Does shooting the negative thoughts then replacing them with positive ones work as well as we're told?

For years I’ve been watching how those who claim to assist and train others in being better and more successful and I’ve noticed something. There’s one main thing that they all love to suggest to everyone:

They always advise us to shoot the negative thoughts and replace them with more positive ones.

While I can’t disagree with the main core of that approach entirely I do have trouble with the methodology.

It is true that negative thoughts might cause us to under perform so I’m not against doing something to eradicate them. But the coaches, motivational speakers, and psychologists all sing in the choir of the method known as “thought replacement”.

It works like this:

You identify your negative thoughts and then replace those thoughts with positive ones.

Now, on the surface that sounds pretty simple. Something anyone can do. But wait, there is a problem. Here’s what it is:

It’s a ton of impossible work here’s why.

Research has shown that the average human processes thousands of thoughts per day. That’s a lot of thoughts. Not only that but the experts estimate that of those thoughts about 70 percent of them on average are considered negative.

Hmmm.

Let’s see then. So if you have about 50,000 thoughts per day and 70 percent of them are negative then that’s a boatload of effort to replace all that. Not to mention the fact that as you are busy replacing those thoughts new thoughts are constantly being formed and 70 percent of those are quite possibly going to be negative as well.

If looking at it this way begins to give you negative thoughts about this article then I can’t blame you but read on because there is a workaround for this dilemma.

So, seeing as the task of trading in all those negative thoughts for positive ones is virtually a never-ending one, at least the way that the great personal development gurus are teaching it, I think it’s time for something completely different.

To give this a new shocking perspective I’m going to have to introduce something that many of you have not heard of before.

First though I have to make one key observation. All of the advice that pertains to thought replacement is what I call bead-based. What I mean by that is that the focus is on the brain that’s in the head.

Of course, I do understand why they place such a lot of interest there. Thoughts, either positive of negative ones, appear to be made in that region so it makes sense. The fine old head brain is what people are thinking of when they talk about brains in general. But what if there was more than one set of brains in every human?

Sounds like a weird thing to say I know but the fact of the matter is…

It’s true.

In 1996 a cell biologist  Dr Michael Gershon announced to the world through an article in the New York Times that he had found evidence that there is a crude brain in the gut of every human and it can, and does, act on its own.

To me this was big news since I had been using a new system of my own design to boost a person’s potential and to buffer the effects of negative thinking automatically. This system relies on the release of the hidden energy available in the gut brain to soothe the upper brain creating an elegant dual relationship between the two.

I’ll talk more about this in subsequent posts as well as on my free online web shows.

If you’d like to attend my show on Monday nights at 11PM Eastern - Click here to join

More power to you

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Mobius Monday Minute – June 27 , 2011

Sports figures, entrepreneurs, politicians, and you and I. This is only a partial list of those who succeeded because of just one thing: they had just enough belief to try.

I’m talking about self-belief of course. That’s the kind of belief that infuses the confidence of our mindset and opens a portal to our potential that allows it to flood into our every attempt to succeed at something new.

But there is a problem with this. Two problems actually.

The first is the worrisome fear that our self-belief might be groundless and superficial. That it was applied, like a thin coat of cheap paint, from the time when we read something inspirational in a book or listened to a motivational talk from a skilled presenter.

The second problem is that our potential, if we even think we have any, cannot be seen. Its invisibility becomes a burden even though we’re told by others, who are trying their best to encourage us, that we have lots of it. So we stubbornly use that as reinforcement to our argument for why we can’t do something. If we can’t see it, we reason, then how do we know it’s really there?

There is one main reason why these two problems exist. It’s the lack of actual proof. The problem of your potential’s invisibility is do to the fact that you are human. You can’t see your own potential because it’s simply too darned big a pattern to fit into your human brain.

Yes, the fact is that you can’t possibly comprehend something who’s boarders you can’t see. For example, imagine that you’ve been shipwrecked and found yourself alone in the middle of the vastness of the ocean. You look around but all that you can see is open water in every direction. How could you not feel completely lost?

