Train Your Brain For Success

by Roger Seip

  However, when we do have a vision, we become instantly successful. Earl Nightingale defined success as “the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.” The key words in that definition are progressive and worthy. Progressive means that it's about being on the path—any progress towards a worthy ideal is success. A worthy ideal means that you are working toward some ideal or goal that you believe to be worthy. Life is not about having a big house, a fancy car, a lot of money, or cool toys. Life is about moving toward something that you are passionate and enthusiastic about. It's not about “Did you get there yet?” It's about “Are you getting there?”

  Some good news is that your vision doesn't need to be perfect for it to work for you. I'll show you how to craft one here shortly, so understand that even an incomplete or imperfect vision statement is much more effective than none at all. I mean, I'm constantly working to refine and update mine. Mine is a living document, and I encourage you to make yours into one as well. In its ideal manifestation, a personal vision statement becomes a skopos. I first heard this word in a sermon preached by Alex Gee in 1994, and it was definitely the best sermon I ever heard. I hope I can do the concept justice. Skopos is the Greek word for goal, but it implies much more than that. It implies vision—it's the root word for our modern word scope. If you think about the word scope, it essentially means everything that you can see. It shows up in words like telescope and microscope.

  So it's one thing to have a goal, but it's a whole different ballgame to have a skopos. As Pastor Gee said, “When you get a vision it might be in your eyes. But when you get a skopos, it's in your feet. When you get a skopos, your feet move towards it. When you get a skopos, your hands move toward it.” And then eventually, you don't have to push yourself anymore, because your vision drags you into it and pulls you along. A real, true, powerful vision for your life will cause you to go to the place where motivation is no longer necessary because it just burns from within you. And my friend, when you are on fire with a skopos, people will come from all around just to watch you burn. It's the real deal.

  Throughout history, people have been given visions—Joan of Arc, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, Moses, Muhammad. But you don't need to wait for a miracle—you owe it to yourself to help the process along. You can give your own life skopos that it really wants.

  Here's how we do it.

  Constructing Your Personal Vision Statement

  Again, this process is deceptively simple. You just answer a simple question, in a way that gets your juices flowing when you read it.

  The question is:

  “In the next five to seven years, what do you want your life to look like?”

  That's the gist. If you had the opportunity to wave your magic wand and create the ideal life for yourself (which you actually do, as long as you're willing to wave that wand called your thinking and then get to work), what would that life look like? When you have a written answer that gets you going, you have an effective personal vision statement.

  A couple of guidelines:

  1. Note the time frame suggested—five to seven years. This is not set in stone. When you craft a personal vision statement, understand that you are mentally creating your ideal life. If it really is your ideal life, who cares if it takes five years versus seven or ten? The whole point is the image itself, so don't get hung up on the time frame.

  2. I recommend answering this question for each area of your life. Professional, financial, physical, family, community/social, and mental/emotional/spiritual each get their own vision statement. The example you'll see below is the vision statement I created for the professional area of my life in 2010.

  3. Your answer should definitely have subjective qualities to it; not all of it needs to be specific and measurable. I also recommend that your answer have some objective qualities, like numbers and statistics. You'll see both qualities in the example below.

  4. Your answer should be written in the present tense, as if it is happening right now. Phrases like “I am,” “we are,” “our clients love,” “my family experiences,” and the like are actual images that your mind can see. This is much more powerful than something written in the future tense. “I'm going to,” “we will,” “our clients will love,” or “my family wants to experience” will not create as much. You'll notice in the example below that the present tense is used throughout.

  So here's an example of what an effective personal vision statement can look like:

  My Professional Vision

  Freedom Personal Development has become the world's premier personal development company. In terms of numbers, the company does $20,000,000 in annual sales, with exactly the right number of speakers and bookers generating that revenue, along with a kick-ass marketing system that generates results 24/7. Inside salespeople have a clear path to at least $100,000/year income, while speakers make an average of at least $250,000. Our total staff is a group of happy, hard-working people. We love what we do, we do it to the highest level of excellence and integrity, and each individual earns an income that they are ecstatic about.

  Our clients experience a series of life-changing workshops, coaching programs, audio/video resources, and books. Between our entry point workshops like Memory Training and Reading Smart (and more to come), our weekend events, our advanced retreats like the Abundant Living Retreat (and more to come), our personal coaching programs, and our home study resources, our clients have the ability and the desire to develop true lifetime partnerships with us. I personally bring value to tens of thousands each year as a leader, a coach, an author, and a teacher. I deliver 35 to 40 fee-paid programs per year, and I never need to leave town for less than $10,000. My working time is devoted to these things:

  Creating resources for our clients to purchase and benefit from (writing and recording).

  Delivering keynotes and workshops worldwide to groups of all sizes and getting paid handsomely for it. Getting me in front of a group is expensive and totally worth it.

