I’m deep (to be read: drowning) in research for two projects right now:
- My upcoming event, October 18th here in Nashville (it’s sold out and will contain about 8 hours of programming material & mental training content)
- My next book (I’m undecided on the title but it will have something to do with “Belief Architecture” or immortality – which can only be achieved through control of the mind)
Let’s break down a piece of this and hit two birds with one stone…
“To give something no place in your life does not mean to try and avoid it; it means to ignore it.” -Vadim Zeland
In psychology there is a concept called “cognitive diffusion.” It’s a piece of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), first explained by Steven Hayes.
The idea of cognitive diffusion is simple: distance yourself from your thoughts so you can observe them (rather than attempting to change them). To change a thought is intensely difficult. It’s the hardest way to climb a mountain.
If there were a path to the top of a climb, fitted with scaffolding, holds for your hands and devoid of obstacles, you would be silly to go around it and attempt to scale it on your own.
This is the mental imagery I want you to have: there is a path to changing the way you think — and the path is not a direct attempt to change your thoughts. The path is through observation. When you observe something, it tends to naturally come into alignment with your programming.
Ahh…
So next step, “what does your programming say about you?”
The neurobiology of the brain tends to run on addictions. Not all addictions are bad addictions. A substances is addictive when the receptors in the brain normalize to the thing.
This means, technically, everything enjoyable in a person’s life qualifies as addictive. Not everything that is enjoyable is productive, though. Have you ever known someone who was addicted to drama?
The drama is enjoyable to them. And in some aspects, it’s enjoyable for all of us. We feel good when we can over-fixate on someone else’s flaws — it distracts us from our own.
Humans are suckers for “bad news” because it justifies whatever lack we are experiencing in our lives. Is your business struggling? Well it’s easier to justify it when you start looking at the economy, the current president, world events that are tilting out, etc.
But this is not a healthy or productive addiction.
Winners tend to get addicted to things that are invisible. They’re invisible because nobody sees them.
Here are some examples:
- Physical exertion and exercise
- Waking up early or, at least, on time
- Reading, study, and enriching their minds with quality information
- Spiritual alignment and wholeness
- Time spent with relationships that matter deeply to you
- Creating, producing & adding positively to the wellbeing of your market
These things don’t “pay off” right away.
There is a delay. The longer the delay the more impactful the efforts are likely to be. This doesn’t mean you should pick the slow routes, it is simply a heuristic; correlation, not causation.
To pull of something difficult is going to cost you something. You will need to develop an addiction to the process before the payoff.
I used to have a group of friends who were very talented but they were exclusively focused on the payoff. I became like them and my life turned transactional. If it did not benefit me or take me closer to an opportunity, I was not interested.
This is an energy that feels beneficial but eventually leads to a lot of collateral waste.
Why?
Because our operating systems are projected onto the people around us. The person who is most concerned with being betrayed is usually the person who has a pattern of betrayal. We accuse where we are guilty.
It doesn’t matter what we’re talking about, either. The “severity” of the thing is not correlated. For many years I was concerned that everyone who wanted to be my friend was just using me because I had a platform. Why was I concerned with this?
Because, you see, I had become transactional with my friendships. Therefore I was concerned that people were being transactional with me.
Anxiety is usually an inside game. I’ll be going much deeper on this subject both at the event in October and in my next book (which should be completed in December with a target publish date of summer 2025).
Until then, here is what I recommend: identify the drives in your life and figure out where they came from. I’ll be taking ~80 or 90 entrepreneurs through this on the 18th.
The results are always outstanding. When we get clarity on us, we can line up our behaviors (and our feelings) with higher-yield choices that will take us where we want to go.
Onwards,
T