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In this episode, we dive deep into the science of goal achievement. Discover how to transform your mindset and leverage the power of your brain to reach any personal or professional goal.

1.Understanding the Brain’s Role in Goal Achievement

- The importance of changing your brain to achieve goals.

- How the brain creates paradigms and belief systems to keep us safe and comfortable.

- The impact of new and unfamiliar experiences on our brain.

2. The Power of the Reticular Activating System (RAS)

- Introduction to the reticular activating system and its functions.

- How the RAS connects the subconscious brain with the conscious brain.

- Practical examples of how the RAS filters information and focuses on what matters most.

3.Changing Beliefs to Reach Your Goals

- The process of choosing new beliefs to support goal achievement.

- How our brain looks for evidence to support existing beliefs.

- Steps to introduce and reinforce new beliefs for personal growth.

4. Practical Applications

- Strategies to shift negative beliefs about aging, health, and business success.

- Techniques to build bridge thoughts and ladder thoughts for progressive belief changes.

5.Inspiration from Successful Entrepreneurs

- Book recommendation: "Worthy" by Jamie Kern Lima.

- Insights from following entrepreneurs who have achieved significant financial success.

- How to use their journeys as evidence to support your own goals.

6. Overcoming Cognitive Dissonance

- Understanding the discomfort of confronting new evidence.

- Ways to gently guide your brain to accept new beliefs.

- The importance of exploring new paradigms for personal and professional growth.

7. Action Steps to Achieve Your Goals

- Believing in the possibility of your goals.

- Actively seeking evidence to support your new beliefs.

- Encouraging your brain to explore and accept empowering beliefs.

Take Action

Start by following people who inspire you and align with your aspirations. Share this episode with someone who needs a boost in their goal-setting journey, and don't forget to subscribe for more insightful episodes!

Download my free guide to getting your coaching business up and running in ONE weekend.

Ready to work together? Schedule a call to explore your goals and learn how I can help you.

You're listening to episode 53 of

burning brightly, how to reach any

2

goal by just changing your thoughts.

3

This is Burning Brightly, a podcast

for Christian moms who are feeling

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called to build a business and

share their light with the world.

5

I'm Bonnie Wiscombe, a life coach,

mom, and entrepreneur, and I'm honored

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to be your guide as you face this

business building adventure full of

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highs, lows, and everything in between.

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This is where we help each

other find the courage to shine.

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Hey friends before we get started

this week, I want to make sure that

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you know about podcast jumpstart.

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It's coming this next week

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And I can't wait to show you again.

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It's totally free.

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Click the link below to register.

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And I can't wait to see you there.

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Okay friends today, we are going to

talk about how to reach any goal.

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And I do mean any goal, personal

professional, social, I don't care

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what goal you have, physical health,

whatever it is I'm going to teach you.

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A handful of steps to get there.

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And they're going to be a little bit

different then you may be used to

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hearing, usually we're used to hearing,

set a goal and then break it down into

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steps and take each one of these steps.

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But we're going to talk about today.

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Is instead how to change your brain so

that you are more likely to reach this

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goal, because there's a lot going on

up there that we may not be aware of.

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And unless we change it, we are

not going to make any progress.

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So, first of all, what we need

to do is have just a little bit

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of a lesson science lesson here.

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I am not a neuroscientist.

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I don't know a lot about this

stuff, but the things that I've

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learned have been fascinating as

I've become a certified coach.

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So I want to teach you something.

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That is going to be really important

to understanding why our brain

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believes and acts in specific ways.

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So our brain sets up these paradigms

and these belief systems for a reason.

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The main reason is

because it keeps us safe.

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That's our brain's number one priority

is to survive, to keep us safe.

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So it creates these paradigms,

these belief systems.

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To keep us in a place

where we feel comfortable.

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Have you noticed how uncomfortable you

feel when you go someplace really new,

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if you've ever traveled to a foreign

country and everything is different.