That ocean is like your potential. It’s a pattern and the pattern is huge. It may have an edge somewhere but since you can’t see it you’re unable to have a frame of reference between you and it. Without that frame of reference there can be no understanding of the pattern you’re looking at.

If you need some kind of proof you need to have it in a form that is solidly understandable. A huge ocean like this is a great metaphor for the size of your own personal potential but to get your head around it you need a something smaller. You need a sample. You need a cup.

A cup of that ocean’s water is an amazing game changer. Small enough so that its boarders can easily be comprehended yet chock full of truth because its contents are exactly the same as the water that’s in that ocean.

There is a word for this type of sample. It’s called a “fractal”.

Fractal images are usually rendered by computer and were first developed and named by the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot in the 1970’s. They are more closely related to geometry, rather than samplings of personal belief patterns, but they fit my purpose beautifully so I use them.

My point is this: If you had just two types of fractals
• a set sequence of true-life examples of your individual past accomplishments
• a set sequence of the exact same gut exhilaration you experienced when you first performed each of the successful activities you had examined above

I have discovered that if those two things are brought together in a tight time- frame of a few short hours then an interesting reaction happens inside anyone who does it. An authentic body feeling will present itself as irrefutable proof that you have had success in the past, and therefore, have enormous potential for attaining it in the future.

To overcome the problem of believing in something that is far too large to comprehend has been my life’s work up to this point. I now have turned the theory into reality and only need a few of you to test it.

Please leave a comment below if you’re willing to give it a try.

More power to you.

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I’m not a huge health nut.  I’m a mindset immunity nut. So what am I doing writing about trans fats? There is a story here.

Not that long ago my wife and I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things. We soon found ourselves in the dairy isle so we got our cheese, sour cream, and some yogurt. Then we got to the butter. “Where’s the butter?” I asked her as if she would know. There wasn’t any. The shelf was bare. Seems there was a sale on butter and, since this was latter in the day, other customers had run off with it.

Our only alternative was the other brand and it was about twice the cost of the house brand that was on sale.

But by now I was hooked on getting a deal and we did need butter. So the only other choice was something that is not even a dairy product.  It’s margarine, that molecular mash-up that often stands-in up to four times as often as butter in many families’ refigerators. Same color, similar consistency, and it even has the same packaging as butter. The one pound square this I got comes dressed in that familiar paper wrapper and its even exactly the same size as a pound of butter.

But of course it’s not the same.

It’s margarine.The label says that on the front. On the back is its ingredients and nutritional info including the trans-fat percentage. This is the thing that’s been linked to many diseases including some types of cancer. It’s a molecular freak that the body simply can’t use. If it tries to it will turn it into something even more deformed.

Now that I’ve had a chance to research it a bit I find that it’s probably closer to being plastic than food. Nothing will grow in it. Leave it out and no pesky flies will go near it. Won’t rot or smell weird if left out either. It’s definitely not butter.

So why did I buy it?

I was skunked by price. Outmaneuvered by the marketing and seduced by easy availability.

Sounds familiar? Many do it every day when they pick up a great book of advice, positive quotes, or read stories of successful people. Get their shot of motivation for the day to help them overcome a tough situation or just help them figure out what to do next.

What else can they do?

Real authentic passion and mindset immunity is in short supply. It’s rarity makes it expensive in time and effort to find it too. So we stick with the mind-candy even though we know that it’s addictive and eventually leads to system breakdowns. It’s loaded with trans-fat thinking that:

• is extrinsic, it doesn’t come from you it comes at you
• clogs the pathways of good clear creativity with rules and “guidelines” that are not your own
• it’s not natural to you so it may not quite fit and it doesn’t last very long
• it’s just cheap and instant and requires little work to get because there’s lot’s of vendors out there who are ready to give it to you

I’ve read some of those trans-fatty books. I know what they are like but I now know better.

Glad I’m finished with this post. Now I can go to my fridge, reach in for that chunk of margarine, and chuck it in the garbage trans-fats and all.

More power to you all.

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Freud: Happy? "No, just less miserable."

For a long time now, particularly ever since I discovered the phenomenon of mindset immunity, I've been very interested in human happiness. Or should I say lac of it. (See I suspect that there might be a happiness deficit in the world today.) I had a hunch that there might be tons of people just like myself who are interested in happiness and how to make it stick around longer.

