Transcription
[Music] Welcome. You made it. It's day three, and you're still listening to these tapes. I'm impressed. Welcome back. Did you do the exercise on tape number two? If you didn't, you know what to do. Shut this tape off and go do that exercise. And if you've already done it, let's just move on.
What have we talked about so far? In your first two days, we've talked about the following: that to create results in our life, we have got to use our personal power, which means the ability to get ourselves to take action, to get clear what we want, to know our outcome in any situation, to follow through by taking action, to notice whether it's working or not, to develop what we called sensory acuity, to be acutely sensitive. Hey, am I getting closer to my goal or further away? And to be flexible enough to keep changing our approach until we get results.
Then on tape two, we said, "Okay, if that's all it takes is to know what we want, to go forward a hundred percent, to role model the most successful people, then if that's all it takes, how come everybody doesn't follow through?" And the answer we found out was fear. Specifically, what stops most people from taking action is fear of pain, whether that pain be the thing they call failure, or rejection, or the unknown, or what people might think, or what people might say. People need to avoid pain, and it drives their behavior. And they also desire very much to experience pleasure.
And we talked about yesterday in detail how these are the driving, controlling forces of our life. But specifically, what drives our life is our neural associations. New word. What does it mean? Well, neural associations means whatever we associate to a situation in our nervous system is going to determine our behavior. In other words, when you think, again using the metaphor we talked about yesterday about chocolate, if you associate the chocolate, well, eating a lot of it isn't so great because you'll be fat, but eating it would mean lots of pleasure, then what's happening is you have a stronger neuroassociation, a stronger association in your nervous system, in your gut, to the pleasure of chocolate than the pain. Are you following me so far?
So, what controls our life then is the meaning that we associate to a given situation. Please remember that the meaning you associate will determine your behavior. Hey, listen, if when somebody smacks you, you learn to associate that means they love you, you will literally get pleasure from it in the future. If when you think of dieting, the meaning for you is ultimate pleasure, that is, "Hey, I'm getting thinner, I'm getting more energy, I'm getting more alive," if you really associate that and that's what it really means to you in your nervous system, in your gut, then you are going to want to diet and go for it on a regular basis. Conversely, if losing weight means pain, are you going to do it on a consistent basis? We already know the answer. The answer is no.
What if you associate to getting married a lack of freedom? And that is a stronger association in your nervous system than the level of intimacy or connection or bonding that you think being married will create? Is that going to create a problem in your life? You better believe it will. Especially if your partner thinks getting married is ultimate pleasure, and for you, getting married might mean some pain. There's going to be some conflicts there. And I'm sure you've seen those in the last minute jitters, and maybe somebody you know got married. Think about it.
If you've always wanted to start a business and you haven't done it, it's because you associate too much pain to it. Yes, you want it, but what's stronger in your nervous system? The stronger neural association is, "Well, gosh, what if I fail? What if it doesn't work out? What if it's too much hassle? What if it takes up all my time?" There's too much pain associated in those areas. So if you want to create a successful business and get yourself to follow through, you're going to have to change what having a new business or starting a business would mean to you. You've got to change, not what it would mean to you intellectually, because that's only one part of your nervous system. You've got to get it where when you think of starting a new business, where mentally, when you picture it, you feel good. When you talk to yourself about it, you feel phenomenal. And in your gut, you feel good. Anytime you think about it. In other words, your whole nervous system has got to link pleasure to starting a business and pain to not starting it. Versus the way we just talked about, whereby while starting a business might mean pain, and "Oh, I don't want to feel that way," and not starting.
So, if we want to change our lives, we must change our neural associations. In fact, the science you're going to learn in this tape program is called the science of neuro-associative conditioning: how to condition ourselves so we associate things in a way that makes us feel and behave the way we want to, instead of the way that we do not want to act or behave. Specifically, in this tape, though, what we want to focus on is what are some of the key associations that you've linked up in your mind that may be directing, controlling your whole life? Because if you make a few simple changes on these major errors of your life, lots of things change simultaneously and almost without effort. And that's a major secret to lifelong success.
So, let's take a look. What creates destiny? See, for years, I read all the books, I attended all the seminars, I listened to all the tapes, and my life still wasn't working. Because most of them said, "Hey, just think positive and go for it." But the problem is, I would have these situations in life that would come up, and I'd really be working on thinking positive, but also, something happened. Wham! All of a sudden, I was thinking negative. Or something would happen, and also know how to reach for food, or other people I know around me reach for a cigarette, or reach for the television set. In other words, most of us in life think that thinking positive is going to really change our life. But I'm here to tell you, it's nice, but it is not enough. Because the biggest problem with positive thinking is you've got to think about it. And for most of us, by the time you think about it, it's too late. You're already in reaction.