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It is a little bit

traumatic to your brain.

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It's like, oh, I don't know where

to go to eat or to the bathroom

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or these basic survival things.

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We don't know anything about.

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We can't understand

what people are saying.

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We can't read the signage.

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It's really scary.

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And so our brain creates these

systems to put things in boxes so

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that we feel safer and we can take

care of ourselves the way we need to.

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It also helps us make sense of the world

around us when things are confusing,

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our brain has to work a lot harder

and expend more energy than normal.

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So it wants to make

things very simple for us.

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And that's what these

paradigms and these systems do.

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Now recently I've been reading

a book called worthy by Jamie

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Kern, Lima, highly recommended.

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I love her.

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She is a delightful entrepreneur

has a beautiful story.

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And now that she's made a billion dollars.

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Building her cosmetic

brand and selling it.

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She is now dedicating her life to teaching

people how worthy they are and how they're

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worthy of reaching any goals they have.

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So I really recommend the book, but

inside the book, she talks about

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a portion of the brain that is.

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Fairly unknown to us.

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Lay people.

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And it is called the

reticular activating system.

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So I want to talk about

this system really quickly.

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And the reason the reticular activating

system is important is because one

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of its main purposes, it has a lot

of purposes, but one of its main

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purposes is to connect the subconscious

brain with the conscious brain.

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So it takes the things that

we may not generally be paying

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attention to, and it connects it

with the conscious side of things.

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I took a drive recently with my kids.

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It was a 12 hour long drive.

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I was the only driver.

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And what I noticed when I was thinking

about this particular activating

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system was all of the things that my

brain was not paying attention to.

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So your brain gets constant stimulus at

all times, just sitting here, I'm noticing

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lights on me, the camera, my microphone,

some important things, but there's lots.

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I'm not noticing I'm not no sitting

the other things in my room.

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I'm not noticing the sun shining.

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There's a lot of things I'm tuning

out so that I can stay focused

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on what I'm doing in this moment.

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It would be so overwhelming for your

brain to pay attention to everything.

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And on this.

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Drive.

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I noticed the same thing.

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They're the things that I wasn't

particularly paying attention to

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that my brain was tuning out was

the mountains I was driving along.

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I was driving along a

lot of mountainous roads.

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It wasn't paying attention to the

cliff or the rocks next to me.

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I wasn't paying attention to the little

sounds in the car and outside of the car.

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I wasn't really paying attention to

smells in the car, the feel of my

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clothes or my jewelry on me or the

bug splatters on the windshield.

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I was ignoring most of these because

they weren't necessary in the moment.

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But what was I noticing while

really essential things?

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Like if there was an obstacle in the road,

the cars all around me, I was noticing

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rain when it started raining on us or any

other adverse driving conditions, because

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these were critical for our survival.

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I was driving 80 miles

an hour down the freeway.

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I had to be paying attention to the things

that could cause me or my family harm.

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A funny example was there were multiple

dead deer on the side of the road.

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So sad.

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And I would mention to my

kids, oh, do you see that deer?

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But we were moving so quickly that

for them to like look up and notice.

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, most of them missed it.

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And my younger son was

kind of upset about this.

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I missed the deer, but I

saw every last one of them.

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Why.

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Because there were potential

hazards for me and my family.

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So I was constantly scanning the road.

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Now, if the deer had been, you know, a

mile off the road in the field, I wouldn't

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have noticed because my brain was so

focused on the road in those hazards.

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So start to pay attention when you

are doing something, all of the things

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that your brain is not noticing, and

you will understand just how powerful

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this reticular activating system is.

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It pays attention to the

things that matter most.

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So what we want to do in order

to reach our goals is to tell

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it what to pay attention to why.

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Well, because our belief

system is set up a certain way.

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Because that has been what service in the

past, but if we want to reach new goals

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and beliefs, we have to tell it to pay

attention to different things, because

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we are stretching and growing ourselves.