As I researched the topic of happiness I, naturally, ran into many references to the field of psychology. One in particular was Sigmund Freud. He was known widely as the founder of psychoanalytic school of psychiatry, a branch of medicine where it's practitioners try to make their patients better through analyzing things like dreams but Freud, as it turns out, was quite a pronounced pessimist and I'm guessing not that very happy a guy himself.

Flooded with clients who had lost their joy of life I think in time he must have caught what ever unhappiness bug it was that they had. Whatever the case it must have resulted in a man who eventually concluded that happiness and hope might be close in the dictionary listings but that's about as close as they got. Check out what he had to say about happiness:

• "It's a doomed craft. It's propelled by infantile aspects of the individual that can never be met in reality."
• "One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be happy is not included in the plan of creation."

Whoa! And he was a doctor!

I think that old Sig should have forgotten his head and had is gut examined instead. If he had perhaps he'd now be listed among today's innovative researchers like Dr. Michael Gershon. Dr. Gershon you see is a professor as well as chairman of the Anatomy and Cell Biology department at Columbia University Hospital in New York City.  He's the guy who noticed that the human gut contains large amounts of feel-good chemistry and brain cells exactly like the one's found in the head.

GUT BRAIN

Not only that though. According to Dr. Gershon the millions of neurons in the gut qualifies them to be recognized as a brain all by themselves.  He even wrote a book on it called "The Second Brain" in which he describes in detail the disorders and the mysteries of what he calls the enteric nervous system.

The moment back in 1996 when I first heard about his discovery made that a red-letter day for me. I was looking for something concrete to put into context the incredible results I was seeing with attendees at my seminars who had just used my H.E.R.O. search tool.  They all reported a strong feeling of happiness and solidness eminating from an area just below the rib cage. Thanks to Dr. Gershon I now I know how to frame an explaination for it. One that I will be using extensively in my soon-to-be-released DVD entitled "Immune To Failure".

I happen to believe that happiness is a part of our birthright. After all don't we normally all start out that way?  Only taking on sadness and despair usually much later in life? Now, when I talk about happiness I'm not talking about the showy over-the-top jovial Santa-type happy but a steady ability to weather the storms that existence sometimes throws at us. Happiness has to be authentic. The smile on a used car salesman's face is for example quite different than that which comes to us from a new mom who sees her baby for the first time.

No contest right?

Here's an interesting video on happiness from a TED seminar by the famed luminary of positive psychology Mihaly Czikszentmihaly.[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXIeFJCqsPs[/youtube]

A Poll:

One day I was wondering about how happiness was being prioritized by business people on the web. I wondered how it effected their mindset so I wanted to ask a multiple-choice question.

I'm a member of the popular Warrior Forum so I posted a new thread and asked. Here's the results I got after the thread had been going for just under 200 days: The title of the thread was " Which of these is your top priority?" In this poll I asked people to weigh in on a short list of things:

My number one priority in life would be: (Please choose one)

1) More happiness

2) More time

3) More money

4) Other (please note a short description)

Results are In!

Here are the details for the poll as to the end of February 2010: a total of 196 days. Total views: 1,822 Total Responded: 123 Here's the choices they made:

More Happiness: 58

More Time ——- 9

More Money —- 21

Other ————- 20

Not clearly selected: 14

It was obvious early on that happiness was going to trump all other choices. Interestingly, those who choose "More money" felt that they had to explain themselves even if in a very brief sort of apologetic way.

Those who chose happiness more often than not just made the one brief statement: "I choose happiness".  No apologetic reason ever seemed to be needed although some did make statements concerning the state of the world.

Seems the exercise did reveal quite a bit about the state of some people's mindset wouldn't you agree?

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Nelson Mandela in 2008. Photo Credit: www.sagoodnews.co.za

Madiba is not a name most of you will recognize right of the bat.

I didn’t.

That’s because, for one thing, I’m not South African and for another I didn’t take the time to closely educate myself about the man whose unfailing belief in his cause changed his whole country first and later the world.

