Super self-control: not being a slave to habit

Chapter 13

Overturning the Mindset: Actively Harnessing the Power of Thinking
Habit, as a mental set, seems to have a latent power to drive people. For individuals, habit is a way of life, but also a set of thinking.A correct mindset is conducive to understanding, while an incorrect mindset will form prejudice, stubbornness, and lead to wrong ideas.If you encounter a "ghost hitting the wall", please tear down the wall of thinking and open a skylight in your thinking.

Good habits lead to good results, bad habits lead to bad results.Adults are mostly confined to a certain kind of thought.They rarely cross the artificial boundaries they impose on themselves.

—John Maxwell
tear down the walls of the mind

"Whether a person succeeds depends on whether he can break through himself and find potential energy!" This is a sentence from the famous success scientist Napoleon Hill.There is a big difference between the reality and the subconscious self of each person, as if there is a thick wall between them, some people break down the wall and grab the potential power, then he succeeds; People can't get out of their inner thinking, they can't push down that wall, they can't grasp their potential, and such people can only be mediocre.

What is the "wall" in the way of thinking?

The British psychologist Richard Wiseman, in his Weird Psychology, describes his experiments on the relationship between luck and personality:

I distributed a newspaper to each of those volunteers, and asked them to read it carefully and tell me how many photos there were in it.In fact, I also prepared a money-making opportunity for them in this newspaper, but I didn't tell them.In the middle of the newspaper, I wrote this sentence in half-page length and super large font: "Win yourself £100 if you tell the researchers you saw this sentence!" I spent my mind on counting the number of photos, so I didn't find this opportunity to make money.In contrast, those lucky ones seemed so relaxed that they saw the big print in the middle of the paper and won £100 for themselves.

It's a simple experiment that shows us that lucky people can always take advantage of unexpected opportunities that bring them good luck.

Why do lucky people always bring themselves more luck?Unlucky people always meet more unhappiness?

In fact, those who install the "lucky guy mindset", who build a lucky world full of opportunities, will be more likely to find potential opportunities in the outside world, while those who install the "unlucky guy mindset" tend to turn a blind eye to opportunities, because There is no such thing as "chance" in their mental model.

In this way, the lucky ones repeatedly confirm their "lucky ones mode" and thus believe in their "lucky world" more, while the unlucky ones firmly believe in their "unlucky world".Have you ever seen some people around you seem to be blessed by God and everything is so smooth; others seem to be born unlucky, and their teeth are stuck in cold water?

This is the wall of thinking: some people only know to follow the instructions given by others or themselves, their thinking is completely controlled, and their thinking goes along a set channel; others can break through this. Face the set wall, pay attention to other more convenient outlets, and find more opportunities to yearn for flow.

Swiss female psychologist Bomdartan Trammell Franzichek believes: "There is actually a wall between gorgeousness and plainness. Breaking through the inner thinking can get different expectations." Many things people think of, But you can't break through the common sense of thinking, so you can't do it, and let the opportunity slip through your fingers.If you still don't understand the constraints of the wall of thinking, then read the following story:

Before 1954, no one dared to imagine running a mile in 4 minutes, so no athlete broke this mark.It is generally believed that running a mile in under 4 minutes is beyond the limits of human physical strength.British long-distance runner Roger Bannister said: "The four-minute mile has been a goal that athletes and sports enthusiasts have talked about and dreamed of for many years." Quite impossible, beyond human reach."It's definitely a limitation, as sailors of old thought that at the ends of the earth, water would cascade down.But this is just an illusion.

In May 1954, Bannister broke through this limit on the runway of Oxford University, running a mile in 5 minutes and 3 seconds. Two months later, in Finland, this achievement was broken again by Australian player John Landy. He achieved a time of 59.4:3.In the next 58 years, 3 players have broken this record.

Are humans better physically?Or is there any technological breakthrough in flat running shoes?None, but the habitual mindset of "it is impossible for humans to run a mile in 4 minutes" has been broken!Roger was convinced that it was possible to run a mile in less than four minutes.Second, as medical students at Oxford and subsequently neurologists, they took a scientific approach to their training.When they shortened their time to 4 minutes and 4 seconds in training, their performance began to stagnate. They clearly realized that this was an obstacle in their own thinking mode, and they needed to seek another breakthrough and adopt better training method.

