If you have a high PSI, then you received more (or better quality) positive strokes than negative.
If you have a low PSI, then you received more (or stronger) negative strokes than positive.
I will now tell you something which is very important:
These strokes have far more effect upon your PSI when you are younger than when you are
older. (By 'older' I mean over about twelve!) Remember also that strokes are stored away
subconsciously, so you don't have much access to them via your conscious mind.
Positive and negative strokes started to accumulate when you were born (some would argue
before). As a baby you immediately started to store away feelings about your own self-worth
(PSI- belief), depending upon how your parents handled you and spoke to you. If they spoke
softly and were kind, loving and gentle, then your PSI started to increase. On the other hand, if
they were rough and unkind, your PSI started to decrease.
In the real world, few babies are either loved absolutely, or continually brutalised, so you
probably received a mixture of positive and negative strokes depending on the stress-levels of
your parents! Hopefully you received far more positive than negative, but if it was the other way
round, then you were off to a bad start with a pronounced NSI.
The process didn’t stop there. As you grew up into a toddler and learnt to speak, you started to
be bombarded with messages intended to alter your PSI one way or another.
Wait a minute! Surely the PSI is not affected by messages like these because it is in the
subconscious and the subconscious doesn’t speak or understand English?
11
That's right! It is not really affected by the content of the message (although the I-CAN is!), but it is affected by the emotional tone of the message. Put simply, the words are not important, it is the way they are said which affects the PSI.
The Power of Emotional Tone
For example, you could say really softly, gently and lovingly to a one-year-old: “I wish you
would go and jump in the pond and drown, I can't stand the sight of you!” The chances are that
the child would smile sweetly back at you.
Alternatively, you could yell loudly and angrily at the same child: “I think a banana is a yellow
skinned fruit and I’m going to eat one NOW!” and no doubt it would burst into tears and
become very upset.
The content was unimportant, it was the emotional tone which had the effect.
I will now tell you something surprising: Even when you are old enough to understand language
it is still the emotional tone of the message which affects your PSI-level and not the content.
(The content affects your I-CAN level but we will be discussing that in the next chapter.)
Let me give you some examples:
Danny is four years old and very pleased with the model boat he has just made. He toddles up to
Daddy and proudly displays his handiwork.
Daddy says in a flat monotone without looking up from his paper: “That's really very good
Danny, well done.” Danny feels dejected and toddles off to play by himself.
Although the content was correct, the emotional tone did not support it! The emotional tone
said: “I don't care about you, I'm far more interested in my newspaper.” And this was the
message received and filed away in Danny's subconscious where the PSI is stored.
Score minus-ten for Danny's PSI-belief!
How about this though? Danny toddles up with his model boat and shows it to Dad. Dad puts
down the paper, takes the boat, admires it, smiles broadly at Danny then gives him a great big
hug. ALL WITHOUT SAYING A WORD!
Danny goes away glowing with pride, even though the verbal content of the exchange was zero!
Score plus-ten for Danny's PSI-belief!
The messages received between birth and about five years old play a major part in determining
your present level of PSI-belief. I would estimate that these messages formulated over half of
your PSI belief, and that the remainder came as a result of all the years since!
If at least half of your PSI-belief was formed before you were five, is it any wonder that you
cannot access it via your conscious mind? It is there nevertheless and it controls your life as
effectively as a puppet-master controls a puppet.
School Days
When you went to school you opened yourself up to an absolute barrage of messages, a great
many of which affected your PSI-belief.
Even here though, the content didn’t really affect your PSI-belief, but the emotional tone certainly did.
Supposing your mathematics mistress took you to one side and said to you very kindly:
“Although you have a lively and inquiring mind, and despite the fact that you’ve tried really
hard this year, I feel that maths is probably not the subject for you. However, your many other
abilities outweigh this and I have suggested to the headmistress that you be allowed to join the
fourth year Latin class.”
12
The content of this message is a bit of a downer. She is effectively saying that you are useless at maths, and this will be noted by the I-CAN. However, she has not really affected your feeling of
self-worth because her emotional tone suggested that she liked you, and that you were a really
worthwhile person.