  Coaching leaders, internally at FPD and externally at our client companies. One-on-one time with me is expensive and totally worth it.

  Architecting and leading FPD on its path to being the world's premier personal development firm.

  The result of this is that I have a million-dollar business inside of FPD. This helps to serve as the template for everyone in our company to build the same level of success (or better).

  My time is under my control. I am intensely present, focused, and productive when working, and I take six to eight weeks of vacation every year with zero guilt and zero negative effect on our company. In short, I am passionate about what I do and it creates enthusiasm, energy, joy, and abundance for me and for those surrounding me.

  For some additional questions to stimulate your thinking, check out the “Reinforcement and Bonus” section at the end of this chapter.

  What Do I Do with This, Now That It's Crafted?

  Once you have a personal vision statement crafted, I recommend you do these things with it.

  1. Spend time with it on a daily basis. In Chapter 17, you'll see that part of the daily energy management practice we teach involves reading your personal vision statement. So make it part of your Power Hour. Barring that, make absolutely certain that the first step of your Two-Hour Solution involves you reading and seeing your personal vision statement. That way you're reviewing it at least weekly.

  2. Make it a living document. Don't allow this to become static. Once it's done, other ideas likely will come to you. You may feel a desire to add to the statement—go for it!

  3. To balance #2, don't regularly make wholesale changes. There are only two times when it's appropriate to just throw the whole thing out and start over. One is if your life undergoes a significant change and you find that your original vision just isn't meaningful for you. The other is when you actually realize your vision.

  If you haven't already taken the time to craft your personal vision statement, get going now. If you really get stuck, reach out to
me and my staff. We can help you get moving again.

  Reinforcement and Bonuses: This chapter has been Memory Optimized™ for your benefit. For your brief lesson and some great bonuses, visit www.planetfreedom.com/trainyourbrain with the access code in the About the Author section. Enjoy!

  Record-Breaking Component #4

  Aggressive Mental Care

  Chapter 15

  The Most Basic Piece: Energy

  The fourth component of a record-breaking performance is practicing Aggressive Mental Care. As we studied top achievers and those that were breaking records, one of the strongest (and least surprising) tendencies we noticed was that these individuals and organizations systematically take excellent care of their minds. They proactively put positive thoughts into their mind and kept negative ones out. A little more in-depth study taught me why this is so important.

  It has to do with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. “What? I've never heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics —what are you talking about, Roger?” Hang in there, this is interesting and applicable.

  We can all agree that if you are to break records in any area of your life, that it will require a high level of energy, right? Even outside of the context of what we're covering here in Train Your Brain For Success, there's almost nobody who wouldn't like to have more energy in their body and/or their life. It just makes sense—you can't get high-powered results without high power! Well, if you want more energy, an understanding of the Second Law of Thermodynamics is actually critical, because it affects every energy system in the universe—and you, my friend, are an energy system in it's purest form!

  Thermodynamics as a branch of science is simply the study of how energy moves. The First Law of Thermodynamics you've probably heard—it's the one that states that “energy can be neither created nor destroyed, it can only change form.” That's interesting in and of itself, but the Second Law applies directly to your own energy level. It states that (I'm paraphrasing here) in any energy system—from a plant to a car to a house to your body to the entire universe—that the transfer of energy is never 100 percent efficient; there is always some level of “energy leakage.” This energy leakage leads to a higher and higher level of disorganization or chaos (known as entropy) in that system. In fact, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is often referred to as the law of increasing entropy. Another way of looking at it is to simply understand that the default setting of everything is that over time, it decays and becomes more chaotic or disorganized. Different things decay at different rates—a piece of cheese left in the sun decays faster than a broken down car in a junkyard, but fundamentally everything is decaying and falling apart at some rate.

  Think about your car—if you don't maintain it, it breaks down, right? Your body is the same way—if you don't take care of it, it breaks down. Guess what, your whole life is an energy system, and if you don't maintain it, it breaks down.

  Now it would be easy to extrapolate what I'm saying, and come to the conclusion that we're all just doomed to fall apart. Before you do that, take a look at what I'm actually saying. I said that the default setting is this tendency to decay. I did not say that it's the only possibility for a human being. There is another option.

  In 1977, Dr. Ilya Prigogine won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on what came to be known as dissipative structures. He noticed that even though everything in the universe has the tendency to decay, there were certain systems that displayed the opposite behavior. He noticed that certain chemical structures actually became more complex and resilient over time, and then figured out why this is. The result applies not just to chemical systems but to a human life.

  From the Journal of Applied Psychology:

  In summary, Prigogine discovered that importation and dissipation of energy into chemical systems could reverse the maximization of entropy rule imposed by the second law of thermodynamics, that only applies to closed thermodynamic systems with no exchange of energy or entropy with the environment.

