Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ Beyond Human Positive thinking gone wrong

Is it possible to delude yourself through positive thinking? I'd like to recount a very long story of how I believe I did just that. I think it might be too long so here is a link to the full story, and I'll summarize below.

Full Story Here

You need goals in life if you want to accomplish anything, right? These were my three primary goals:
1. I have a succesful career trading stocks & commoditites with only my own funds. i.e., no customers or bosses.
2. I have a home somewhere with a view of the ocean.
3. I have a very special & beautiful woman to share this with.

Now maybe you can already see where this is going but #3 is the one that really threw me for a loop. I know that #1 is very difficult to achieve and only a select few ever make it there but I never saw that as a reason to change it. After all it's only dificult because of the emotions of fear and greed. And #2 is a piece of cake if I succeed with #1.

In addition to visualizing my goals was also using Holosync, Paraliminals,etc to help focus my mind on making my goals my reality.

This tale starts out as I'm working VERY hard to sell my families business. My parents were working themselves to death and I felt partially responsible due to the fact that I helped them build the business before leaving for a career on Wall Street.

Now I absolutely hate the family business so I'm constantly thinking of my primary goals.

Then one day I meet a beautiful woman who I believe is perfect for the role of my #3 goal. I don't know if she feels the same but for some reason I believe she might. Now I only met this woman very briefly but I felt we had a connection so I stayed in contact with her via email, occasionally. This is where, looking back, I can see that I lost touch with reality. I so wanted my goals to come true that I believed this woman was the realization goal #3 above. I thought of her almost every day, maybe constantly, while I worked on selling the business so I could move on with the other goals.

When I finally sell the family business I end am in a financial position that makes Goal #1 more easily attainable. I didn't know it was going to work out that way when I decided to help sell the business. HEY! Positive thinking and goals REALLY work!! My life seems to be coming together nicely.

Shortly after selling the business and before starting my new trading career, I make plans to see the woman again. This is 1 year after I originally met her. This time I'm going to spend 5 days with her so I can really get to know her well. Now this is where the positive thinking started to interfere with my perception of reality. It had been a year since I saw this woman and I had only spoken to here very briefly via email. So over the past year I had been thinking about what little a knew and trying to build a complete story. Well when I went to see her it seemed as though everything I had made up in my mind was true. Everything she did/said that supported the story I had created in my head just added to the perception that she was the perfect woman for me. Everything that didn't fit was subconsciously pushed aside. Rationalized by the fact that she had a very different life than me.

After that trip I was sure she was perfect. Now all I needed to do was get my trading up to a profitable level and my life goals could all be accomplished. They were within reach!!

However, after some initial rapid success my trading took a turn for the worse and dragged on that way until I hit my predetermined loss limit that forced a vacation from the market.

So I make plans to see the girl again, this time for a month. On this trip I was doing the same thing. But this time the discrepancies that were being pushed aside were becoming too much for my subconscious to hide. And finally it felt as though I had awoken from a dream even though the realization came to me when I was wide awake.

I was behaving as if she was my girlfriend when I knew we really didn't have any type of relationship at all. Somehow I convinced my conscious mind that we had a very serious long lasting relationship when my subscious knew that this wasn't true.

It was emotionally very painful to come to this realization but now I feel 100 times better. Like a huge weight has been lifted from my mind.

This is all very strange to me and I'm still trying to figure it out. I don't even know if this is appropriate for this forum but i thought I would give it a shot. It would be interesting to hear the perspective of a complete stranger on this matter.

Maybe this can serve to show someone that goals should be very general.

It also serves as an example of the importance of taking in what your senses are telling you is real and not distorting it so that the reality around you matches your fantasies.

You could still have general goals and be generally deluded.

The purpose of goals, general or specific, is not to block out what your senses are giving you and replace that meaning with a personal fantasy. It's to test reality against your goal, operate on reality to make it match your goal, test again, and operate again if necessary ... and go through the test->operate cycle until the test of reality matches your vision, then you exit.

It's called the TOTE (Test-Operate-Test-Exit).

The purpose of positive thinking is to provide yourself with encouragement and motivation for you keep hacking at it until you get it.

Sounds to me that you are mistaking positive thinking with delusional thinking.

Of course, sometimes you have to be a little unrealistic if you're shooting big, because reality is going to give you negative feedback. But saying, "No, I *can* do it" is different from "Everything is already the way I want it."

Actually your goals probably need more polish because clearly they say to me that you haven't got them.

What you've done is build castles in the sky; pretty hard to get to from here.

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1. I have a succesful career trading stocks & commoditites with only my own funds. i.e., no customers or bosses

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Adding rules makes the affirmation/intention "delusional" state clearly what you want give nothing to your mind to think about that you 'don't want.

Why not say..
I allow myself to create my own personal wealth from trading stocks and commoditites myself.

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2. I have a home somewhere with a view of the ocean.

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This one is a big problem You could wind up living in the middle of the desert with a nice wall painting of the ocean.

Some where is no where - and if you don't know where you are going how will you know when you get there? You might already have a home with a view of the ocean, so you're not going to sense any major movement for this goal

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3. I have a very special & beautiful woman to share this with.

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Define special [to you]
Make a list of qualites that you would like to have in the person you want to share this with.

While the affirmation may not need changing, you need to set the boundries in your mind. List what makes up a special woman, does she cook? love to bake is that even important, does she like to travel do you?

Once your goals are clear in your mind it becomes easier to take tangible action towards your goal even if you think this woman is right for you, someone else my step in before you.

Don't put rules on the universe that you're only going to do the steps in that particular order. True that selling the family business appears to be the easiest way to start with your own money. But taking action putting some money aside so that you can start trading with a modest amount is demonstrating the intention. The woman that you email may not be the one for you but she may be the one that knows someone who knows the person that will buy your family business.

So take the time to polish your goals one of the reasons that you are placing rules on the universe is that you haven't really made goals you've made wishes. If opportunity knocked that allows you to reach any of your goals you won't be so coy about checking it out.

If you want to quickly draw up your most personal and personally correct goals consider doing the online e-learning course Clear Mind Bright Future. In about 3 hours you will have written down your 3 most important goals for the year, taking intoconsideration where you want to be 3 5 and even a lifetime down the track. It sure beats sitting down for weeks on end figuring out which is your most important goal since Paul takes you though the all important self check to see if this is what you want and if you've stated it clearly enough.

Alex