Trickle Down Mindset

by Michal Stawicki

  It makes perfect sense. Of course, you can organize some kind of retreat, sit with a list of life and death questions, meditate upon them, ponder them, and resolve them from within, let’s say, within three days. But have you three days to spare? You are busy living! Besides, you are not static. New questions will appear in your life sooner or later. The old answers will slightly evolve. A simple daily discipline is a better solution for facing life’s challenges. And one more thing. If you drain yourself answering all the important questions, you may be overwhelmed by the answers. You will suddenly realize how much work is awaiting you and how much effort you need to put into straightening out contorted parts of your life.

  Self-examination is part of a personal philosophy for many successful people. Socrates, the Greek philosopher who invented the term “philosophy” had a motto: “Know thyself.” Many successful people recommended journaling as a way to keep in touch with yourself and to adjust your personal philosophy. Among famous diarists were Lewis Carrol, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Virginia Woolf, an English novelist; British Prime Minister Winston Churchill; and many American presidents including George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Ronald Reagan, and Harry S. Truman.

  Keeping a daily journal is a great discipline for constantly maintaining a high level of self-knowledge. It will reveal the truth about you piece by piece. You will rebuild yourself one bit at a time. The revolution may be stretched out, but it will become a lasting one, and it won’t be any less impressive than the one done within three days.

  If I were you, I would consider keeping a journal as your main indicator of how serious you are about this whole “adjusting personal philosophy” thing. It’s a simple activity. Everybody can keep a journal. With the level of technology we have achieved, you can be even limbless and keep an audio or video journal. But the vast majority of our society has two strong hands, good eyesight, and has mastered the skill of writing (or typing), yet still doesn’t keep a journal. Not doing so is an error in judgment repeated over time. And absolutely any kind of journal qualifies. Even a food journal can be a valuable source of self-information. Keep a food journal for a couple of months and you will recognize patterns. Are you consistent? Are your cheat days devolving into cheat weeks? Are you better at abstaining from your favorite (and caloric) foods or at introducing a new type of healthy food? Do you prefer regularity or novelty? Many people track their moods in their food journals or note down the time and duration of every meal. All this data can be translated into your character’s traits.

  How you structure your journal is entirely up to you. It may be a very focused kind of journal, such as a food, time, or a gratitude journal. Or you may ramble for five minutes each evening about your emotions like a teenager. Techniques can be freestyle too: Video, audio, or online blogs or just good old school notepads and pens work. There is only one iron clad rule when it comes to doing it right: do it consistently.

  Before my transformation, I had never kept any kind of journal longer than a couple of months and the last time I did so was when I was a teenager. Now I keep six of them:

  My daily Bible study, where I write just a few sentences about the specific fragment I found speaking to me that day;

  Gratitude journal about my wife, where I write at least one thing I’m grateful for or about her.

  Gratitude journal for my kids, where I write at least three entries about each of my three kids.

  General purpose gratitude journal, where I write about 10 to 20 things I’m grateful for this very day. I include also my daily achievements in that journal; I’m grateful for them too.

  My progress journal, where I write everything I did for my business that day and, from time to time, some ruminations.

  My self-analysis journal.

  I didn’t start them all at once. It was a gradual process that took me about nine months.

  I encourage you to start by tracking your data sources. Carry a pocket notepad with you at all times for one week and jot down what you read, listen to, watch, and with whom you speak and meet. You can extend the scope of this discipline: note the time each of these took you, track if you label this input as positive or negative, the conversation subjects (small talk, job, spirituality), and whatever else comes to mind.

  Start journaling today. Only you can reveal the treasures that are hidden inside you.

  If you want to take massive action from the start, when your motivation is at its peak, do some hefty self-examination sessions. I can’t replace you in this task, but I can provide you with some support. I give you questions and exercises. Answer them all at once or one by one, in one or ten sessions, in this particular order or one that is more suitable for you. You are in charge of this mission. It’s up to you.

  What activities are you trying to avoid? Why?

  What do you consider your greatest failure? Why?

  What do you consider your greatest success? Why? Was it hard to choose this one? Can you think of more success examples?

  What are you good at? Why?

  What have you always wanted to do but have been afraid to attempt?

  List your life’s goals. Imagine you have no limitations, that success is guaranteed. Which one goal would you choose to achieve? Why this one?

  Imagine that you have only six months left to live. How would it change your actions?

  Recall the time when you felt most loved. Why did you feel loved then?

  Visualize how your life will be in 5, 10, and 20 years from now if you don’t make any significant decisions during these years. Imagine letting your life “go with the flow.” Dwell on your finances, health, relationships, personal growth, spirituality, career. Do you really want your life to look like this? What is missing in these pictures? Think more in terms of values and feelings than of physical possessions.

  Visualize your own funeral. Who is there? What are your family, friends, church members, and work mates saying about you? Write your own specific eulogy. Actually write it out.

