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PPI #100: How To Reprogram Your Mind (for Positive Thinking)

Eric Partaker

SUMMARY

  • Negativity, it’s Holding You Back! –  Learn how to reprogram that negative state of mind. Today, learn five steps to reprogram your mind for positive thinking.
  • Focus on the Story – Reprogramme your mind by writing out your current story. Next, write a new story of how your ideal self would be, how you want to view yourself, and what you would like out of life. Rewrite for 90 days straight to reprogramme your mind.
  • Adopt a Professional Mindset – Let go of the amateur. Professionals know that actions generate feelings, amateurs believe that feelings generate action.
  • Today is Going To Be a Good Day! – Start everyday with this positive frame of mind and you’ll see over time how it reprogrammes your mind.
  • The Dream Team – Three areas of life we seek to do our best in is our health, wealth and relationships. Begin each day thinking about who you are at your best in each of those areas.
  • Wins and Learns – At the end of everyday take 5 minutes to document what went well, your wins, and what you have learned. This creates a sense of gratitude and positivity within.

TRANSCRIPT

Your negativity is holding you back. You’re always thinking that perhaps the worst is going to happen. Unless you reprogram that negative state of mind, you’ll always stay in that down state. Now, here’s the good news. You actually can reprogram your mind for positive thinking.

My name is Eric Partaker, and as a peak performance expert, I help people reach their full potential, whether they’re trying to do that in business as an entrepreneur or just in daily life. Today, I’m going to share with you five things that you can do to reprogram your mind for more positive thinking. What’s not to like about that? Make sure you stick around for the full message, so that you can grab hold of and use all five of these tips and techniques. But to start off with I just want to tell you a bit of a story about me.

I didn’t always think in a positive state. Frankly, my mindset was more negative than positive. When I look back 10 years ago or so, I was a chronic procrastinator. I had trouble focusing on stuff. I often questioned if the things I was doing were at a high enough quality level. Were other people thinking that my work was good? That self-doubt, that lack of positivity meant that I approached each and every day in a negative state. Right? In a down state, not feeling confident about myself, not feeling confident about my work, often getting to the end of the day, for example, and looking back at that day and perhaps thinking, “You know, what the heck happened? Where did the day go? Why didn’t things go to plan?”

Ultimately, at the root of it all, at the foundation, I didn’t have a positive mindset. What I embarked on thereafter was a journey, a journey to literally reprogram my mind, reprogram the way I was thinking, reprogram my outlook on life, reprogram my confidence in myself, reprogram my self-belief, all so that I could start approaching things with a lot more positivity. Today, I’m going to take you through five things, as I mentioned, things that you can do to reprogram your mind for more positive thinking.

Number one, we need to focus on the story that we’re telling ourselves. The story that you tell yourself, it’s the most powerful story you’ll ever hear in your life. You may not think you tell yourself a story on a daily basis, because perhaps you’re not waking up and reading yourself a story about your life, of course not, but you are subconsciously every single day telling yourself a story. There’s a very powerful book on this, by the way, called The Power Of Story. When I read that book, it created a life-changing moment for me, because one of the exercises in that book was to write out your current story, which I highly recommend that you do.

On a piece of paper, don’t hold back, write exactly what is the story that you tell yourself today? What are the phrases that you use? How do you think about yourself? Go ahead. Let the negativity, if it’s there, let it pour out onto the page. Write your story exactly as you talk to yourself, exactly as you currently think about yourself, because here’s the thing. That story, whatever you end up writing out, that’s actually playing on a daily basis in your mind. When that’s playing on a daily basis, what do you think that does to your self-belief? What do you think that does to your confidence? If that story isn’t glowingly positive, what do you think it does to your ability to achieve the things that you want to do? What do you think it makes you, as a presence, as an energy for others around you? Do you think that that story fills you with positivity that makes you shine? Or does it maybe hold you back? Are you a lot dimmer than you actually could be?

Take a moment, write that story out, and then here’s the fun part. You get to write a completely new story. After you’ve written that existing, your current story, it’s going to become your old story, and you’re going to start to reprogram yourself with a new story. It should be about the same length, maybe a single side of paper. Write how you would like to be. Write how you would like to think about yourself. How is it that you look and behave? What are the things that you do? What might you have in life? Write out that new story and define who it is you want to be. We all can create our own story.

Then the next step that you do, once you have this story, is I’d like you to literally rewrite that story every single morning for 90 days. I know that might sound like a very long time, but we’re talking about reprogramming your mind for the rest of your life, whether that’s five, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. Three months, 90 days is nothing compared to the benefits that you’ll get from doing this as an exercise. When I did this, I literally did that for 90 straight days. I rewrote that new story. It totally changed the way I was thinking about myself.

My old story, for example, had things on it like I’m a procrastinator. I take too long to get things done. My work isn’t truly world-class. I second guess myself. My new story, however, included things like I get things done on time. I do things when I say I’m going to do them. I’m relentlessly reliable. My work is world-class. Take a moment. Do that. That’s the first thing. We’re going to reprogram your mind by writing out your current story, which is going to become your old, and then writing a new story, which you’re going to use and rewrite with yourself for 90 straight days to literally start to reprogram your mind.

