote books incorporating all these stages of thinking – including creative inspiration and also problem solving – so that the approach to thinking through an issue isn’t simplistic or naive. His book ‘Teach yourself to Think’ gives an excellent approach to both logical and creative thought in one. Also, the original models of NLP did contain with them the concept of rehearsing through difficult and problem situations and learning to handle them in advance. I think some of this has been overlooked or forgotten recently and the approach has sadly become less adept and effective.
A more precise and appropriate focus would be to emphasise the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system responses and to train one to spend more time in the latter rather than crudely promoting ‘right brain’ activity over ‘left’ (which is not in any way equivalent to positive over negative thinking anyway – a lot of negative responses involve a great deal of emotion and imagination and cognitive therapy for one seeks to bring this under control through the power of rational analysis).
THANK YOU FOR THIS INFORMATION! i TOO HAD BOUGHT INTO THE LAW OF ATTRACTION,THINKING i WAS WRONG IN PREPARING FOR OBSTACLES, AND NOW i FEEL REASSURED.