  Don’t stop at these tasks. Seriously consider forming a self-analysis habit. Once you start, you will find it easy to continue. Each morning I sit down with a pen in my hand and for about ten minutes, I write about myself: my goals, problems, plans, obstacles, dreams, achievements, struggles, relationships, etc. At the beginning, I was afraid I would quickly exhaust the topics but a year later, I still have a fresh subject to ponder. Human nature is amazingly complex. You will find something worth thinking about every time, I assure you.

  I usually ask myself a question and try to answer it comprehensively. For example, how would you like your life to be in ten years? If I find the subject too ample, I continue answering the question for the next day.

  Here is good material for such an exercise. Examine your attitude toward the advice I have already written about: the law of errors and disciplines,, long-term perspective, personal responsibility for your life’s outputs, the importance of self-analysis. Ask yourself, “Do I believe this is true? Why? Why not; then what’s true in this regard? Which of my experiences support my point of view?”

  I’ll continue to emphasize this point. It’s your personal philosophy. You own it. You must embrace those “right” pieces as your own. Maybe they are not right for you, maybe you have been diagnosed with end-stage cancer and long-term perspectives are not valid for you. I don’t know, but you know yourself and your situation. Use that knowledge.

  One of the almost universal pieces of successful people’s philosophies is “stop hanging out with negative people.” For me it was not acceptable. Tell me how the “negative” people are supposed to change if they have no example to follow? From where should they get inspiration to transform? Severing my relationships with them was in my eyes like abandoning them. I embraced two other bits of philosophy.

  First, that I’m solely responsible for my reactions. No one can “drag me down” if I don’t allow it first in my mind. I didn’t consciously break any relationships. I
changed the things I was focusing on. I almost stopped playing the computer games and my favorite card game. My playing buddies see me a lot less often.

  Second, that I must be the change I want to see in others. I don’t dwell on their “negativity.” I don’t mull over how they behaved unjustly towards me or how their philosophy and deeds are wrong, debilitating, and not constructive. That’s their life and they can do whatever they wish with it. I focus on being the best “me” I can be.

  Maybe I could progress faster without them. Quite possibly. A million millionaires are preaching this rule of ditching the disturbers, so it must have some merit. But I still progress nonetheless and I feel much more “me” doing it my way.

  Another idea for self-examination is creating and using your personal mission statement. It’s your personal constitution, which “focuses on what you want to be (character) and to do (contributions and achievements) and on the values or principles upon which being and doing are based.”[1] Composing your own mission statement is a self-examination experience in itself, but it’s just the beginning. Once you have it, you refer to it every day; you read it, listen to it, repeat it in your mind. It’s enough to know those words by heart to examine every information input through them. You almost automatically correct your actions to be in accordance with your mission.

  A personal mission statement is a very effective tool for transformation. I vote for it. I attribute 80 percent of my progress to it. If you want to write your personal mission statement, visit my blog and follow the guidance:

  www.expandbeyondyourself.com/how-to-write-personal-mission-statement/

  All of the above examples are just that—examples. Those disciplines worked well in my case but won’t necessarily be as effective for you. Don’t restrict yourself to just them. You will find your way to discover your own unique methods to observe your self-talk, your internal interpretation of the events from the outside world.

  Why all this hassle with self-examination? Well, apart from it being indicated as a success factor by numerous sages, for this kind of job—developing your personal philosophy—you must realize what parts of your present worldview hinder your progress. You want to remodel yourself. In order to do that you need to know what your “shape” is right now. Transforming your mental constitution is very similar to character-forming disciplines the Stoics practiced. The word “character” comes from the Greek word meaning to chisel or the mark left by a chisel. A chisel is a steel tool used for making a sculpture out of hard or difficult material, like granite. You are like an unformed clod of matter that needs chiseling to bring out the outstanding sculpture hidden inside. The excess matter must be discarded, chiseled out to reveal the statue inside. To do that, you need to make an internal inventory.

  Does it mean that you will have to stop being yourself and transform into someone else? In a way, yes. But it’s you who consciously determines what to choose and—most important in this phase—what to discard from your current philosophy.

  It’s not New Age stuff. Benjamin Franklin did something similar, which also gives some consideration to the importance of habits. You can check it out here:

  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm#IX

  The master sculptor doesn’t focus very much on which piece of excess matter to discard. He has a vision of what is hidden in the clay and he steadily aims to materialize this vision. Benjamin Franklin did the same by defining the virtues he wanted to master. You just need to be aware that some parts of your present constitution are disturbing. However, your main task is to form a new personal philosophy, not to analyze the old one.

  Benjamin Franklin is worth mimicking. Focus on what you want to achieve. List all of those traits and goals. Form appropriate habits to achieve them. Build new healthy elements of your personal philosophy.

  Action Items:

  - Keep a journal as your main indicator of how serious you are about adjusting your personal philosophy.

  - Create and make a habit of using a personal mission statement.

