Thinking is the first funky success process and is one of the most important. It is crucial as it is the starting point of all the others and it also continues across the other processes.
What I want to cover in this chapter includes:
- Your beliefs
- Thinking big
- Subconscious mind
- having a laugh
- External things
The power of your beliefs
Beliefs are so important in your life as they will dictate now only your thoughts but you action. They will be the gatekeeper of what is possible and what is not. I’m not specifically talking about religious beliefs but in general. When Tony Robbins make people walk bared foot on hot rocks, is really demonstrating what changing your belief can do. It will make the impossible, possible.
As for the placebo effect and the holistic approach of alternative medicine, shows us once again the real power of beliefs. It is said the medication is not always necessary but belief is. It is just astonishing to see the energy level from you brain when strongly believe in something. Therefore it is important to understand that beliefs are not just an illusion but has a physical reality
Thinking big
One of the fundamental differences between achievers and non achievers is the quality of their thoughts. Their thinking quality is way above average which make them perceive the world differently. They attract the things they want, by constantly focusing on it and reducing all the other non relevant thoughts. It is important to understand that as human being we are the only animal that is self aware. Indeed, we have the possibility to stand outside ourselves and look not only at our body but our thoughts as well. As we have millions of different thoughts per day, it is almost impossible and certainly not realistic to only have positive thoughts, but the one thing we can do, and which will dramatically improve the quality of our lives is to be aware of what we are thinking and automatically change our focus to a positive or goal oriented thoughts. It is quite easy to so as our mind may only have on thought at a time. Therefore as soon as you change this tought you will be somewhere else. Understanding how the mind work, will help you well. Knowing that your brain doesn’t deal with negation, will demand to focus on the word . For example, focus on health as opposed to not being sick or quit smoking. Many people have understood the importance of this. Mother Theresa once said that she won’t go to a protest against war, but will only go to a protest for peace. You may say, that those two are the same thing, which might be for a meaning point of vue, but there are definitely different by how your brain interprets them. You need to facilitate your mind.
Subconscious mind
If our mind is an iceberg, the submerge and biggest piece would be the unconscious. So many times we underestimate the power of the subconscious, a deposit of all your thoughts, deams, sensations, feeling and much more. We may say the once it is recorder through your 5 senses, it is stock in this virtually infinite database. This is the reason why positive thinking alone is not sufficient. You may tell yourself all day the you are courageous, but if in your subconscious fear is coded, it will win the battle. This is why changing your subconscious takes time, with constant affirmation and action. But once it is your side, meaning that your subconscious and conscious is aligned, the sky is the limit and you may accomplish anything.
As crazy as it may sound, you may also control your dreams while you are sleeping. The key element is to be able to become aware of that you are dreaming and then take control and do the craziest thing you ever imagined including flying and meeting all the persons you wish. It is a complex process, as it hard to realize that you are actually in a dream. It is however worth the practice, as I once had a casual conversation with my mentor Tim Ferris.
About having a laugh
If there is one remedy I would suggest to everybody is to be able to laugh a lot. If you had the chance to collaborate with funny people, lauging so much that you belly hurts, your whole perception of reality changes and time seems unlmost non existent. One of my advice is to try to emerge yourself in comedy by watching, listening to funny materials (stand up comics, sitcoms, comedy..) There is actually a big relation with society that have a good sense of humour and their happiness level. It not surprising to learn that Montreal a city which is the creator and host of The Just for Laugh summer festival is considered to be one of the happiest place on earth.
Let it go, don’t let external things affect you
There might be a millions external things that may affect you during the day, from noise to rude people. More often then not, you don’t have any influence upon them. What you have, however is the power to control how you think about them. You can get angry, or you can you smile and let it go and it won’t affect you at all. Like most people you may blame so many people, and think about so many different reason, but at the end there is nobody else responsible except myself.
Indeed as we mention before you are you’re the boss. I make all the calls and are responsible for all the decisions. My freedom is based on the decisions I make and the responsibility I take for them. So for any situation that might affect you, here is the reasoning why it shouldn’t :
First of all, it is all up to me if I want the attitude and behaviour of somebody else affect me. Like the expression of one of the most famous US first lady Eleanor Roosevelt goes : “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.” It is definitely true and makes more sense when you know how to let it go. It is of course easier said then done, therefore I still need to be working on it every time it happens. On the good side, everytime you overcome it it is a way to build patience. But most importantly if you are able to control your thoughts, just as you can change the road of your final destination on a GPS, you can keep adjusting them and select only the one that are beneficial to you and eliminate the others. Once you have the complete control of your thoughts, you become the real master of your own world and the possibilities become endless.
The second thing if it really affects me that much and I’m thinking that there is no way I can control it (this is obviously just a wrong assumption, as in theory you could have complete control over whatever you set your mind on ) here are some useful tips that may help:
- be aware of it and make it a habit to change yout thoughts route as soon as anything affects you
- Take deep breaths and count to 3 (1001, 1002, 1003) to relax your habit
- Think of something pleasant. I always have the scene in the Blow movie in my mind where Johnny Depp is a drug dealer and will be crossing the borders at the airport. He has a number kg of white substance in his suitcase and his advice is to divert your mind and think of something pleasant like making love to your girl. It obviously works as if you are relax as opposed to stress and sweathy, you won’t be on the usual suspects list.
- Remind yourself that this situation is nothing and will not affect you in any ways. You will soon forget about it, so don’t even bother. Try to put it a time perspective. Will I care about this tomorrow, in a week, or in a month? Or put it in global perspective. How is serious is that issue on a national level? Those question are likely to reduce the impact as really it is not the important.