Trickle Down Mindset: The Missing Element in Your Personal Success (9 page)

Action Items:

- Keep a journal as your main indicator of how serious you are about adjusting your personal philosophy.

- Create and make a habit of using a personal mission statement.

- Read the fragment of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography and copy his process.

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“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

― Jim Rohn

In the chapter
Analyze Your Data Sources
, I dwelt on how to incorporate new data sources into your life. In the previous chapter, I pointed out journaling as a great habit for self-analysis to track and change your internal interpretation of events and experiences. You need the habits to also change your social environment. New data sources may offer opportunities to meet new people. The host of the podcast you start to listen to, the owner of a blog you start to follow, their followers—all of them are potential new buddies. I encourage you to look for new acquaintances online. It’s not true that online relationships are
all
impersonal and superficial. They tend to be that, but they can be so much more.

About a year ago, I joined “Pat’s First Kindle Book” on Facebook. It’s a huge group of indie authors who share not only tips and tricks, but also encourage and cheer each other. I learned a lot there, but I also got new business connections, including the editor of a couple of my books, who also became my accountability partner.

Social media can be addictive, so beware. While the Transformation Contest was running, I spent an hour a day reading my friends’ entries and commenting on them. But social media is also very handy in developing habits. You can set the reminder to log onto Facebook at 9 p.m. and set the timer to spend just fifteen minutes on it. You don’t have such flexibility with one-on-one interactions.

Once you change the kind of information you absorb, the kind of people you interact with, and your internal interpretation of your experiences, your actions will change too. To accelerate this process, you should consciously look for new experiences. Start a new activity, preferably involving new people, and you will attain the change of all the three basic elements of personal philosophy at once. For me, such an activity was joining the Transformational Contest. There I met people from other continents and cultures with different sexual orientations and religious beliefs, an amazing mix of individuals I wouldn’t have met in the offline world. I started a new activity, journaling (up until the contest, I had only a gratitude diary for my wife). And the nature of this activity made me mindful of my internal interpreter. I was describing my actions and motives. I was giving my opinions and advice to the other contestants.

It accelerated my progress many fold, but I saw it only in hindsight. And I did it all on a whim—“W
hy not join the online contest, it can be fun, it can be useful.
” You can design your accelerator consciously, knowing which elements to seek.

Whatever activity you choose for gaining new experiences, I strongly encourage you to socialize with new people. Humans are the most unpredictable creatures on the planet. They bring the indeterminism factor into your life like nothing else.

Action Items:

- Carefully choose an online community that shares your passion and values.

- Join such a community, interact there daily, and track your time spent (beware of a social media addiction).

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“If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want

and copy what they do and you’ll achieve the same results.”

― Tony Robbins

Even the most successful philosophy that belongs to someone else is not able to transform
your
life. It can be seen throughout history. Sages and teachers tried to pass their wisdom to others, but without much success. We had only one Socrates and one Jim Rohn. Certainly, there were fewer successful stories out of Jim Rohn’s seminars and programs than attendants and listeners. Some very successful individuals like Tony Robbins, Darren Hardy, and Jeff Olson credit much of their success to Rohn’s lessons, but they found their unique ways to apply those lessons.

Nonetheless, there are many universal elements in the personal philosophies of successful people. A few of them have already been pointed out in this book. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. If so many people have so many beliefs and ideas in common, it is possible to adopt them. The word “adopt” fits here. Those foreign, external elements of philosophy may be used by you only when you take ownership of them. You cannot just learn them; you must
know
that they are
true
. Only then is your brain appropriately hypnotized to utilize them.

You may be afraid that adopting these beliefs and developing these traits will turn you into some kind of corporate clone and you’ll lose your uniqueness. It’s not a valid fear. Compare any half a dozen successful people you know—great entrepreneurs, artists, scientists, sportsmen, or sages. They may have a core of common beliefs, they may have the same traits, but each of them is different from the other. It’s not those success blocks themselves, but how you merge them into your philosophy that will lead you to your success. You can take perseverance, integrity, courage, and decisiveness and mix them in proportions unique to you. You take the common elements and create an uncommon formula out of them.
Your own
success formula. You just consciously do what was done to you on the subconscious level: digest, analyze, and discard or keep all the data inputs. The ones you keep shape your internal constitution.

