The article is part of a master's thesis on the topic "Radical reform in education - individuality instead of unification" in Pedagogy to acquire the qualification "Teacher of Economic Disciplines" at IU - Varna, protected with Excellent

The mass obsession today is for every child to graduate from university. Children are subjected to comparative tests, entrance interviews and all sorts of other competitive methods from a young age. If the child does not get into the right kindergarten, he loses a chance to get into the right school afterwards. Therefore, education is primarily aimed at children and young people. And that is totally wrong.

Early in life we accumulate educational resources. But with age, they decrease. Today's language teacher hardly remembers all the physics formulas from school. In the last year of high school, almost everyone is vee with half a tank of knowledge. And there aren't many places to recharge along the way. The main mistake today is that education is preparation for the future. About what happens next. And it should help people connect with the present.

The other glaring error in today's education is the hierarchy of disciplines in school. At the top are mathematics and languages, followed by the exact sciences, then comes the turn of the humanities, and the arts remain at the bottom. A misguided cliché is superimposed that some disciplines are more important and more useful than others. But for whom? Today, academic achievements are mandatory to call a person successful. Students who go on to university are considered more successful than those who go on to a vocational qualification. Many intelligent people spent their years in school believing that they were not. At the same time, people with academic abilities recognized by the system have failed to develop their other gifts.

The mistake is in the way of thinking. When the mind believes and perceives, the body achieves. Science proves it. Success starts working first in our head, through the RAS - reticular activating system. These are actually a group of nerve fibers located in the brain stem. RAS is involved in many of the body's important functions - sleeping, walking, heartbeat, breathing, behavioral communication. It also contributes to appetite and eating, control over attention and directing the mind to certain matters. In the case of RAS injuries, a person may fall into a coma. The RAS is the command center of the mind. It is where our thoughts and feelings meet, as well as external influences. Everything we see, feel, hear or taste goes through the ASD. Simply put, the ASC is the main brain center for our motivation.

The primary function of this system is to sort through the millions of bits of information that flood our brains on a daily basis. There, the information is filtered and only what is important to us is extracted. As in an office - incoming information is evaluated and prioritized. The ASC is the filter between the conscious mind that gives instructions to the subconscious mind. The mind then commands the body to make physical activity necessary. The system scans the environment for information patterns that match our knowledge or beliefs. Then it connects our thoughts and feelings with familiar patterns and the mind receives a signal.

We've all heard incredible stories about faith. Sometimes she is capable of bending even the laws of physics. But we all believe in different things, sometimes contradictory. Regardless of what we believe and what we think, our ASD pays more attention to it. It filters out the rest of the information and helps us arrive at what we choose to believe. This is why some people believe things that are not true. And that is why the same situation is perceived by some as an opportunity, and by others as a difficulty. It is not by chance that in the Chinese language the word "crisis" is composed of two characters. One means "danger" and the other means "opportunity". We feel about an event what we think it means. Therefore, both the belief system and our faith determine whether our ASD works for us or against us. Whether we're asleep or awake, ASD finds exactly what we've told it, just like a search engine on a computer. If we believe that we can only earn our money through hard and persistent work, we will only see information that confirms this. The system will filter out the other information because we set it up that way. Or let's say we decide to buy a new car and have already chosen a model and brand. And walking down the street, we begin to notice many more cars of this brand than before. This is because RAS excludes information about other cars because we are already thinking specifically about this one. The good news is that we can program our ASD ourselves. We just have to learn to send her the right messages, and consciously. This is how we will create our own reality.

The reason many people fail in life is because they haven't decided what they want. Another reason is that early in life, ASD is programmed by adults, particularly parents. While children are young, they hear the same phrases all the time: "Shame on you", "Be obedient", "You are a bad child", etc. And when these children enter puberty, the spontaneity and dreams they had as children are already lost. Because someone reprogrammed them. And at the end of their adolescence, they are already doing what adults want them to do. They marry the "right" person, even if they don't love him, they go to a university their parents prefer... They take the sensible, safe route and feel unsatisfied for the rest of their lives. Even those who seem to have succeeded: a middle-aged man, a famous lawyer working in a prestigious law firm, financially secure...but not happy. And in the eyes of most people, he would seem ungrateful to life and fate. Actually, he wanted to become a doctor. Or a photographer who travels the world, or a teacher who works for a low salary but loves to deal with children. Let's let our children decide for themselves what they want from life. Because what's the point of climbing the ladder of success if you lean it against the wrong wall? Living up to other people's expectations and being unhappy just doesn't make sense.

For something to happen, whatever it is, we just have to start it. First we decide WHAT we want. Not HOW, but exactly WHAT. If we immediately start thinking about how it will happen, it is better not to start at all. When he makes that decision, it becomes embedded in our minds. Then our RAS will begin to filter the huge flow of information and find an answer to how to make things happen. We will find an answer how to achieve the goal and the ways will come by themselves.

