BY JONATHAN PARKER

The human mind is incredibly complex and powerful. Every achievement we’ve made from the wheel to space travel has come from our. mind and despite the best attempts of modern science, much of its powers-remain a mystery. For example:

We’ve all heard the amazing story of a frail grandmother lifting a car weighing thousands of pounds to save a loved one. Or those who can remember hundreds of names and faces of people they’d only met once. Or crash survivors who withstood sub-freezing temperatures for days.

Belief Creates Reality

Let me tell you a startling yet true story of just how powerful beliefs can be in affecting physical conditions. A man accidentally locked himself inside a refrigerated box car. Try as he did, he couldn’t get out. He recorded his progress by writing on the side of the car.’ The first entry indicated he was slowly getting colder and colder. He said there was nothing to do but wait. He probably banged on he side and shouted for help, but there was no one nearby to hear. Finally, he wrote, “I’m slowing freezing to death. These may be my last words.” And they were. The next day the man was found dead there on the floor of the box car. He had died, but not because he froze to death, but because he believed he had. He knew he was in a refrigerated car and knew that it would have sub-freezing temperatures. That is under normal circumstances, but you see the refrigeration unit was out of order. The temperature in the car was 57 degrees and there was plenty of air. The man died of his own self-created illusion.

This is certainly a dramatic example of how the power of beliefs and thoughts can affect us. Beliefs and thoughts create feelings and expectations of happiness or sadness, success or failure. Based on those perceptions, a person is either spurred toward success and accomplishment or bogged down by accepting failure or mediocrity. Your life will unfold according to how you think.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the placebo effect. A placebo is an inert or neutral substance given to a patient who has not responded to traditional therapies. The patient is conditioned by being told he or she is being given a powerful new drug that will surely work. The patient is then given the placebo, which is often nothing more than a capsule filled with powdered sugar. In an amazing percentage of cases—often 30 to 40% and more depending on the condition, the person gets better. Not because the powdered sugar did anything to help, but it was the person’s belief about it that did the trick.

Break Through Physical Limitations

One of the most amazing and encouraging stories of all concerns the Russian Weight Lifter Vasily Alexeyev . Before the mid-1970’s no human being had ever lifted 500 pounds overhead. The Russian held the world record but he was never able to break the 500 pound barrier though he had tried several times. For one important competition, his trainers told him that he would be lifting a weight he had lifted before—499.9 pounds. He did it and then discovered that his trainers had deceived him about he weight—he had actually lifted 500 1/2 pounds—a new world’s record.

What his trainers did was purposely tell him to do something he already knew he could do. They had erased a limitation that had been; embedded not only in his mind but also in the mind of all other weight lifters and the 500 pound barrier was broken forever. And soon other weight lifters were lifting more than 500 pounds. In fact, once the 500 pound limitation was removed from his mind Vasily went on to lift more than 560 pounds overhead.

The Secret Lies in the Subconscious Mind

For years, I searched to understand the incredible untapped potential we all possess. And my study has been a fascinating one that all points to one fact—that there are resources and powers available to us that can enable us to accomplish far more than we have ever imagined possible. And the secret to releasing these resources lies in the powers of our inner mind.

You see there are really two major components of our mind. First there is our conscious mind—which we use continually to think, analyze, solve problems and make decisions. But it is just the tip of the iceberg, because beneath it is a much greater resource—our inner mind—which is called our unconscious mind or our subconscious mind. This portion of our mind plays a different role—it stores all the information that comes in through our conscious mind, housing our emotions and all the memories and knowledge we’ve gained from birth, and with this information, our subconscious mind exerts a tremendous influence on our conscious behavior and actions. Most people think they are in conscious control of their life, but in reality, it is the subconscious mind, the huge reservoir beneath the surface, that is the actual determiner of our life’s destiny.

Many psychologists liken the subconscious to a computer, which, although it is extremely fast and powerful, operates only according to a set of instructions called a program. With different programs, a computer can do different things—word processing, accounting, filing, statistics calculations, games, the list is almost endless. And you can change the computer’s capabilities, by loading different programs.

Your subconscious is like a computer in that it, too, operates according to a set of instructions or a program. All of those memories and experiences which are stored in your subconscious become your “master program.” And it’s the master program in your subconscious that directs, controls and determines virtually every aspect of your life.

What is in Your Master Program?

What if you could control the programming of your mind as easily as you can control the programming of a computer? Imagine, being in total control of all the potentials you have? Wouldn’t that be the most valuable resource you could ever possess?

The master program controls our emotions and success patterns in our career and our relationships. It actually determines whether we are positive and happy most of the time or depressed and moody. Even our habits that we are often slaves to and find so difficult to change are controlled by our subconscious. The subconscious is especially important in your financial life. If you’re not making as much money as you should be, in most cases the reason is that the self-sabotaging programming in your subconscious is preventing you from having it.

Whether you make $20,000 a year or $200,000 a year or even $2 million dollars a year has more to do with the limitations set in your subconscious mind than any other single factor. Your master subconscious program affects your income more than your background, your education, the economy, the business you’re in, even how hard you work!