As a kid, you didn’t analyze your parents’ teachings very much, you just accepted them. In a normal family, Mom and Dad are not just figures of authority. They are the most loved and trusted people in the whole world. You mimicked them and absorbed their philosophies by osmosis, just living with them day by day. You probably know the saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.” If you have your own kids, you know what BS this is. You certainly know it if your parents ever tried to use it against you.

You didn’t need sermons to inherit behavior from your parents. I can’t recall a single conversation with my dad about the value of equanimity. When I try, my mind is totally blank. But I can recall no more than half a dozen cases when he lost his cool. I identified with my wonderful dad in my childhood, so equanimity is a part of me. My sisters identified with my more dynamic mom and equanimity is quite foreign for them (Funny, most of the instances when my dad lost his temper involved kicking discussions with my mom).

That’s the natural process of forming your system for conduct of life. You observe what’s going on around you (peppy mom, calm dad), interpret that data (I want to be like dad, so I’ll be tranquil), and act according to the results of your analysis.

I’m the most religious person in my family. When I was seventeen, I found a church community and felt a calling to join it. Theoretically, I was a Christian, a Catholic, but I didn’t really feel it. I was learning almost everything from scratch—prayers, reading the Bible, and so on. I inherited this very weak bond with God from my parents. I remember when I was trying to explain my conversion to my mom, she said something like, “Yes, I know, God is somewhere far away, and we are here on our own.”

That was her personal philosophy regarding religion and spiritual life. With such a belief system, it’s not strange she didn’t pass faith on to me. You cannot give something you don’t have. With this conviction, she didn’t pray. Why should she? God was far away and left her on her own. In her mind, it was like trying to be heard by shouting through the ocean. Hopeless.

My sisters also inherited our mother’s philosophy, more or less. They hadn’t the strong experience I had (joining a church community) to change or challenge their worldview. My personal philosophy shifted a bit with my church community experience. And I not only think but act differently than my relatives in the realm of religion.

You can absolutely use the same process of attitude osmosis, this time through the use of intellect, which will accelerate the whole process. And it’s the
only
way it can be done. New elements of philosophy, new ideas, new attitudes must come through the guard you have put up around you. They must be let in; they can’t conquer you. Your internal fortress is your last stronghold. It’s your essence. Your whole being stems from it. New ideas can only be allowed in and adopted as a part of its walls. If they conquer you by force, they will triumph only on the smoky ruins of your old self. Such subjugation equals madness.

That’s one of the reasons you resist change and especially the change in your internal composure regarding your personal philosophy. You are stable and you don’t want to get mad.

Knowledge Items:

- Even the most successful philosophy belonging to someone else is not able to transform your life.

- Attitude osmosis is a natural process, which you can accelerate through the use of intellect.

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“Ignorance is not bliss.”

― Jim Rohn

A few months ago, my friend asked me how I maintain my inhuman consistency. I replied via her blog post and while writing it, I realized that many beliefs have “sneaked” into my personal philosophy. I didn’t plan it that way. It just happened because I changed my data sources, met new people, and worked hard on my spiritual and personal development, which led to a drastic transformation in the internal interpretation of my experiences.

Starting from that blog post, I did reverse engineering to discover how my personal philosophy had transmuted. It led me to writing this book. I believe you can have more control over this process than I had. That’s why I’ll provide you with dozens of pieces of successful people’s philosophies. You can absorb them all or just the chosen ones. You can adopt them one by one or all at once (if possible). Or you can just let the natural process of philosophy osmosis change your worldview the way mine has changed: by consciously choosing who you interact with, what you read, watch, and listen to, and by journaling.

Knowing these successful bits in advance will accelerate your progress. They are not universally right; they are just most common among people who have achieved a lot in their lives. When you read biographies of entrepreneurs or books written by them, you recognize this effortlessly. They don’t unanimously eulogize perseverance, integrity, courage, or decisiveness, but the
majority
of them do. So those blocks are not universal for success, but they are a close approximation of a universal success philosophy. This is indicated by a multitude of successful individuals over thousands of years, and across different cultural backgrounds. Quite solid evidence if you ask me.

It’s unlikely that you can craft your own philosophy with some totally new approach not based on those success blocks. Too many people utilized them with great effect to ignore them. They are common simply because they work. They use the laws that govern the material world, spiritual world, and human society.

