Scott Adams is an interesting fellow. After making millions with the Dilbert cartoons, he now has enough clout to get them to publish pretty much whatever he wants to write or draw. And that’s led to some fascinating stuff, like the philosophical mind experiment “God’s Debris,” which I recommend to anyone wanting to expand their mental horizons.
I was leafing through his pseudo-futurist book, “The Dilbert Future,” and came upon something that fascinated me. He calls it “affirmations.” You pick a goal, no matter how outlandish. Then every day, you visualize attaining that goal, and write down the goal 15 times. According to Adams, he has achieved amazing results from this technique alone. Coincidences begin to pile up that lead him straight to the goal.
Normally this type of thing would make me groan, with its new-agey “aligning your chakras” sensibility. But then I thought, what can it hurt? Even if it just gets you to focus on the goal a little bit each day, it’s a good thing.
I’m actually thinking about doing this. Now I just need to pick a goal. What would yours be?
That’s actually a great method of getting things done, just because it makes you focus on them. Otherwise we tend to get distracted by all the other junk in our lives.
Mine would be “Remove the debris from the kitchen.”
Just wanted to let you know, affirmations have been around for a long time now, and despite their new-agey-ness, they’re endorsed even by psychiatrists and medical doctors as helping people heal more quickly as well as just have plain better lives. Of course, they work much better when they’re not about actual physical “goals,” but when they’re something both present tense and internalized, like “I am beautiful” or “I am smart.”
Just think about how often your internal monolouge is saying “that was dumb” or “they don’t reallly like me” or stuff like that. Then affirmations like Ariann mentions start to make sense. Just don’t go all new agey/occultic on us 🙂
I agree entirely about the value of affirmations — when you think how many negative thoughts you have each day, it only makes sense that they affect your psyche. But, like your comments about “Excalibur” and “The Holy Grail,” it’s hard not to think of Stuart Smalley: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and, doggonit, people like me!”