Contrast this with the same treatment your friend receives at the hand of the dreaded Mr
Masters: “Pay attention Jones, you disgusting, snivelling little creep! Just because you're top of
the class and get every answer right, doesn't give a smart-ass like you permission to dream your
worthless life away staring through the window!”
A little extreme perhaps, but the content was effectively telling Jones that he was really good at maths! (and this will be noted by his I-CAN), however, how do you think the message affected
his PSI? Badly! His PSI-belief only heard the emotional tone of the exchange, which effectively told Jones that he was not a worthwhile person, and that the master despised and loathed him.
His PSI-belief will be greatly reduced if exposed to too much of this type of treatment -
particularly if it is being re-enforced in his home life.
Out of School
As we grow up and mature, we become somewhat less sensitive to direct assaults on our PSI-
belief. (As I said earlier, a large part of your PSI-belief is formed before the age of five.)
For example, if you were involved in a car accident and an offended party started waving his
fists and saying things like:
“Your sort shouldn't be allowed on the road you moron!”, it is unlikely that you would allow
this to affect your PSI-level. You would (hopefully) be mature enough to make allowances for
circumstances.
However, a great deal of PSI-damage can be done by a process called 'discounting'. Put simply,
anything which discounts you as a human being is likely to decrease your PSI-level. Two trivial
examples will suffice - I'm sure we have all experienced these, or something like them:
You are waiting to get served at a crowded bar. Your turn comes and goes, but no matter what
you do the barman seems to ignore you, (although he serves several people on either side of
you).
You may easily feel discounted and worthless because the implied message is: “All these people
are more important than you, you're worthless.”
Or: You are waiting in a queue, (a peculiarly British pastime), when someone pushes in front of
you. Again you feel very upset; not because you have to wait a little longer but because you
received the message: “You're so worthless I'm not even going to acknowledge your presence.”
Too many of these situations without the compensating positive strokes can cause a gradual
decrease in an otherwise mature person's PSI-level.
It is very important that you understand that PSI is a dynamic, changing thing and is affected by
daily positive and negative strokes.
EVEN THE MOST RUGGED PSI WOULD
CRUMBLE IF DEPRIVED OF POSITIVE
STROKES FOR TOO LONG, OR EXPOSED TO
NEGATIVE STROKES REPEATEDLY.
No person is an island unto themselves. For example, if someone with a really high PSI were to
find themselves in solitary confinement, say in a prison camp where they were being continually
13
brutalised, and without access to positive strokes (e.g. other prisoners), it would be an
alarmingly short time before their PSI level was reduced to nothing. This extreme example
should serve as a reminder to us that we have to continually maintain our PSI-belief.
I was very excited when I first realised that PSI-belief was central to achieving success, because
up until that point I had blamed external factors for my lack of achievement. Of course these
external factors (lack of money, bad luck) being external were out of my control. If they were
out of my control I couldn't do anything about improving my situation could I? I wasn't to
blame! I could happily carry on moaning about my bad fortune, complaining about my lack of
abilities, talents or money and starting every other sentence with “If only....” After all, what
could I do about it?
When I realised that PSI-belief was the real controlling factor and that all the other things which
I had blamed were minor by comparison to this, it was as though I had suddenly woken up. The
shock of realisation was quite a powerful and liberating experience. It is my sincere hope that
through this report, you will come to have this experience yourself.
I was still puzzled by one thing though.
Why does our subconscious mind prevent us from achieving all the good things which we
deserve? It seemed to me to be plainly stupid that a part of your mind could plot in secret
against another part to stop us from being happy! I could understand it if it were the other way
round, for example if the subconscious mind prevented you from smoking, drinking or taking
drugs because it knew that these things would harm you! But the very reverse is true. Many
people do some or all of these things knowing that they WILL be harmed!
The Pay-off
The mind does not do things without a reason. It has not evolved to act in a haphazard fashion.
Every ‘brain circuit’ evolved for a specific survival reason. There has to be a 'pay-off' for all
behaviour, EVEN NEGATIVE BEHAVIOUR.
