Mental Creation

 

Mental Creation

Philosophers have said, “I think, therefore I am.”  We say, “I am aware of what I think, and I choose to control it, therefore I am who I want to be.” Entropy is a natural law in the universe.  Basically what this means is that things have a tendency to slow down or to seek a state of rest.  In physics this is called, “seeking an angle of repose.”  It is the same for us. We often like our “angle of repose” more than we really want to change our lives. This is why it’s so hard to lose weight, or get fit, or stop smoking….these things are simple (just follow the steps) but they are so hard…because of the joy and comfort of our normal routines — our angle of repose. Or in a negative way, sometimes people would rather live with an unhappy situation so they don’t have to cast off into the scary, unknown darkness.

Think about those times in your life when you really wanted to make a change. Did you have a burst of inspiration and rush about making changes? Perhaps you bought a gym membership, paid for food preparation, or hired a coach or mentor. But all too soon, our initial burst of enthusiasm and confidence is gradually swallowed up by our comfort zone and we slowly allow “life” to pull us back into our angle of repose.

Og Mandino, the author of the Greatest Salesman in the World, understood this principle. In his Ten Scrolls he wrote, “As I repeat the words (of these scrolls) daily they will soon become a part of my active mind, but more important, they will also seep into my other mind, that mysterious source which never sleeps, which creates my dreams, and often makes me act in ways I do not comprehend.”  Og desrcribes two aspects of ourselves: (1) our conscious self, and (2) our subconscious self. 

Recent research into highly successful people in a wide range of industries and disciplines has found a common element to the success of these high performers—and it is not talent.  As Geoff Colvin writes in an article titled, Why Talent Is Over Rated: 

“The best performers set goals that are not about the outcome but rather about the process of reaching the outcome. Again, the best performers make the most specific, technique-oriented plans. They’re thinking exactly, not vaguely, of how to get where they’re going. The most important self-regulatory skill that top performers in every field use during their work is self-observation. Even in purely mental work, the best performers observe themselves closely.  They are able to monitor what is happening in their own minds and ask how it’s going. Researchers call this metacognition—knowledge about your own knowledge, thinking about your own thinking.  Top performers do this much more systematically than others do; it’s an established part of their routine. When a customer raises a completely unexpected problem in a deal negotiation, an excellent business person can pause mentally and observe his own mental processes as if from the outside: Have I fully understood what’s really behind this objections?  Am I angry?  Am I being hijacked by my emotions? Do I need a different strategy here?  What should it be?”

Mental Creation and fantasy both use the power of visualization to imagine a better future. Most of us (98%) tend to escape into fantasy rather than engaging in Mental Creation.  Mental Creation is the process of visualizing in great detail the end of our journey and then walking each step backwards in our minds as we see the steps we have to take to achieve our dream. On the other hand, fantasy is the process of visualizing in great detail some dream and then walking forward in great detail thinking about how much better our life will be then. People who engage in fantasy have little sense of how to achieve their dreams. Fantasy is an escape and generates real, chemically driven emotional reactions that affect our mood and body’s health. The brain is flooded with dopamine (causing pleasure) when thinking about our great future. On the other hand, our brain is flooded with cortisol (causing stress) when pulled out of fantasy by some event in our real life. Those who engage in fantasy create what neuroscientists call mental constructs – expectations or concrete conditions for happiness which tend to cause them to feel a vague sense of anxiety and overwhelm without being productive or furthering their efforts towards financial freedom.

Use this Mental Creation exercise to engage in proper visualization that will ignite your passion and help you continue forward through the initial resistance offered by “life” and the scariness of leaving your comfort zone. If you don’t know how to visualize as part of Mental Creation, this is a good time to practice.  If you find yourself fantasizing about how great your life will be when….(insert your dream here)….then you’ve slipped into fantasy. If that happens, just pull yourself back into Mental Creation by walking backwards through the steps necessary for you to become financially free.

Engage in Mental Creation as often as you need to both ignite your passion and measure your progress. Make small course corrections to your actions in the tangible world if those actions are leading you away from your established milestones. Remember, Mental Creation helps you establish the road map you’ll follow on the way towards your journey. Mental Creation allows you to see yourself on that path and measure the pace of your progress and so guide what you do in tangible reality to stay on track to your eventual destination of financial freedom and peace.

One more thing…There is no “1, 2, 3 dump money on me” easy way to wealth. There is a power that governs abundance which is first accessed by Mental Creation and then fully engaged when creating in tangible reality what you have already created in your mind.

As you begin the process of Mental Creation, use the four “C’s” to help you:

  1. Calibration:  What mental and emotional wiring holds you back  and what helps you move forward as a trader?
  2. Connection:  How will you connect your education to practical application?
  3. Condition:  How do you measure your efforts so they can be improved?
  4. Contribution:  How will you give back to your class and fellow students and eventually to the world?