Your Automatic Pilot to Goal Achievement
by Denis Waitley
Every living organism has a built-in autopilot to help it achieve its goal, which is, in very basic terms, to live. In more primitive forms of life, to live simply means physical survival for both the individual and the species. This built-in mechanism or instinct in animals is limited to finding food and shelter, avoiding or overcoming enemies and procreation to ensure the continuation of the line.
Humans have intelligence and emotional and spiritual needs and capabilities, which animals do not have, and we often overlook the fact that human beings have a success instinct. Animals cannot select their goals; their success mechanisms are limited to those inborn goal images that are called instincts. The success instinct in the human being, however, has something that animals will never possess: the creative imagination. The human being is the only creature on the earth that can direct his or her future by choice. You are more than a creature; you are a creator. You choose what your reticular activating system in your brain gives credit to. And you choose what you are looking for in the future through the repeated use of your creative imagination. The way you perceive your world defines the world in which you live. To see it in its unlimited range of possibilities is to see with the Quantum mind.
The perceptions we hold of ourselves, or our self-images, determine the kind and scope of people we are; our self-images are our life, controlling mechanisms that dwell at the subconscious level of thinking. Responsible for autonomic body control, such as breathing and heartbeat, and also for storing conditioned reflexes (repeated skills or images), the subconscious can be compared to a navigational guidance system or automatic pilot. The conscious level of thinking, responsible for collecting information from the environment, storing it in the memory and making rational decisions, can be compared to an attorney or judge.
Guidance systems can be programmed to seek an image or target. They are installed in missiles and spacecraft, which are then guided by these highly sophisticated electronic systems to seek a target through the use of electronic data feedback. The homing torpedo, for example, is a self-propelled system that makes every correction necessary to stay on target and score a hit by constantly monitoring feedback signals from the target area and adjusting the course setting in its own navigational guidance computer. Programmed incompletely or nonspecifically, or aimed at a target too far out of range, the homing torpedo will wander erratically until its propulsion system fails or it self-destructs.
So it is with each of us. Set a goal or an image and this self-motivated system, which constantly monitors self-talk and environmental feedback about the goal, adjusts the self-image settings in our minds and makes every decision necessary to reach the goal.
Most of the information fed into your subconscious memory stays there. The billions of separate bits of input stored over a lifetime are all there awaiting retrieval, and can never be willfully erased by you. They can be overridden or modified over a period of time, but you are stuck with them for life. While performing brain surgery on patients who were conscious under local anesthesia, Dr. Wilder Penfield of the Montreal Neurological Institute stimulated certain brain cells with a weak electrical current. Incredibly, he found his patients remembering experiences that had happened to them many years before; it was as if each person had a videotape recorder in his or her head. One thirty-five-year-old woman recalled her fifth birthday party in vivid detail. She saw all the children around her in party hats; she saw herself opening her presents, including a Dutch doll with wooden shoes, and she blew out the candles on her cake and made a wish. On the basis of this work, Dr. Penfield theorized that every experience, sight, sound, smell, taste and touch registers a pattern in the brain that stays long after the actual experience is consciously forgotten.
Recent research suggests that the brain can function like a holographic projector, which uses laser beams to project and reassemble three-dimensional images. If you’ve been through the delightful experiences of Disneyland, Walt Disney World or Epcot Center, you’ve been startled and amazed at the “real-life” ghosts and characters. Though they are just an assembly of light waves, they appear so solid that you could reach out and touch them! It is this holographic capability of the brain that makes your mind such a potent force.
Scientists agree that the human nervous system cannot tell the difference between an actual experience and one imagined vividly, emotionally and in detail. Many of your everyday decisions are based upon information about yourself that has been stored as truth but is just a figment of your imagination, shaded by your environment.
During every moment of our lives, we program our self-image to work for us or against us. It strives to meet the objectives we set for it, regardless of whether they are positive or negative, true or false or safe or dangerous. Like a videotape recorder playing its cassette, its sole function is to follow instructions implicitly, based upon previous inputs/
- Denis Waitley