The 'pay-off' for positive behaviour was obvious to me. We indulge ourselves in good food and
drink and we wear nice clothes, because these things feel good and have very few negative
effects.
I could also just about understand the 'pay-off' for physically harmful things like smoking and
drug taking. Obviously the instant pleasure was a stronger influence than the spectre of some
possible future health problem.
What I could not understand, for a long time, was why the subconscious should seek to prevent
us from achieving something good which had no (obvious) negative effects. Why should our
lack of PSI make us act in a way which was guaranteed to make you fail, hence make you feel
more miserable and worthless and thereby reinforce your NSI? It seemed like a vicious circle
with no obvious reason or 'pay-off'.
A behavioural psychologist could easily have answered my question for me, but at the time I
didn't realise this. I had to study psychology before I found the answer.
The answer I found may surprise you; it certainly amazed me!
Put very simply, I believe the answer to be this: The subconscious mind doesn't really care a fig
for our 'happiness' as such.
The subconscious mind couldn’t care less about your goals, ambitions and dreams. It is
really not interested in your plans to become a millionaire or your ambitions to run your own chain of designer clothes shops. All these things are as illusory to the subconscious mind as
your dreams are to your conscious mind!
The subconscious mind views the conscious mind as a whirlpool of thoughts, ambitions, hopes,
half-formed ideas and sensory data and doesn’t pay much attention to the detail - it finds it
confusing.
14
Similarly, the conscious mind views the subconscious mind as a whirlpool of images, feelings
emotions and dreams and finds it equally confusing and nebulous.
I was now on the trail of something big. If the subconscious mind doesn't give a damn about our
'success' or 'lack of success', (two extremely difficult and ‘intellectual’ concepts for the
subconscious mind to grasp anyway), what does it care about?
Physical World View
The answer is SURVIVAL. Or, more accurately, holding on to a coherent world-view. That's a
bit of a mouthful, but what it really means is that the subconscious is desperately trying to
make sense of the external world and your place in it, and having made a certain amount
of sense, it likes to cling on to that picture.
Furthermore, IT DOESN'T LIKE CHANGING ITS BELIEF IN THE WAY THE WORLD IS!
No sir, not one little bit! It doesn't mind making the odd little adjustment to the picture; a little tweak to the edges here and there to keep the picture in line with the facts, but it hates making any major changes.
Why is this?
Because the World View, which you painstakingly pieced together in your very early years, is
an essential survival tool. Without a consistent World View you are doomed.
Your World View tells you that a floor in a room is likely to support you as you walk across it
and not turn to jelly. It tells you that most people are friendly and are unlikely to suddenly attack you unprovoked.
It tells you that rain will not kill you but that electricity might. It tells you that you can drink water but not bleach. It tells you ten thousand similar things.
If you had to work these things out for yourself every time you encountered them, you could not
possibly survive. It's hard enough surviving your first electric shock or brush with fire! And
remember, our minds did not evolve to live as we do today. They evolved to live in a
Pleistocene Wilderness, circa 4 million to 100,000 years ago.
The Mental Jigsaw
There are thousands upon thousands of pieces to this jigsaw puzzle which the subconscious
mind painstakingly put together, through bitter and painful experience, to comprise a ‘jig-saw’
picture of the world and how you fit into it. It was hard-won!
Because this picture is so hard-won and required real effort to construct, the subconscious
mind is very reluctant to change large, firmly established pieces of the main puzzle.
Unlike real jigsaw puzzles, the World View picture is growing all the time as you find out new
things about the world around you, but at your age, these are changes to the edges of the puzzle and are quite minor; they do not affect the main body of the picture.
For example, you might watch a TV documentary on fashion trends in the young and thereby
expand your World View to include the possibility that short skirts were back in fashion. But if
another documentary told you that all dolphins were actually robots from Venus you would
strongly suspect a spoof!
The first example involved a change only to the periphery of your World View jigsaw, so you
were willing to accept it, but the second example threatened a change to some of your central
pieces, so your subconscious mind rejected it.
