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Sharpening Your Axe

How does sharpening your axe relate to building an online business? Abraham Lincoln said “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”. It’s a useful analogy to remember whenever you’re attempting any large task or undertaking. The “axe” in the case of building an online business is your mind, or better yet your intention.

With a strong intention, clear vision and an awareness of your most likely obstacles, it is much easier to drive towards your goals and aspirations. But if you harbour doubt, are insecure about your mission or vision, or you are unclear about your path, you’re already inhibiting your intention with the seeds of doubt.

Doubt will kill off your ambitions pretty quickly as will uncertainty and even fear of failure. There must be no doubt in your mind. If there is, you might ask for someone’s approval, which is the surest way to add more doubt and uncertainty. Most people aren’t interested in your aspiring beyond their own goals and ambitions, if they have any. So keep things to yourself, set yourself a clear objective and fuel your intention with belief. Here’s how to do it!

Sharpening Your Axe

A little while ago I found a video online of a guy talking about building an online business. It seemed so magical to build a business online which could give me a life of freedom and flexibility. Little did I know the journey up ahead. After a few early sales online I thought I was on my way. But I found my “inner” world would get in the way of success for me.

My old patterns of thinking meant that I quickly spent my earnings, rather than re-invest them into the business. I soon found myself back at square one, with little marketing budget and this further fuelled my feelings of inadequacy and uncertainty. In turn, these inner demons cycled me into procrastination, doubt and depression. In such a state, it’s pretty near impossible to build something, especially if you don’t have a roadmap with which to do it.

But this cycle was a typical pattern for me, and I was well familiar with it. What I subsequently learned was the opposite pattern was what I needed.

Sharpening Your Axe – What Successful People Do

The habit of being down on yourself, talking yourself out of things which will improve your life might sound familiar. This pattern fuels inaction, doubt and procrastination. Ultimately it leads to more of the same. What successful people do is the opposite to this.

They inspire themselves with positive self talk, take action and use positive feedback to further install the positive self image which they build on over time. This is the cycle of belief which either leads you downwards or upwards. At any given moment, you’re either going up or down with your self talk, feelings and emotions.

You can “hijack” this unconscious tendency if you make it conscious, and focus on the things which will encourage and support a new self image and new course of action. Successful people tend to have this pattern “installed”, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Identify The Negative “Triggers”

Negative triggers can lower your emotional state. These are events or mental “triggers” such as a disagreement, situation, or a bad experience. Even small things can trigger negative emotions from experiences which happened years ago.

It’s well worth getting therapy if you have some childhood trauma, for example, which can help you clear and overcome this. Over time you can become entangled with negative triggers which lead you into a negative emotional state unconsciously. If this becomes your default state, you are literally feeling low most of the time. It can be very difficult to get out of this if you start identifying the state with who you are! See also goal setting and identity shift.

If this is happening to you, you might be dealing with grief, or triggering feelings of loss or grief which you haven’t dealt with properly. If you have deep grief from experiences in your life, it is these you experience when you come up against issues within your business. So, even a small hiccup in building your business can send you down into a pit of depression.

Identifying these triggers can help you avoid them and create a less painful experience. If you don’t identify them, you’ll likely come up against them and project their cause as the current issue, rather than the old, painful trauma.

These can be the likely hurdles to building an online business. Identifying them will help you keep from running into them again and again!

Set An Intention And Write It Down

Intention setting is a great way to clear out the debris, focus on what you would like to achieve and set it out clearly in a way your subconscious mind can understand. A good, clear intention should be written out a number of times and adjusted to fit a specific criteria:

You really, really want it
You 100% believe you can achieve it

Once you have your focused intention, you can write it out and repeat it over and over to yourself. As you do so, certain feelings/emotions will likely surface. As they do, pay attention. This is your subconscious mind communicating how it feels about your goal.

These are likely the blockages which you might use to excuse yourself from the task ahead! They are feelings of inadequacy, or doubts and fears. Notice them and pay attention. Are they justified? Perhaps your goal is too lofty for you to believe? Or you’re talking yourself out of it because you don’t really care about the goal?

Pay attention to these feelings as they arise and re-write your goal to align with the two main criteria:

You really, really want it
You 100% believe you can achieve it

If you don’t really want your goal, you’ll soon abandon it. If you don’t believe you can achieve it, the same will happen. When you align the two you will find a goal/intention which aligns all parts of you. When this happens, it’s much easier to overcome any feelings of doubt and internal resistance to your intention.

Cybernetic Transposition

A MIT professor named Stuart Lichtman wrote a book on a subject called cybernetic transposition. This is the best book I’ve found on the topic of dream realisation/goal and intention setting. See Stuart Lichtman cybernetic transposition.

On a trial of 50,000 participants 81% achieved a seemingly impossible goal on their first attempt using this strategy. In short, you write your goal out multiple times over and over. This hardwires the goal/intention into the subconscious mind and it gets to work on it.

