Look at any Best Seller list in bookshops today, and it'll be populated with autobiographies of the rich and famous. From glamour models to footballers to empire builders, they all have a different story to tell, but each has a common thread - they overcame adversity by focusing on the positives.

This is the way the world works; to be achievers in life we must encourage positive reasons why 'we can' to flood our consciousness, and drown out negative excuses why we can't.

This attitude to studying is paramount for the student. To successfully complete a training program, an optimistic mindset is the biggest tool in a trainee's workbox. A positive approach brings about all sorts of possibilities, circumstances, answers and opportunities to achieve. By contrast, a pessimistic outlook blocks our learning receptors and thwarts creativity .

This is because of our Reticular Activation System - a mechanism that automatically tells our brain what to focus on. Over our lives, we've experienced a huge number things that no longer remain in the forefront of our minds - the majority of what we've learned moves from our conscious mind to our sub-conscious mind, a kind of cupboard that stores all our past beliefs and knowledge.

When we attempt consciously to do something, our RAS (Reticular Activation System) will search for any relevant information in the sub-conscious mind, and bring it to our attention. If we're taking a walk down a street, only the things that have meaning to us will be noticed - the rest is just background noise.

So if our conscious mind has regularly been transferring upbeat, positive messages to our sub-conscious mind, then that's what will come back. But if our sub-conscious has been fed a bunch of downbeat, defeatist messages, then that's equally what will come back.

It seems that achievers are able to manipulate the messages filtered through to their sub-conscious minds by deliberately programming their RAS and choosing the exact messages the conscious mind sends. This makes it an essential tool for achieving goals, as the sub-conscious mind can't distinguish between real or imaginary events.

So, as it believes what it's told, we must create a really specific picture of our goal in our conscious mind. This will then pass on to our subconscious via the RAS - which will then help us to achieve our goal. This is done by bringing to our attention all the meaningful information which might otherwise have remained as 'background noise'.

The writer Napoleon Hill said that we can achieve any realistic goal if we keep focusing on that goal, and stop dwelling on any negative thoughts about it. Obviously, if we keep thinking that we can't hit a goal, our subconscious will help us not to achieve it.