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We do this through changing our beliefs

as a life coach, I teach people how

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to change their beliefs so that they

can change the world around them.

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And that the life that they have, if

someone told me before I started this

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drive with my family, that there was a

lot of rock slides happening in the area.

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Guess what?

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I'd be paying attention

to those mountains.

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I was driving along right.

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There was a lot of these Rocky

cliffs that I was driving along,

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but I wasn't particularly paying

attention to them because they

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didn't pose any sort of hazard.

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To me, if there was a rockslide happening,

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you better believe I would be

paying very close attention to

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those mountains and those rocks.

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Okay.

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So the first step to reaching any

goal is to choose what to believe.

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And then our reticular activating system

goes to work finding evidence that is

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true and making that belief even stronger.

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All right.

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So let me give you an

example in regular life.

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The past few years, I've started

seeing wrinkles on my face.

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I'm 44 now, and I've noticed

that my face is changing.

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I can see evidence of aging

that I never saw before.

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But what I've learned as I start

seeing these wrinkles is that my

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brain believes that wrinkles are bad.

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Gee.

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I wonder why probably because

society has told me so celebrities

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and other famous people.

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The people that society

tells us are beautiful.

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Do not have these wrinkles

for the most part.

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Right.

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They, they fight against them.

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They do all these, these treatments to not

have them because society says wrinkles

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are bad or they're ugly or whatever.

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When we have a society that does

not value something and we see that

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thing in ourselves or our loved

ones, we're going to start panicking.

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That's not valuable.

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Wrinkles are bad.

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Wrinkles are ugly.

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I don't want them for some reason.

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So because I have this belief that I

actually didn't even know was there until

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I started seeing the wrinkles on myself.

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My brain now looks around for

evidence that this belief is true,

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even though I don't love this

belief because it causes me anxious.

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When I look in the mirror and I see

wrinkles, I think bagels are bad.

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And then I feel bad about myself.

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I don't want this belief, but my

brain still scans for evidence.

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So what does that look like?

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When I see someone beautiful or

successful with wrinkles, I actually

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don't pay attention to that.

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I ignore it instead.

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I noticed everyone who

does not have wrinkles.

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So everyone that comes up on my

Instagram or on my TV or on wherever

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I'm looking in, in real life.

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And I know they're about my age

and they don't have any wrinkles.

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I think.

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Ah, how'd they get that way?

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How they do that, right?

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Because my brain values the not wrinkles.

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Cause I keep thinking there's

something bad about them.

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Isn't that fascinating.

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So my brain is looking for that evidence.

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I actually don't want to fight aging.

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And so I'm trying to actively change

this belief, but it's going to take

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time because it's been building

up in my brain for a long time.

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Here's another example.

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Let's say you're trying to eat better,

but you don't currently love vegetables.

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That's a belief you hold on to.

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And you've got lots of evidence of it.

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You've eaten peas and asparagus.

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And every time you eat

a vegetable it's growth.

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So anytime you confront vegetables,

your brain is going to start

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saying there's a bias there.

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I don't like this.

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I will not enjoy this.

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Even if it's a brand new

recipe, you've never tried.

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You believe you hate them.

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So your brain is going to continue

finding evidence that you hate them.

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So you have to actively find

evidence that it's not true.

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One way to do this is to just start.

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Giving yourself more experiences around

vegetables and start saying things like.

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Actually roasted Brussels

sprouts are pretty amazing.

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Don't lie to your brain.

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Don't try to trick it.

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That will not bring any success.

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Our brains are too smart for that.

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Right.

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But you can find examples of when you do.

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Enjoy vegetables.

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Maybe every time I put spinach

in my smoothie, it actually gives

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me vitamins and it tastes great.

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I can't taste anything bad there.

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So I enjoy spinach in a smoothie.

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So give your brain evidence to combat

this belief that you want to change.

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Now as we can see that belief and the

evidence are intrinsically tied together,

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there is really no way of separating them.