Hey, look, you and I live in a stimulus-response world. Where if I say something to you like, "Winston tastes good like a..." what's your response? For 80% of the population, it's "cigarette should." Even though that's been off the air now since the mid-70s, and we still respond like Pavlov's dog. Hey, "How do you spell relief?" For most people, it's called "R-O-L-A-I-D." That is called a neuro-association. That response is literally anchored into your nervous system. Even if you don't believe that Winston tastes good like a cigarette should, you still respond. I mean, try not to think of it. Okay, "Winston tastes good like a..." Now, don't think of it. "Winston tastes good like a..." Don't think of it. "Winston tastes good like a..." That's like saying, "Don't think of the color blue." You know, if I keep saying it over and over again, it's linked in your mind over and over again.
So, we must do more than just think positive. What we've got to do is change our conditioned responses to our environment. So, if your conditioned response to losing weight is purely negative, and immediately you think pain, that's not going to change until you change your conditioned feelings about it. Does that make sense? If doing your term paper is still totally negative in your nervous system, it isn't going to change until you condition yourself to feel differently every time it comes up. No matter how positive you are, you get positive for a moment, but where are you going to go back to? To the place your nervous system is linked to, which is doing my term paper equals pain.
If being married to you is going to mean pain, and yet you want to get married because you know also going to be pleasure, you've got to change those associations. Thinking positive is not enough. And I want you to know that all these neural associations are controlling and directing your life because what they direct and control is your motivation level, what you're willing to do or not do. And you've gotta understand this: that every single action you take, as little as it may seem, has an effect on your life.
Let me just say this to you. This tape, for me, is about studying destiny. That by making some simple changes in what we link to things, we can change our behavior. Because, see, look, your destiny is based on your daily behavior. Listen, the ultimate results you want in your life start with what you do right now. In other words, I believe if we study destiny, that everything in life has four parts. Everything you think or do is a cause set in motion. I don't care how little it may seem to you. Picking up this tape program is a cause set in motion. Not listening to a tape is a cause set in motion. Not following up is a cause set in motion. Following up is a cause and motion. Whatever things you think or do, those actions are going to have an effect in your life. Now, it may seem like a small effect, but there is an effect. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. You've heard that. Means anything you do, there's going to be a result. There's going to be an impact.
Now, the third element of life is, for every result you get in your life, you begin to create a direction. In other words, a cause is set in motion, there is an effect, and each effect stacks up on the one before to take you in a particular direction. And for every direction you're heading in, there is an ultimate destination or destiny. What's important for us to do in our lives is decide, "What do we want our lives to be about? What is my ultimate destiny? What meaning do I want my life to ultimately have?" And then we have to chunk back and say, "Okay, in order to accomplish that, what would I have to believe? What would I have to think? How would I have to act on a daily basis in order to create my results?" You know what? The time to design the next 20 years is now. Not 20 years from now when you come back and go, "Oh, shoot, I wish I woulda or I should."
The key to our lives then is to be able to see that impact. And I've got to tell you, growing up, I was very fortunate in that in my life, I've created somehow or took part in the creation somehow of some very powerful neural associations. And they have shaped me. And I want you to know, in your life, there have been many experiences that are shaping you right now. We want to find out what they are, not so we go back and relive the past and go, "Oh my god, this happened to me. And if that wouldn't have happened, just think where I'd be." That's a bunch of garbage. Remember, the past does not equal the future. But it's useful to take a look at what some of the associations are that you made in the past that right now you're allowing to control yourself. And the minute you notice them, the minute you're aware of these negative neuro-associations, you can change them. Awareness by itself is sometimes curative. Because your brain will go, "That doesn't make any sense. Thinking that way about things is creating more pain than pleasure." And as soon as your brain gets that, it'll change. Literally that fast.
So, let's take a look. What are some things in life that if you just change the meaning you had to these things, it would literally change your destiny? Meaning, it would change how you feel, how you behave daily, the kind of results you got in your life every day, the direction you're heading, and your ultimate destination. So, let me share with you, if I may, a few examples in my own life. Because I don't know you personally yet, I don't know your story, but maybe in sharing mine, you'll begin to make some linkages yourself. You'll be able to see some of the associations you've made that have empowered you, and maybe some that have disempowered you.
Somewhere along the line, growing up, I made a very powerful association that has shaped my life. In fact, two of them. Number one, somewhere along the way, I linked up that learning, specifically learning ideas that could help me to change the way I felt and the way I behaved, and learning ideas that can help me to shape the way other people feel and behave, help them to literally change their lives, that that was ultimate pleasure. I somehow linked in my head or associated learning how to change people's lives will mean ultimate pleasure for a lifetime. That I did nothing, literally felt better than that. As a result, I read over 700 books in the area of human development. I listened to almost every tape program I could get my hands on. I went to lots of seminars, many of them lousy. But while I was going through the pain of the lousiness, meaning boredom, during the time, what also pulled me through is I said, "Hey, if I just get one idea, it's going to be worth it, because one idea could make it all change." So, I constantly had this driving, compelling pleasure for learning, and it's given me an insatiable appetite.
