That's Not Who You Are

Do you remember the difference between the conscious and the subconscious mind? Remember that the subconscious is like a tape player always playing in the back of our minds, and that it's where our self image comes from? Another difference is that the conscious mind has the ability to perform inductive and deductive reasoning, while the subconscious can only perform deductive reasoning. In simpler terms, the conscious mind can reason from the specific to the general (inductive) and also from the general to the specific (deductive), but the subconscious can only do the latter. That is very important to understand because of where some of us grew up.

I grew up in a small town in upstate New York and there were no celebrities and there was no film and tv industry. When we saw images of Hollywood, New York, and famous people it was always on a screen. It created an "us" and "them" mentality. Those celebrities never came through the tv set or off the theater screens and into our daily lives. They were not a part of our daily reality. And our subconscious mind, with it's deductive-only reasoning ability, reasoned that we, therefore, could never be a part of their world. Our subconscious mind looked at the reality of life in upstate New York and said 'there is an invisible wall between us and them, between people from small towns and people in show business'. Our self image, therefore, became that of a person who can never be a part of their show-biz world. Even though our conscious mind knows that with hard work and luck we can work in the entertainment industry, our subconscious mind (which controls 90% of what we do) believes that we will never be a part of that world.

So begin today to tell yourself that there is no wall between us and them. Tell yourself that there is no "us" and "them". There is only "us". We are all in this together. And every one of those people working in entertainment came from some small town somewhere. Each one of them were, at one time, the most creative one in their family, in their class, in their community theater, in the college department, and so on. They gravitated to New York or LA and found a way to build the right relationships. And here we are, you and I, in New York. We've made it this far. The rest is going to be easy!