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By Bill Harris, Centerpointe Research Institute
    [Page 2 - also see Page 1]

Your Internal Map, your life script, is not set in stone.

You can, with a little effort, rewrite it, or even give up living a pre-scripted life and instead create an intentional life.

As Dr. Eric Berne, the creator of Transactional Analysis and a pioneer in script theory once said, “You can close the old show, and put a new one on the road.” 

You do this by learning how your Internal Map works, and noticing what it is currently creating. Next, you notice previously unnoticed choices, notice which are the most resourceful, and begin to exercise them.

If your Internal Map of Reality is operating under your conscious and intentional control, you can actually change it on the fly.

In doing so, you can generate any result you want.  These three things—how you feel, how you behave, and the people and situations you attract into your life — determine most of what happens to you.

Yes, genetics plays a role, and, yes, there are random acts in the world. And, other people are acting (though usually unconsciously) with their agenda, which may conflict with yours. 

Even so, once you take charge of your Internal Map and learn to operate it consciously and intentionally, genetics, random acts, and the potentially conflicting  desires and actions of other people become, in almost every case, a non-factor.

When you take charge of your Internal Map of Reality, you find a way to overcome any problems of genetics, you avoid the people and situations that might thwart your intentions, and you find ways to avoid most negative random acts, and turn  the others into opportunities. 

WHAT YOU FOCUS ON, YOU CREATE 

A fundamental characteristic of your Internal Map is its ability to determine what you pay attention to (and also, as a result, what you disregard, overlook, or delete  from your attention).

What you pay attention to supplies the “raw  material” used to generate feelings,  behaviors, meanings, decisions, and other aspects of your moment-by-moment experience of life. 

On the other hand, you cannot use what you are unaware of to create your life.

In a practical sense, it doesn’t exist. If you are unaware of a possibility, it doesn’t exist. If you are unaware of certain information, or certain people, neither are available to you.

What you pay attention to exercises a powerful effect on what happens in your life. 

If how you pay attention happens automatically, because your Internal Map is running on autopilot, your choices are limited.

If, however, you can intentionally pay attention to that which helps you create what you want, you can create any internal state and any external result. 

Why is paying attention, and what you pay attention to, so powerful? 

Research indicates that when you repeatedly focus attention in a certain way (for instance, when you repeatedly focus your attention on an idea, a feeling, a meaning, or an outcome you want), or when we repeatedly take certain actions (as when we practice or rehearse a certain skill), the brain actually devotes additional neural real estate to noticing, processing, and actualizing that idea, feeling, meaning, outcome, or skill. 

This leads to a rather startling conclusion: what you repeatedly place your attention on, you tend to create in reality.

What is more, in the midst of an infinitely complex and often confusing world, with billions of other people setting out to attain ends which may often conflict with yours—the one and only thing you really have complete and total control over is how you focus your attention, what you focus it on.

(This  was the message of the popular film, The Secret. Unfortunately, The Secret  implied that focusing your mind is all you need to do, that creating what you want is somehow magic. As we will see, focusing your attention on what you want is a crucial first step, but there is much more involved.) 

The part of the brain involved in the finger dexterity a concert pianist needs to play Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, as well as the part of the brain that allows her to make the minute auditory distinctions that enable her to play it well, are many times larger than the same parts of the brain in persons who have never practiced the piano or received musical training.

By repeatedly focusing attention in a certain way, and by repeatedly taking certain  actions, the concert pianist develops what seem to the rest of us to be almost magical powers. 

This mechanism works for more than motor skills or auditory distinctions, though.

Whenever we repeatedly pay attention to something, it grabs additional brain real estate, and as this happens we become better at it.

This is true whether our focus involves feelings, actions, or any other human activity. 

Scientists recently studied Buddhist monks, some of whom had spent up to 50,000 hours practicing a special meditation designed to increase feelings of loving kindness and compassion.

The part of the brain that generates such feelings was many times larger in these monks than in persons who had never meditated, and, as a result, these monks actually are more compassionate. 

The simple—and perhaps  obvious—truth is that when you repeatedly focus your attention or repeatedly practice doing something—mentally, emotionally, or physically—you get better at it. 

Once you learn how your Internal Map of Reality works, and practice choosing how to operate each part of it, you will become a master of your mind.

As this happens, the parts of your brain that intentionally create how you feel and behave, and that intentionally attract or become attracted to certain people and  situations, will become increasingly better at doing so.

In that way, you can master your life. 

If, on the other hand, your method of determining what to pay attention to continues to operate automatically, without intentional choice on your part — if you continue to automatically pay attention in the same way, to the same things — your brain will continue to devote more neural real estate to paying attention  unconsciously, and you’ll continue to create your life on autopilot, for better or worse.

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Centerpointe’s Life Principles  Integration Process (LPIP) is a step-by-step method for mastering your Internal Map of Reality. To experience a free preview lesson, visit the site: Centerpointe Research Institute.

From the Institute newsletter MINDCHATTER, July 2007.

Bill Harris is a Certified Trainer of Neuro Linguistic Programming and is trained in Ericksonian Hypnosis. He is a long time student of contemporary psychology, quantum mechanical physics, the evolution of non-linear systems (chaos theory) and the effects of a wide range of neurotechnologies on human change, evolution and healing.

He is a founding member of the Transformational Leadership Council started by Chicken Soup for the Soul author Jack Canfield, and is founder and director of Centerpointe Research Institute.

Also see more articles by Bill Harris and free online course led by Bill Harris: The Masters of The Secret.

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