Trickle Down Mindset

by Michal Stawicki

  Building an entirely new philosophy is like joining a religious order. You abandon your old life. You change the whole social fabric of your life; you surround yourself with totally new people. You change the sources of information. Worldly sources become secondary at best. You focus on the holy teachings and the teachings of holiness.

  If your calling is the real deal, you will also change your internal dialog, the interpretation of events and actions you encounter and/ or perform. You and your life will change completely within a short period of time.

  But they are not so eager to accept a fresh convert into religious orders. They know that the resolution may be temporary. That the freshman may slip back into his old ways after several months and find himself unfit for the new way of life. That’s why practically every respected religious order introduces the institution of novitiate. They accept a candidate for a set period, usually for a year or longer to see if he can persevere. During that time, he is also examining himself, to see if he really finds this new life compelling.

  There are genuine converts who are able to transform their lives within a few days, but they are rare birds. And they come into an order the same way ordinary mortals do—through the probation period. Religious orders accumulated their wisdom over thousands of years. Use their balanced approach to prepare your own life revolution. Break yourself in gradually.

  Besides, I can’t teach you how to develop an entirely new personal philosophy from scratch, because I didn’t do it. I meticulously transformed my old philosophy, and I advise you to do the same.

  Sudden transformations are uncommon. You hear about them a lot because they are so spectacular and the media loves them. But for every sudden breakthrough, there are 999 more mundane and slower but equally effective stories of development.

  And usually you can find some background preparations that took years to develop before the revolution occurred. Saint Paul converted to Christianity in a single encounter. But he was prepared. He was a very educated Jew. He knew all the old scriptures. He was also introduced to Christianity by the believers he persecuted. He needed just a “gentle” push to convert. His story couldn’t materialize in some pagan who didn’t even realize that there was one God. He was carefully prepared for years to reach this single moment of catharsis.

  Saint Augustin was a lecher and flibbertigibbet. He enjoyed a worldly life to its fullest. But he was also the son of a very pious woman and was exposed to her lessons in his early years. She also prayed for him for all the years he pursued the pleasures of flesh.

  So, yes, their transformations were unexpected. What sane person would believe that a murderer or lecher could transform so quickly into a saint? But in hindsight, it’s clear that it didn’t happen out of the blue. Their new philosophy was founded on their past experiences and knowledge. And this is the way you should seek your transformation, your shift in your personal philosophy.

  Your current personal philosophy could be messy and probably is. You are not in the place you desire in life. You want a better body, health, higher bank balance, finer things, better relationships, better education. You didn’t get them because of your mindset. However, your mindset contains a lot of gems, a lot of solid parts upon which you can build your new life. Everything that has happened in your life to date has prepared you for your upgraded philosophy.

  And there is one additional advantage in admitting that your previous philosophy led you to your current results—you take responsibility for your past decisions, actions, and results. It’s irrational, but empowering. It’s irrational because you can’t take responsibility for the earthquake that destroyed your house. But it’s empowering because you feel you are in control of your life. It was you who decided to settle in that spot where there was a risk of earthquakes. Your decision led you to your current pitiful situation, so your decision can also bring you out of it. That’s the attitude shared by many successful people, and it’s worth adopting.

  Knowledge Items:

  - Don’t revolutionize your philosophy; drastic measures also have a drastic cost attached to them.

  Action Items:

  - Admit that your previous philosophy led you to your current results. Repeat the self-analysis exercise from the chapter, The Law of Nature.

  Changing Course

  back to top

  “You cannot change your destination overnight,

  but you can change your direction overnight.”

  ― Jim Rohn

  In the previous chapter, we concluded that you are at this point in your life because your beliefs, thoughts, and actions led you to this exact point. And it’s not a bright point or you wouldn’t be looking for ways to improve your life.

  So, are you a complete failure? Your negative self-talk may tend to agree with that not-so-gently put question, but I am sure you are not.

  First of all, you are alive. It means that you have already gathered years of experience and winning experience at that. There are some of your peers who didn’t make it. You did. That’s no small feat.

  Secondly, you are reading this book. It says a lot about you. Obviously you can read. You also want to improve your life. That means you have a high enough level of integrity to realize that you are not perfect. You are able to admit mistakes. You are humble and willing to learn. You have stuck with me so far, enduring my frequent religious references, so you are religious yourself or open minded and tolerant.

  I could go on with the list of your positive traits for a few more paragraphs, but I think you get the point. You are not a complete failure, whatever your external circumstances are. Your current personal philosophy is a mishmash of right and wrong beliefs and habits. You can build on what you have. And you shouldn’t rush this redevelopment.

  Yes, it would be nice to have a new shiny personal philosophy tomorrow that would skyrocket you to the ranks of millionaires in a few months. But it is unreasonable to expect it to happen. Forget about instant gratification. Forget about quantum leaps. Consider those terms as the products of an alien civilization. Absolutely foreign and incomprehensible.

