Transcription
Okay, so welcome to the first interior Empire, which is mindset. So you've definitely heard the word mindset, and everyone's talking about mindset. And as I suggested to you, people are saying things like this: "Get your mindset in order, and you'll be a great business builder." "Raise your mindset, and you will own your industry." "Calibrate your mindset so there's no negativity, and you'll live a beautiful life."
Well, I believe mindset is only 25% of the Personal Mastery equation. And as you know, the interior Empires are what set you up for your exterior Empires. So we're going to talk about a heart set, and health set, and soul set. But a mindset, 25% of the equation. Let's dig deep.
So definitely, your thinking is important because your daily behavior reflects your deepest beliefs. And I would say the majority, in many ways, are very stuck. The majority are stuck in a dread disease you never want to let anywhere your mindset. And the dreaded disease is called victimitis, excusitis.
You see a brain tattoo for you to think about. To have the results that only 5% of the population have, you've got to be thinking, and then behaving, and then living like only 5% of the population are willing to think, behave, and live. And when you do that, you're going to be different. When you leave the tribe, become different from the majority, adopt a different series of beliefs, new routines, live differently, people are going to say, "You're weird," or "You're strange," or "We don't understand you."
And simply remember that being misunderstood is the price of world class. Every great genius, every great empire builder, every great history maker was considered a freak, misfit, oddball, and eccentric. And so being misunderstood, and being different, being considered strange, uh, by most people, is really the price of your greatness. And so mindset is so fundamentally important because you're never going to rise any higher than you think.
Okay, and the way you think, in your personal identity, and this whole psychology in terms of what you can achieve, and who you can be in the world, and the thoughts you're running through your mind every day, of course, they're going to affect your performance. So let's get into some specific tactics that will help you take your mindset from where it now is to the highest level.
So one of the ways that I keep on improving my own mindset is through reading. Every single morning, I spend some time reading. Reading a book or listening to an audiobook is nothing more than having a conversation with the author. And we know from the excellent research of Nicholas Christakis over at Harvard University, you become your conversations. I mean, the people you associate with affect your mindset, they affect the way that you feel.
We know there is a certain type of brain cell that is being discovered called the mirror neuron. And the mirror neuron simply causes us to subconsciously behave like the people we spend most of our time with. And as I've done my research, I realized the mirror neuron was an absolute survival advantage thousands of years ago. If someone discovered how to make fire, automatically we would learn to make fire. If someone learned a new tool that would help us eat better, automatically we would start making that new tool. If someone else discovered a way to deal with the temperature extremes that we used to have to deal with thousands of years ago, automatically, thanks to this survival advantage, this evolutionary adaptation of a mirror neuron, we would survive while other people would perish.
Well, here it is now. We're in the modern, modern world, and we forget. We still have these mirror neurons. And the point really is, if you are around people who are operating at less than world class, you will be behaving like the people you are around. And so reading a book by someone whose life you want to be living, being around people who are healthy, and productive, and creative, and prosperous, and full of life, will dramatically affect your mindset.
So really, the first tactic is reading and learning. Listen to audiobooks from the great ones. Read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Read great autobiographies, people like Elon Musk, or a, or a Steve Jobs, or a W.C. or the founders of the great companies. Read books on positive psychology. I call this the 2x 3x mindset. Please write that down so you'll lock it in. The 2x 3x mindset.
And by the way, a little extra point, the more engaged you become with this course, the more active your learning is as we go through this process, the more rewards you're going to get, the more sticky the learning is going to be. So write down this: the 2x 3x mindset. And the 2x 3x mindset is simply this: to double your income and your impact, triple your investment in two core areas: Your Personal Mastery and your professional capability.
To double your income and your impact, triple your investment in your Personal Mastery, which is really what your interior Empires are all about. And also within your professional capability, you want to know more about what you do than anyone who does what you do. There's a lot of people that are worried about the global economy right now. They talk about commoditization. They say there's so much competition. Well, I want, and and you're going to learn how to do this as we go through this process in this program, but I want you to be so good at what you do that there is no one else on the planet who can do what you do. I want you to be so amazing at what you do that you literally create your own personal economy born of virtuosity, because the marketplace always pays for what's best.
So anyway, first tactic is to learn. First tactic to really dial in your mindset is to read for at least 60 minutes every day. And I call this the 60 Minute Student. And the larger point is, because you become who you hang around with. And so if you hang out with Elon Musk, and if you hang out with Thomas Edison, and if you hang out with Mother Teresa, and if you hang out with the great business builders, and if you hang out with the best psychologists, even if you don't know them, through their books, through their works, their thinking will leave what I call residual wisdom on your choices as you go through your day.
Key point: if in the lonely, quiet hours of early in the morning, you're reading the great books, the great wisdom, the great philosophy about great entrepreneurs, about the great creative people, Picasso, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Chopin, Beethoven, Shakespeare, that their thinking, their sharing, their influences, their ways of doing, their daily rituals will leave residual wisdom on your mindset and on your behavior in every remaining hour as you go through your day. You cannot help but be better just by that connection to those great thinkers.