Transcription
The second tactic, which is conversation, as I mentioned to you, reading a book or listening to a podcast. I love audiobooks. I call it traffic University. If you're in traffic, don't complain, don't be frustrated, don't waste your time. I mean, here's another brain tattoo. Write this down: The hours that victims waste, A-level performers exploit. And so you want to be using your commuting time having a conversation, uh, with great thinkers, with people whose lives you want to be living. And a great way to do to do that is in an audiobook.
It's also really important to ask yourself, what is my personal orbit? You know, I call it the circle of genius. And we know from Nicholas Chris's work that you will be influenced not only by your friends, but by the friends of your friends, and by the friends of their friends. I'm going to repeat that again because it's so fundamentally important. I call this the three layers deep theory. Your thinking, your mindset, your performance, even your financial life, your physical life, and you will be influenced not only by your friends, is what I'm suggesting, but by their friends, and by the friends of your friends's friends. I again, I call this the three layers deep theory. It's really important to think about it.
So if you have allowed energy vampires in your life, if you're spending a lot of time with victims, if you have dream stealers in your personal orbit, if you have people who are seeing the worst in the world versus the best in humanity, if you're around people who are always in scarcity, they're complaining, they never have any money, if you're around people who go to work and they say, I just want to coast through my day, I don't really like my customers, and I'm not really interested in all this professional mastery and owning my industry and being one of the best in the world, by you, well, just know those conversations are destroying your fortunes.
Tactic number three to raise your mindset is reflection. Wow, we live in an interesting world right now. I call it an addiction to distraction. So many people are in diversion. So many people are chasing all these shiny toys through digital devices, through social media. A lot of people are addicted to video games. A lot of people are very busy being busy. But here's a brain tattoo I want you to write down: You can be busy, or you can change the world. You can't do both. Another brain tattoo I want you to write down: An addiction to distraction is the death of your creative production.
And so there's a lot of super intelligent people in Silicon Valley who have created all of these apps and all of these platforms and all of these technologies designed to addict you, designed to hook your attention. And your concentration, your focus, and your attention is one of the prized assets that you absolutely need to protect every single day. And so on this tactic, I want you to start thinking about taking some time every day and improving your mindset by getting away from the world. You see, the heroic producers spend time in the world, but they also make time for the wilderness. There's huge value in reflection. There's huge value in daily contemplation, getting away from the noise and listening to the signal, improving your mindset by asking yourself, hmm, what do I need to improve in terms of my beliefs today? Where is my faulty thinking that is limiting my performance?
Reflection allows you to know yourself. I mean, all of the great heroes, all of the great producers, all the great business builders, they literally were so intimate with their inherent powers, they knew themselves so fully that when they went out in the world, they weren't unaware. They were so aware that they could dial in on those superpowers to make themselves even more successful. So really, what I'm suggesting to you is find some time every day to improve your mindset by reflection. And you can do that in a journal. You can do that simply by sitting in silence. You can do that by simply having a cup of coffee and thinking.