As I wrote in
my last blog post, if you trust your brain, it will find the answers you need to any question or problem. However, in order to take action and apply those answers, your brain must also trust you. Whether or not your brain trusts you is up to you. But your brain won’t listen to you if you merely say, “I am the master.” It’s not a pushover. Even if you shout, “I can do it!” your brain will say, “Oh, yeah? Show me!” If it can find even trivial evidence contradicting your claim, it won’t believe you. Its attitude will be, “See, you can’t do it.”
So what do you need to secure the confidence of your brain? A thought or a word isn’t enough. First, you need to check your consciousness regularly, again and again, for any doubts or fears about whether you will do what you say. Doubts and fears will pounce on you given the smallest opportunity.
Second, you need to check your actions. Your actions will demonstrate whether you will follow through with what you say. Through your actions, you need to show yourself what kind of person you are, persuade your brain of it, and win your brain’s trust. If you think a lot, but don’t act, it shows just how weak the power of your brain is; your brain signals are not powerful enough to move your body.
Even if you take action, the trust of your brain cannot be won in a day. Your brain’s trust is a form of energy, an asset that must be accumulated and managed carefully by investing a great deal of time and effort. You build faith in yourself when you continue to show devotion in what you do, beginning with little, trivial things and moving one step at a time. And that faith, ultimately, quiets the brain’s doubts and fears, and enables the brain to display its powers to the greatest extent possible.
Winning your brain’s trust this way requires
willpower. Willpower is the ability, once we establish a goal, to see it through to the end without giving up because of the obstacles and pain we encounter along the way. Between “I’ll do it” and “I’ll give it a try,” there exists a difference that is so subtle as to be barely distinguishable yet so fundamental as to determine the success or failure of an endeavor. Many people take the attitude, “I’ll give it a try,” and think that they are doing their best by “working hard” at something. It seems to them that the thought “I’m doing my best” is more than justified by the drops of sweat on their foreheads and by the weariness they feel in their bodies. When you take the attitude “I’ll give it a try,” although it may appear on the outside that you are working at something diligently, somewhere deep in your heart, somewhere difficult to see, there exists yet another mind, one that is formulating an excuse in case you do not achieve your goal. With that mind whispering to you, you cannot use 100% of your energy, which is essential for achieving what you want. To use 100% of your energy, your mind must be unified and all parts on board for working toward your goal. Regardless of how you explain the situation, your brain knows this is what’s going on.
In contrast, if you
completely make up your mind and say, “I’ll do it,” your fear of the task will vanish, and your heart will grow lighter. You’ll use 100% of your energy because you’ll be free of conflict over whether to do the work. And, once you truly make up your mind to do something, your brain, on its own, will make all the preparations necessary to accomplish it. Then, quite mysteriously, the
conditions surrounding you will develop in a way that will make it easier for you to accomplish what you set out to do. Aid will come to you unlooked for, and things that had only a 50-50 chance of working out will end up going your way.
If something you intend to do isn’t quite working out the way you’d like, then check to see whether you truly have the willpower to reach that goal and remind yourself what you had made up your mind to do in the first place.
When, with willpower, and with honesty, integrity, and responsibility, you put your choices into practice, you win the trust of your brain. It will begin to listen to what you say and serve you. When that happens, you will grow into a mature human being who continues to reduce the discrepancies and contradictions between thought and deed, between body and brain, and between the principles for life you have established and the life you actually live.