Changing the Puzzle
15
What happens if you try to change several of the central pieces of the puzzle?
The answer is that the subconscious mind will respond strongly with FEAR and RESISTANCE
to the change. It will ask the conscious mind to examine the data again and again to see if the
change is real, or whether it can be squeezed into the existing World View.
It will effectively ‘ask’ (in strictly emotional language): “ARE YOU REALLY SURE ABOUT
THIS???”
If the change is a really big one then a mental breakdown could result, such is the strength of the
subconscious resistance to changes in the main body of the picture! Remember your survival
depends on having a coherent world-view. This is not trivial stuff.
For example: Supposing you walked into a room and saw a man sitting in the lotus position
suspended a foot above the floor. This event would seriously undermine a major piece of your
World View puzzle. (The piece which says that people cannot defy gravity without artificial
means such as stage magician’s tricks.)
Your first response would be shock. Shock at such a basic piece of the jigsaw being violated.
The conscious mind would attempt to change the World View of the subconscious mind by
saying: “Look, a floating man!” The subconscious mind would respond with, “NO WAY!”
Such would be the reluctance of the subconscious mind to change the World View, that it would
insist upon the conscious mind examining the facts very carefully again.
So you would dutifully examine every detail of the floating man. You would check carefully for
ropes or wires, mirrors or other foul means of deception. Then you would pass this summarised
data back to the subconscious mind; effectively saying, “Sorry, but it really is a floating man!”
The subconscious mind would still refuse to accept this, and certainly would NOT start to alter
the basic World View. It would suggest that the conscious mind look yet again! It must be a
joke, surely? Or a trick; yes, someone was playing a trick! It wasn't a real man, probably a
hydrogen-filled balloon in the shape of a man, or a hologram, or a dream...
In short, the subconscious would try anything, no matter how wild, to convince itself that what was being experienced could be fitted into the existing World View. It would FIGHT and
SCREAM and KICK against making any alterations to that World View.
If, despite everything, the conscious mind could find no trickery, deception or illusion; would
the subconscious then grudgingly accept that men could, under certain circumstances, float? NO
WAY! NOT A CHANCE! Instead, you would run out of the room screaming with terror!
Anything rather than change such a basically-held belief.
Later on, you would go over the incident and think up some ‘logical’ explanation for the event;
something you had missed at the time, some reasonable method which would account for what
you had seen. It was probably a publicity stunt; the man must have been supported somehow,
after all, it was no different to those conjurors on the television, they were always doing things
like that weren't they? Aha! I bet it was powerful magnets! I never thought of that… yes, that
must have been it. Magnets. Phew!
When you had seized upon an explanation, no matter how bizarre, your subconscious would
breathe a big sigh of relief at not having to change the World View! Everything would be back
to normal, it could relax.
Obviously the World View can, and does change. The subconscious is not set in concrete!
However, pieces of the jigsaw which are considered central to the basic picture on the ‘box lid’
of life require a great deal of effort to change. Other pieces of lesser importance require less
effort to change.
The Black Polar Bear
For example, all polar bears are white. You know that, I know that. If you saw one which was
totally black you would look at it for some time and try to evaluate it. Eventually you would be
16
prepared to consider the possibility that black polar bears do exist, but this change is unlikely to cause you major problems. Why? Because it integrates with your other knowledge (world
view). Sure, you’ve never seen or heard of a black polar bear, but what do you know about
colour and animals? It’s pretty unspecific, right? There are black swans and white swans, albino
crows and suchlike, so this is unusual, but not totally bizarre.
I have told you a little about how the subconscious mind likes to build a physical picture of the
world around it. This is essential if you are to survive. However, in addition to building a nice,
cosy picture of the physical world around you, the subconscious mind also likes to build another
picture which is equally as powerful.
This is the picture of WHO you are and HOW you fit into the society and environment around
you. It is this facet of the World View which is important to our discussions.
Here is something very interesting:
The subconscious mind works in exactly the same way when it comes to defending its
views about who you are and what you are, as it does to defending its picture of how the