There used to be a sign above the sink in our staff loos at one place I worked. It said simply, “Caution. Very hot water.”

It wasn’t lying. You could really scald yourself on the stuff that gushed out of that tap.

Yet, every so often, despite the sign, someone would hurt themselves on the hot water.

Why?

Couldn’t they read? Didn’t they understand English?

No. It was none of those.

It was that they’d seen the sign so often they didn’t notice it.

Imagine that! A notice that doesn’t get noticed!

Apparently, this “sign blindness” is quite well known. After a while, signs get ignored if they’re there all the time and never change.

They become, to all intents and purposes, invisible.

It's Not The Subconscious' Fault!

We have thoughts like those signs. I call it invisible thinking, and I’ve done that for a reason. I don’t want to blame the poor old subconscious because, well, it’s subconscious isn’t it? We have no more idea of what’s in there than we know about the contents of the King’s dustbins! Pointless rummaging around in there - we’ll be just as much in the dark as we were when we began.

No. Invisible thoughts are thoughts that are quite conscious but because we’re so familiar with them we ignore them just like the sign about the very hot water.

These thoughts don’t scald our hands. They limit our lives.

A classic one of mine used to be, “I can’t afford that.”

Just so you know, it was probably literally true. I spent many years struggling for and with money, so I rarely had much spare, if any at all. No doubt, it was through those years that that thought habit ingrained itself.

But in fact, there’s another way to look at that which has changed my life - and fortunes. Because that thought assumes that my bank balance - whatever it was - was fixed and permanent.

One day, I noticed the invisible thought and stopped it in its tracks. I wanted to buy a training program that cost $500 and I didn’t have that spare.

The offer was open for just 3 days.

Notice my language there. That’s how I saw it at the time. “JUST” three days. Implying that, had it been open indefinitely, perhaps someday I might have enough money to get it.

But three days?

Again, invisible thinking was telling me that it wasn’t possible.

As I said, I caught it and stopped it in its tracks. So when the thought - the invisible one, “I can’t afford it” - flashed through my mind, I caught it and said to myself,

“I don’t have to think that.”

Immediately, like the lid being taken off a pressure cooker, new thoughts bubbled up.

“What if I could make the money?”

I had no idea how to make such an amount of money. The next thought came:

“I’ve got three days. But I still have no idea.”

And so I saw that all I needed was an idea. That came the next morning. I acted on it and well before that offer closed I had the money. By the time it did close, I had more than double the amount needed - over $1,200!

Now, this isn’t a story about how smart I am. Anyone can do this.

We have access to not only incredible power but also guidance that will always take you where you want to go and get you whatever you want.

There’s a paradox though. Somehow, our culture has adopted very strong beliefs that it’s effort and hard work, techniques and pushing through which produces results. So it doesn’t come easily to us - at least at first. I avoided saying “it doesn’t come naturally” because actually that’s exactly what it is - our natural, default setting if you will.

It’s returning to this default setting so that we can be guided through life and easily get the joys and the rewards we desire with no more struggle that is one of the core issues I’ll be exploring in “Unlimiting Your Life” - my 3 day event in London in early summer this year.

If something in this article rang a bell - not intellectually, but recognisably - then you’re already closer to Unlimiting Your Life than you might think.

The work isn’t about adding anything new.

It’s about noticing what’s already been quietly shaping your decisions, your limits, and your sense of what’s possible.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll share more around this theme.

For now, simply notice where “invisible thinking” shows up for you.

That noticing is the first step.

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