How to Reprogram Your Mind for Success to Become a Powerful Force in This World

“You can either remain a slave to the code written in your head, or you can go through the painful experience of learning it, deconstructing it, and reprogramming it.”

Image credit-Midjourney

Your brain can make life a miracle or hell.

The choice often happens unconsciously. That’s because the mind has software for which we are given no instruction manual.

Thanks to this fact and human evolution, I found myself in a dark place about a decade ago. The only way I can describe it is that my mind worked against me each day.

If I wanted to go on a romantic date with a new woman, my brain found a way to screw it up. If I had to play an important DJ set to advance my music career, my brain found a way to sabotage it. If I wanted to start a new business, my brain found a way to talk me out of it.

So I never got anywhere. I was a mommy’s boy, afraid to leave the nest. Then one idea changed everything…

There’s an operating manual for the mind that most people never pick up

As my thoughts got darker I approached the end of my patience.

I just didn’t like living anymore. I hate to think where that story could’ve ended. What changed is I started learning about the topic of psychology.

First, by watching youtube videos, then by reading psychology books. When you study the mind everything starts to make sense. One of the most important topics I studied was dopamine. It’s the reward system for the brain.

I quickly figured out most of us have our dopamine system work against us rather than for us. This can be altered.

The most powerful topic I learned about from studying psychology was self-talk. Every day we have conversations in our head. If most people heard them we’d sound like murderers on death row waiting to be executed.

If anyone else said the things we tell ourselves, they would be our worst enemy 
– Chris Williamson

So I learned to change the story in my head one step at a time. I started to be kinder to myself in my thoughts. I tried to explain failures and rejections in my head as future opportunities. Slowly the narrative changed.

I didn’t become some Mother Teresa to myself with a do-gooder mission and a bunch of flowers every time I spilled my coffee. No. But I did become more positive. By tipping the scales slightly, it changed everything.

The cool thing about learning psychology is it prepares you for traumas and tragedies that haven’t happened yet (and will).

Action: Study psychology. Stop operating on auto-pilot.

The Dan Koe effect

Dan writes a lot about psychology. His ideas are some of the most powerful. He says:

“You can either remain a slave to the code written in your head, or you can go through the painful experience of learning it, deconstructing it, and reprogramming it.”

What’s missed is this is a proactive exercise. And it requires you to know that there is code and it can be programmed. I didn’t know this at the start.

Once I found out, I realized investing time and money to reprogram my mind created a kind of miracle:

Limitless thinking. Limitless opportunities. Limitless abundance.

With those three things on your side, you become a force so powerful … nothing can ever stop you or stand in the way again.

The programs screwing up your performance

Dan says the mind is a supercomputer. Our attention is the RAM (random access memory). Inside this computer are programs that run just like on a Mac.

There are three programs that slow you down:

1. Regrets

2. Thoughts

3. Tasks

If these programs start to slow performance too much, a reboot exists. Dan says it comes in the form of focus, mindfulness, and writing. I’ve found deep work done in a flow state is the best reboot for me. Everything feels better afterward.

The brain is a computer designed to be used. The best way is through using your creativity and imagination.

You can update your programming through new learning. You can empty the recycle bin through journalling. And you can recharge your brain by taking a midday nap or through sleep at night.

These are the habits to clear your mind:

• Less social media

• Less overthinking

• Less perfectionism

• Less procrastination

• More walking in nature

• More reading instead of Netflix

• More effort with impulse control

• More time in the gym lifting weights

99% of people numb themselves from reality when the superpower is to embrace it.

The limitations in your head came from here

Many of you don’t live a limitless life.

I don’t say that to talk down to you or make you feel bad. I say it as a friend offering a simple explanation.

When we’re born we’re free. Society, culture, and schools teach us how to think. They restrict our thinking and place a limiting valve on our consciousness.

I don’t say this as some sort of conspiracy theory or to be like one of those “exit the Matrix, mofo” kinda people. I say it because we are tribal animals and it makes sense we’d follow the pack and not always think twice about every decision.

The incentive for institutions, governments, and corporations is to limit your options so you can follow their plan. Again, not evil but just a fact. You either build a machine or become a cog in someone else’s. Often all we can see is the latter.

No one tells you how to build a machine.

To break free you must accept you’re not a victim and no one is coming to save you. All the control is with you, which is the greatest hidden freedom of all. If nothing or no one can limit you anymore then what is possible for your life?

Humans are easy to understand

Society makes sense when you learn all of our reactions are programmed and automatic. I learned this working in sales.

Every objection was either a lack of time or money. And underneath those two objections is fear. Fear is the default response to a lack of understanding of our own psychology. It’s what fills the space between insight and action.

What I learned is if I’m fearful it’s good. It’s a sign of growth. It’s a sign new code is been written in my head and a new limitless opportunity is right in front of me.

Have you heard many people describe fear like that? No.

