Trickle Down Mindset

by Michal Stawicki

  I was able to reverse engineer my previous personal philosophy by analyzing my past actions. In a nutshell, that previous philosophy said, “Do just enough to get by and try to enjoy the rest of the time.” I worked just to get the money to live off. My jobs offered no progress or social acceptance. I did my duty as a father and husband, the head of the family, but as soon as I could, I ducked out and played on the computer or read. I was moderately responsible, but whenever I had a choice between an obligation and entertainment, I chose the entertainment.

  Make an inventory of your actions and ponder what they say about your philosophy. I know you would prefer an out-of-the-box solution. I would prefer it too. But the problem with quick fixes is that they fix you quickly, but only when you are already fixed. You know, the whole “when the student is ready, the master appears” thing.

  Of course, you could get some great results from any given how-to solution. Action almost always beats inaction. It’s better to try something new and fail than not change your behavior and expect that the change will materialize on its own. Besides, everything affects everything. If you get some results from such a program, you will get different input, a different interpretation of facts, which in turn will shift your personal philosophy a bit. A tangible result will have an effect on your intangible attitude.

  But we already established that such an approach has only about a five percent success rate. I consider such a percentage ineffective.

  So, what should you do?

  The only person who can answer this question is you. My advice really comes down to this: read this book, ponder it, digest its message, and most of all, make this message your own. Only then, act upon it. That’s the sole universal “quick fix” you will ever find in personal development materials. Your personal philosophy determines what you accept from this and every other book. That’s why you should work more on yourself than on any external material.

  Your philosophy is unique. And no single entity in the universe, including God Himself, can influence your philosophy without your consent. That’s how humans are created and that’s how they function. Even if I wanted to implant my beliefs in you, I can’t do that.

  The magic component of any activity that has the goal of improving your life is YOU.

  What works for YOU. What YOU can apply. How YOU can change. What are YOUR values? You, you, you, and YOU! All I’m trying to achieve via this book is to help you to change your life.

  I can assure you that you are capable of doing this. I have done so and so have others. We are not freaks who did impossible things unattainable to ordinary mortals. On the contrary, we used ordinary mortal powers to achieve the results each of us is capable of.

  Find your own path.

  Create your own personal philosophy. I can’t do this for you. Only you can unlock your real potential.

  The most widely known advocate of the personal philosophy concept was Jim Rohn, but you don’t need to be his clone to harness the power of personal philosophy. You don’t need the kind of money or hardships he had. You don’t need to be raised in a similar background. You don’t even need to have the positive character traits he possessed. Well, at least you don’t need them at the beginning. All you need is to form your personal philosophy and mold it so it will generate the desired output: money, health, or appropriate traits. Whatever suits your definition of success.

  Knowledge Items:

  - Your personal philosophy is more unique to you than your genotype.

  - YOU have one and it is inseparable from your essence.

  - It’s not the information, but how you digest and implement it that makes the difference.

  A Deeper Look

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  “If you’ve reached the point in life where you feel you’ve got all the answers,

  you better start asking some different questions.”

  ― Jim Rohn

  We dealt with the “personal” part of your philosopher’s stone. Now it’s time for the second part. According to the Oxford Dictionary, philosophy is:

  1. the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline.

  a particular system of philosophical thought.

  plural noun: philosophies

  “the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle”

  the study of the theoretical basis of a particular branch of knowledge or experience.

  “the philosophy of science”

  synonyms: thinking, reasoning, thought, wisdom, knowledge

  “a lecturer in philosophy”

  2. a theory or attitude that acts as a guiding principle for behavior.

  The etymology of a word says more about the concept than the present definition of it. Philosophy is derived from “knowledge, body of knowledge,” from the old French filosofie and directly from Latin philosophia and from Greek philosophia, “love of knowledge, pursuit of wisdom; systematic investigation,” where philo means “loving” and sophis means “wise, learned.”

  As you can see, this book is a bit skewed towards the second definition, but instead of particular behavior, it focuses on your life as a whole. It is also worth noting that one of the primary meanings of philosophy in the ancient world was “systematic investigation.”

  Your personal philosophy is your life attitude formed by your all past experiences and the meanings you gave them. And it can be systematically investigated and developed using the reasoning faculties of your mind.

  Do you see how the definition of philosophy almost automatically makes your present world view a personal philosophy? Your life experience is your knowledge and wisdom mixed and distilled into philosophy. You are designed to function this way, that’s how your brain operates. It gets the input, registers it, examines it, and saves the results. A child who touched a hot kettle received the input and gave it meaning—“hot kettles hurt” —and then formed a piece of philosophy that informed him how to conduct his life—“avoid hot kettles.”

  We all need such a frame of reference to operate without information overload. You would go crazy if you needed to approach every fact like a scientist examining a new object. Extrapolating a general conclusion based on a few pieces of data from your past allows you to free up your brain capacity for higher functions.

