The Resilient Mind - Master Your Thinking - Brian Tracy

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

Brian Tracy is a Canadian-American motivational public speaker and self-development author. He is the author of over 80 books that have been translated into dozens of languages.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to Master Your Thinking with Brian Tracy. Get access to the Mental Mastery Program and other exclusive episodes by becoming a subscriber. Enjoy. When I was a young man, I came across a statistic that you've seen. It said that the average person only uses about 10% of their potential. And the other 90% is left unused throughout their lifetime. Well, recent research shows that that statistic is not true.

The average person only uses about 2% of their potential. And the other 98% is stored like treasure buried in the ground, and it's never used. And what do people use their 2% for? Well, they use it mostly for conversation at work and with their friends. They use it for messaging and tweeting. They use it for watching television. average person watches a screen three to five hours per day. Is they're watching a screen of some kind, whether it's a computer or an iPhone or an iPad or a television?

And most of what they're watching is in category two. It's completely irrelevant and unimportant. It makes no difference in their lives at all. But whatever you do over and over again becomes a habit. So today we have an entire generation of people who have the habit of watching screens all the time. and as a result, their lives go very, very slowly. So therefore, you have to ask yourself, is this a good use of my time?

Does this work have tremendous consequences for me? So when I came to studying thinking, I said, what is the activity that has the greatest potential consequences for you in your life? And the answer is thinking. Because the way you think, the quality of your thinking determines the quality of your decisions and choices. Your decisions and choices determine the actions you take.

The actions you take determine your results. Your results determine the quality of your life. And it all starts with your thinking clearly. You know, sometimes you've heard me ask, what is the highest paid work in America? What's the most important work in any job or any company? And the answer is thinking. Thinking is the most valuable work.

I began studying time management about 30 years ago, and I came across a word in my studies, and the word was consequences. And what it basically said is that something is important if it has big potential consequences. And something is unimportant if it has low or no potential consequences. Number one reason for success is people focus on things that have high potential consequences. Number one reason for failure is people focus on things that have low or no potential consequences. Very worst use of time is to work intently on something that need not be done at all.

And one of the things that is holding back entrepreneurs, business owners, is killing them, by the way. And it's wiping out an entire generation is this obsession with technology. I see people that are walking with their phone. It's almost like drug addicts that are mainline. They cannot stop staring at their screen. They cannot stop pushing their buttons. The fact is that this obsession with looking at the screen and staying connected is killing people. Because it stops them from focusing.

You cannot focus if you are distracted. like an attention, deficit, disorder, dog. So you're constantly ringing and responding to bells, almost like a crazy person in a toy factory. What do most people do in the morning? Most people in the morning, they turn on their computers, and they check their email for a few hours. And they turn up their bells,

so it goes, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, and they're like attention, deficit disorder children. Bing, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, answering their phone, ding, ding, ding. By the end of two or three hours, the brain is so flooded with dopamine that they're incapable of concentrating on anything. And so distraction, technological distraction today is killing you.

It's destroying your hopes for your future. It's keeping you busy, and at the end of the day, you've accomplished nothing, and you're exhausted. According to a recent report, every time that you respond to a new impulse and a new distraction, it burns up part of your brain energy. At the end of a day, of a typical day today, the average person's IQ has decreased by 10 points.

That means throughout a distracting day you get stupider all day long. And by the end of the day, you're just plain stupid. You've gone from college level to basically driving a truck in terms of intelligence. This is really serious. There's some very in-depth scientific articles on this. Some try to say it's a good thing because it stimulates your mind. The others will point out that it stimulates your mind so much. That what happens, every stimulus triggers dopamine, and dopamine has the same effect as cocaine on your brain.

It's a stimulus, and you get addicted to this dopamine stimulus, and you cannot not surround yourself with stimuli. You cannot not watch your computer. I mean, many people get up in the middle of the night and go and check their computer to see if there's any email, any spam. Then they go back to bed, they can't sleep. Anyway. You know what, the average business owner today spends only 11% of their time. It's marketing and sales. All the rest is distraction.

