How To Do Sentence Completion Exercises
- Sentence completion exercises access the subconscious mind.
- Sentence completion can give you the answers to difficult problems.
- Trust your mind for the answers, and you will get them!
Sentence completion exercises are a deceptively simple, yet powerful tool to identify problems or clarify a situation.
They can also be used as a means of raising your awareness and understanding of a subject, whilst at the same time, accessing and examining the thoughts inside your subconscious mind.
How To Do Sentence Completion
Sentence completion exercises are very simple, and will only take a few minutes to do each day. You can do sentence completion exercises by hand, or type them on the computer. Â
All you have to do is write an ending to a sentence stem at least 6-10 times. I will give you some examples of sentence stems to work with later in the article.
However there are 2 rules.
Rule 1 - You must do the exercise as quickly as possible, writing the first thing that comes to your mind, without worrying about spelling or if it makes sense. This will help to bypass the conscious mind, and access the subconscious.
Rule 2 - You can’t use the same ending twice.
Sentence Completion Example
O.k. So first of all we start with a sentence stem, for example:
Living consciously means…
This sentence stem can be anything you like, but I am using this example to help raise your understanding of conscious living, that has been discussed in the past few articles.
The sentence stem is the subject that you want to increase your knowledge and awareness of, the answers will come from your subconscious and will tell your conscious mind how well you understand that particular subject.
Some answers to this sentence stem could include…
…Being in the present.
…Remembering the things I have got to do today.
…Thinking about the consequences of my actions.
…Thinking about my choices and decisions before I put them into action.
…Noticing how I am affected by the things I say or do.
…Noticing how others are affected by what I do.
There you go, your first day is already done for you! Ideally you should do this exercise in the morning Monday to Friday, and for at least 7 days, or for maximum results 14 days.
Also make sure you do not look at what have written, do your exercise and store it away for later (very important).
Sentence Completion Exercise Review
At the end of the week have a look at what you have written during the weeks exercise. Naturally there will be many repetitions, but there will also be new endings.
By doing the sentence completion exercise, what you are doing is forcing your subconscious to work over the information you have given it (the sentence stem) and come up with new ways of understanding it.
The more your subconscious understands something, the more it will be translated into your conscious actions and awareness.
So by doing this exercise, what you are doing is transferring information from your subconscious onto paper or a computer.
When you look at what you have written at the end of the week, you are then transferring that information to your conscious mind.
Now in order for this exercise to be effective, you now need to create a feedback loop.
Creating A Feedback Loop
After reviewing your sentence completion exercises you have done during the week, you must now do another exercise, using the following sentence stem…
If anything of what I have been writing this week is true, then it might be helpful if I…
Or
I can use what I have been writing about this week in my life by…
Again, do this exercise as quickly as possible, with at least 6-10 endings.
The answers you get will come from your subconscious, as solutions or answers as to how you can apply or use your original sentence stem.
In this case, the answers will tell you how you can live more consciously in your life.
So let’s review what you have done by doing this exercise.
1 - Created a sentence stem. This can be anything you want to increase your awareness of, or get an answer/solution to. Basically you are asking your subconscious a question.
2 - Doing the exercise every day, Monday-Friday, forces your subconscious to think about the question more and more. This gives you more answers (remember not to peak at your answers!).
3 - Reviewing your sentence completions at the end of the week. This transfers information obtained from the subconscious mind to the conscious mind.
4 - After reviewing your weeks work, do another sentence completion exercise (as described above). Your subconscious will then tell you how you can use the information it has given you during the week.
To simplify the whole process…
Conscious ->
Subconscious ->
Conscious ->
Subconscious ->
Conscious
Sentence Completion Exercise Final Thoughts
Some people may find this exercise harder than others. The best way to approach it is to empty your mind of any expectations as to what you think will happen or is suppose to happen.
By thinking about what’s going to happen you will be using your conscious mind, which may make accessing the subconscious more difficult.
You can tell when the conscious mind is being over used during this exercise, as each session should take no longer than 10 minutes maximum.
If it takes longer than this you are thinking too much. Just trust the process and let it flow from your mind (your subconscious mind!)
Ideally you should do the exercise for at least 2 weeks, or until you get a satisfactory solution or have raised your awareness and understanding about something to a level you are happy with.
Extra Sentence Stem Examples
If I bring 10% more awareness to my activities then…
If I did (x) everyday then…
If I am more (x) then…
(x) to me means…
When I avoid responsibility…
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November 25th, 2007 at 9:38 am
This is a very interesting piece in the interest of mental health. I was thinking it would be a great idea for someone to create a Web site that features sentence fragments for the purpose of this exercise so that people could just go to that site every day and practice health! Thanks for the tip!
November 27th, 2007 at 8:26 am
Your welcome! And yes this can be a very useful tool if used properly.
p.s. you have a very interesting site!