  You are a human being and rapid transformation is not a trait you are equipped with. Your brain doesn’t work that way. If it meets with a rapid change, it reacts with instant resistance. But when you introduce changes slowly and gradually, your subconscious won’t even recognize them as changes. It will sublimate them and after some time it will defend those new ideas as its own. Gratification and quantum leaps will come. But they will be the fruits of a long, consistent effort. That’s how they always materialize.

  The bad news is that you just can’t change your life in a single moment. The good news is that you can instantly change your life’s direction. Once you decide to adjust, to incorporate one idea or concept into your mind, the overall direction of your life will drastically change. And the longer you stick with this adjustment, the more drastic change will materialize. Think of a plane starting in New York and heading to Los Angeles. A tiny change of course of only one degree will change its destination by 40 miles. Just three degrees south or north is the difference between San Diego and Bakersfield. That’s the gap between errors in judgment and disciplines.

  Another thing I want you to contemplate when you are beginning to reconstruct your personal philosophy is your life span. How long will you live? Well, you don’t know. You can hope at most to live a certain number of years. But no matter if you are a teenager or a venerable sage, no matter if you will die in an accident, of sickness, or old age, one thing is sure: you will live as long as it takes.

  And guess how long your personal philosophy will serve you? Yep. Until the end of your life. In my opinion, as a believer, it will serve you much longer than that. It will serve you into infinity.

  You may not believe that and that’s fine. Forget the afterlife. The impact of your personal philosophy will continue beyond your lifespan. Even if you are reduced to a heap of proteins, your past choices will affect others. For example, if saving money was
part of your philosophy, you will leave an inheritance for your relatives and/or charities of your choice. If creation was a part of your philosophy, you will leave a legacy of paintings or musical works or writings. If Jim Rohn hadn’t changed his personal philosophy, he wouldn’t have left numerous audio programs and books for others to develop themselves. I would have been a different person without that and you probably wouldn’t be reading this book right now.

  So it’s good to emphasize the long-term perspective in your philosophy. Don’t worry about naysayers who claim that it will keep you from achieving your short-term goals. If that’s the case, then those goals were not worth achieving. Just focus on your daily job and lifelong vision and you will exceed your goals. Before publishing Master Your Time, I would have been stoked if I’d earned 5 percent of my salary but I had no immediate goals connected to it. I was only focused on creating the best possible book for busy people interested in increasing their productivity. And a new book was just a small puzzle in the big picture of my life. I was taken completely by surprise when that book became a bestseller. Since then the lowest level my royalties have reached have been 16 percent of my salary.

  There is magic in long-term thinking, the one utilizing the law of errors and disciplines. The long-term perspective is fruitful even within a short time span, but the opposite is not true. Chasing medium-sized goals one after another without thinking about the long-term consequences is likely to lead to emptiness.

  Knowledge Items:

  - You are not a complete failure.

  - It is unreasonable to develop a new shiny personal philosophy tomorrow.

  - The long-term perspective is fruitful even within a short time span; the opposite is not true.

  Analyze Your Data Sources

  back to top

  “Garbage in, garbage out.”

  ― Anonymous

  I encourage you to first address your data sources. Change the media from which you obtain information. Change the amount of time you employ to get information. I don’t mean you should turn off your TV for good because you enjoy watching 30 minutes of the evening news every day. Don’t focus on what’s wrong with the current way you gather data. It’s helpful if you target the most destructive data inputs responsible for your worldview, but it’s not necessary to develop an improved personal philosophy.

  All you need is to introduce positive changes and focus on them. New beliefs and ideas will challenge your current philosophy and habits. With time, you will realize what was wrong. And you won’t have to struggle to give up on those not-so-supportive input sources. You will want to dedicate more time to your new and effective ways of conducting your life. The old customs will naturally die out.

  To stick with those changes, develop new habits. It’s essential to adopt new habits of ingesting information. You need automatic routines to take care of this element of reshaping your philosophy. Changing your social environment and the interpretation of your experiences is much harder than changing your data sources. You need more conscious effort to master them. That’s why you should employ habits in those cases, too. Don’t stop at changing what you read or listen to. Develop new habits that will help you meet new people. Make a habit of examining your speech patterns, your self-talk, and your thoughts.

  Everything is easier when you use automatic routines. A common theme across the whole personal development realm is to use the power of habits to your advantage. This advice is not a recommendation of theoreticians. It was tested in practice time after time. Successful people almost unanimously recommend the use of habits as the most formidable tool for reaching one’s goals. Jim Rohn, Leo Babauta, Jeff Olson, Stephen R. Covey, John D. Rockefeller, Thomas Edison—all of them were employing habits in their pursuits.

