The Mindset Mentor - Ep 98 - Unconscious Priming

Episode Date: April 4, 2016

This might be one of the coolest episodes I have done, in my opinion. I talk about how a small thing like a cup of coffee can have a "hypnotic" effect on people and taint the way they view the world. Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Before we dive into today's episode, if you would like a free copy of our motivational ebook called Hack Your Goals, the Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Success, go to mwfmotivation.com and download it. It's already been downloaded over a thousand times, so go ahead and get your copy now. All right, I'll get you the podcast right now. Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast, which I am proud to say has been rated the number one podcast in iTunes new and noteworthy in six different categories, including self-help and business, and is the podcast designed to help you grow into the best version of yourself in 10 to 20 minutes. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we'll take a life topic, break it down, discuss it, and leave you with thoughts to impact your life and mind. My name is Rob Dial, and

the podcast starts now. Welcome to today's episode. If you have not yet done so, please subscribe to us, however you listen to us. And also, if you have not yet done so, go to MWF Motivation on Facebook, which is facebook.com slash MWF Motivation and like us. I usually put up episodes early. So if you want to get episodes a little bit early, go ahead and like us on Facebook and you can get them there. What I'm going to talk about today is how to hypnotize someone just by holding a cup of coffee. And this sounds crazy and it's not necessarily hypnotizing, but it makes it a little bit more interesting when I started off this way. I'm going to talk about unconscious priming. And some people will hear me talk about

stuff consciously or unconsciously or subconsciously and think that, you know, the conscious makes sense, but unconscious and subconscious stuff, like those things, it probably isn't true. Like some people are just very skeptical of it. And I get it. I understand it, that they think that the subconscious might not actually really do as much as we say it does. And I'm going to talk about unconscious priming because it really gives you an idea of how your subconscious really dictates how you view the world and how you view everything else around you and even the stuff that you do. And this is really important for talking about what you want to get out of life, what you surround yourself with, the people you surround yourself by, the podcasts you listen to, the shows you watch, if you watch crappy

reality television, which is really just destroying your mind. But I'll get into that into another episode. But basically, the study that I want to talk to you about is something that they talk about with unconscious priming. And what happened was they had a story about somebody and all they had people do, these researchers went out and they took 100 people who they went up to and 100 people they went up to. So 200 people total, but they did one thing different and that was that they went up to them, they gave them a short story about somebody, and then they asked them to rate the person based on if they felt that that person in the story was their attitude, if they were cold, if they were dark, if they were the type

of person that would go out and speak with people, or if the person was upbeat, if they were the person who would be okay with going up in front and talking to people and being social. So they asked them if they were kind of like, I guess the easiest way, if they were a good person or if they were a cold person more than anything else. And what happened was it went exactly the way that they thought. 100 people that they asked, almost every single one of them, it was 80% that they went up to said that it was cold. And then the other 100% of the other 100 people, 81 of them said that they thought the person was happy.

What they didn't realize is these students were actually unconsciously primed before they met up with this person that was asking them a question. And so what they had them do was if a student was sitting outside, a person would come by and there were these actors and they would have a cup of coffee. One of them, and they would go up to the first 100 people and they would have a hot cup of coffee and they would say, hey, I have to tie my shoe. Could you hold this for me real quick? And they would hand the cup of coffee, the hot cup of coffee to the first hundred people and they would have a hot cup of coffee and they would say, hey, I have to tie my shoe. Could you hold this for me real quick? And they would hand the cup of coffee, the hot cup of coffee to the students. As they were actually tying their shoe, then they

would take the cup of coffee and walk away. And that was it. They would just hand them a cup of coffee for about 10 seconds, tie their shoe and then walk away. Those students, those hundred students were more likely if it was a hot cup of coffee, to rate the person as more outgoing, to put the person as them thinking they're more of a good person, more of an outgoing person, more of a person that would be more social, all of these things. They did the exact same thing with the next 100 people. But instead of a hot cup of coffee, they said, hey, will you hold my cup of coffee? They tied their shoe and they handed them iced coffee. And the iced coffee, those 100 people were the ones that said, out of those 100 people,

80% of them said that they felt that the exact same story that they were reading was a cold person, was a dark person, was a person who was not social. So nothing changed except for a hot cup of coffee and a cold cup of coffee. And what this really shows you more than anything else, and just so you know, they read this story about 15 minutes after they held this cup of coffee. What this shows though, is that just holding that cup of coffee triggered something in their subconscious that changed the way that they looked at the world for at least the next 15 minutes.