That’s what happens when you reprogram your mind and stop accepting the bullsh*t limitations placed on you by everybody.

IQ screws up the human condition

IQ leads us to facts. Facts are logical and lead to scientific truths.

But the human condition is illogical and unscientific. So learning facts and aiming to have a high IQ, which is what universities worship, isn’t going to help you. It’s why there are so many geniuses that are lost and become recluses.

Paradoxes are the key to understanding your psychological programming.

Paradoxes are counter-intuitive and so is the truth. The world doesn’t make sense unless you study it through paradoxes.

It’s why my note-taking app is jam-packed with paradoxes such as these:

• Work hard, get less done.

• High IQ makes people stupid.

• Facing death helps you truly live.

• Pain is the shortcut to unlimited pleasure.

• The task you fear is the #1 thing you must do.

• “Until we know we are wrong, being wrong feels exactly like being right.” – David McRaney

Study more paradoxes and watch how reality starts to look different.

The secret to mental health

People obsess over their physical health.

A key indicator is how fast your body can recover from rigorous exercise. The faster, the fitter you are. By that measure, I’m a big fat cow sitting in the middle of the road.

Performance coach Greg Harden says the same applies to mental fitness. When you work on your mind the recovery time from tragedies, failures, setbacks, and rejections is faster.

In 2021 I had $1.2m stolen from me in 30 minutes. It hurt for about an hour. The next day I got back to work. I got on a call with my business partner and we carried on. He said to me “I don’t understand how you could be this calm and just move on.”

I hadn’t realized, but 8 years of working on my mental fitness every day meant that I’d become somewhat immune to disastrous events like this. That’s the power of reprogramming your mind for success and working on it.

Setbacks that ruin most people – or even cause some to take their lives – don’t become a possibility anymore. Imagine if this stuff was taught in schools and workplaces.

The unknown benefit of mental liquidity

A foundational level of our psychology is our beliefs.

What we belief determines how we think and act. Many of us have sh*tty beliefs and don’t realize. I’ve written my beliefs down every year for 10 years. At the start they were limiting and full of victimhood. Slowly they became more empowering.

But most people don’t change their beliefs. Ever. And even if they do once, they won’t change them regularly.

The challenge is change is so rapid that you can’t afford to hold onto old beliefs. The skill to develop is mental liquidity. It means you can easily change your mind when new information comes to you.

I’ve found the trick is to forget about what people think when you change your mind. If you’re so focused on being judged, you’ll be afraid to be wrong. When you don’t care you’ll happily say “yep, new information showed me I’m wrong so I changed.”

I cop this a lot as a writer. Things I believed years ago are no longer true. Yet some readers hold me accountable to those old beliefs and won’t let me go.

Get used to shedding many of your beliefs roughly every 12 months.

The marriage to pain is destructive

If you’re a human then the pain from negative situations is guaranteed.

Someone you love will tragically die. A gatekeeper will take an opportunity away that you deserve. An abuse of power over you in some weird way will happen.

Author Chuck Palahniuk says “People fall so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind.”

The temptation is too great.

Pain becomes an excuse. It helps us form an invisible enemy with some person or organization. The real problem is the fact we care so much. If we quit the pain it’d go away and be replaced by something else.

But blaming and complaining feels better so we do it. This pain can even lead to stories. These stories run non-stop like Marvel movie sequels at your local cinema. The story becomes a trap that starts to define us.

“You know Mary, I just can’t do it. My legs are sore, I’m getting old, money is hard to come by, my Uncle’s Uncle has a special needs kid, the car rego is due, I never was good at reading, I have vegetable impairment syndrome which ruins my energy.”

I’m sure you’ve heard limiting stories before. The solution is to divorce the pain. Use the pain as an excuse to make a comeback. Take limitations and allow them to make you the underdog everybody loves.

Chaos is our default reality

The news and social media make modern life look like a nightmare.

They take all the chaos and package it up into bite-sized chunks you can chew slowly and digest. It becomes an excuse to pause, or say “now is not a good time Timbo. Too much chaos. Perhaps next year will be better after the election.”

But every new year there’s new chaos.

New wars, viruses, and cult leaders. Dan Koe made me understand that entropy is the way of the world. We wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for chaos. Marvelous inventions wouldn’t happen without it. Vaccines for deadly viruses wouldn’t be created without pandemics.

The trick isn’t to avoid chaos or wish it away. No. It’s to embrace chaos.

When you do, everything makes more sense and you learn to operate in Summer, Spring, Winter, and Fall.

Final Thought

The key takeaway here is that the mind can be reprogrammed to think new thoughts, and therefore, create an alternate reality. Once you understand this at a deep level, suddenly, nothing ever becomes impossible again.

All any challenge needs to overcome it is new thinking. And that thinking can come from books, newsletters, masterminds, or really anywhere.

Program your mind or have it programmed for you.

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