  - Read the fragment of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography and copy his process.

  The Company You Keep

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  “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

  ― Jim Rohn

  In the chapter Analyze Your Data Sources, I dwelt on how to incorporate new data sources into your life. In the previous chapter, I pointed out journaling as a great habit for self-analysis to track and change your internal interpretation of events and experiences. You need the habits to also change your social environment. New data sources may offer opportunities to meet new people. The host of the podcast you start to listen to, the owner of a blog you start to follow, their followers—all of them are potential new buddies. I encourage you to look for new acquaintances online. It’s not true that online relationships are all impersonal and superficial. They tend to be that, but they can be so much more.

  About a year ago, I joined “Pat’s First Kindle Book” on Facebook. It’s a huge group of indie authors who share not only tips and tricks, but also encourage and cheer each other. I learned a lot there, but I also got new business connections, including the editor of a couple of my books, who also became my accountability partner.

  Social media can be addictive, so beware. While the Transformation Contest was running, I spent an hour a day reading my friends’ entries and commenting on them. But social media is also very handy in developing habits. You can set the reminder to log onto Facebook at 9 p.m. and set the timer to spend just fifteen minutes on it. You don’t have such flexibility with one-on-one interactions.

  Once you change the kind of information you absorb, the kind of people you interact with, and your internal interpretation of your experiences, your actions will change too. To accelerate this process, you should consciously look for new experiences. Start a new activity, preferably involving new people, and you will attain the change of all the three basic elements of personal philosophy at once. For me, such an activity was joining the Transformational Contest. There I met people from other continents and cultures with different sexual orientations and religious beliefs, an amazing mix of individuals I wouldn’t have met in the offline world. I started a new activity, journaling (up until the contest, I had only a gratitude diary for my wife). And the nature of this activity made me mindful of my internal interpreter. I was describing my actions and motives. I was giving my opinions and advice to the other contestants.

  It accelerated my progress many fold, but I saw it only in hindsight. And I did it all on a whim—“Why not join the online contest, it can be fun, it can be useful.” You can design your accelerator consciously, knowing which elements to seek.

  Whatever activity you choose for gaining new experiences, I strongly encourage you to socialize with new people. Humans are the most unpredictable creatures on the planet. They bring the indeterminism factor into your life like nothing else.

  Action Items:

  - Carefully choose an online community that shares your passion and values.

  - Join such a community, interact there daily, and track your time spent (beware of a social media addiction).

  Learn from Others

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  “If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want

  and copy what they do and you’ll achieve the same results.”

  ― Tony Robbins

  Even the most successful philosophy that belongs to someone else is not able to transform your life. It can be seen throughout history. Sages and teachers tried to pass their wisdom to others, but without much success. We had only one Socrates and one Jim Rohn. Certainly, there were fewer successful stories out of Jim Rohn’s seminars and programs than attendants and listeners. Some very successful individuals like Tony Robbins, Darren Hardy, and Jeff Olson credit much of their success to Rohn’s lessons, but they found their unique ways to apply those lessons.

  Nonethel
ess, there are many universal elements in the personal philosophies of successful people. A few of them have already been pointed out in this book. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. If so many people have so many beliefs and ideas in common, it is possible to adopt them. The word “adopt” fits here. Those foreign, external elements of philosophy may be used by you only when you take ownership of them. You cannot just learn them; you must know that they are true. Only then is your brain appropriately hypnotized to utilize them.

  You may be afraid that adopting these beliefs and developing these traits will turn you into some kind of corporate clone and you’ll lose your uniqueness. It’s not a valid fear. Compare any half a dozen successful people you know—great entrepreneurs, artists, scientists, sportsmen, or sages. They may have a core of common beliefs, they may have the same traits, but each of them is different from the other. It’s not those success blocks themselves, but how you merge them into your philosophy that will lead you to your success. You can take perseverance, integrity, courage, and decisiveness and mix them in proportions unique to you. You take the common elements and create an uncommon formula out of them. Your own success formula. You just consciously do what was done to you on the subconscious level: digest, analyze, and discard or keep all the data inputs. The ones you keep shape your internal constitution.

  As a kid, you didn’t analyze your parents’ teachings very much, you just accepted them. In a normal family, Mom and Dad are not just figures of authority. They are the most loved and trusted people in the whole world. You mimicked them and absorbed their philosophies by osmosis, just living with them day by day. You probably know the saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.” If you have your own kids, you know what BS this is. You certainly know it if your parents ever tried to use it against you.

  You didn’t need sermons to inherit behavior from your parents. I can’t recall a single conversation with my dad about the value of equanimity. When I try, my mind is totally blank. But I can recall no more than half a dozen cases when he lost his cool. I identified with my wonderful dad in my childhood, so equanimity is a part of me. My sisters identified with my more dynamic mom and equanimity is quite foreign for them (Funny, most of the instances when my dad lost his temper involved kicking discussions with my mom).