In addition, somewhere along the line, I linked up that learning myself was not enough. That I had to share that with other people. And that if I could share with people what really made a difference, not where they just heard it, but where they really made a change and enhanced their life, but that would make me feel better than virtually anything I could imagine, even better than learning. That's why I'm talking to you right now on this tape. It's why I came in here in the studio and sat in this dark room and talked to you. And even though I can't see your face, I want to, but I can't. But it's worth it because I know, I absolutely know, that if you'll do this for 30 days, you're going to see measurable progress in many areas of your life, not just one. That juices me. It has literally changed my destiny.
Now, let's look at the opposite. I'll give you a personal example. A young man was sent to me for a private consultation, and he was from Hawaii. And his family sent him with a rather large document, approximately 15 pages, from the school psychologist saying why this student could not learn effectively. And one of the reasons was this young man was dyslexic, which means he reverses letters when he reads something. For example. And first of all, this young man comes into my home, and he's rather excited, to say the least. It's feeling pretty good. Sits down, and all of a sudden, he hands me this document, and I see him immediately start to feel a thing called pain. You know, like, "Here we go again." I read the document from beginning to end, and just kind of mumble a little bit. Hmm.
Well, hmm. And I watch this young man's response. What the document basically tells me is that all the people around this young man have decided that he can't learn anything, that he doesn't have the aptitude. Garbage. Unless there's something physically wrong with your nervous system, you can learn anything. It's just a matter of strategy and desire. The problem is, this kid linked learning in school to being painful. Why? Because he's more of a kinesthetic kind of kid. What does that mean? It means he's one of those more quiet, more relaxed. He's more associated to his body than pictures. He doesn't talk as fast as I'm talking to you right now. He processes things more slowly.
So, I read through this whole thing, took one good look at it, looked up the boy, took the pieces of paper, tore it into shreds, and said, "This is garbage." Well, that kind of changed his state. He started laughing and smiling. I said, "These people, they're very nice people, but they just don't understand you. I can take one look at you and I can tell that you're really good at a lot of things. I bet you're really good in sports." I said, "Are you good at a particular sport?" He said, "Yeah, I'm really good at surfing." And the minute he started talking about surfing, you should have seen him. He started to feel good. Pleasure. Because he knows he's good at that.
Well, while he's thinking of surfing, guess what I do? I start talking about learning surfing. Learning, feeling good, surfing, learning, feeling good, surfing, learning. That's how you create a new association. All you have to do is get yourself to feel a certain way, make sure you feel it strongly, and while you're feeling it, link it to something else by repetition. I mean, isn't that what commercial advertisers did to us? How come you say, "Winston tastes good like a..."? It's because they did it over and over and over and over again. Now, you can speed it up so you don't have to hear it so many times if you create more emotion.
So, I got him where he was talking about surfing. Boy, he was just surfing so well, just feeling incredible, talking about this particular wave. And right then, I said, "Yeah, how did you learn to do that?" And all of a sudden, he said, "Well, I learned to do that this way." And he started changing his neural association. Still, pretty soon, when he talked about learning, his voice changed, his face brightened, and he felt phenomenal. I said, "Well, now, let's talk about surfing." And he did that. I said, "What would it be like to develop a surfing school?" And so, sure enough, he's telling me about surfing, talking about school. Pretty soon, school and learning make him feel phenomenal.
All of a sudden, I take out some of the words that specifically it said he could not spell. And I said, "I want you to pretend that you're surfing, though. So sit like you'd be surfing, breathe the way you're doing your surfing. We're going to do this with the kind of rhythm that you would if you're surfing. Let's get this spelling down." And we did it for five minutes. And also, any spelling perfectly the words that he's supposedly dyslexic with. In other words, he had an emotional block before. All I did was change his association to learning. Now, this kid was getting D's and F's. He went back and got C's, B's, and A's. Just with one little 45-minute session of changing his. How will that change his destiny? Ultimately, I don't know. But I guarantee you one thing: it's affecting him right now. And what he's doing right now is a cause set in motion, won't you agree? There are effects that are measurable right now in his schooling and how he feels about himself and his self-image. And affects more than just surfing. It's affecting his own idea of who he is and what he's capable of. And as that happens, it's taking him in a whole new direction and ultimately a different destiny.
