For those of you who don’t know me so well, I am a very spiritual person.

The other day, faced with a mounting sense of overwhelm, and yet another disappointment on the romantic front, I decided to get back in touch with an old acquaintance of mine. A few years ago, I trained as a Spiritual Healer and John, had been one of my tutors.

I was sharing with John how every time I met a great guy that I was attracted to, I’d just reach the point where I was thinking ‘Mmmm I would like to see a lot more of this guy’ when he would suddenly start to go quiet on me – then I’d realise it was me initiating all the contact so I’d back off to allow him to resume the chase, only to have him disappear altogether.

Why does this keep happening to me, I asked John. John shed some light on it for me:

The unconscious mind exists to fulfil our every desire. It takes the thoughts, emotions, words and actions of our conscious mind and body and seeks to bring into being all that matches. It deals in absolutes – hot or cold, black or white – it cannot handle ambiguity, it needs a clear outcome to aim for.

John got me to imagine a set of old fashioned scales. Now, picture all the negative things that have happened in past relationships as being in one pan of the scales so they are tipped over to one side completely. Then my conscious mind has created the desire for a new loving and fulfilling relationship with a great guy.   As I meet someone who interests me, all the positive experiences I have with him, all the fun, the romance etc starts to fill the other pan of the scales, and the scales start to shift.

Eventually the pans are perfectly in balance – equal amounts of negative and positive energy. To the unconscious mind this is ambiguous.  So it throws up a question, a situation to get guidance as to which way the scales should be tipping.

Just as I reached that ‘he’s great, I like where this is going’ stage, my scales were in perfect balance. So my unconscious mind created the situation where there was some uncertainty (the guy starting to go quiet) to get some feedback from me as to which way to move the scales.

I then started to worry that things were going wrong,  so my unconscious mind (which is there to fulfil the desires of the conscious mind) took that as a signal that I wanted the negative outcome that I’d had previously – so through a combination of the situation and my reaction to it, that’s what I kept getting.

Now that I understand that better, I can be more aware and when my unconscious mind sends me a challenge to test which way I want the scales to tip, I can ensure that I give it a very clear, resounding and unambiguous sign.

I guess the same applies in business – we set off on a course of action only to hit a hurdle. Too often, we give up and resign ourselves to the ‘I knew it wouldn’t work’ self-recrimination. Perhaps by understanding that we are just at that tipping point where our efforts are about to move us from past failure to future success will ensure that we keep going and send a clear message back to our unconscious mind – Success Please!!