  What the heck does this mean? In practical terms, it means that this increase in or maximization of entropy only applies to closed systems— systems that do not or cannot accept an influx of energy. Open systems, on the other hand, are an entirely different story. Open systems are ones that have the ability to interact with and learn from their environments, and more important, possess the ability to have energy put into them and then give energy back out.

  What it means for you is very good news. As a person, you have the ability to be an open system—it's a choice that you make. The reason this is very good news is that when you exercise that choice to be an open system your life then displays the same tendency that Prigogine noticed. You buck the system; you “reverse the maximization of entropy.” You literally counteract the default setting of the entire universe, and you become more adaptive and resilient over time. It's a wonderful opportunity!

  The main thing you need to be cognizant of in this equation is that in an open system, energy is always flowing in and out, and here the default setting comes back into play. The outflow of energy in your life is happening without you—it just gets drained out. Because of biology, the media, our environment, other people, and a host of factors, you don't have to do anything to make energy leak out of your system. The inflow of energy will not happen unless you choose for it to happen and then act on those choices. This is the starting place of a concept that governs your life whether you realize it or not:

  You are either growing or dying—there's no third option.

  There's no such thing as standing still—you are either moving forward or falling behind. In an ever-expanding universe, in a world where the pace of life is accelerating at an ever-increasing rate, you cannot simply maintain. If you're not mindfully increasing the inflow of energy in your life, you are unconsciously just allowing it to drain out, unchecked.

  Your Mind Is a Flow Point

  So how does this all relate to the idea and practice of aggressive mental care? Well, there are a few major flow points in your life, places where energy flows either in or out of your life, depending on how you manage them. The three big ones are:

  Your body

  Your environment

  Your mind

  This makes sense if you think about it. If you're body is healthy, it gives you energy. When it's sick or injured it drains your energy. Your external environment (home, office, car, yard, family) is the same. Depending on how your environment is constructed, it will either give you energy or suck it from you. The next two chapters will address specific ways you can manage your body and your environment for stronger inflow. Your mind, however, is the central flow point of the three. Your body affects your energy through your mind. Your environment can only affect your energy through your mind. Conversely, your mind and your thoughts actually create the environment and the body that's giving or taking your energy in the first place. So by caring for your thoughts (practicing aggressive mental care), you impact positively the central flow point of energy in your life.

  Think of it like a farm field. If you take a perfectly prepared, plowed and fertilized field and plant corn in it, what will grow? That's right, corn … and weeds.

  You don't need to plant the weeds; they grow all by themselves. In fact, if you don't take steps to keep the weeds out they will actually choke out the corn you want to grow. Your own corn is made up of the thoughts that uplift your life. Your weeds are the negative, self-limiting or self-destructive thoughts that pull you down. Have you noticed that negative thoughts just seem to happen all by themselves? You don't need to cultivate them, do you? To begin to understand how to grow more of a harvest, rather than just a bunch of weeds let's get a plain English understanding of how to influence your thoughts.

  What Is “Attitude”?

  When people start thinking about how to influence the flow point of your mind, the word that gets used most frequently is “attitude.” Attitude may be the word most frequently used by parents, coaches, and professional speakers
in the last century, which is great. You hear all kinds of wonderful quotes, such as:

  “Attitude is everything!”

  “Attitudes are contagious—is yours worth catching?”

  “It's your attitude, rather than your aptitude, which will determine your altitude.”

  All of these are true. Earl Nightingale said that you literally “become what you think about,” one of the most powerful truths expressed in the last 100 years, but let's clearly define what we mean. When I ask participants in our workshops how they would define the word attitude, the word “outlook” is the one that comes up most often. This is close, but not complete. The definition we at Freedom Personal Development use is:

  Your attitude is the way you choose to view your world.

  Yes, attitude is a matter of outlook (how you view your world), but the key word in this definition is choose. The role of choice in your mindset is critical. In order to train our thoughts in a more positive or productive direction, the first understanding necessary is that we ultimately choose our thoughts.

  Ultimately, the overall direction and quality of our thoughts is something we each choose daily, and the fact that we choose is wonderfully empowering. Why? Remember the CIA model? There are things in life we must accept, things we can Influence, and things we control. It's a lie to say that we control our thoughts directly. We do not control our thoughts. We have some influence over our thoughts, but a lot of the thoughts that arise in our minds just happen randomly. What we do have control over, however, is which thoughts we choose to focus on and what we choose to do with those thoughts.

  Who does this mean is responsible for your attitude? Clearly, the responsibility is yours. If your attitude is a choice, that means that it's you and only you who's in charge of it. The quality of your thoughts is not to be delegated to your boss, your spouse, your kids, or your co-workers. It's not a result of the economy or your job, the outcome of a sporting event, or any other external circumstance. The quality of your thoughts is your responsibility—yours alone. The reason this is so empowering is that if you and you alone are responsible for your attitude, then you and you alone get to decide upon it.