I want you to know, as you're listening to these tapes, not only are you learning how to take control of your own life, but one of my outcomes, obviously, is for you to learn to help other people to make changes as well. Family members, friends, people you care about, business associates, I don't care who. But see, once you learn how to take control of your own life, out of your energy and power and enthusiasm, you won't be able to help but go work with other people and help them to change. You'll see them not doing something. You pull them aside and say, "Look, the only reason you're not doing this is because you link too much pain to it. But let me ask you a question: If you don't do it, how painful will it be?" Right? You get them to use some of the motivation we talked about yesterday, and you'll be able to come in and say, "Look, let's just change what you link to this." And you're going to have a whole series of ways of doing this. By the time this program is over, you're going to get good at this stuff.
Let's take another area of neuro-associations. What do you associate to giving? What does giving mean to you? And what does it mean to give of yourself? To give of your time? To give of your money? Your beliefs or associations to giving are going to control your destiny. I know for years, for me, my whole idea of giving was, "Give everything I've got." That's the bottom line. Be a giver. Give, give, give, give, give. Never receive anything. And that frame of reference made me feel like I was going to have pleasure in my life because I figured, "Hey, somewhere in my mind, I linked up, if I give, then people are going to love me, they're going to like me. That's going to mean pleasure." So, even though in the moment it may feel painful to give, ultimately it'll be more pleasurable than painful. Are you following me?
So, what's the problem with that? Well, the problem is, it made me this person who was a martyr. Who I gave, gave, gave, gave, gave, and would not allow anybody to give me back. Which also means I was cheating them out of the opportunity of having the pleasure of giving to me. Now, how does this relate? Well, I hope to stimulate you to take a look at your associations around giving. Because if you're a parent, you really have a chance to shape the destiny of these people you call your children. For example, I have four kids. And I remember when my youngest child, Jarek, was around four and a half, maybe five years old. One of the things that was really important to me was that he learned, number one, to love school. Because I noticed he went to school a few days, and he didn't like it too much. Well, I wanted to make sure that for him, learning was compelling. Because I knew it would change his destiny, as it did for me or anybody else that I've met who learned to love school. It really helps you to learn and grow when you love it, and you love the environment. And two, I wanted to make sure that this child was not selfish, but was a giver, but also was balanced, unlike I was.
So, what I try to do is get him linked up. So, for example, recently his grandmother came by, and for no particular reason, she just showed up with all these balloons to surprise my son. Jarek, boy, he was jazzed. He would have all this pleasure. He felt loved and excited. And of course, my mom, his grandma, got all kinds of pleasure by doing this, right? She was linked up. She saw him turn on and get excited. He gave her this big hug. And so, I said to him, I said, "Okay, after he'd had them for a while, I said, 'Let me ask you a question. How do you think right now you could create even more fun? Have even more happiness right now?'" Now, this child's, you know, four and a half years old. So, I don't know. I said, "Well, let me ask you a question. You could keep all these balloons, or you could take some of these balloons, or maybe even all these balloons, and we could go over here to this place, and you could give them to them. You could give these balloons to these old folks in this old folks' home." What do you think he's thought for a while? I said, "Oh, you can just keep them all, just for you, right?" And give them this little tonality, let them know I didn't approve a thousand percent, right?
And so, sure enough, we went over to the old folks' home. And sure enough, you got this incredible set of new neural associations. Here's this kid who's four and a half, walking in for no reason with all these balloons, walking up to these people. It's not a holiday, it's nothing, there's no special reason. And he goes up and he hands them. You can imagine the amount of pleasure he got. All these people say, "Oh, God, you're the most adorable kid in the world. Oh, you're so incredible. God, you came and saw us." All these hugs. I mean, he got so much pleasure attached to giving, it's a joke. With that kind of association, now what he does in his life is he looks for places to give. What will that do to his destiny? Well, that's a cause and emotion. The effect is he'll be focused on giving instead of taking, which means in most relationships, people are going to appreciate him. I would hallucinate more than somebody I think is trying to get something out of them. In addition, what direction does that take him? What ultimate destiny? I believe one that'll shape his life for the positive.
Let's take a look at some that maybe have affected you as well. How about the area of health? What are some of the neuro-associations you have there that may affect you negatively? See, what do you associate, for example, to drugs? If you're the kind of person who made an investment in this kind of a program, it's highly unlikely you've got major addictions. Possible, but unlikely. But if somebody does take drugs, why do they do it? For example, cocaine. Cocaine is a hundred billion dollar a year product. The number one selling product in America. How come they're so effective? Is it because they have such great sales people? I doubt it. The bottom line is, cocaine does something that virtually everybody wants. It immediately eliminates pain and creates instant what? Pleasure. Think about that. That's what drives human behavior. And by the way, now they've made it dirt cheap, and we want to have an epidemic on our hands. Now, there's a question: How come everyone is a non-cocaine if it does the two things human beings want? Because some people link up in their mind, "Doing cocaine means ultimate pain." Pain of being out of control. Like, I would never take cocaine in a billion years. Why? Because cocaine to me means being out of control, not having the freedom to really make my life the way I want it to be, being addicted, which to me is like the most disgusting emotion I can imagine, being in a situation where I'm doing something unlawful, doing something that I've got to do behind somebody's back. I mean, I, everything I can imagine that's filthy or dirty in terms of pictures or images or feelings, I would associate to that process. Being broke, wasting my money, I associate to it as well. So I wouldn't do it. But somebody who does clearly links pleasure to the process.