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So if we want to change the belief,

we have to change the evidence.

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Here's another interesting example.

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There is kind of a growing network of

people who believe that the earth is flat.

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Interesting.

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Why do they believe this way?

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Is it because they don't have

access to the same science we do

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that prove the earth is round.

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No, of course they have

access to all those things.

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But they have chosen the

belief that the earth is flat.

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And so they find all the

evidence, the proof that is

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true or support their belief.

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And they hold on to that evidence

really tightly because there,

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this belief is important to them.

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The same thing happens with

all the beliefs that we have.

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Okay.

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Now let's move on to business.

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Let's say our goal is to

make $50,000 in a year.

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The first thing we have to do is

start believing that it's possible,

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especially in our industry.

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Once we do that, our brain will start

to look for evidence that it's true.

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Now, we like to think that we have to

find the evidence first, but unfortunately

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that's not how the brain works.

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Even if we find evidence to the

contractory, our beliefs will fight

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against that evidence because.

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Our brain is so latched on to

the belief system that we have.

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Okay.

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So one thing you might want to do to

believe this thought is start looking for

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other business owners, in your industry

that are making $50,000 or more boom,

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evidence, evidence, evidence, right?

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You start seeing multiple of them and then

you need to start creating some bridge

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thoughts to get you where you want to go.

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So.

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Let's see your current thought

is I can't make $50,000.

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That's so much money.

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And the thought you want to get

to is it's easy to make $50,000.

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Well, there's a big gap

between those thoughts.

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You can't just wake up one day and

think it's easy to make $50,000.

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Your brain doesn't believe it.

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It won't look for evidence for it.

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You need to work on the thoughts

that will build you up to that.

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Sometimes we call them bridge

thoughts or ladder thoughts.

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All right.

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A few examples.

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If you're currently thinking I can't

make 50,000, it's so much money.

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What if you started thinking, I

wonder how much money I could make.

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What's the maximum amount of

money I could make in my business.

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Or maybe you get a client and

you think I just made X amount.

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How much would I have to multiply

that by, to get to 50,000?

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Or thinking something like, well, 50,000

is only a thousand dollars 50 times.

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Right?

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You start changing your, hold on

this thought a little bit that

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thought that 50,000 is so much

money and you'll never make it.

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Just try shifting that thought a

little bit, changing it a little bit,

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losing your hold on a little bit.

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And maybe eventually you can

get to, that's not so hard.

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I can get there.

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And as you start making money, you will

actually be building that evidence that

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it's true, that the $50,000 is easy.

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You'll build evidence that that thought is

true and it will become easier and easier

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to believe, but it's not an instantaneous,

overnight thing that's impossible to

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do and your brain will fight back.

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So start looking for the evidence and

start practicing every single day.

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Now I personally love to follow

entrepreneurs that are making a lot of

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money because of very inspiring to me.

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And it builds my evidence that I

too can make many, many thousands

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of dollars and my business.

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It makes my own goal of a hundred thousand

dollars on my business seem so easy.

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Yeah, I can do that.

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She just made 5 million, a

hundred thousand is nothing.

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So find evidence.

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That's going to make it easy to

believe the things you want to believe

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so again, In the world.

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We like to think that we are going

to find evidence for something, and

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then we're going to believe it's true.

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But in fact, it's the opposite.

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Our brain believes something

due to the paradigm and systems

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we already have set in place.

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And evidence that comes up

and contrast that belief.

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Actually causes us some discomfort

unless we're ready to change our beliefs.

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Have you ever been confronted with

evidence that has blown a closely

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held belief out of the water?

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It's really uncomfortable.

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Nobody likes that you tend to ignore

it, or you dismiss the evidence or

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maybe you even insult the person

who brings the evidence to your.

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Awareness.

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We don't like to accept evidence

that is going to throw us

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into cognitive dissonance.

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It's going to tell us that

our beliefs are wrong.

