When you think of a large cruise ship and the way that it’s run. Who runs the ship, the captain or the crew?
If you’re like most people you would say the captain….. and you’d be wrong. As you think about all the things that need to be done on the ship, keeping the engines running, taking care of all the wants and needs of the passengers, the entertainment, the food preparation, the cleaning, the navigation, the weather and all the moment by moment decisions that must happen in order to make the ship work; there is no way that the captain could be personally involved in even 2% of those decisions.
If the captain were to get caught up in things like deciding when the ships engine is due for an oil change or deciding what seasoning is going to be on the fish dinner tonight or the brand of glass cleaner used to wash the windows then the ship couldn’t function. There’s absolutely no way the captain would be able to be involved with all that stuff AND make the important decisions that need to be made in order to get the ship safely where it needs to go.
Therefore instead of making those decisions himself, he communicates his goals and objectives to the crew and leaves it to the crew to get it done. The result is that the captain gives the orders but crew runs virtually everything on the ship.
Now let me ask you a few questions.
What happens when the captain does not provide clear direction?
What happens when the captain fails to properly train the crew?
What happens when the crew doesn’t respect the captain?
Is the captain going to get poor or unsatisfactory results? You bet he is!
Is the captain going to get anxious and stressed? Is he going to be unhappy?
What happens when the captain gets so upset and starts beating on his crew for not getting the results, he never told the crew he wanted??
You get mutiny right, the crew rebels against the captain. And let me assure you if you've ever experienced mutiny, the ship's going where the crew wants to take it regardless of what the captain wants.
You work the same way. Your conscious or logical mind is the captain and your unconscious mind is the crew.
It is your conscious’s job to set objectives and train the unconscious on how to properly run your life.
It is the conscious’s job to notice the results the unconscious is producing and refocusing or retraining the unconscious if it is not getting the desired results.
And It is the unconscious job to reach those objectives without unnecessarily disturbing the you the captain.
If you’re not getting the results you want, if you’re stressed or anxious trading or if you continually find yourself doing things you don’t want to do, your crew is out of rapport with it’s captain, and it’s time for a change.
John Locke
This article originally appeared at lockeinyoursuccess.com.