Now, I'm going to let that sit in for a second. By holding a cup of coffee, whether it was hot or cold, that triggered something in somebody's subconscious to then taint the way that they saw the world around them. So, psychologists say that priming people in this way is not hypnotism or even some type of subliminal seduction. More than anything else, it's a demonstration of how everyday sights, smells, sounds, everything around you can selectively activate goals or motives that people already have in their head. What does that mean? Even if you're not paying attention to the ads that are around you or the messages that are around you, the

people that are speaking around you, your brain, your subconscious is still taking this information in even if you're not paying attention to it. So if you're surrounding yourself with negative people, if your top five, when I say your top five is so freaking important, the top five people you spend the most time with, if your top five is not full of positive, successful people, people that are driven, if you're still hanging around the house and you have negative people around, some of your family is negative, whatever it might be, even if you're trying to selectively pay attention to what you listen to with what they say, you're still in your subconscious taking that in. And all of that is tainting the way that you see the world. So even though you

don't notice the ads or the messages or anything else, they still influence us. And the way this works is, I'm going to go kind of nerdy on you and explain this to you, but just hold on, it'll make sense. The spreading activation is in your semantic network. And your semantic network in your brain is easiest way to explain it. It's just a web of knowledge of everything that you know. And everything that happens to you consciously or unconsciously in your brain, your brain will then find connections to other things in your mind. So the exact same way that you think of somebody holding a cold cup of coffee will then connect that cold cup of coffee will then connect

that cold cup of coffee when they read about somebody 15 minutes later, even though it's the exact same thing, they'll see that person is cold. And what your brain tries to do is make connections to everything. That's all that it's doing. So when you see a logo or you listen to somebody speak that influences you, it activates certain parts of your brain, whether you concentrate on it or not. Once it's in that part of your brain, the other parts of your brain that your brain associates with those then become activated and

your brain associates everything that comes up with that to be activated as well. So once you have all of, you know, once they all have become activated, all of these different things, if you think of, for instance, if you think of motivation, and then you think of my podcast, or you think of Tony Robbins, or you think of one time that you became really successful because you were super motivated, or you had a lot of willpower, all of these things, if you think just motivation, all of these other things could be triggered. And then you will have your life tainted by just hearing this one thing. If you hear motivation, it could get all of these other parts of your brain activated

and they all influence the way that you process the world around you. So lack of a better word, like what I've been using, is they taint your perception of the world around you. So if you listen to, it was about 30, 40 episodes ago, when I talk about brainwashing yourself to be successful, it wasn't just because I thought that was a cute thing to say. We're literally being somewhat brainwashed by everything that happens around us. Why do I hate reality television? Well, because people see these people and they think, oh, it's just another way to pass the time. So I'm going to watch Meet the Kardashians or I don't know what

the hell that's keeping up with the Kardashian. I think it's called. But in reality, they're watching these people and whether it's just on in the background or whether they're actually consciously watching it, that is going to activate certain parts of your brain, which will then make activations in other parts of your brain. So if you're watching that, think about it. If you could watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians or you could watch a Tony Robbins seminar, which one do you think is going to, if you're taking a hot cup of coffee, the cold cup of coffee? I would say Keeping Up With the Kardashians. I think that's what it's called. Meeting them. I don't know what the heck it's called, but something with

Kardashians, whatever it is, that's going to be like your cold cup of coffee. That's probably going to make you associate when you see people yelling at each other and screaming at each other and these housewives of whatever hills or wherever they are. That's going to be like that cold cup of coffee. If you listen to a good podcast, you read a good book, you listen to a good seminar or something like that, that's going to be like that hot cup of coffee. And those two things, if you can fill your brain consciously or unconsciously with something, are going to then, without you knowing, influence the way you process

the world around you. So that's why I say brainwash yourself to be successful is because you can watch the news and you can hear about all of the bad that's supposedly happening, even though if you look at statistically, the world is getting better and people are getting nicer and the crime rate is lower than it ever has been. The murder rate, even though we hear about all this gun violence, is lower than it's been since 1952 in America. But you would not think that by watching the news. You could watch all that crap and this is why I don't even have TV. You can watch all that crap and fill your mind with it or you can fill your mind and be selective of what you fill your mind with because whatever you fill your mind with, consciously or subconsciously, unconsciously,

they will influence the way you process the world around you. What can we learn from this? Everything that you surround yourself with, everything, every person, everything you see, everything you smell, everything you hear, everything you watch, every single thing that you surround yourself with makes an impact on your mind

and influences the world around you. So more than anything else, if you could get one thing from this, it would be selective with what you surround yourself with, with the people you surround yourself with, with the stuff that you listen to, with the stuff that you see, the stuff that you watch, whatever it is, because whether you like it or not, it is unconsciously priming your brain and tainting the world around you in a positive light or in a negative light. So that is why I say, make sure that you fill yourself, fill your life, fill your mind, fill your ears, fill your eyes, fill everything with as much positive and as much motivation as you possibly can. So that's what I have for you today in this short episode. Actually, not that short, just about 11 minutes so far that I've been recording. But if you enjoy this

episode, please share it with somebody. Please share it with somebody who watches Keeping Up with the Kardashians so they can try to get an idea of what's going on in their head whenever they watch that show and those people that are on it. And I'll finish at that. So if you like this episode, please share it with somebody that you know that would get something from it. And like I leave you every single episode, make it your mission today to make somebody else's day better.

I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day. Well, that's it for today's podcast. If you want the show notes for this episode, they can be found at mwfmotivation.com. Also, if you liked this episode, please spread the love and share it with a friend because it's our mission to help as many people as we can. And to keep in touch, you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Both handles are at

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