Wednesday 14 December 2016

Greylag Geese and Why You are Not Successful



Has your past influenced the way you are now?  Of course it has!  We all have free will, but the decisions we make when we use that free will are highly conditioned by things that happened to us in the past.

In many cases that is a good thing.  You have a bad experience because of something you did, and that teaches you not to do the same thing again.  If this were just a memory, from which you could then make a logical decision, this would in many cases not give you enough time to modify your behaviour before it caused the same problems.  So we are all equipped with a way to make the "right" response instantly, before we even have time to think about the response.  This is called "imprinting".

The 19th century biologist, Douglas Spalding, discovered the phenomenon of imprinting and published his results in "Nature" in 1872.  Konrad Lorenz popularised the concept, particularly in his books on the studies he did on the behaviour of greylag geese.  Lorenz found the geese bond with the first object they see after they had hatched.  Normally this is a good thing, as it will be older geese who will show the younger geese what they should and shouldn't do.  But sometimes the process goes wrong, and the geese are inappropriately imprinted.  When this happens, the badly imprinted geese behave inappropriately, even when that behaviour causes them problems and maybe is even very dangerous for them.

The same thing applies to all of us.  Except our imprinting is certainly not limited to the first thing we see after we are born.  Many things influence us in this way throughout our childhood and on into our adult life as well.

For example, imagine as a child you hear your parents having a big argument.  This makes you very unhappy.  You notice the argument is about money - which is one of the commonest reasons for a couple to argue.  This imprints on you the idea that money is bad because it causes arguments and makes people unhappy.  And that imprinting creates within you a block that will always try to stop you making money.  Unless you find a way of dealing with this block it will be almost impossible for you to make much money.  Even if you do manage to make some, the block will act to make sure you lose it quickly!

Very many people have at least one "money block" that was imprinted on them from early childhood.  I would go as far as to say the majority of people have "money blocks".  They also have many other blocks, which stop them from achieving anything they have set their heart on - success, a fabulous life partner, etc.  Which means the majority of people will find the manifestation techniques they learn simply don't seem to work for them.  They study all the books they can find on the Law of Attraction, try to put it into practice, and eventually give up in disgust.  They decide all this talk about affirmations and how you can attract all you wish for through the power of thought is nonsense.

Does this sound at all familiar?  Perhaps you have reached this phase and are ready to give up trying.  Or maybe you are not as far down that road, but are still getting frustrated that nothing seems to work for you.  It could even be that you have only just started, are full of enthusiasm, and have not yet realized how difficult the journey is going to be.

Whereever you are on your journey to your definition of success, you need to find and eliminate the many blocks you have which will either make it impossible or very difficult to reach your goal.

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