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All right.

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So.

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Our brains are so cautious about

this because it doesn't want

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us to upend our entire life.

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If we accept this new belief.

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And this new evidence.

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What if it throws

everything into disarray?

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That's going to be a problem.

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So I saw this a lot when I was

a missionary for my church.

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I was teaching people about Jesus Christ.

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I was trying to get them to find

some more joy by accepting Jesus.

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And what I noticed is that people

were very cautious to listen to me.

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Listening to my beliefs, especially if

they were vastly different from their own,

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caused them to feel a little bit nervous.

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I think what was happening was

they were thinking subconsciously.

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What if I listened to this and I

believe it, and it changes everything.

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What if I will lose the comfort

or the relationships or the way

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of life that I've had for so long.

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People don't like change our brains.

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Resist change.

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It's hard.

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It's uncomfortable.

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Even when it's good change and

growth that we know we want,

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our cortex knows we want it.

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We're going to push back against

it because it is uncomfortable.

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So I saw that a lot.

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I was trying to teach them, and

this is actually going to bring you

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more joy and satisfaction in life.

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And I was trying to gently show them

new beliefs while allowing them to

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bring some of their former beliefs

along with them, because a big

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change like that, like the change of

religious belief system is very, very.

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Uncomfortable and can be

a struggle for people.

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We can do the same thing with our

business beliefs or any belief

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when it comes to reaching a goal.

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We get to choose whether or not

it's hard to reach our goal.

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We get to choose whether or not we

want to hold onto the belief that

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it is impossible to get there.

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Now when you have those beliefs that

are not getting you to where you want

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to go take a look at them and don't

get mad about them, ask yourself,

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how is this belief helping me?

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Because you can guarantee it

is helping you in some way.

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How do we know this?

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Because your brain believes things for a

reason, whether it's a good reason or a

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battery's a reason we want to keep or not.

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It believes things for a reason.

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So, is there an upside while

you're bleeding that way?

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What is it, why does your

brain continue to believe this?

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In the example of not making a $50,000,

your brain doesn't want to believe it

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because your brain gets to be super lazy.

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We can just sit around watching Netflix.

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If we don't believe we can make $50,000,

what's the point I'm not even going to

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try, but if we believe it's possible,

we're going to get into our office and

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we're going to work every single day until

we hit that goal because it's possible.

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Why not?

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So how can we gently allow our

brains to explore these new beliefs?

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How can we encourage it to look

outside of its current paradigm

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and to explore something that

might serve us a little bit better?

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How can we shift these beliefs that

we currently hold to allow something

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new, something more empowering.

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To expand our brains to accept

evidence that is going to be

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important in changing those beliefs.

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We want to gently guide our reticular

activating system to pay attention to

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the evidence that is going to further

our goals and not keep us stuck.

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So as a recap to reach any

goal, you have to number one,

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believe that it is possible.

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And number two, find the evidence.

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And frankly, sometimes you have to find

the evidence in order to believe it.

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So start scanning your environment.

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For evidence that your goal is possible.

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If you want to run a triathlon,

start following people that run

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triathlons at your age and with your.

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Athletic history.

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If you want to believe you can save the

money to buy the house of your dreams.

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Start seeing people that make

the same amount of money as

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you who are buying their dream

houses, ask them how they did it.

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Learn more about them.

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Start allowing your brain to

entertain this possibility.

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And then you're going to start

seeing evidence everywhere.

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And as we train our reticular activating

system, to find that evidence that

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supports our new beliefs, we're going

to completely explode our paradigm

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and be able to accomplish literally

anything I'm so excited for you to do it.

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All right, I'll talk to you next week.

398

Are you ready to start or

grow your dream business?

399

Click the link in the show notes to

download the free starter guide to

400

building a business or to schedule

a free coaching call And if you

401

loved this episode, Don't forget

to leave a review and share it with

402

a friend who might be feeling the

call to burn a little brighter.