Are you succeeding or failing by default?
Hey! It’s Bog.
I’m halfway through listening to an audiobook called Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz.
It took me quite a while to start reading it because the name sounded super weird. But I’m glad I did.
The author of this book was a cosmetic surgeon and noticed a strange pattern among some of his patients.
Some people who get plastic surgery become a lot happier and more content with their lives.
Obviously.
However, some of his patients who got the plastic surgery done were still unhappy and kept feeling socially anxious and disgusted with themselves even though the underlying issue was completely gone.
It turns out that it doesn’t matter how someone looks it matters how they perceive themselves to look.
And this book is essentially a long guide on how to improve your self-image.
So naturally, as with many of the books I read, I try to write down the core concepts and ideas that I think could be useful to my life.
Here are the ideas from the book that I wrote down so far (I hope they will be somewhat useful and maybe even convince you to read the book):
Mental practice is as powerful as actual practice.
You use your conscious mind to pick a goal, and then use your imagination to communicate it to your brain which then starts working in the background to achieve the goal (10 minutes a day just imagining yourself achieving the goal).
I think imagination is the missing piece for me. I always pick a goal and then go straight to work. I.e. making a YouTube video, writing this newsletter, creating a course, etc. But I never allow my brain some space to work on the problem in the background before I actually try to tackle it.
Act as if.
If you can’t come up with a goal you can think of what you don’t want (example: wear a suit, go to the office, work for someone else).
Once you set a target your brain will slowly take care of the rest in the background.
Use your imagination to “shop around”.
Imagine yourself in different situations. Think of things that you have accepted as hard facts because you weren’t able to change them and shop around for different “facts” because nothing is set in stone.
Think:
“Why do I believe that I can’t”
“Is this belief based on a fact, a random assumption, or a false conclusion”
“Is there any rational reason for such belief?”
“Could it be that I’m mistaken in this belief?”
“Would I come to the same conclusion about another person in a similar situation?”
“Why should I act and feel as if this was true if there’s no good reason to believe it?
You stress because you try to solve problems with your conscious mind. It’s designed to identify problems, not to solve them.
You relieve stress by learning to assign problems to your automatic success mechanism (aka your unconscious brain), and then letting go of them.
Once a decision is reached, and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome. Unclamp your intellectual machinery and let it run free. And the service it will do you will be twice as good.
Much worry and anxiety are caused when you make a decision and then try to run away from it mentally.
If you made it, then it’s so silly to try to run away and resist it mentally.
Accept it, embrace it. If the decision is made to go through with it, not to run away physically, why mentally keep considering or hoping for an escape?
Example:
I used to go to social gatherings only for business reasons or to please my wife, I went but I mentally resisted it and was usually grumpy and uncommunicative, then I decided that if the decision was to go physically I might as well go along mentally and dismiss all thoughts of resistance. Last night I did not only go to what I would have called a stupid social gathering, but I was surprised to find myself thoroughly enjoying it.
Notice the details, be here and now. Being busy with many things just jams your creative success mechanism.
As an exercise, when you leave the restaurant, try to remember every sensation you got there. Don’t just leave and never think about it.
Stop and think.
Make it a habit to notice everything around you.
Plan and think about the things you want to achieve tomorrow today.
Visualise them before you go to sleep.
When you wake up you will have “slept on it” and the things you visualised will be so much easier to achieve.
Try to relax while you work, even just a little bit.
Our creative success mechanism works best when we’re relaxed and when our “active” mind doesn’t have too many engaging stimuli.
You can only focus on one thing at a time.
It’s like using a calculator, you can’t calculate and solve two equations in the same calculation. It will just jam your system.
Try to only focus on one thing at a time.
Being relaxed can also become a habit. During the day as you work stop for a second and imagine yourself in a relaxed state. For example, think of how you feel after you’ve just got a message or visualise that your arms and legs are frozen in concrete and they become super heavy, syncing down into the bed. Do this daily and it will soon become a habit and you will be relaxed while you work.
Tell people what to do not how to do it. Don’t micromanage in a business. Tell them what to do and let go.
If you let external events dictate your mood it’s like you’re sitting in an audience of a TV show and when they show a sign that says “laughter” you laugh, and if they say “applause” you start clapping.
Like a sheep.
Like a slave.
That’s the same thing if you let external events tell you to be unhappy and you become unhappy because they told you so.
Don’t be a sheep.
It’s only fun if you make it, if others make it for you that’s entertainment.
Our attitudes, emotions and beliefs tend to become habitual.
Arguments between long-term spouses become habitual. You say this to me… I say this to you.. and so on and so forth.
Reenacting the identical script. Responding in exactly the same way to the same stimulus.
These habits can be changed or reversed simply by taking the trouble to make a conscious decision and then by practising or acting out the new response or behaviour.
All problems, personal, national or combat become smaller if you don’t dodge them but confront them.
You must forget failures.
If repetition was the only thing that we needed to reach success then we would all learn to fail, since we repeat failing many more times than winning.
But as you practice more and more you win more.
Our brains enforce and reward winning and forget failure, that’s why we start winning more and we practice.
So if you keep remembering failures you’re filling your brain with stuff that it should forget in order for you to win.
So remember past wins not failures.
Perfection is neither necessary nor required. Approximations are good enough for all practical purposes.
Frustration as a way of solving problems does not work. Feelings of frustration, discontent, dissatisfaction are ways of solving problems that we all learned as infants. A hungry infant expresses discontent as crying. A warm tender hand then appears magically out of nowhere and brings milk. This does not work in adult life. Yet many of us continue to try it.
Thanks for reading 👋!
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