Awaken the Giant Within

02How Beliefs Secretly Control Your Life

Behind every single decision you make lies an invisible architecture of beliefs that silently dictates what you believe is possible, what you think you deserve, and how you view the world around you. If you want to permanently change your actions and your ultimate destiny, you absolutely must uncover and rewire these deeply ingrained operating systems. To put it simply, a belief is nothing more than a feeling of absolute certainty about what something means. When you say you believe you are intelligent, what you are really saying is, "I feel certain that I am intelligent." This feeling of certainty is immensely powerful because it acts as a command to your nervous system, filtering out any information that contradicts it and highlighting any evidence that supports it. To visualize how beliefs function in our minds, think of a tabletop. A tabletop without any legs is just an idea. If you have the idea that "I am a fantastic public speaker," but you have never actually spoken in front of a crowd, it is just a flat surface resting on the floor. It has no stability. However, the moment you give a speech and the audience gives you a standing ovation, you have just added a solid leg to that table. If your boss praises your presentation skills the next week, you add another leg. Soon, through repeated references and experiences, that idea elevates into a sturdy, unshakable belief. The danger, of course, is that this exact same process works for negative beliefs. If you fail a math test in the third grade, and a teacher scolds you, you might build a leg under the idea that "I am terrible at learning." Over time, you subconsciously seek out more failures to support this table, effectively crippling your potential for decades. The driving force behind all human behavior, including the formation of our beliefs, boils down to a fundamental biological mechanism: the desire to avoid pain and the desire to gain pleasure. Everything you do, from the clothes you wore today to the career path you chose, is driven by this twin force. If you are procrastinating on a major project, it is not because you are inherently lazy. It is simply because your brain has associated more immediate pain with doing the work than with putting it off. Conversely, if you have a habit you desperately want to break, like eating unhealthy food or smoking, your brain has linked massive pleasure to the immediate gratification of that habit, while the pain of bad health seems too far in the future to matter. To permanently change any behavior, Anthony Robbins introduces a revolutionary system called Neuro-Associative Conditioning. This is a deliberate, step-by-step process designed to hack your nervous system by completely reversing what you associate with pain and pleasure. The very first step in this process is to get incredibly clear on what it is you actually want, and what has been preventing you from getting it. Most people spend their entire lives focusing on what they do not want. They say, "I want to stop being broke," or "I want to stop feeling depressed." Because your brain moves toward whatever you focus on, focusing on being broke only reinforces the state. You must define a positive target, such as, "I want to achieve absolute financial abundance." The second, and arguably the most crucial step, is to gain massive leverage over yourself. You must reach a point where changing is no longer a "should," but an absolute "must." To do this, you have to associate unbearable, agonizing pain to not changing your behavior right now, and tremendous, ecstatic pleasure to the experience of changing. If you want to quit smoking, you cannot just rationally tell yourself it is bad for your lungs. You have to vividly visualize the exact moment a doctor hands you a terminal diagnosis. You must feel the heartbreak of your family, the physical suffering, the loss of your future. You must make the pain so intense that your nervous system physically rejects the thought of picking up another cigarette. Then, you link massive pleasure to quitting: imagine the vitality, the extra years with your loved ones, the deep breaths of clean air. Once you have established this leverage, the third step is to interrupt your old, limiting pattern. Our brains run deep neural pathways, much like a well-worn groove on a vinyl record. Every time you feel stressed, the needle drops into the groove, and the old habit plays automatically. You have to scratch the record. If your pattern is to yell when you get angry, you need to do something entirely unexpected to break the cycle. The next time you feel the urge to yell, do something absurd. Jump up and down, sing a silly song, or speak in a ridiculous accent. It sounds completely bizarre, but doing something radically out of context shatters the old neural pathway, leaving your brain confused and open to a new suggestion. The fourth step is to create a new, empowering alternative. You cannot simply destroy an old habit without replacing it, or the void will quickly be filled by another negative behavior. If you used to eat junk food to relieve stress, and you successfully break that pattern, you must find a new, healthy way to get that exact same feeling of relief. Perhaps you replace it with a brisk ten-minute walk, a deep breathing exercise, or calling a supportive friend. This new alternative must provide the same emotional payoff pleasure without the destructive side effects. Finally, you must condition the new pattern until it becomes completely automatic, and then thoroughly test it. Conditioning involves rehearsing the new behavior over and over again with intense emotional involvement. You reward yourself every time you successfully execute the new alternative, reinforcing the pleasure association. Testing it involves mentally projecting yourself into a situation that would have previously triggered your old bad habit. If you imagine a stressful day at work and your immediate, natural impulse is now to go for a run rather than reach for a donut, you know the Neuro-Associative Conditioning has worked. By taking conscious control of your beliefs and your pain-pleasure associations, you stop being a victim of your past programming and start acting as the architect of your future.

Continue reading with LeapAhead app

Full summary is waiting for you in the app

Continue reading