And they don't even realize it until somebody follows them around with a camera and a stopwatch. The average business owner today is so distracted that they're distracted away from what they do. So I'll give you a very simple way to double your income, increase the size of your business, become eventually wealthy, live in a big house, big car, and retire to Switzerland. Here it is. Are you ready? Yes. When you start in the morning, leave things off.

Don't check your computer or your iPhone or anything else. There's nothing there that's important. A friend of mine in New York wrote a book two years ago, go called Don't Check Your Email in the Morning. And then she just goes on to explain why checking your email in the morning starts the addictive process. And then you're addicted all day long. You just can't get out of it. It's like an alcoholic or a drug addict that takes a drink.

They can't stop drinking. You take a shot, you can't stop. So don't turn it on. Leave it off. And the rule for success today is leave things off. Leave things off. And so if thinking is the most important thing you do, because of the consequences of thinking determine the entire quality of your life, then the quality of your thinking determines the quality of your life.

And so the more time that you spend thinking and thinking well and thinking clearly, the more successful you are. Over the years, I worked with some very powerful people, billionaires and multi-billionaires, people who are on the Forbes 400 list repeatedly, over and over. And I've had a chance to be with them during crises. And when times were something that was happening that was serious, it was a major problem. And I noticed that they all had one quality in common is they all went calm. It's just, pooh, they went calm.

People around them were angry and upset and worried about what happened and who did it and so on. And they would just go calm, almost like a pond would go calm. And they knew. And I learned later, I didn't know why this was. I admired it, but I didn't know why it was, is that when your mind is calm, your entire cerebellum, the thinking and deciding brain functions at its high its level, like turning up all the lights on a dimmer switch. It's functioning like a Christmas tree.

But when you get upset and angry, what happens is your thinking reverts to your limbic or emotional system and your ability to think clearly diminishes dramatically, and you make a lot of mistakes. That's why when you are facing a difficult situation, you have to use every skill, trick, game, whatever it is, stay calm. And that's why they teach you to meditate. Now, I'm going to write a book on this whole subject of thinking, because I think it's very exciting, but I want to give you three types of thinking practiced by the most successful leaders. And they're very simple, and they're based on many decades of research Nobel Prize winning results. Number one is called short-term thinking versus long-term thinking. Average people think short-term. They think for immediate gratification,

They think what they want to do now, they watch television, they do things that give them immediate pleasure. Top people think long-term. They make long-term plans. They have long-term goals. They study and take courses and read books and come to courses in order to develop skills for the long-term. So the more you think long-term,

the more guaranteed you are to move up in your life and your work and your income. 50 years of research at Harvard, transferred worldwide, and I began studying this many years ago. I love this research. Most people missed it when it came out, and it just kind of faded away. But what it basically said is that it doesn't matter where you come from in life.

All that matters is how far ahead you think. So if you think five or ten years ahead, and you're willing to sacrifice. And this turned out to be the word in the research. If you're willing to sacrifice pleasure, TV watching, fun in the present, in order to work and prepare yourself for the future, then you'll have a wonderful future. So people who think long-term are the ones who move up faster in the ladder of success. The second type of thinking is called uninformed thinking versus informed thinking. And we'll come back to this later, but uninformed thinking is where we act without enough information.

And if we do that, the probability, the consequences are that we'll probably make mistakes. Informed thinking is where we gather all the information in advance before we make our decision. and it requires patience and it requires discipline, it requires slow thinking, it requires long-term thinking to be an informed thinker. People who rise to the top are people who make the best decisions and get the best results. And they are also people in 50 years of research who take the time to get more information. They keep asking questions. They keep studying. They keep learning. They hire consultants. They ask other people for advice. Sometimes one piece of advice from one person with experience in a particular area can change your thinking completely.

So thinking, as Thomas Edison said, thinking is the most important thing that we do, and yet it is the most difficult, which is why most people won't do it. Most people do not do thinking. It's too hard. And thinking requires that you stop the clock, turn off your cell phone, shut off the phone, and spend some time thinking. In psychology, they call it mindfulness. You think, you take some time and you think quietly about a big decision before you make it.