Why do I have those associations? Did they just grow up out of the ground? No. When I was in grade school, I had the good fortune of watching some films, and in those films, they showed people that were drug-addicted on heroin and LSD. And it was during the 60s. And I got associations that were so disgusting and so scary and so fearful that those sensations, I don't even remember the pictures or anything else anymore. All I know is, in my gut, in my nervous system, I created ultimate pain to using drugs. I never have.
What about alcohol? Here is a drug that is commonly used by most of us because we've been programmed. We've been programmed to associate drinking alcohol to being pleasurable. I got a question for you: Was it really pleasurable the first time you drank it? If you took some hard whiskey and drank it, did you go, "Yumbo, that's just good stuff"? I doubt it very seriously. You learned to associate pleasure to alcohol. The unfortunate thing is, somebody taught you to do that. Now, it may have been through role models, but they were originally sold by somebody who sold everyone on the idea. That is, the manufacturer, the person who's making the dollars and cents.
Now, here's the challenge. Statistics show year after year that the majority of automobile accidents that end in death are alcohol-related. It's one of the biggest killers in America. Yet, most people in America have abused or do abuse on a fairly decent, regular basis. Some don't. And our society is changing. Why? Because now we're seeing on television, over and over again, things like Mothers Against Drunk Driving. We're seeing imagery. We're putting out commercials that get people to associate drinking is not cool, or excess drinking, let's be specific, is not cool. That's going to mean death. That if you let a friend drive and they're drunk, you might as well be killing them. Those kinds of associations are starting to create cultural changes in the way we look at alcohol as a whole, just as cigarettes have begun to change as well.
Now, for me, I never drank alcohol in any mass. Why? Well, because I had a fairly smart mom. She was a good neuro-associative conditioning specialist. She didn't know it at the time, but she created a technology, and I modeled it from her later on. One day, I watched my father, who drank beer every day. That was one of his pleasurable things, like a lot of Americans. And my dad was drinking. I wanted to be like my dad, so I wanted to have some beer too. So I said to my mom, and I said, "I want some beer too, here." And my mom said, "No, no, no, no. You're not. You know, that's not what you want to do. It's not good for you." "It's not good for me. How come Dad's doing it?" "Well, because he's an adult." "Well, I want to be an adult right now." Why do they want to drink the alcohol? Was it because I tasted it and was addicted to it? No. Because I want to be like Dad. Because if you're like Dad, that means pleasure. You're a big kid, you know. There you are, you and Dad. So I want to be like him. I thought that would mean pleasure.
My mom kept telling me no. I kept arguing. I had an intelligent mom. She stopped arguing with me. She said, "You know what? I'll make you a deal. Here's what you do. If I let you drink this, then you gotta drink a whole six-pack just like Dad. All right? And you cannot stop, even if you don't want to. You've got to drink the whole thing. Is it a deal?" I said, "No problem." I don't know how old I was, maybe 12 years old, maybe 13 years old, maybe 11 years old, something like that. At the time, but I do remember the experience to this day. I started drinking this drink, and I thought, "God, this stuff tastes terrible." But see, I knew it's supposed to taste good. So I went, "Mmm, yeah, yeah, Dad, yeah." And I drank some more. To drink some more, and it tasted pretty lousy. As I drank more and more, I didn't feel very good. And after I finally finished the whole first can, I said, "That's enough." And I said, "Mom said, 'No, no, no. Remember our deal.'" Somewhere around the second can, maybe two and a half, I vomited all over the table, all over the beer, all over everything. And my mom said, "Keep drinking." I said, "No, no, no." "Keep drinking." Guess what? I associated a beer to this day. The smell of beer is something I can't even stand. She conditioned me to have a different association.
Now, you might say, "Well, that's terrible." I kind of liked the results. It made me look for other ways to make myself feel good other than something that drastically changed my biochemistry and took me out of control. Now, I'm not making you wrong if you drink. Obviously, I'm not one of those people that's here to be an evangelist. But I do want to give you more choices. You're going to learn in Volume 3 how to get the same kinds of feeling changes, or what we call state changes, in your body and your emotions that you could get from drugs or alcohol or food, but to do it without the use of any of those things. But meanwhile, right now, what I want you to do is take control and take a look at the consequences of your behaviors. That's what studying destiny is all about for me. Saying, "What are the consequences of the present associations I have in my life? Where are they taking me? Are they taking me the direction I really want to go?"
