This is a lesson from the course “Hack Time: Achieve 10x More Through Godlike Efficiency and Speed“ (see below for a 20% discount code for the entire course).
In this post, I want to tell you an interesting story.
A few months ago, I was in the south of Greece, in the Peloponnese. And I rented a motorcycle and drove directly through the Taygetos mountain range, eventually ending up in ancient Sparta, where I met King Leonidas. Well, the statue of him anyways.
And that journey through those mountains is a day that I will never forget.
It is believed that as a warrior culture, the Spartans sent their young men into the mountains to learn how to survive. And it is depicted as a harsh and bitter place. But when I traveled there, I saw nothing of the sort.
I felt like I was inside of a painting. I’ve traveled to five continents, yet it was one of the most stunning sceneries I’ve seen. Multitudinous mountain crescents, evergreen pines of green, auburn, burgundy, and marigold. Quaint mediterranean villages tucked into the sloping hillsides.
And I thought about it, and I think it’s a little bit like a metaphor.
Many of us tend to think that the only way to succeed in life is through pain, struggle, sacrifice, and years of paying our dues.
But what if that really wasn’t the case? And what if thinking like this actually forms the chains that hold us down to conform to this reality?
What if merely believing that the path to success is full of hardship and struggle is actually preventing us from getting where we want to be?
Our subconscious minds respond to the energy, emotions and the thoughts that live in our head. The subconscious does not respond to commands.
And so the more we fill our head with thoughts of struggle and sacrifice and adversity, and the bitter feelings of these things, the more our subconscious minds will think that is what we want.
Everything in the physical world is potter’s clay to our imagination.
Interestingly, the easiest and most effective way to create the future that we want is by putting our imagination to work to mentally create it in the present. The more that we hold ourselves in the state of our wish or our goal fulfilled, the more likely it is to become physical reality for us.
Conversely, by not focusing on thoughts of struggle and sacrifice and other things that cause us hardship and pain, we avoid those things in reality as well.
For example: if you were to tell an alcoholic to “stop drinking,” their subconscious mind only pays attention to the word “drinking.”
Similarly, if you say “I don’t want any drama,” or “I don’t want any negativity,” unknowingly you are subconsciously attracting these things into your life. Your subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference, it doesn’t understand the nuances, it simply retains the idea.
This is a concept that, I am ashamed to say, locked me in place for many years.
My father was an entrepreneur and inventor, and two of the companies he started in the golfing industry today (Aldila Golf and Odyssey Golf) employ thousands of people around the globe.
I used to think that I could never fill his shoes. That I could never live up to the example that he had set. That even trying to be half of the man that he was would be impossible for me. And as a result, my reality (for years) constricted itself to conform to this belief.
Today I instead envision myself as someone who is already successful, who is already respected, who is already influential, who is already likable, who is already lovable.
And because I already imagine myself as that person, it makes it so much easier to actually be that person. I spent so many years trying to be the man that I wanted to be, and always falling short. I never realized that I was already that person.
When we see life as a struggle (or the road to success as a struggle), it will always feel like a struggle.
Theater of the Mind
I want to share with you the concept of the “Theater of the Mind,” created by Maxwell Maltz, the author of “Psycho-Cybernetics.”
Maltz had a background as a cosmetic surgeon, helping patients to physically transform their entire appearance. He discovered something troubling: even though he was able to correct an ugly person’s external scars, their inner scars would still remain.
In other words, his patients became physically beautiful but still saw themselves as ugly, unworthy, and unlovable.
To achieve success, you need to develop a practice that allows you to see and consider yourself as a success first. You need to be able to happily achieve, rather than feeling the need to achieve to be happy.
If you want to do great things, visualize yourself doing those things in your mind’s eye first, creating vivid mental images. If you want to give a great speech, notice how confidently you stand on stage, gesturing and speaking. Listen to the sound of the crowd as they roar their approval and offer you a standing ovation.
What To Do Next
The best way to create our ideal reality is to selectively choose the ideals and thoughts that we want to have, and allow them to have a permanent home in our conscious and subconscious minds.
Don’t entertain undesirable feelings. Although they may come as visitors, don’t allow them to become permanent guests in your mind.
Instead, learn how to use your imagination to overcome the reality you don’t want and to shape it in a different image. When you go to sleep at night and look back at your day, look at the day the way you would have liked it to be. If you received a rejection email, or someone didn’t respond to you, imagine instead receiving the email you would have liked to have had. If you fell short at something, imagine instead the outcome that you wish you would have had.
These thoughts just before we go to sleep at night enter into our subconscious and go to work to shape our destiny during the seven or eight hours we spend in bed.
Always use only the present tense.
If you tell yourself “I am healthy,” it is infinitely more powerful and useful for affecting your reality than saying “I will be healthy.” When you say I will be, it implies that you are not. Implying such reinforces a belief in your subconscious that you are not, and ill health remains the present result.
Similarly, if you want to be happier, say “I am happy” and then look for things to be grateful for. This empowering belief allows to choose what to focus on and filter out what not to do, which empower you in the present to be happier. These 15 strategies can help you cope and stay above water no matter how tough things get.
The physical reality around us is nothing more than a confirmation of the belief that we have inside of our subconscious. And so the better we become at influencing our subconscious with our words, thoughts, energy, ideas, and emotions, the greater our capacity to grow.
This lesson is from the course “Hack Time: Achieve 10x More Through Godlike Efficiency and Speed“
Use the code “timehack#2023” for a 20% off at checkout.