  A myriad of inputs and meanings form your way of thinking about the world and your role in it. And this way of thinking determines what actions you undertake.

  Okay. I hope you’ve grasped how absolutely fundamental your personal philosophy is to your life. It’s the filter for everything you encounter and the generator of everything you do. It’s your sanity shield and action engine. Once you realize the importance of your personal philosophy, you can’t stop yourself from finding ways to improve it.

  If you are not convinced about this, go back to the previous chapter and try to embrace this concept on a personal and emotional level. Because if you don’t, then the rest of this book may be interesting, but won’t change your life.

  So to achieve tangible results you need to change your intangible thinking process. Borrowing other’s ideas won’t help much unless you make those ideas your own.

  But is it possible to absorb a “foreign” way of thinking? Absolutely. What you consider your personal philosophy, your self-image, and your worldview is likely to be just a conglomerate of your parents’, your siblings’, your friends’, and respected authorities’ personal philosophies. You automatically absorbed their belief systems trying to sort out this complicated world of ours. Your brain loves generalization. If mommy said that talking to strangers is dangerous and you hadn’t any data conflicting this point of view, you just saved that information for further reference and made it part of your operating system. One more puzzle piece had been classified and your brain could put a bit more power into solving other puzzles or enjoying the present moment.

  A basic prerequisite to absorbing bits of others’ philosophies is to know them. You can’
t make something your own if you’ve never heard of it. So your first task is to seek new sources of data inputs. If you never watch TV, turn it on (and recognize that useful philosophies are generally absent there. Well, that’s my opinion; form your own). If you watch TV every day, turn it off and go out. If you don’t remember the last time you read a book, start reading one. If you read fiction, start reading nonfiction. If you don’t read magazines, read a few issues. If you are religious, read an agnostic’s blog post. If you are an atheist, go to church.

  Break your routine, do something new. Look for new people to meet. Find data sources different to those that shaped your existing philosophy, which doesn’t serve you well enough. Approach new things with an open mind. Don’t sabotage your physical attempts (new places, new people, new sources of ideas) using your mental terrorists: distrust, arrogance, and reluctance.

  Knowledge Items:

  -You can systematically investigate and develop your personal philosophy using the reasoning faculties of your mind.

  - Borrowing other’s ideas won’t help much unless you make those ideas your own.

  Action Items:

  - Start by breaking your routine by using different data sources or meeting new people.

  Question Your Beliefs

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  “First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”

  ― Epictetus

  In April 2014, I read Catalyst, which argued using solid scientific research that confidence is the mysterious, hard to define, but game-changing factor that “reacts with our strengths, shapes what we achieve and who we become.”

  They described in detail how overconfidence becomes aggression and lack of confidence makes you an underdog. They also gave some very convincing examples on how having steady, well-grounded confidence can have a positive impact on every aspect of your life.

  And they were right. Real, heartfelt confidence is a game changer. A man who knows his worth and acts with steadfast confidence will achieve more and become more. However, they didn’t take into account where the confidence is born. It starts in your mind.

  Confidence doesn’t just automatically happen when you know you are right or strong or experienced. Besides, if you are like most people, you rarely allow yourself such thoughts and beliefs. Doubt and hesitation are more likely to preoccupy your mind. You need a solid set of beliefs supported by your experiences to draw confidence from. In other words, you need the right personal philosophy.

  If part of your personal philosophy is the belief that people are generally selfish and strive for “I win, you lose” situations, you cannot act with confidence. Confidence is acting with trust, as the etymology of the word shows. You may be an expert in your field and have long years of experience that should support your self-confidence, but with such a philosophy, you are doomed to fail.

  One of the aspects of your worldview is how it affects every new input you receive. Personal philosophy filters the ideas you are exposed to. It works almost like a conscious counterpart of reticular formation in your brain. Your whole being depends on how your brain processes external information. It constantly registers, analyzes, and saves every sensory input and abstract concept. You must absolutely trust your most basic coping mechanism to maintain your mind’s integrity (read: sanity). You can’t constantly doubt your every past experience, memory, or belief.

  Your brain is lazy. It doesn’t enjoy the mysteries of the universe. It prefers to stay dormant, without any challenging ideas. It avoids thinking as much as possible. Hence, it does everything in its power to stop you from facing a cognitive dissonance. And rightfully so. It can threaten the stability of your personality. Unfortunately, in our age, the brain overdoes this function, defending you not only against revolutionary ideas but also against a fuller life.