Hey, cigarette smoking. Why do people in our society smoke cigarettes? Answer's real simple: because someone trained them to link pleasure to it. That's their neuro-associations. But what's the destiny of all of these things? Think about it. Did you smoke a cigarette for the first time and go, "Yumbo"? I doubt it very seriously. You probably coughed and choked, and your brain went, "Hey, stupid, what are you doing here?" But you kept on smoking. Why? Because you watched commercials, and you watched your friends, and you watched movies where over and over again, what was linked to cigarettes? You were taught. Well, think about it. A small group of people got together one day and they said, "You know what? We got a product. It's dirt cheap. It's totally addictive. If we sell it and we get enough people to get addicted to it, we literally can make billions of dollars." Now, one of the guys in the group said, "We got a problem, guys. Our product stinks and it kills people." And the other guy said, "Don't worry. People are stupid. We can train them. We'll just condition them to link to cigarette smoking the things they want most, things that have nothing to do with cigarettes."
And what are the things they told you'd get by smoking cigarettes? Think about it. What would you get? Well, you could be cool. K-O-O-L. You could be independent. You could be strong. In fact, you'd rather fight than switch. That makes sense. You'd either punch somebody then switch brands of nicotine. You could take in so for the way I do that is to smoke a cigarette. No problem. Because the pleasure will be worth it. In fact, that pleasure is much, much more real than the pain of a few moments of choking on the cigarette. What else would you get if you smoke cigarettes? Well, it's obvious. You'd be independent. "You've come a long way, baby." And you're not going to go much further if you keep on smoking. I mean, seriously. The bottom line is, we've linked all kinds of things here. In fact, sex is one of the major ones, right? Think about it. But if you smoke, you'd be sexy. Doesn't that make you really, you know, think of somebody sexy when you smell their breath other than smoking? Doesn't like turn you on and stuff? I don't know about you, but it's not high on my list. And you know what? Or you'll be able to relax. If you smoke, you'll be able to relax. That's true. If you keep smoking, you're gonna be able to relax for a long time. Seriously. What happened? You went to smoke the cigarette, and your brain went, "Hey, stupid, what are you doing?" But then another part of your brain went, "Shut up, brain. The sex will be worth it." You just went on doing it. Even further. See, our neuro-associations drive us, even when they don't make any sense.
Hey, can you get somebody to do something that's destructive just by getting their brain to link up that it's going to be pleasurable? You better believe you can. Think about it. I'll give you a classic example. You got to know World War II. The Japanese developed this group of people called Kamikaze pilots. Got people to go kill themselves. How'd they pull that off? Real simple. They got them to associate dying, something that would be fairly painful, to being ultimate pleasure. Why? Because it would honor your family, it would honor your country. Plus, you're going to go to a place that's much better than here, where there's ultimate pleasure. See, we can train people to do anything. A lot of negative things.
I watched a film the other day, and I saw some negative neuro-associations. Classic example. This movie is called "Jackknife." I don't know if you've seen it, but in the movie, Robert De Niro plays a Vietnam veteran. And basically, the movie is about his relationships with other people based upon the negative associations he created in Vietnam, or that he unfortunately experienced in Vietnam. And the interesting thing is, in this movie, this man, Jackknife, is known for his destructive behavior. And one of those behaviors is when he gets really upset, he slams his fist through plate glass. Now, they think he's a bit crazy. Well, he's courting this woman in the movie. And there's a point when he, you know, she's giving him all the signals, and he really feels connected to her, and he starts to kiss her, and she starts to kiss him. Then she pushes him away, and she goes a little crazy on him. And he tries to communicate, and it doesn't work. And finally, she goes, "Just get out. Just get out." And he takes his fist and wham! He slams it through this pane glass. And all of a sudden, he's bleeding all over the place. She immediately freaks out. She runs over and says, "Oh my god, oh my god, what'd you do?" She takes his hand, tapes it up, says, "Oh, gosh, you know, it's okay. It's okay. Listen, I love the kiss. I love the kiss." Well, after going to the hospital, he comes home and makes love to her.
Now, let me ask you a question: What kind of neuro-associations do people get from something like that? Well, this guy, I'll tell you why he slams his hand through that, because even though it's painful, his brain links up that it's much more pleasurable in the end because he gets so much attention for it. Haven't you seen that happen? Maybe even with kids. If you don't give them positive attention, they'll try and do something negative to get your attention. It's still a way to get attention, which is pleasure. We've got to be very careful about the neuro-associations we create because a lot of them in life are negative. That is, we've linked things up that don't relate, and they control our lives.