So they go out hiking or rock climbing for a few days, switching their minds to a different mode.After returning, their training score broke through 4 minutes.

Note that I am not saying that the world can be completely changed at will.What if I told you: You can run four miles in one minute if you want!That's crazy talk.There is a limit to human physical ability, but this limit is far higher than we imagined.People who work out in the gym may have experienced such feelings, limbs are sore, and the whole body is tired.But what has long been understood is that fatigue is produced by overtired muscles.But scientists in South Africa have discovered through research that it is not the muscles, but the brain that sends a warning signal of fatigue, that is, the brain releases a chemical called interleukin-1 to protect the body from excessive exercise.So the fatigue of exercise is not that the muscles cannot work, but that the brain activates the early warning system.The brain sensed the faster and faster heart rate and the soreness of the muscles due to lack of oxygen, and issued a "stop" command to the body.That is to say, when the athlete's body first wants to give up, they are far from reaching their physical limit.So endurance athletes know that the first wave of fatigue is definitely not their real limit. As long as they have strong willpower, they can break through the early warning interference of the brain, and then survive until they run the entire race.

Self-control expert hot comment
Although there are limits to human physical and mental strength, this limit is much higher than what we perceive in normal thinking.We must dismantle the wall in our consciousness and subconscious mind that encloses the way out of thinking, and then we can use self-control to break through habitual thinking and do something that seems unbelievable.

Skillfully "Clean" Your Brain

By understanding your brain, you can discover the unique ability of your mind, and to take full advantage of this unique ability, we must know how our brains work.

The thinking structure of the brain can be seen as a super biological computer, where thinking emanates from countless data nodes.This structure mirrors your neural network, the physical makeup of your brain.Your existing database is built on the basis of this fact.

In order for this biological computer to operate efficiently, the highway of thinking will not be congested.Well, let's not mess around with this computer, let alone make it too busy.Because if you do that, the operating efficiency will be very low.The redundant things must be cleaned up in time to ensure that there is ample space on the disk.

Human beings have an innate ability to organize things in the mind, and this natural organization is sleep.Human sleep is divided into three stages: light sleep stage, deep sleep stage and rapid eye movement sleep stage.In the stage of "rapid eye movement sleep", the brain will start the cleaning process: distinguish and clean up the information received during the day, leave things that should be put in the human brain database, and throw away things that should be forgotten.

So we usually feel refreshed after waking up in the morning, because the garbage in the brain is cleaned up at night, and the heart is brightened.We say that early morning is the prime time for thinking, precisely because this is when the brain factory is well organized and running at top speed.And if we have sleep disturbances or something that interferes with our sleep, we wake up not feeling well and feeling groggy.

In the past, the amount of information was relatively small, so only using the sleep mechanism can fully forget and clean up the brain.Nowadays, people are living in a society with excess information. Those unnecessary information are easy to accumulate in the brain, and it is impossible to clean them all up by sleeping at night.If our forgetting speed cannot keep up with the speed of information entering, the brain will slowly become confused, and it is often in a busy state. Symptoms such as memory impairment and slow thinking are caused by this reason.

Self-control expert hot comment
The brain that can only go out but not in is prone to "constipation".So, in order to turn our brain into a highly efficient system, we have to work hard at forgetting anyway.We must persevere in sorting out the things in our brains, keep the essence, remove the dross, and completely eliminate the faults of the thinking program.

engage in positive self-suggestion

The so-called "self-suggestion", from a psychological point of view, is a psychological process in which individuals exert influence on themselves through their own cognition, speech, thinking and other psychological activities.This kind of self-suggestion often affects one's will and even the physiological state unconsciously.

Suggestion does not work in the form of order, persuasion, etc., but in an indirect and implicit way.According to the source of stimulation, suggestion can be divided into other suggestion and self suggestion.The "perfume incident" mentioned later is what others hinted at.If you use a certain concept to influence and change your cognition, behavior and emotion, it is self-suggestion.