Now the third type of thinking, third type of thinking is fast thinking versus slow thinking. Now fast thinking is what you do when you are driving through traffic. You think fast. You have to think fast or you will be cut off or have an accident. Slow thinking is the thinking that is required when you are engaging in activities that have long-term consequences. when you are thinking about your career, when you're thinking about how to use your time, when you're thinking about your projects, when you're thinking about upgrading your skills, you use slow thinking.

When you're thinking about business decisions that take a lot of time and money, then you use slow thinking. So the big mistake they found, this is Nobel Prize winning material, is that people use fast thinking when they should use slow thinking. They don't take enough time to think carefully about things before they do this. and then the consequences turn out to be very negative. The longer that you take to make an important decision, the better the decision will be. The higher quality decision.

And Lord Acton once said, when there's not necessary to decide, it is necessary not to decide. In other words, the professor said, buy as much time as you can for a decision. Put it off. If you can put it off for a day, a weekend, a week, a month, put it off.

Some of the best decisions that you make will be decisions that you will allow to steep for a while, like water and tea. So remember, anything that is important that has long-term consequences is a candidate for slow thinking. The rule is that fast decisions are usually wrong decisions, especially fast decisions involving people or money are usually wrong decisions. So if you're going to make a decision that has long-term consequences, then you have to give it a lot of thought. You have to sort of look at it like a beautiful piece of porcelain.

You look at it from every single side and think about it carefully. And the more carefully you think about a decision, the better the quality of that decision will be when you finally make it. How many times have you said, you know, if I just thought about that a little bit more, I wouldn't have done it? Or if I just thought a bit better, or I'd just taken time to think. Well, superior people, through experience and through painful experience,

learn to take their time in making, important decisions. So one of the very best ways that you can develop the discipline of clear thinking is to sit in solitude for 30 to 60 minutes when you have a major problem or a major issue in your life. Solitude has been discovered and rediscovered throughout all the history of man as the most powerful of all thinking tools. You see, if you can imagine a bucket of water with silt in it and it's all churned up and you can't see anything, but if you leave the bucket of water to sit for a while, all the silt will drop to the bottom and the water will become perfectly clear. This is what happens for you in solitude.

If you sit calmly by yourself with no noise, no distractions, nothing to read, just sit quietly, which takes tremendous discipline the first few times you do it. At about 25 or 26 minutes, your mind goes clear. And any problem that you've been working on, the solution just pops into your mind. Any issue that you've been dealing with, the answer just comes to you. It's almost like a miracle. When you practice solitude, you actually activate your super conscious mind and your intuition. And something that you've been having trouble with or wrestling with suddenly becomes clear and you know exactly what to do.

Here's the wonderful thing about solitude. Everybody who practices it will tell you it's incredible. And if you've never done it before, just practice it once. Sometime today, take 25, 30 minutes, take an hour if you can, and just sit quietly by yourself. and allow your mind to calm. Sometimes it's called mind calming. And just allow yourself to calm down and think. And the most amazing things will happen. You'll start to make better decisions. You'll start to hear what is called the still small voice within. And this still small voice sometimes will shout at you so loudly, you will be amazed. Now here's another way to think better.

When you're dealing with any kind of a situation, write down every detail of the problem or situation. Take a sheet of paper, and the rule is think on paper, and write down every detail. How would happen? What's going on? The problems, the concerns, the cost, who is involved? Just write it down, write it down, write it down. And the most amazing thing happens between the head and the hand. As you're writing out all the details, sometimes exactly the right choice pops out at you. It becomes clear, but you would not have triggered that super conscious solution if you hadn't taken the time to think on paper.

