Orion Nebula's biggest stars
In recent days I have been thinking more about how to set goals and especially performance goals and the process of supporting and reaching them.
Yesterday I had one of those memorable and inspirational experiences that I want to capture and share. The story of the Hubble space telescope was showing at the local Imax theater in 3D, and I went with two friends to see it.
The pictures were breathtaking and the story was dramatic and inspiring. Of course I had heard the newscasts at the time and thought the story was an interesting one. But the movie provides more of a sense of immediacy and reality.
I remembered afterward that the unconscious mind can’t tell whether what it is seeing is real or imagined. Only the conscious mind knows that it is in a theater watching a movie. No wonder I was on the edge of my seat during the difficult and dangerous mission!
The beauty and magnificence of creation is beyond me to describe. The telescope provides pictures of galaxies millions of light years away. Even so the extent of it is unimaginable. Seeing stars being created and stars in their decline, planets with their suns and moons spinning and moving all in their own orbits is awesome. We could see our own Milky Way and within it our planet Earth, a beautiful and unique life-sustaining orb, suspended.
In all that vastness there is what I would describe as a divine order. A sense of those billions of stars and planets having a life span and a place in the universe. Laws of some kind governing their orbits and their travels in relation to the others. (What keeps them from careening into each other more often than they do?). I can’t believe this is some random series of events that just showed up.
And although it is a common hope and fantasy that we will discover another planet similar to ours, capable of sustaining life as we know it, there is no sign of it. As far as we know, we are IT. There was a reminder that we must care for, heal and sustain this one place that sustains us.
The other big impression that I was left with was the power of the human beings who created and completed the missions of the Hubble. The newscasts showed us pictures and stories of the brave crew members who are blasting off to complete the missions. What the movie shows is the vast cast of supporting members who were helping them train, developing the technology, building and refining the equipment, even dressing them before launch. I think the figure was 10,000 people and 10,000 hours to achieve the goals that made Hubble possible.
And all of them imagining the positive end in mind. We become what we repeatedly think of. For them to press on despite the difficulties, to face the dangers in order to repair the telescope, they had to have a positive outcome in mind. They were obviously NOT imagining failure, and they were NOT saying that it couldn’t be done “because it’s never been done in the past!
How often have you said that to yourself? Imagined a negative outcome to your goal? Or put off even starting because all your conscious mind can conjure up is your experiences of the past? “This is the way we’ve always done it.” or “No one in my family ever flew into space (or went to college, or made that much money, or was a successful painter, etc.).”
Such thoughts and the images you are feeding to your unconscious mind will put a quick and miserable end to the goals statements that you have set. Learn to work with your conscious mind, which feeds your unconscious mind by writing personal goals and then repeatedly giving yourself the images of the outcome you desire.
Photo credit: NASA, European Space Agency, M.Roberto and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team