Some of those philosophy pieces may be not suitable for you. Breaking relationships in the name of progress is not for me, for example. But
most
of them are good for you, because they are the distilled wisdom of thousands of people who applied them successfully. Don’t dismiss them too readily. Regard them carefully, weigh your options rigorously, and discard them only after thoughtful consideration. Because some of them
should
be discarded by you. A universal formula for success doesn’t exist or we would all already be successful. You need to find your own path, in accordance with your deepest values, beliefs, and life experiences. If something just doesn’t feel right for you, no matter how you wrap your mind around the concept, don’t use it. Don’t try to force the change. Force causes resistance.

The grand goal is to rebuild your personal philosophy. The immediate one is to make those chosen elements a part of it. You can only make that happen if they are true for
you.
Borrowing them won’t cut the mustard. You must adopt them. However, if you go through the list and discard most of the elements—“that’s stupid,” “oh, it can’t be the truth,” “that sounds like naive thinking,” “it’s not like me,” “that surely won’t work in my case”—beware! It may be just your old, messy philosophy in action. Part of personal philosophy is interpretation. You already have some interpretation subroutines established. Considering that the results you get in life are far from perfect, it is quite possible that those subroutines are far from perfect too. Be mindful of this fact.

Using those success blocks doesn’t automatically make you a success. It just increases your chances significantly. You can meticulously develop perseverance, determination, integrity, and resourcefulness, but ignore how important tracking is for success and steadily head in the wrong direction for years.

Those statements don’t have to feel like dogma. Well, very likely they don’t, if they aren’t part of your recent philosophy now. However, if they feel true enough for you to give them a chance, that’s enough. If a given sentence sounds to you like utter hogwash, don’t try to accommodate it into your worldview right now. The internal resistance caused by cognitive incongruence will be too high to profit from this “success rule.” You will spend more energy on adopting this belief or trait than receiving it in the form of results. Wait. Adopt other beliefs. Work on your input sources and interpretation. Go back to the list in a month or six months and examine your attitude once again.

Another handy criteria is, “Do I really want to make it part of me for the rest of my life?” Your personal philosophy is really part of you, something at your core that determines who you become and what actions you undertake. When you let some new piece of philosophy into your internal fortress, it will affect your life in a very serious way going forward. It will probably stay with you for the rest of your life. So, don’t just choose something that sounds cool. Pick up only those blocks from the list that you feel may be integrated with your being without long-term damage.

~

“
What, then, will anyone gain by winning the whole world and forfeiting his life?
” - Mt. 16:26

~

The list in the following chapter is an appendix to this book. There is more than one way to skin a cat, but there are only a handful that are most effective. If you are going to achieve success in any area, you are bound to be equipped with traits and beliefs in common with the successful people known throughout history.

Don’t rush the process of picking and adopting these “success blocks.” The biggest mistake you can make is to skim through them and pick them more or less at random. You mark this activity as done and never go back to the exercise. It’s a mistake I made over and over again with some potentially useful personal development stuff. I know a guy who claims that
Awaken the Giant Within
by Tony Robbins has changed his life, to the point where he earns seven figures and is very happy with his life. I read the same book about eighteen years ago and I’m (sadly) no millionaire. I enjoyed the book a lot and I made some immediate changes in my life because of it. But I remember that each time there was some exercise in the book I skipped “for later” (read: never) or did it hastily, without much reflection. My life didn’t transform then and the changes I introduced fizzled out in less than a year.

Your horizon will expand with the development of your personal philosophy. You will open up to new ideas and concepts. Don’t be afraid to refer to this list again and again. Come back to it in a week, a month, or a year and you will find other nuggets hidden there, as your perspective will shift.

If your current philosophy stands in the way of accepting these bits of wisdom, take a step back and work on expanding the more “technical” aspects of changing your philosophy—using new data sources and meeting new people. As long as you persist, the shift in your perspective is unavoidable. These disciplines must bear fruit. It’s the law of nature.

Action items:

- Go mindfully through the success blocks enumerated in the next chapter and pick some you would like to incorporate in your life.

- Find a way to refer to them every day (stick them to your fridge, record them and listen to them on your mobile phone, ruminate on them in your journal, etc.)

- If you don’t find the list below compelling, go through the quotes of a few successful people you admire and pick several of their “success blocks.” Refer to them daily.