was confident. Her greatest fear was appearing confident and then finding the result was worse than she had anticipated.
Even at the times when she felt she did know her work well she still couldn’t leave her books alone, fearing she’d overlooked something. She’d get into last-minute panics and rush back to check on facts. She’d create in her mind exam questions that she couldn’t answer and she’d get very stressed and tense in the days leading up to the exams. Even afterwards she would focus on all the things she hadn’t included in her answer. She hated hanging around with people discussing the papers and hearing the things they had put in and that she had omitted or done differently, fearing that they were right and she was wrong. She’d then tell people she was sure she’d failed. The results, when they finally came out, were an anticlimax. Invariably she had done well.
Her mother had brought her in to see me because Betty’s major school exams were looming at the end of the following year and she was afraid that the stress would be too much for her. I pointed out to Betty that it was fine to study hard. It was indeed silly to assume she knew everything she needed to know and to stop studying too early, but that it was also counter-productive to get over-stressed by focusing on the things she didn’t know.
During the tests and exams of the coming year she was to work just as hard as ever at her books, but she was gradually to start focusing on all the things she did know and to start assuring herself she could learn all her work in time and that she would do well in the exams as a result of her diligent efforts. In the few hours before each test or exam, when further study was impossible, she was told to start affirming to herself that she knew all she needed to know, that she had done her work well and that she would do well in the exam.
Note that she was not told simply to assume she had done enough work and that all would be well. She was not told to stop trying. The aim was to create a situation where she did study hard but where the extra, non-productive stress was removed from the situation.
The results were interesting. Both she and her mother reported that she was indeed less stressed. There were two added benefits that she had not foreseen. Firstly, she told me, study was becoming easier as she kept telling herself she was capable of learning and understanding all she needed. Secondly, she said that when it came to the actual exam she was able to answer the questions better both because she remembered more and because she was less stressed and was able to relax and think more clearly and formulate her answers better.
The period between doing the exams and getting the results had always been a trial for all the family. They were tense because Betty was tense; they were also tense because they kept hearing her say she had done badly. She was told to start affirming to herself, from the moment that she walked out of the exam room, that she had done well.
‘But what if I haven’t, what if I’m wrong?’ Her greatest fear raised its head again.
‘Then at least you’ll have spent the intervening time feeling happy rather than stressed,’ was my answer.
‘That’s like living in a fool’s paradise,’ she said anxiously.
‘Better than living in a fool’s hell as you do now, worrying when you have no need to.’ With this she agreed, albeit reluctantly.
As a result of harnessing her subconscious, by programming it for success rather than failure, she was not only less stressed but more successful too. She still found it hard to tell people she was sure she had done well, but at least she was able to stop bewailing how badly she had done.
It is worth repeating one important aspect of this. Notice one very important thing about the way Betty reprogrammed her subconscious. She did not go into the study period saying ‘I know enough. I know I’ll pass and do well.’ She included in all her affirmations both the concept that she was working hard and well and the concept that as a result she would do well in the exams.
In this she was in sharp contrast to Edward.
Edward had gone to a new and progressive university where the students were encouraged to set their own study patterns. He had been at a strict school and the new freedom was going to his head. Further, he had joined friends who were familiar with affirmations and their use and who spoke glibly about the power of the subconscious without really understanding it. He decided to copy them. His affirmations included ‘the work is easy’, ‘I am good and will pass all my exams’, ‘I’m tops, I’m successful and I’m competent’, and ‘when I need to remember what we did in class it will all come back to me simply and easily’.
On the face of it these are all very positive and empowering affirmations. Perhaps, when the power of his mind becomes strong enough, they will become sufficient to see him through the challenges of his life. However, in this instance they took the form of being relatively trivial thoughts and became an excuse not to study. He was surprised when he failed badly at the end of the first term, but he had learnt a valuable lesson about the subconscious.
Use the power of positive thoughts and your subconscious mind in combination with your conscious endeavours. Don’t dump the responsibility on to your subconscious and mess around.
If you were placed on the Earth for the very first time at this moment how would you feel? Would you know what was safe and what threatened you? Would you know you should be wary of snakes or could rejoice in a sunset? Would you worry about money if you had not heard of it before? Would you know what sort of person you could trust and who you could ask for help? Of course you would not. You only know these things when you have had a previous experience on which to base your judgement.
These past experiences may be helpful in the way you form your new judgement or they may be a hindrance. If you grew up in England and knew you could ask a policeman for help any time you were in trouble you might get a surprise when you approached the armed officer of some country in which the police were feared. If, as a woman, you were used to the considerate behaviour of men you might not be sufficiently careful in a situation where any lone woman was at risk. If you come from a warm and loving home you may be inappropriately trusting in other similar situations.
It can work the other way too. If a dog that seemed friendly suddenly turned and bit you some time in the past you are unlikely to trust dogs in the future. If you have always been beaten when things went wrong you may still cringe and feel stressed anytime a voice is raised, even if it is not in anger. If your mother died or left home when you were young and your first girlfriend walks out on you, you may never learn to relax and trust your wife, fearing at any slight or possible sign of her interest in another man, however casual, that she is about to leave you.
Your view of the world and your expectations of the future, immediate or distant, are based on your experiences in the past. It is on the basis of these past experiences that you make your decisions of today. This, at one level, is so obvious that it may seem unnecessary to stress the fact. Yet few people take in the full implications of this. For it means that if you came to inappropriate conclusions in the past your whole assessment of the present may be equally inaccurate or inappropriate. It also means that if you once learnt to filter, to delete, to generalize or to distort in the past, you are likely to continue developing this habit. It is by exploring the past and assessing the relevance to the present of the conclusions you reached then, that you can significantly reduce many of the stresses of the present and the future.
Early experiences
The