  If your present philosophy doesn’t serve you well, you should get new data sources and interpret the data from a new perspective. If you are a believer and read an atheist’s post for the first time in years, beware the attitude “he is a moron; I know better.” If you are an atheist and went to church for the first time since you were a teenager, don’t judge the people there as “cretins, who are talking with the figments of their imagination.” Those are your old convictions and they don’t introduce a new perspective. They just create a mental firewall against new ideas. If someone who preaches a different point of view is a moron or a cretin, then you are not obliged to pay attention to his jabbering, are you? And instead of probing the new philosophies, you will just consolidate your present one.

  Your set of beliefs is filtering the ideas you come into contact with, labeling them, and discarding the vast majority of them, which are not well aligned with your present philosophy. These conflicting ideas are just simply ignored most of the time. That’s why they don’t challenge your existing beliefs. Your brain looooooves coziness and laziness. This mode of operation allows it to dispose of adversaries before they even show up.

  The other magic your brain does to maintain your status quo is to interpret things. It is trying to interpret all the events, experiences, and feedback from others in a way that amplifies your existing philosophy. Think of the issue of global warming. Did you heard of the infamous Climategate? The scientists who believed that the rise of the average temperature correlates with human activity tried to ignore data that contradicted their vision or interpreted it in a way that was in accordance with their views, which is what your brain does automatically.

  To maintain your cognitive integrity, the brain literally disrupts reality. In the same way global warming believers extended the date range to fit their worldview, your brain receives a bit of reality and grinds it into a pulp that is familiar to you. You are a Democrat and a Republican politician did something right? He had some ulterior motive for sure! You are in the union and you’ve heard that some corporation gave their employees in China an unexpected bonus? Ha, they felt guilty, that’s why!

  Your brain pulls out every trick, uses any excuse to maintain the status quo. It doesn’t care much about logic. It can be employed to your advantage. You can use logic and reasoning to dismantle such a flawed philosophy and install a better one in its place. I would even argue that falsifying the evidence is your brain’s last resort. It has more subtle ways to distort reality. The most powerful one is cutting you out from the sources of input that it considers to be dangerous to your existing philosophy. Is this periodical a Republican mouthpiece? Don’t read it. Is this TV station Democrat-friendly? Don’t watch it. Turn your attention to the “right” sources, the ones that fully agree with your mentality.

  By picking up the data inputs for you, it avoids the cognitive dissonance. You “know” that they preach idiotic ideas in the media, so you skip them. You “know” which media tells the truth, so you consume its content. Simple, but effective. The lazy brain doesn’t spend an ounce of effort to fight off the cognitive dissonance; it saves you the precious energy.

  Knowledge Items:

  - Your brain constantly interprets all the events, experiences, and feedback from others in a way that amplifies your existing philosophy.

  Action Items:

  - Examine the media you consume AND those you don’t. What’s your reasoning behind these choices?

  Choose Your Story

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  “I know how to learn anything I want to learn. I absolutely know that I could learn how to fly the space shuttle because someone else knows how to fly it, and they put it in a book. Give me the book, and I do not need somebody to stand up in front of the class.”

  ― Will Smith

  So far, personal philosophy looks like a cure for every human suffering. It sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? You may regard it as some intangible, half-mystical thing of the mind. But where are the tangible results? If this theoretical concept is so effective, it should have at least a small number of real case studies where it was implemented and delivered the results. So where are they?


  Everywhere. Every single person who overcame her obstacles and hardships in any area of her life did so because of the shift in her personal philosophy.

  Bob Proctor worked at a service station for the fire department. He was in debt and had no hope for the future. He met a mentor who helped him to change his worldview and his life changed dramatically within a single year. He went from earning $4k a year to being an owner of an international company.

  Sophie Bennett was broke. She lived a life beyond her means for too long. When she was forced to sell her car, she decided to change. Within seven years, she was a millionaire.

  J.K. Rowling was a single mother with no evidence that her story about a boy who discovers his magical heritage was great material for a children’s book. But her personal philosophy drove her actions. She didn’t quit after the first or fourth rejection.

  Beau Norton discovered that his thoughts were creating his reality. His negative thinking was creating a reality that was also negative. His mindset slowly shifted to being more optimistic about life as he learned ways to improve himself. He started an online business and was able to quit his day job at the factory.

  People often blame circumstances for their fate. You may be guilty of this bad habit too, if you are not very different from the rest of society. But look at the stories above. Struggles, hardships, and obstacles didn’t defeat those people. The external events and circumstances didn’t magically change in a moment. The only thing that changed at the beginning was their perspective. Their personal philosophy.

  And you can see that it’s true in your surroundings, too. I’m sure you know someone who changed his or her life. Whether it was a successful business owner who had gone bankrupt, a young girl who launched a successful business after college, an alcoholic who managed to quit drinking, a recidivist who began an honest life after his last sentence, a woman who pulled herself together following a divorce, or an old man who lost 100 pounds. All these changes are the result of a change in personal philosophy.