Alvin Toffler said, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ”

It’s not what we don’t know that holds us back, it’s what we know but don’t do that holds us back. As I have coached many people over the years, the one commonality that successful clients have is the ability to simply be reminded of that which they already know to do. I have found that it is not that people are completely ignorant of what needs to be done, it’s that they have forgotten what needs to be done. You see, most of us already have a sense of what would take our lives, business, relationships, or projects to the next level. It’s not that we are completely lost, it’s that we are completely overwhelmed with the vortex of busyness and therefore forget what we need to do.

Let me explain…

Your conscious mind (your thinking mind) can only focus on what it is currently aware of in the moment. You can’t act on that which you are unaware of. If your conscious mind is not activated by a trigger it cannot make a decision or action. The only way for you to act on something is for you to be consciously aware of it in the moment. This is why we have to write down to do lists, otherwise we would forget what to do until we consciously thought about it. The to do list helps us bring tasks back into our conscious awareness. This is why it is of the utmost importance to have systems in place that continually keep us aware of what we need to be doing. When we learn something new, or get a new piece of information into our conscious we then store it into our subconscious mind (the library of our thought information). Only when we are consciously reminded of it do we then walk down the hallway of our mind into our subconscious library and pull out the book of information we catalogued the informatioin into. So the subconsious library remains locked up until our conscious mind is activated to unlock it. And the moment our conscious mind stops thinking about whatever it is we are thinking about, the thought gets locked back up into our subconscious library.

The whole point of what I am describing here is the process in which we make a decision and act. Again, remember we cannot act on that which we are not aware of. Therefore, if you want to make sure you are moving ahead in life, you must have a system that helps you relearn what you already know. Well…it’s not really relearn as much as it is acting on that which you already know, but the process is basically relearning or acting on something that you already knew you should have acted on…lest you forget and let the idea collect dust in the library of your subconscious mind.

Let me make this even simpler…Dr. Samuel Johnson said, “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.” Relearning what we’ve already learned is how we continue to keep our conscious mind solving problems and extracting solutions. Whatever it is that you want to keep moving forward in your life you must have a system to keep it in front of you so you don’t lose sight of it. Because the moment you lose sight of it is the moment you will stop consciously working on it. This is why you should NEVER have the mindset that you already know everything. Know-it-alls will NEVER accomplish much more than they currently are because they have no system to relearn what they’ve already learned. People that never surround themselves with more of what they already know never grow. However, highly successful people will read the same types of books again and again and again and again and again because they are relearning by keeping themselves in a conscious state of forward motion. Coach John Wooden said, “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”

Your Challenge:

Boil down everything you want to be accomplishing to the top 3 most important. Only focus on those 3 things and keep it visually in front of you at all times as your conscious mind goes to work making it happen. And for goodness sake…surround yourself with triggers that will keep your conscious mind productive at all times.