You also must listen to your intuition and re-write your goal so that it aligns with the principles:

You really, really want it
You 100% believe you can achieve it

If a goal brings up doubts, it needs re-writing so you fully believe it and really want it. If you don’t really want it, you’re not going to do the exercise and write it out hundreds of times!

Sharpening Your Axe

When you fill your mind with doubt, fear and scepticism, you create circumstances and situations of a like mind. But when you do the opposite, and focus on your intentions and goals, your subconscious mind delivers ideas and insights which can help bring about the results you want in life.

“Sharpening your axe” when it comes to building something like an online business refers to this principle. Without a clear intention, a roadmap for success, and a strong desire to realise the outcome you want, small, relatively insignificant problems are enough to derail your plans. Small problems become big problems. If you are harbouring negative ideas and inner demons and problems from long ago, they will surely surface when problems arise.

Sharpening your axe means uncovering your inner shadow and facing the inner pains which you may have pushed away and avoided. The grief from long ago will surface when faced with difficulties. By becoming aware of it, you loosen its grip on you. You become free from troubling emotions and can focus on your dreams and aspirations without fear, doubt or scepticism.

It is these negative emotions which are the biggest obstacle to overcome because they rear their head when something goes wrong which on the surface is superficial, but underneath causes a lot of emotional pain.

Stuart Lichtman PDF

The Stuart Lichtman PDF “How To Get Lots Of Money For Anything Fast” is one of the best resources I’ve found online. Whether you have a business, are learning affiliate marketing, or are trying to achieve anything, this book is for you! In it, Stuart shares what he calls the cybernetic transposition technique which he personally developed. Cybernetic transposition is a technique for transferring a success in one area of your life to another. So if you can remember a success you’ve had, you can transpose it to another area of your life.

“Cybernetic Transposition is the proprietary technique I developed and perfected, and which companies paid me $25,000 a day to teach their employees.” – Stuart Lichtman

Cybernetics is the science of how electronic machines and human brains work, (and developing machines that do things or think like people). Transposition means to transpose, or move one part to another; or an interchange of two parts.

Stuart Lichtman PDF

If you have read any of the classic books on the Law Of Attraction, you’ll understand that thoughts become things. See motivational books pdf free download and working with the law pdf. But Stuart Lichtman has taken this concept to another level in his book.

Here’s an extract: “Cybernetic Transposition may be the single and most powerful technique ever developed for personal achievement. What Cybernetic Transposition does is empower the mind to use one success – any success – that you have experienced, and “transpose” (or transform) that first success into the solid foundation for a success in another area.” – Stuart Lichtman

But just exactly how does this work and how does Stuart do it?

Cybernetic Transposition

To achieve anything takes focus. But what most of us do is get distracted and take our attention off the outcome we desire. Habits can be detrimental to our success if we allow the bad ones to grow and don’t encourage the good ones.

Here’s a quick summary of what’s involved in the technique:

Firstly create a target or a goal which you know you clearly want to create in your life. It needs to be understood by all major aspects of your unconscious mind. This means getting very clear on exactly how you would like your target to look when it comes about.
Prioritise your target so that your unconscious mind will focus on it, even when while you are not thinking about it.
Resolve any unconscious habit patterns which would normally prevent you from achieving your target.

In Stuarts book you’ll need to work through this creating an outcome which is truly desirable to you. An important distinction with goal setting is that many people create goals which they either don’t believe in, or are not truly aligned with.

By resolving the conflicts which will undoubtably arise in your unconscious mind, you can get clear on your objective. If your goal doesn’t give you a 10 out of 10 for both desirability and belief, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Something in your subconscious mind will sabotage your efforts, and you’ll find a way to fail.

Stuart Lichtman Cybernetic Transposition – The Meta Story

There are some exercises in the book which you’ll need to work through. Be prepared for some hard work here! Stuart will make you write out your goal many times, correcting it accordingly to resolve any conflicts which come up. For example, your goal might be to lose weight. But you might also like eating and hate working out. By resolving these issues, you will come up with an appropriate goal which aligns with all parts of your mind.

Once you have got very clear on what you want, both in terms of desirability and belief, you can build what Stuart calls a Meta story.

A meta story is the end goal narrative in which you have created the outcome you desire perfectly. It’s the story which you are going to communicate with your subconscious mind in order to create a powerful objective. If your meta story is littered with objections and doubt, your subconscious mind won’t flag it as a priority; and it won’t have the same power.

Therefore getting clear on an objective is essential to this process of creation.

Access Stuart Lichtman PDF

You can access the Stuart Lichtman pdf by clicking on the image below.

Stuart Lichtman Cybernetic Transposition

I first found the Stuart Lichtman cybernetic transposition technique after joining a group of affiliate marketing mentors. Stuart’s book was called How To Get Lots Of Money For Anything Fast! As a cynical Northerner (based in the UK) this seemed a little cheesy but it was a course requirement so I bought it.