If you just look at the picture on this page you’ll know right away who Madiba is.

Just in case you’re wondering (and I didn’t know this myself either till I found it here) the other name of this man is of course Nelson Mandela. Madiba is an honorary title adopted by elders of his clan.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the day that he walked out of prison a free man after being locked up for an entire third of his life (Mandela is now 91).

What kind of strength of mindset does it take to survive 27 years in a prison cell and then come out of it and not seek vengince on those who condemded him to all those years?

I only have a clue.

…But

It’s not just positive thinking (although that might help)

It’s not deep-breathing excercises (though that’s a good one for health)

It’s not keeping really busy doing something else (though I think he certainly did that too)

It’s all of those things and something more. Something natural and a mystery at the same time.

A phenomenon really.

I have a name for it. I call it Mindset Immunity

It kept him from becoming a bitter and resentful beast.

It does it for you too if you’re very lucky to have it strike your insides.

Happy anniversary Madiba!

More power to you.

…David

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File this under alternate health care.

It is being reported that at the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax Nova Scotia has hired a psychologist to take care of emergency patients that complain of pain but don’t seem to have any physical symptoms.

What to do? Send him/her home telling them that they’re crazy and, “Oh, by the way, please don’t come back”?

No. That would not do.

This hospital has something better.

They refer the patient immediately to the hired talk-therapist to quiet the person down.

“Intensive, short-term dynamic psychotherapy” they call it. After the session they then send them home without telling them they’re crazy (but still thinking that they might be).

Apparently it must be working. The hospital now reports:

“Helping people recognize the link between their physical symptoms and their stress or emotions resulted in a 69 per cent drop in repeat visits to the emergency room by patients in this group. Hospital visits dropped from an average of almost 4.6 visits a year to 1.4 visits a year, the researchers found” says the report.

As an example they say that they saw an 80 per cent drop in panic attacks with just a single interview.

Plus:

• The average treatment was completed in just 3.8 sessions
• patients reported a high degree of satisfaction.
• For every 100 people seen by the staff psychologist, there will be 300 fewer emergency visits a year, which adds up to a huge savings and reduction in unnecessary tests

Wow.

Sure sounds good alright.

I wonder though.

I used to live in a government town while growing up and I can tell you that if a government sponsored agency spends public funds the suits in the corner offices will be heavy on building a good story that backs their decisions.

I’m not saying that they’re not getting results, they may indeed be. But it’s been shown time and again that left to our own devices many of us humans will recover on our own, in due time anyway, without intervention. I’ve read about studies that detail surprising findings. Like the one that showed that subjects who go through the AA 12 step program could actually get better results by doing nothing at all.

In the good old days (100 years ago) anxiety used to be handled by the sufferer. He just talked with friends or family who just told him that he’s not going bananas and that everything is going to be ok “so get back to work and plow your field of corn you puff-cake!.

The big problem is no one’s got very many close friends any more.

Now we’ve got to pay a pro to do what used to come freely.

If we have to use the psych services why not do what the good doctors are doing in England. There they have so much demand for mental health services that they decided to work out of the box for a change.

To meet the demand a patient can now log on to a special internet site and, his appointment is handled by “talking” to his psychiatrist who could be sitting at home or in his fancy office sipping his tea.

The patient simply types away and, with his own descriptions, gives the details the problem.

Here’s what happens a surprising number of times:

Turns out that the patient, who can now see his whole story in black and white,  and in his own words, often begins to recognize that his “problem” doesn’t amount to a hill o’beans in the scheme of things and he soon begins to feel better.

Now I’m sure you may have noticed that on this site that I promote the idea that there exists another immune system in the human person that works to control out of control thinking. The only problem with it is that it works very slowly.

So slowly in fact that it appears to not work at all sometimes.

I think I have something that can fix that.

We mostly work with entrepreneurs and wannabes because it’s tough to get through the learning curve without driving over the edge sometimes.

All we do is show them how to use our  on-line “machine”. By doing that they seem to get so confident in themselves they feel that they can take on the world with ease.  It takes less than a day to complete and results are permanent.

They end up having a mindset that won’t get offset.

More power to you.

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