So, how do we create neural associations? Well, first of all, understand this: that you are always creating associations in your mind. You're always anchoring things together in your mind. It's like, I bet there are songs that you can remember that as soon as you hear that song, instantly you remember maybe someone you had a relationship with. You have a song like that. That's called an anchor. That's a neuro-association. Our brains, whenever we're highly emotional, and when I say highly emotional, what I mean is we're feeling strong feelings. Those feelings can be positive or negative, like negative ones like depression or frustrated or angry, or positive like happiness or joy or ecstasy. Any time we're feeling strong feelings, whatever is happening around us consistently at that moment usually gets linked to it. That's called an anchor. That's what a neuro-association is.
So, for example, if you were in a situation in your life where somebody yelled at you, and while they're yelling, they gave you a certain kind of look. Later on in your life, somebody may give you that same look, and you might get angry right away. Have you ever had that happen? "Don't look at me that way." And they go, "What way?" Or I'll give you another example. What happens to you when you see a spinning red light in your rearview mirror? Do you get a state change? You better believe it. That's a neural association. What's happening at that moment is you've learned to link that spinning red light to some rather negative emotions. How did it happen? Well, one time you got pulled over. You didn't like, wake up one day, or you didn't get born where you came out of your mother's womb and said, "Okay, copper." All right? That's not how it happened. What happened was, you were driving along, minding your own business, being a good citizen, and one day somebody pulled you over for no reason. And sure enough, they scared the heck out of you, wrote you a ticket, you got mad, or you felt scared. And maybe that happened enough times to now you just see a spinning red light and you feel a state change, or you hear the sound, you feel a state change. Is that a fair assessment? That's called anchoring again.
So, remember, anchors happen whenever we're highly emotional states. By the way, they happen even when we don't want them to. If, let's say, you've had a horrible day at work, and you come home, and you're feeling pretty angry and upset about something, and you come home to your husband or wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, whoever, significant other. They now say, and sure enough, they try and cheer you up, but you're in such a negative place that nothing works. You just stay angry. And they keep trying to express to you that it'll be okay, and you stay angry. And you're angry while you see their face, angry while you see their face, angry while they see their face. Pretty soon, let's say that happens for two, three straight days. Let's say the fourth day, you have a great day. God, you feel great. Can't wait to be home with your husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, significant other. And you walk through the door feeling great. Can't wait to be with them. You look at their face, and within a few seconds, you feel angry. Or also, you start fighting for no reason. Have you ever seen like something like this happen? I know not in your life, but maybe in other people's lives. My hallucination is you probably have. That's called anchors.
We've got to be careful anytime we're in strong states, things get linked up. That's how our memories are. Have you ever noticed, like when you remember something, many times that memory will remind you of something else? "Oh, I was trying to think of that before. Oh, yeah. Do you remember this?" And it's like this network of associations in our mind. So that's how the brain works. Those associations are happening all the time. And sometimes they totally disempower us, and sometimes they have nothing to do with reality.
I'll give an example. I was doing a seminar one time. Here I am, bouncing along, talking in the front of the room. I had about 600 people in the room. And I'm speaking, and I'm really cranking. And up on the stage next to me was this knight. What I mean is, literally, a suit of armor. And I was using it as a kind of a fun metaphor for the story I was telling at the time. And sure enough, as I'm talking, when I walked in the area of the stage where the knight was standing, all of a sudden my microphone started to go crazy with all the static. And then as I walked away, the static seemed to go away as well. So I kept on talking. And sure enough, as I got close to that same spot, all of a sudden my microphone, the static started going crazy again. Well, you're gonna guess what happened. Immediately, people in the audience turned to me and said, "It's the knight. That's the problem. Stay away from the knight." And I said, "Boy, you guys sure link things up pretty quick. I'm not convinced. I only did it twice, and you're already convinced it's the knight. You've already associated the knight is the problem." I said, "I don't think that's true." And I walked away from the knight, and it stopped having static. And they said, "See?" And I walk towards it again, and sure enough, the static happened again. And I walked away, and the static kept on going. And I walked over the knight, and it stopped. I looked and I said, "What do you believe now?" They looked rather confused. What actually turned out was there was a police car going by, and it was interfering with my signal.
See, a lot of times in life, we link up things. We go, "The reason I didn't succeed is because of this," or "If this would happen, my life would have been this way," or "If you hadn't done that, this would happen." But I've got to tell you, a lot of our neural associations have no basis in reality. They feel real to us, but they are totally disempowering because they have nothing to do with what actually went on.
So, on the next tape, what you're going to study is how to change your neuro-associations, specifically step by step. But you already know how to create it. If you're in an emotional state, something happens consistently while you're in the peak, you're going to link it up. Just like Ivan Pavlov and the dogs, remember him? He took these dogs, didn't feed him, put food in front of them. As soon as they saw the food, wham! Immediately felt hungry. While they're feeling hungry, ring a bell. Feeling hungry, ring a bell. Feeling hungry, ring a bell. Until pretty soon, the two got linked. As soon as he rang a bell, wham! They felt hungry. Now, even though the bell had nothing to do with it. That's what advertisers have done with you for years. It's now time for you to take control back. It's time for you to advertise in your own mind. So, if you
Want to change the direction of your life, your ultimate destiny, and how you feel now? You gotta change these associations.
