LESSON THREE
EXPERIENCE PRIMING
WHY IT WORKS
Research has demonstrated the existence of several independent unconscious guidance systems: perceptual, evaluative, and motivational. From this perspective actions of an unconscious mind precede the arrival of a conscious mind - action precedes reflection.*
By creating experience moments of input from your conscious mind, your subconscious mind can be trained to recognize and create future subconscious action.
Experience priming uses situation or word targets to create experience pathways. Once created, they trigger without conscious intervention. It as an internal automation.
As you implement all three lessons in combination, during your day be alert for new responses, actions, and behaviors where old actions once occurred. It will surprise you.
NIH, "The Unconscious Mind", John A Bargh and Ezequiel Morsella
HOW TO START
For this section you should consider keeping a journal and writing down what you uncover. There are two types of experience priming, situation or word priming.
Situation priming is thinking about a situation, a moment, an action, and bringing a new result into the priming. Athletes do this by visualizing competitive moments and plays. They visualize how it's going to happen and the result.
Word priming is thinking about a character trait or word which will direct future action bringing a new result into the priming.
WHAT TO DO
To begin priming your subconscious, after you ground yourself breathing and connecting your senses, bring into your mind a situation or a defining word.
The defining word should always be positive and you should say, "I am <the word>". As an example, "I am confident".
If situational, think about the situation. As an example, an upcoming meeting or conversation.
When you have it, go to the next step.
Experience Priming
With your word or situation, begin to think about how it will feel when the word or situation happens. It's a rehearsal. Rehearse it in your mind. Be in that moment and think about your senses.
As an example, if it's a conversation. How would it feel to be calm, how would it feel to be clear, what would that be like? Think about how you'll convey your communication effectively. Visualize it.
If it's a word, how would you feel? If the word is confident, how would that feel? Would you be relaxed? Would your body be postured differently? See it in your mind, how would your body feel, how would you look at the world differently?
These are experience-based moments. Connecting the moment with senses feeds your subconscious a new routine and it begins looking for ways to bring it into action - automatically.
PUTTING IT TOGETHER
Begin,
1) Heart breath
2) Feel your senses
3) Find your word/situation
Experience it, be in it, be in the outcome. What will it be like for it to be different, regardless of the situation. How will you be different? An actor, not a spectator. Active, not passive.
BUILDING ON IT
As you become more familiar with practicing My Daily Method, you can expand on it. Add more words, more situations, building it into something that works for you.
After each time, be on the look out. Your conscious brain will pick up on moments where things are - different. Your responses are - different, aligned.
REAL WORLD EXAMPLE
One of our case studies performed word priming for 30 days. During their routine they would say, "I am patient". Not, "I want to be patient", or "I wish I was patient". No - "I am patient". And while thinking about that, they visualized scenarios where they are patient where they were not in the past. They thought about how it would feel and what they would do different.
Surprising to the case study, the next time a situation arose where their patience was put to the test, their subconscious responded with patience they had not had before. It was a trained automatic reaction. Their conscious mind realized the new response. accepted it, and used the new patience to listen more intently, and be more present.
This is the power of experience priming and training your subconscious.
YOU ARE READY FOR FINAL GUIDANCE
Now that you have all three components, review our final guidance and notes from our experience working with My Daily Method