STICKPERSON CONCEPT

During my training as a LifeSuccess Consultant, I was introduced to a concept relating to the Mind which completely shifted my way of thinking: the Stickperson concept shows how the conscious and subconscious parts of the mind work, and how our body is in fact the instrument of the mind. I will briefly summarize the main teachings below and invite you to check out the Proctor Gallagher Institute website to watch a video of Bob Proctor explaining it in his own words.

The conscious mind is our thinking mind and we can think anything we want. Thoughts and ideas are continuously flowing into our consciousness and we have the freedom to accept or reject any of them.

The subconscious mind is our emotional mind. This part can only accept what we hand over to it; it cannot reject an idea. Also, it cannot differentiate between what is real and what is imagined. It is where all our conditioning resides, our beliefs, paradigms, and habits. Whatever thoughts we turn over to our subconscious mind will dictate how we are going to feel.

In our conscious mind, we choose our thoughts and we can decide to hold pictures of what we want to create in our life. When we choose to create a beautiful image of what we want in our conscious mind, we then impress the idea on the subconscious mind. This is our emotional mind that affects how we are feeling, so our thoughts cause our feelings.

Now whatever thought we are impressing on our subconscious mind is expressed through our body as an action. So our feelings are expressed in actions. And it is our actions that produce what we call results, whether it is in relation to our finances, our health, or our relationships.

Thoughts -> Feelings -> Actions -> Results

The Stickperson concept helps us see the connection between our Thoughts, which cause Feelings, which move us to take Actions that produce certain Results. So if we want to change the results we are getting, we must first change what’s going on inside our mind, change our thoughts and our thinking.

How do we choose our thoughts? We have been taught to process our world through our five physical senses: see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. These five senses are hardwired like antennae into our conscious mind and they are always turned on processing the world around us. We gather most of our information through our physical senses and, as a result, we put all our attention on the conditions and circumstances in our environment. When we do this, we end up operating from the competitive side of our nature, believing that there is a limited supply of resources.

We have been conditioned to do this from an early age. As children we were told to: eat up all our food, listen to our teachers, watch where we were playing. As adults now, we look and listen to the news, to TV programs, the Internet, our friends and family, so we need to be careful of what we allow influence us. Remember that the conscious mind has the ability to accept or reject anything that comes its way. Well, we can choose to reject what we are hearing from outside sources and we can choose to think the thoughts we want to think.

One of the best ways to do this is through the use of our creative faculties. Most people don’t know what these intellectual faculties are. We have given most of our attention to our bodies and our physical senses, and little or no attention to the higher side of our nature: our intellect, our creative side.

We have 6 creative faculties: Perception, Reason, Intuition, Memory, Imagination and Will. They are like mental muscles that we can develop to help us change our thoughts and conditioning.

Unlike our five physical senses that keep us outwardly focused, these faculties allow us to turn our attention within.

To develop these faculties, always remember the importance of repetition and practice. We have to keep USING these mental muscles if we want them to be of service to us in changing our thoughts and conditioning.

Let’s have a look at these creative faculties, because these are the tools you can use to create the life you really want.

1) Perception is shaped by your perspective which is your point of view. It is how you interpret or see life, the world, situations, yourself, and others. When you constantly look for the positive in people and situations, you will find it. Wayne Dyer has been quoted as saying, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

2) Reason gives you the ability to choose your thoughts. To be able to choose your thoughts, you first have to pay attention to what you are thinking. Since we have thousands of thoughts, it’s not possible to monitor them all. Instead you can pay attention to how you are feeling, since we know that our thoughts cause our feelings. When you start to feel bad or uncomfortable, you can look to see what you are thinking and then choose to replace the negative thought with a positive one.

3) Intuition is often referred to as our hunch, our inner knowing, our inner guide. It is our ability to pick up the energy of other people and places, to sense that energy. You can walk into a room and instantly pick up the vibration of another person. We even use the term “good vibes” or “bad vibes” to describe people or places. You feel the positive or negative energy emanating from them.

4) You can use your Memory to remember the good times you’ve had in the past, rather than the bad times. This creates positive emotions, which are like fuel for your dreams. If you only choose to remember the negative events in your past, you drag them continuously into the present and then wonder why you’re living them over and over again, getting the same old results.

5) Imagination is the workshop of the mind. You can use your imagination to build beautiful pictures in your mind of the life you desire, and then step out and do it! Everything that you see around you was first just an idea in the imagination of its creator, whether it’s the clothes you are wearing or the chair you are sitting on. We are always using our imagination, but most of us are using it to imagine the worst-case scenario. You must replace the negative images with positive ones and hold them in your mind.

6) Your Will gives you the ability to concentrate, to stay focused on one idea. You can put your attention on one thing at a time to the exclusion of all other distractions and in this way you increase the intensity of your thoughts. The will to the mind is like a magnifying glass to the sun. The more you practice developing your will, the stronger it will become.

So you should use these 6 mental faculties continuously and allow them to govern your thought, allow them to assist you to really think. Instead of gathering information from your 5 physical senses, which is the competitive side of your nature, you move to the creative side of your nature. And you begin to change the way you think. And when you change the way you think, you begin to change the way you feel, and this moves your body into taking completely different actions, which ultimately changes your results. You start to see a world of infinite possibilities, instead of limited choices.