We have often heard the trite phrase "Make a list of the things you want". However, it makes a lot of sense. When we read a newspaper, we don't remember everything written inside. Our system filters only what we think about and we mostly see articles related to our ideas and thoughts. If we like gardening but are not interested in sports, when we open the newspaper, we will much more quickly notice an article about chrysanthemums than about United's latest victory. That's why the "What I want" list is important. When we write, we focus and start thinking about the things we want. Our ASD gets programmed and soon we start to notice and find information related to things on the list. It is important to think primarily about WHAT we want. Let's leave the ways to achieve it to RAS. The first step is to write the list – by hand! "I don't know what I want" - we have often heard this, even in our own thoughts. It's actually not that complicated. We just have to answer one question: what would we do with great pleasure even without getting paid, but we can do it and get paid? When we are able to answer this, then we have discovered our life's mission.

Many people claim that they cannot make enough to support themselves doing what they love. However, if they make it a goal written on the list, ASD will find a way. If we don't know exactly what profession we want to practice, but we like to communicate with people and help them, the system will suggest us. When we want something with our whole being and materialize it through words on paper, it just happens. Usually, any activity is perceived as work. This is a very wrong approach. A "job" is a temporary way to pay the bills while we pursue our passion. Or it's something we do while we want to do something else. So why not turn our passion into a way to pay the bills?

Let's ask ourselves two questions: what do we want to do for free and what are we working on now. If the answers are different, then it's time for a change. It's time to start waking up with the excitement of doing what we like and it brings us income. However, let's write down the goals we really want. And not to settle for the best of what we see.

People are motivated by two things - to gain benefits or to avoid losses. For some purposes it is both. First of all, we need to determine the amount of goals. A goal is anything that motivates us and that we want to achieve. And here we are not talking about good and bad goals, because they depend on the value system of each person. The goal should be clear and specific. "To be rich someday" is not a goal. So we don't set specifics, and the RAS won't be able to filter the right information to make that happen. However, if we say, "Five years from now, at the end of the summer, I will have a net income of 100,000 a year and no debt," the RAS will go into opportunity-hunting mode. "Owning a nice home" is also not a goal, even if we set a deadline. Because "nice" is a very relative term. however, if the program is a "three-story house with a pool", this is already a goal. For the achievement of the goal, its direction is also important. Is it positive or negative. It is good to include more positive words when writing our wishes. As humans, we tend to define our goals with a negative image. However, ASD only sees positive images and cannot imagine something that it does not see. Therefore, we cannot achieve a goal with a negative focus. And here we are not talking about morality, but about the way of arrangement and types of words. There's a big difference between "I won't eat much" and "I'll eat less" when programming our brains. With the second, success is much more likely.

Positively stated goals create motivational images in the mind. Unlike targets presented negatively – they do not create any images. Let's imagine what we want. And so that we feel it physically (for example, I want to be a famous singer, I imagine how I sing and the audience is ecstatic). If we succeed, then it is embedded in us and we can achieve it.

According to some studies, clear goals lead to good health and prolong life. At first glance, this seems ridiculous. However, scientists have found that when a person sets a clear and specific goal, they live longer, no matter when they set it. It's like a defense mechanism. We have a set program and ASD goes into a mode that keeps us safe so we can do what we have programmed. Therefore, the sooner we start the goal formulation process, the sooner we will trigger the defense mechanism.

Unfortunately, there are few people who, on their deathbed, are satisfied with the life they had. Here are the five most common regrets of the dying: that they had been happier, that they had not cut off friends, that they had expressed their feelings, that they had not worked as hard, and that they had lived the life they wanted (instead of do what is expected of them). As we simplify our lifestyles and make conscious choices, we'll likely find that we don't need such a high income. By creating more space in our lives, we become happier and more open to new possibilities. And they are a prerequisite for a new, better life. There are two types of people. The former have ten years of experience, and the latter only one, repeated ten times. The former achieve much more in their lives. They live longer and have more fun.

Many people think, or rather expect, that achieving a goal is a straight line path. Possibly with only a few bumps. But the truth is different. On the way to the goal there are turns, chasms, steep hills, traps... It happens that, walking on the road to the goal, we find that it is not what we want so much. and then we do something else. We often don't realize how we feel about a goal until we are committed to it. So when we make the initial list, let it include more things. Most people, if they have a goal at all, have one goal. Two at most. And if things don't work out, they despair. And they keep doing what they don't like. If they have a list of ten goals, when the first and second don't work, they'll have eight more to try. And they will stay positive. One of the main obstacles for a person to achieve his goals is the environment. But not the natural one, but the human one. To be truly happy, let's focus on ourselves. Let WE figure out what we want, how we want it and at what pace. And not to strive only to live up to the expectations of others or to compete with their achievements.

Why do others bother us? The answers are many. Our loved ones are worried that we won't get hurt. Those around us decide that we are competition, because they themselves do not have the strength to fix their lives. And they begin to distract us from our goals… or at least they try to. Whether they succeed is up to us. In such cases, it is good to surround ourselves with like-minded people. Because we can only gain positive experience from them. People who haven't had to live with the results of their decisions don't make good counselors. Of course, we cannot ignore them all. We can thank them for their concern and simply continue on the path we have mapped out for ourselves. The simple technique to resist the "brakes" is to simply agree that these people are entitled to an opinion, however unfounded.

© 2023 Iliana Dechkova