Tag Archives: belief

Too Much Junk in Your Brain?

How Much Junk Do You Have?

My dad was a packrat.

Whenever he would buy something, he would keep the box.

“Just in case.”

When I was a kid, we had no problem finding a box for any purpose.

If you’ve ever moved from one house to another, you may have been faced with the difficult question.

“Should I keep this or trash it?”

Especially if you are the one boxing everything up, putting it in the truck (or your friends’ cars) and then unloading it.

You look at it and think, “Wow, I’ve had this for years, but I forgot it. Do I really need to keep it?”

Of course, you still think that you might one day “need” that stuff.

A good rule of thumb is that if you haven’t used it in the past year, you can safely trash it.

Some even say you should do this once a year, even if you’re not moving. It can really give you a “fresh” feeling, even though you haven’t really done anything except throw a bunch of stuff in the garbage.

But even this is hard. You might have a favorite shirt, one you haven’t worn in YEARS.

But when you think about throwing it out, you might start to feel sad. Melancholy for the “good ‘ol days.”

Sure, there are extremes. There are people who shun ALL material possessions. They wander the earth in search of truth.

Then there are those people to keep EVERYTHING. They even make TV shows about them. How their entire houses are filled with all kinds of junk they don’t even know they have.

Human emotions are kind of like that. Our deep instincts.

They were formed when life was dangerous. When we had to chase our food, and other critters were chasing us because WE were food.

But it’s not like that any more.

Many of those fears and trepidations are like that old shirt you haven’t worn in a decade.

It might a bit painful to throw it in the trash, but once you do, you’ll feel a sense of lightness that will make EVERYTHING seem new.

And since you’ve got a whole CLOSETFULL of those old fears in your brain that you simply DO NOT NEED anymore, you can start throwing them out one by one.

And slowly replace them with better feelings and attitudes and beliefs. Just like you can replace that old disco shirt for one that’s much more stylish, and will get you much better attention.

Get Started:

Fearless

Copy What You Want To Do

Are You Copying The Right Things?

Little kids are cute. Very cute.

Especially when they copy adults. Now, a lot of us grownups think we’re all that.

And when we see a little kid copying, we imagine all kinds of wonderful things about ourselves.

Like that little kid is somehow seeing us for our “real self” or they have some kind of “special” connection to us.

Unfortunately, biology tells us something different. Little kids of all animals (humans, birds, etc) learn by modeling.

They are hard wired to copy those around them. Especially if the person that they are copying from is confident and enjoying themselves.

If you’ve ever wondered why it was hard to get your kids to eat that gross baby food while you were eating a burrito, now you know.

They CANNOT turn off their “copy mode,” it’s always on.

Which is why parents know they need to be very careful how they behave around their kids.

But for some reason, when we grow up, we seem to forget our natural learning mode.

Simply watching somebody doing what we want, and then copying them.

Of course, the more complicated the “thing” is, the harder it is to “copy.” Like if you wanted to copy a concert pianist, it would be hard if all you did was dress in a tuxedo and bang around on the keys.

You would have to copy how they read music. You would have to effectively copy how they reference their own memories of learning.

No matter WHAT you are learning, part of it should be imagining yourself performing it as if you were an expert.

To give your subconscious some kind of direction when you ARE doing the necessary boring stuff. Like playing the scales, or learning the more simple songs. Or building in the lighting quick response from seeing a note written on a page, and making that same sound come out of the piano.

No matter WHAT skill you are learning, there is one META-SKILL that will always be required:

A belief that it is possible.

Even if you practiced piano for three hours a day for the next ten years, if you BELIEVED that you’d always suck at the piano, you would always suck.

But if you BELIEVED you were destined for greatness, you’d get there a lot quicker.

Sure, you’d still have to do the work to get there, but the path would be a lot smoother, and a lot more enjoyable.

One of the biggest elements of a negative believe is fear. If you are afraid of success or failure, that will manifest as a belief that you CANNOT do what you want to do.

Which means if you get rid of that fear, you’ll also get rid of your negative beliefs.

Get Started:

Fearless