You see, better decision making comes from the better thinking habits and better thinking habits comes from practical experience, learning both what to do and what not to do. Becoming a more effective thinker on paper is a sure way of becoming a more effective person in practice. There is something magical about writing down a problem. It is almost as though in the very act of writing what is wrong, you start to discover ways of making it right. Perhaps the source of this magic lies in the objective perspective that writing affords you. Even though you are describing your problem, your challenge, your life, your uncertainty, and your indecision, the fact that you are writing about it as opposed to mentally pondering it creates a space between you and the problem. It is within this space that solutions have room.

to grow. You see, writing about events and circumstances that occur helps you to clarify exactly what is happening. When we describe life to ourselves only in our minds, our imaginations tend to feed false or distorted information about how things are, positive or negative. When we describe a situation in writing, however, we become more factual, more accurate and certainly more realistic. Then as we reread what we have written, we create a new picture in our minds to replace the distorted picture we have been working with. And once we finally see things as they are rather than as we think they are, we can then see our way clear to make them better. Right about a current dilemma you are facing. Perhaps it is a personal problem, a business matter,

a family issue or a financial problem. Whatever it is, take the time to capture it on paper the way it really is. As you begin to develop the habit of writing down your problems, recording your observations, emotions and reactions to life's events, you will undoubtedly find yourself both posing and responding to a whole new set of questions about your past, present, and future. Why did I say that? Why does he always make me feel that way? If I follow this course, where will I be five years from now?

As you begin to both ask and answer yourself on paper, you will be amazed at the incredible leaps in personal understanding and self-awareness you will experience. And remember, any positive change which occurs within you will ultimately manifest itself in a positive result outside of you, in your social or professional world, your attitude, your bank account, your habits, and even your appearance. You know, Aristotle once said that wisdom, which is the greatest of all human desires, wisdom is the ability to make good decisions, is a combination of experience plus reflection. Experience plus reflection.

In other words, you have an experience and then you reflect on the experience. And you think about what does that experience mean to me? How can I use that? What can I learn from it? And I love the line from Socrates that says, The unexamined life is not worth living, which means that the life where you do not take the time to reflect on your experiences. Aristotle said that wisdom is an equal measure of experience plus reflection.

And the reason so few people have wisdom is what they have is experience, experience, experience, but they never take the time to sit back and reflect on what's happening to them, reflect on what they're learning. How many people here have seen people get out of bad, relationships and get immediately back into bad relationships. Or get out of a lousy job and immediately join a company and get into another lousy job. What is the natural thing that people do? They get fired or laid off from a job, they quit, they go down the street and they look for what? Another job exactly just like it. Learn from your setbacks. This is one of the characteristics of high-performing men and women is that every single time they have a problem or a difficulty, they sit back and they

dissect it and they learn everything possible from it. They try to develop general principles From each setback, they say, what is the valuable lesson I can learn? So you take a look at everything that has happened to you. Take a look at the very most difficult experience that you're in right now and ask yourself, what is the most valuable lesson I can learn from this experience? And believe me, if you look for the lesson, in the Bible it says, seek and ye shall find. It doesn't say seek and occasionally you might find something. It says seek and ye shall find if you look for the valuable lesson

or the seed of an equal or greater advantage or benefit in every difficulty you will find it. It's always there. So reflecting on your experiences, and the best way to do that is to go for a walk. Just going for a walk where you can't listen to anything. Don't take an iPod or anything. Just go for a walk, 30 or 60 minutes, and just walk. And while you're talking and reflecting upon something that's going on at work or at home, you'll be amazed at the quality of ideas that will come into your mind. To improve your thinking, talk it over with someone else who you like and trust,

and give them the details and ask them to give you their feedback, give you their perspective. Sometimes, especially if you're in a great relationship, the other person can give you a perspective that completely changes your ideas. A good way to think better is to ask, especially if you're frustrated or having difficulties, ask, what are my assumptions? What am I assuming about this situation that may not be correct?

What if my basic assumptions about this relationship, about this job, about this product or service, or this investment? What if my assumptions were wrong? Then what would I do? And here's the key to good thinking. Be open to doing something completely different. Be open to admitting the possibility that you could be wrong and doing something completely different. And what that does is it opens up your mind and your perspective so you can see all kinds of possibilities that you may not have seen before. So clear thinking is the discipline practiced by the most successful, happiest and wealthiest people in our society.

Thank you for tuning into this episode, where we're committed to empowering you with the knowledge and tools to strengthen your mind. We hope you found this episode with Brian Tracy helpful. Please consider supporting the podcast by subscribing or clicking the link in the show notes.