Number two, the second thing that you can do to start reprogramming your mind. This is a mindset trick. I talked about this in previous videos as well, but it’s all about adopting a professional mindset, instead of an amateur. What’s the difference? An amateur thinks that feeling is required to generate action, whereas a professional knows that action generates feeling. There’s such a huge distinction here, because when you switch to that mindset, when you switch to this new level of programming, it just changes the way you show up. You know that action generates feeling, not the other way around. When you’re not feeling like doing something, you know to step then therefore in that direction and to do whatever it might be, because you know that by doing it it’s going to actually generate the feelings that you’re seeking.

In summary, professional versus an amateur mindset. Professionals take action, whether they feel like it or not. They know that action generates feeling. An amateur thinks they need to feel like doing something in order to act. If you just think about those two mindsets, which is going to lead to more positivity, more achievement, more happiness in life, having that professional mindset, a mindset of action, or having that amateur mindset, where you’re constantly, like a balloon in the air, being blown from one direction to the next based on how you might feel in the moment? It’s your chance to turn pro, and that’s what that’s all about, that professional versus amateur mindset.

Number three, when you’re starting each and every day, I want you to start your day with the simple phrase, today is going to be a great day. You can literally do this as your feet touch the floor, as you’re coming out of bed every single morning. Maybe you’re going to tape it up on the wall or something next to your bed or somewhere where you just can’t miss it, that you can’t not see it. You’re going to say to yourself, as you start each and every day, “Today’s going to be a great day.”

When you start your day like that, you start it with a smile. You can’t help but smile. You start it with a smile. When you smile, when you smile with yourself, it brings a lot of positivity into your mood, into your demeanor, and totally changes the way you show up. I mean, you’ll probably brush your teeth in a happier state if you say that today’s going to be a great day to start your day, let alone the rest of the day that follows. Start your day in a positive frame of mind with that simple statement. You’ll see over time how that starts to reprogram your mind for positivity as well.

Number four, I highly recommend that as you are getting your day started, you finish getting ready for your day, maybe you’re sitting down now to begin your day, to start a bit of work, take five minutes before you do that and do what I call a dream team exercise. There’s three areas of life that we seek to do our best in, that we seek to show up as positively as possible. It’s our health, our wealth, and our relationships. I talk about this in my book, The Three Alarms. A powerful way to start your day with some positivity is to think about, well, who am I at my best in each of those three areas? What does the best version of you look like on the health front? Give that version of you a name. What’s the phrase that describes who you are at your best? Also, on the workfront, what is the best version of you look like on the workfront? Give that version of you a name. Then on the home front or the relationship front, what does the best version of you look like there?

When I think about my work identity or my wealth identity, I think of myself as the world’s best coach, because I want to show up with that kind of presence. You know? I want to be that confident, and inspiring, and reliable for the people that I’m serving, for the people that I’m helping. On the home front or the relationship front, when I think of me at my best, I think of the phrase world’s best husband and father, so that I’m prompting the thought pattern at the start of my day, that positive thought pattern. Well, if I was the world’s best husband and father, how would I go throughout this day? What would I do differently? How would I show up? How would I behave?

The number five thing that you can do to literally start reprogramming your mind for more positive thinking is when you get to the end of your day, take five minutes to catalog, to write down your wins and your learnings. The point of doing this is that when you focus on what you did well in a day, what went well, what was positive, the good things that happen, it creates a sense of gratitude. It creates a sense of positivity within. Write out your wins. It might be that you did something nice for your spouse, or one of your children, or a teammate, or a colleague, or perhaps you called a friend. But write what you did that would constitute a win, however small it might be, and then write out your learnings.

There’s an important distinction here, because I’m not saying write out your losses, for example. I do want you to write out the things that didn’t go well, but from the context of what I can learn, because if we constantly look at the mistakes that we make or the things that don’t go well as learning opportunities, we’re much more likely to go forth with more positivity. Right? We’re much more likely to learn from those things than if we literally list them as things that didn’t go well, mistakes or losses for the day. Wins and learns, a fantastic way to end your day.

In summary, there’s so many powerful ways that you could start reprogramming your mind. I gave you five today that have worked wonders for me, for my clients, and I encourage you to give them a try. That first one was to write out your current story, which is going to become your old story, and then write out the new story, the new version of you. How does that version of you act, behave? What did that version of you have? What does that version of you do in the world? Number two, adopt that professional versus amateur mindset. It’s action that generates feeling, not feeling that generates action. So, step up and turn pro. Now is your time.

Number three, start off your day with positivity. Today’s going to be a great day. Put that up as a phrase somewhere next to your bed, so it’s the first thing that you see and you say to yourself each and every day. Number four, define what does your dream team look like on a daily basis? Reflect on that. Who are you at your best on the health front, on the wealth front, and on the home front? Give those versions of you a name. Let that be the superhero kind of dream team force that works with you throughout your day. Think about how you would act and behave in the context of that day with those superhero identities in mind.

Last, but not least, when you get to the end of your day, wrap that day up with some positivity, once again, by thinking about the wins, the things that went well, and the things that you can learn from. I hope you’ve enjoyed that. If you head over to my website at ericpartaker.com, you’ll also be able to subscribe to my Weekly Insights Newsletter.

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Eric has been named "CEO of the Year" at the 2019 Business Excellence Awards, one of the "Top 30 Entrepreneurs in the UK" by Startups Magazine, and among "Britain's 27 Most Disruptive Entrepreneurs" by The Telegraph.
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