"The rational mind is the humble servant, the intuitive mind the faithful gift. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." -- Albert Einstein
In Unconscious Branding, Douglas Van Praet quotes Harvard Marketing Professor Gerald Zaltman, who explains that we are unaware of as much as 95 percent of the reasons we make a choice. The world famous neuroscientist Chris Frith says that 90 percent of our brain activity never reaches our conscious minds.
In other words, the reason you make a choice resides mostly in your limbic system, the deep center of your brain. This is the part of the brain commonly referred to as your "gut" or your intuition. It's the part that causes your stomach to tighten up when you're making a bad choice or telling a lie.
It's also the part of you that needs numbing when you've organized the outside of your life without considering the inside first. This is why so many people eat too much, drink too much and work too much.
So when you are trying to organize your life, the last place you want to look is at your external circumstances and the first place you want to look at is your identity, the core of who you are.
You see, there is a process that all truly successful people follow. Different folks do it different ways of course but all of them know the secret. You have to organize your life and your business around YOU to succeed, not around a goal, or a dream, or even a mission.
You have to know yourself before you can organize your life for success.
Are you right-brain or left-brain dominant? Do you like a quiet workspace or do you thrive in a crowd? Do you love to talk or like to listen? What were your dreams as a child? Who do you want to be? How do you want to be remembered? If you don't know the answer to these questions, it will be difficult at best to break through surface organization into the organization of your life around your possibilities.
No matter how challenging your circumstances, you can do this. Anne Frank, whose diary has sold more than 25 million copies and influenced millions more with it's message of hope and innocence, had to fight for desk space so she could write while she was hiding with her family from capture and death. She knew who she was and she organized herself around that, even in her impossible situation.
You don't have to know exactly what you want. But you do have to know exactly who you are.
Then your choices, as always guided by your innermost brain functions, will be the choices that empower you and inspire you rather than oppress you and depress you.
You've got to start with your heart. Go deep and get to know yourself. Learn about your unique identity. See the labels the world has slapped on you and let them go.
Organize your life so that it works for YOU.
Heart to heart is the way to sell yourself or anything else. And you can't reach someone else's heart if you are not in touch with your own.
"It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it." -- Lou Holtz