Take a look at the most successful people around you and see how one or two simple associations change their entire life. Look at Mother Teresa. Who is this woman? She is a woman who is about totally giving. Why? Because years ago, she linked up in her head that there's going to be massive pain in the world unless she did something on a massive scale to help people. She also linked that if she could help people, I mean, ultimate pleasure. And it has controlled her entire destiny.
Bruce Springsteen years ago linked rock and roll was the way to have ultimate pleasure and the way to avoid pain. Hey, take a look. Michael Jackson growing up was not allowed not to practice. Not to practice meant ultimate pain. His family, you didn't go out until you'd done your practice, till you'd gotten your singing, your dancing up to speed. And because of that discipline of his need to avoid pain, simultaneously he got good. And people noticed that and he gave him all his attention, all this appreciation. And what it created for him was ultimate pleasure. And it's pulled him into a direction in his life that's created ultimate excellence in his particular area of expertise.
Hey, Steven Spielberg. I mean, take a look. If you want to understand why people are successful, just look at their neural associations. That'll tell you what's driven their life and their destiny. Steven Spielberg, one of the great movie makers, I think, out there. And that he really entertains his audiences in a very powerful and fun way, from little kids to people at the most mature of ages. How does he pull it off to affect that many different people? Because he's a genius, obviously. Well, how did he become a genius? Hey, genius is nothing but focusing your action in a consistent way to get a result that you're committed to. If you do that every single day, and every day you strive to be better, and every day you make more distinctions, you'll become what other people call a genius. That's called power.
And why has he done that though? Why has he spent all of these years focusing on how to change people's states? Because years and years ago, he found out he could have ultimate pleasure by scaring the heck out of his sisters. And finally, if I got it, I could do it, make movies, and I don't even have to be there, and I can scare people. That became a driving force was to change people's states and create those feeling shifts in people. And he loved it. And that drove him. It drove him to go further and further and further.
Now, those aren't the only neuro associations, but those are some of them. So I got a question for you. What would be the ultimate neuro associations that you would need in order to create your life the way you're committed to having it be? In order for you to create the destiny that you really want? What would be your associations that you would create or link to things like learning, growing, giving, money, challenging yourself, taking risks, relationships, commitment, power? What are some of the negative neural associations that may be holding you back? And what are some of the empowering ones you need?
Let's do an exercise with that right now. And then tomorrow, we're going to show you exactly step by step how to use neuro-associative conditioning. But right now, let's at least get aware of them and make some changes. So here's your assignment for today. Right now, pull out your success journal. And I want you to write down three neural associations that you made in the past that have shaped your destiny for the positive. And three neuro associations that you created in the past that are limiting your life even today.
Now, for example, I told you that for me, empowering associations were things like linking alcohol to pain. For me, because I felt that empowered me, I didn't ever have to use alcohol and I've had more energy in my life and more physical health. I told you that linking up learning and giving as pleasurable experiences have really shaped my destiny. A third one I didn't mention is public speaking. A lot of people, public speaking is the most painful thing they can imagine. In fact, on large numbers of fearless where people have been interviewed, public speaking is something people are afraid of as much as death, sometimes more. But for me, I linked up ultimate pleasure. That's the only reason I get to talk to you right now, because communicating in public or with large numbers of people to me is pleasurable. It means impact. It means making a difference. It means all those things. Those would be three empowering ones.
I told you earlier what some of my negative ones were. Making a lot of money, I linked up to pain. So I didn't have any. You know, I make so much money and then I sabotage myself. So I thought making money, a certain amount's okay, but too much money, oh boy, then it's not fair because other people don't have as much as you do. I had all those negative associations. I linked up associations like eating lots of food means pleasure, or eating lots of food means love. And I gained 38 pounds as a result of it.
So you've got a list of empowering associations and disempowering ones. I want you to just get those clearly, ones that have shaped your destiny. And I want you to do it right now. So take out your success journal and I want you to think. And don't come up with the only ones, just come up with at least three. What are three associations you've made in your life that have altered your destiny for the positive? That have shaped you as a person? And what are three neural associations that are disempowering you now? Just identify them now.
By the way, if you want to get rid of them all, all you have to do is link enough pain to keeping them and pleasure to changing them. And your brain will find a way. But we'll give you a step beyond that on the next tape. We're going to study how to use the science of neuro-associative conditioning. Part your success journal. Go for it now. I'll see you tomorrow. Live with passion.
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