A psychologist once made such an interesting experiment: he washed an empty perfume bottle, filled it with clean water and brought it into the classroom.The psychologist opened the bottle cap and said to the students: This is a bottle of imported perfume, let's see who can distinguish its taste first.After a while, students raised their hands one after another. Some said it was rose scent, some said it was jasmine scent, and some emphasized that it was magnolia scent... When the students were told that it was clear water, they couldn't help laughing.In fact, this is the result of the teacher's "hint" to the students.

The role of self-suggestion is powerful, sometimes it will bring people back from a dead end, and sometimes it will make people fail.Because people are very emotional animals, people's life is mainly affected by emotions.Be good at controlling your emotions, don't let negative hints dominate, this is related to the direction of a person's life.Shakespeare said: "A person often loses his chance of success because of shrinking!" The reason for shrinking is that there is bad self-suggestion.

A psychologist once did such an experiment.First, he let ten people pass through a dark room. Under his guidance, all ten people passed through successfully.Then, the psychologist turned on a light in the room. Under the dim light, these people saw everything in the house clearly, and they were all in a cold sweat. The ground of this house was a large pool, and there were more than a dozen There was a big crocodile, and a narrow wooden bridge was built above the pool. They walked across the small wooden bridge just now.The psychologist asked, "Now, who among you would like to walk through this house again?" No one answered.After a long time, three people stood up, and one of them walked over cautiously, many times slower than the first time; The three of them fell down after taking a few steps, and never dared to move half a step forward.The psychologist turned on another nine lights in the room, and the light illuminated the room like daytime. At this time, people saw a safety net installed under the small wooden bridge. Because the color of the net wire was very light, they didn't see it at all, "Who are you?" Willing to cross this little bridge now?" asked the psychologist.This time, five more people stood up. "Why don't you want to?" the psychologist asked the remaining two people. "Is this safety net strong?" the two men asked in unison.

The reason why these people were unable to cross the bridge was probably not due to lack of ability or low intelligence, but because they had negative psychological hints under the deterrence of the surrounding environment, so that they panicked and lost their position.

In life, most of us tend to make negative self-suggestions, such as "it's not good", "I can't do this", "Why am I always so unlucky" and so on.In fact, these are a negative suggestion habits.And those who have achieved something and are always optimistic have the opposite habit.That is to say, they are used to positive self-suggestion when faced with negative events.When such a person has a strong desire to succeed, he will often hint to himself like this: You are a successful person.Then he will unconsciously show that imagined image.

Positive self-suggestion is a kind of self-motivation, which can have a positive effect on one's physical and psychological activities, and is conducive to the success of study, life and career.

Many successful people have consciously or unconsciously used the "rehearsal" of self-suggestion to perfect themselves and achieve success.Napoleon Hill, the founder of the Theory of Success, has a famous saying: "All achievements, all wealth, begin with an idea. This idea is a positive psychological self-suggestion."

Numerous facts have proved that whether a person is successful or not, "the direction of the heart" plays a decisive role.Give the brain positive stimulation—that is, benign self-suggestion, and the brain will become active, producing power that even you can't imagine.Most successful American entrepreneurs give themselves good self-suggestions from time to time: My luck is definitely good, and I will definitely succeed.People who think they are unlucky often have a negative impact on themselves because of this positioning, that is, the mentality of thinking "bad luck" itself makes their luck worse.In other words, good luck and success will not come by themselves.So before doing anything, you must be sure that you will succeed, and consciously find something to do.If you fail, you think "I will succeed next time"; if you succeed, you say to yourself: "Look, how good I am, if I keep working hard, I will definitely be better next time!"

When your positive hints form a habit and become part of your blood, then you will become a person who never despairs and is always confident, a real strong person.

Change your negative suggestion habits today!You want to give yourself a positive self-suggestion, and let this awareness into your thinking habits.

Self-control expert hot comment
Self-control is to teach people to learn to control their own active engines. When you find that your imagination engine deviates from reality, you should consciously adjust the direction and power of the engine so that the established goals in your mind are minimally separated from society. as close to reality as possible.Therefore, when the self-suggestion rooted in the "mental image" becomes clearer and firmer, the intuition is not just an intuition, but the full and thick intuition has already given birth to your success.

Create a new mental model
(End of this chapter)