  Your brain was designed to utilize habits. They just work. It’s not willpower. It’s not the purpose, drive, or vision. It’s not the attractiveness of new activities. Habits are the most effective tools of transformation. Use this aspect of your brain to maximize the transformation and ease the effort of introducing the change.

  The best way to develop new habits is to build them on the old ones. When I decided to transform my life, I had a habit of doing a Weider series in the morning for fifteen minutes. It never occurred to me that I could utilize this time. One of the first new habits I adopted was listening to audio programs during this exercise. It opened my mind to a variety of ideas. Over a period of almost two years, I listened to a few audio books, several audio programs, and hundreds of podcasts. My most profound experience involved with this discipline was learning a variant of Muscle Testing Techniques, which I used the very same day in practice. It was my first milestone to overcoming my shyness. It led me to writing my book From Shy to Hi. I did nothing more than commit to listening to audio for fifteen minutes a day and it changed my life and the lives of others.

  All the leaders are readers. I heard this slogan numerous times and felt good about myself because I’m an avid reader. I read in Norton Beau’s Extreme Confidence that he has been studying the lives of successful people for over three years, and he has not came across a single extremely successful person who did not read books.

  I can’t preach reading books strongly enough. Ditch all the excuses! Just do it. If you read at least ten pages of a good book every day, it will translate to eight to ten books read within one year. If it seems daunting because you don’t like to read, start with a couple of pages a day. The worst thing you can do is to ignore this advice and not read at all.

  You are lucky to live in the Internet era. There are a multitude of blogs on every subject imaginable. You can learn about parenting, healthy eating, starting a new business, becoming an author, and a thousand other things. Carefully select two or three blogs in an interesting area and follow them very closely. I recommend you avoid “gurus”—popular blogs with gigantic followings. Find someone closer to your level, who has had some success but still has time and a desire to interact with his audience. This kind of interaction on the Internet touches on another pillar of rebuilding your personal philosophy: meeting new people. Not only does the blog owner count, but also his followers. The comments section is a great place to meet new acquaintances. You get two advantages with one stroke. You can also automate your blog readings by using RSS feeds.

  I strongly dislike learning from videos, but you may prefer this. And there are a lot of valuable video materials on the Internet. As with blogs, there are a multitude of specialized channels on YouTube. To expand your horizons, I recommend TED talks. If you prefer to consume content offline (as I do), there are free tools that allow you to download videos from most of the sites, including YouTube. I recommend Flash Video Downloader if you use Firefox or HD Transform.

  Audio is another way to get new ideas and knowledge. You can utilize a lot of opportunities to listen to audio materials: doing household chores, exercising, commuting, driving, going shopping. The list is endless. You can subscribe to your favorite podcasts and download them automatically into your device. You can even find some valuable TV programs to follow. It’s hard for me to imagine, but there are some such programs. Skip the trash. I don’t have time to go through garbage, that’s why I don’t turn on the TV at all. I can find all I need to learn on the Internet and consume the content in the way I want, at the time I prefer.

  With such a variety of data sources, you can surely find something that will work for you. Nowadays we are more threatened with information overload than with data scarcity. So carefully choose a couple of new inputs and develop new habits of plugging into them. Some useful ideas:

  - Read ten pages of a good book a day

  - Listen to one podcast episode a day

  - Watch one TED talk a day

  - Read a single specialized blog post a day

  - Listen to educational/motivational audio materials for fifteen minutes a day

  - Read a single random blog post a day (just type an interesting topic into Google)

  Approach
these activities like any other serious habit-building activity. Design the process. Try to connect your new habits with existing ones, like I did with my exercises. Find your cue, a trigger for starting an activity, like leaving a book on your bedside table, so every time you lie down, you read ten pages of it. Set alarms or reminders. Track a new habit. Make it a point to do both the habit itself and track it every day.

  Action Items:

  - Develop at least one single new data-absorbing habit.

  - Connect your new habits with existing ones; find your cue

  - Track a new habit.

  Analyze Yourself

  back to top

  “He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.”

  ― Lao Tzu

  Begin from within yourself. You know yourself in the most intimate ways. You are a mine of information about you. Sadly, most of us never try to touch this repository of self-knowledge. Ever.

  I was able to avoid self-analysis for almost sixteen years. A few very serious conversations with close friends or family members, a yearly retreat with my church community where I was given obligatory spiritual exercises —that was all.

  If you feel resistance against self-analysis, you can probably relate to my feelings from that period. I didn’t want to look deep inside myself because I generally despised myself. Only a thin layer of good intentions and good deeds was worthy of praise. Under it was a deep reservoir of laziness, complacency, and middle-class comfort. On the other hand, when I started serious analysis after my transformation, I was terrified of an eventual greatness in me. Both things— below the surface of my life and above it—were uncomfortable to contemplate, so I tried very hard to not think about them at all.

  However, you can speed up the process of upgrading your personal philosophy by getting to know yourself.