I soon realised that this was the real deal! Stuart Lichtman had spent over 25 years developing a strategy to help people achieve the seemingly impossible. He had studied at MIT in engineering, psychology, and artificial intelligence, masters work in applied psychology, and doctoral work in organisation development and cross cultural business.

After developing what Stuart Lichtman called his cybernetic transposition technique, he tested in on a group of 50,000 people. 81% achieved a seeming impossible goal on their first attempt. A bold claim?

Stuart Lichtman Cybernetic Transposition

So how does the Stuart Lichtman cybernetic transposition technique work then? Through his book you will encounter a number of exercises which Stuart calls the three step process. Firstly, you will focus in on what you really, really want to achieve. One of the main problems with goal setting is that you seldom know exactly what you really want. As time moves on, other goals take a more important role. Or competing parts of your mind get in the way of your achieving it; or unconscious habits.

Or perhaps you didn’t really want your goal badly enough to overcome all the things you’ll have to do to achieve it? This is often why people fail with goal setting. Either they don’t want something badly enough, or they don’t believe they can achieve something. Therefore they set a goal which is more easily achievable, but less desirable. So they don’t follow through because the goal isn’t that important to them anyway.

Stuart Lichtman’s three step process allows you to investigate what you really want and it does this by getting you to repeat your goal over and over. As you sound out and write out your goal, you’ll “tweak” it so that it’s more aligned with your inner values. It also needs to be a goal which is a 10/10 on desirability and a 10/10 on believability. If you don’t believe you can achieve something, you won’t fully commit to the process. Similarly, if you don’t really want it, you won’t follow through either.

Stuart Lichtman Cybernetic Transposition

Cybernetic – the science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things.

Transposition – transferring one thing to another

The Stuart Lichtman Cybernetic Transposition technique refers to transferring an old memory or achievement to one which is the desirable outcome. Old memories are hard wired into the brain and the unconscious mind. As you think of an old memory or something you have achieved, you can remind yourself of the sounds, sights, smells, emotions and feelings which accompanied all of those memories.

These are useful because they are the communications of the unconscious mind. Think about a dream you had. Dreams are usually in pictures, feelings, sounds and emotions. They aren’t in words! So using words as a means to communicate something important to the subconscious mind won’t be very powerful. You need to use feelings, smells, emotions and sounds to communicate an idea to the subconscious mind and for it to focus on that idea.

The Problem With Old Memories

Old memories aren’t always things you want to remember! So with the cybernetic transposition technique, Stuart Lichtman gets you to re-write your old memories so that they are more desirable.

Memories aren’t always 100% perfect and we often remember things how we want to rather than how they actually were. If you ask a number of people to describe a particular time or event, you’ll likely get a number of different and even conflicting responses.

So with the transposition technique you get to rewrite your history in a way which is much more desirable. Then, you use these already implanted images, emotions and sounds etc. into your new meta story.

What’s A Meta-Story

Your meta story then becomes your future goal or desirable outcome. By rewriting and rewriting over and over, you’ll get clearer on an outcome which is a 10/10 in desirability and a 10/10 in believability also. You’ll then use your old memory to implant the emotions which went along with your past achievement or event.

This, when repeated over and over, will tell your subconscious mind what to focus on. As your subconscious mind focuses on the outcome you want to achieve, it will come up with ways to do so which you may never have thought of.

For most people, me included, we are hardwired with negative repetitions from our childhoods. We tell ourselves old stories over and over which limit our lives. “I’m not good enough”, “Life’s a struggle”, “Money doesn’t grow on trees” and so on.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could interrupt these old, negative stories of limitations and replace them instead with stories which hardwired us for abundance. Well we can! Stuart Lichtman’s Cybernetic Transposition does exactly that. You just need to do the work.

Creating A “Red Flag” For The Unconscious Mind

Have you noticed that when you buy a particular brand of car, you start seeing them everywhere. But before, you never even noticed them. This is an example of your mind focusing in on a particular thing. The same can be done with your unconscious mind through repetition of a meta story.

A meta story, as mentioned, is a rewritten scenario from your past, which is edited to be more aligned with the outcome you want – your goal. By re-rehearsing your meta story again and again, you are effectively creating a very specific target for your mind to focus on. So even when you’re not thinking about it (consciously), your subconscious mind is.

Most people will write their goals out and few times and then forget about them. This doesn’t work because your unconscious behaviours override your desire for your perfect outcome (the goal). With a meta story, you clearly communicate the desired outcome to the subconscious mind in pictures, smells, feelings and emotions.

When you do this enough, and continue to do it, the goal becomes your overriding target which sits in the background slowly but surely attracting you to it. It’s far more powerful than what most of us do with our goals: planning, struggling, working and doing things only on the outside of the equation. While you also need to do these things to achieve a particularly difficult goal or achievement, using the meta story and doing the invisible work in your mind is paramount to a successful outcome that you really want.

Access Stuart Lichtman’s book here.