How I Brainwashed Myself to Success...

Welcome to the Growth Stacking podcast. This is Dan Martell. This is how I brainwash myself into success. When I was 17 years old, I was angry, depressed, and I honestly thought something was wrong with me. Now fast forward to today and my life looks completely different. I have the privilege of speaking on stages around the world, like Tony Robbins run $100 million company, I fly around on my jet. I even have a best selling book. But it didn't happen overnight. It took me from the age of 17 up, 26 years old, almost nine years until I ever made my first million dollars. But it was implementing these habits and rituals into my life that essentially allowed me to brainwash myself into thinking differently, acting differently, and pulling success into my life. Step one is changing your environment. When I was 16, I ended up spending 11 months in a rehab center called Portage. And at the end of the program, they asked us to do an integration plan. It's designed to help build a plan for your life. Who are your friends, your peer groups? Where are you going to live? How are you going to do in school? What job are you going to get? How are you going to stay busy? So slide yourself back into old patterns and old behaviors. That process was invaluable. It allowed me to stay sober, build a new peer group, and really transform my life. I did the same thing at 22 when I decided to move out west and move away from the town I grew up in to go see if there was any other opportunities out there. There's probably a fear that if you decide to change your environment and make new friends, that you're going to alienate them, they're going to be upset with you. And I get that. And it's a hard place to go to. But here's what I learned, is that the people that I thought were supporting me were really taking me down. Family members that I was born into, family were holding me back. Sometimes we have to create space, go out of our way to create opportunities, to maybe find new friends that can support your dreams and goals. My rule is, if you're the smartest person on your street, find a new street. You're the smartest person in the room, go find some new friends. Changing your environment is step one in brainwashing yourself to success because you need to make sure that you have the space to build from a foundation of positivity. Which brings us to step two, which is remove all vices. You know, often when I'm driving around in my McLaren, I have kids that run up and they're always screaming like hey, what do you do? And how did you afford this car often? Answer, it's what I don't do. I don't drink, I don't do drugs, I take care of my body, I don't gamble, I don't spend time with people that don't support me. It's what I don't do versus what I do that actually creates the space for me to be successful. And that's why I think vices will mess with your mind. I often ask my private coaching clients this simple question. How do you self medicate your pain? And for a lot of people, you got to look at your vices, you got to look at the things that you use to alter your state so that you don't have to feel because it's in that space that you're going to avoid doing the work to brainwash yourself to be successful. You can't have the vices because the vices turn off the part of the brain that's actually going to receive habits of success. But honestly, as you go up the pyramid of success, you realize that if we don't address what I call the bugaboos, the things that are holding them back, that those are the things that are going to show up to self sabotage all the success they've had up to that point and give it all back. And you see these people that are financially successful, or only to watch them live a life that looks like they're trying to escape from something they're in pain they don't want to feel. And those are usually the things that cause them to fail. Which brings us to step three, which is replacing those vices with a positive habit like reading. My dad taught me the value of feeding my mind, of educating. If you want to brainwash yourself to success, it's really important to feed your mind to read every day. I have a rule that I read ten pages every day. I want to focus my attention on positivity, on ideas, on innovation. I want to study the world of success, I want to study my mind, I want to study my health, I want to study betterment, I want to co create with these brilliant minds from the past. For $30 you can acquire 25 years of experience from a person in six to eight hour investment of your time. I think that's one of the coolest thing, it's why I have a minimum 10 pages of reading per day that I do because the words create our future. We don't actually create our future, we attract our future by focusing on the right things. And for me, getting my mind right, reading those words in that book, visualizing what that's going to look like, I get to pull my future into my life. And that's how I brainwash myself into using books. And here's the kicker, you don't read books. You should study books. That means highlighting, referencing, trying to teach the concepts to other people, taking a picture, sharing it on social media. That's how I use books to feed my mind. Which brings us to step four, which is to start journaling. In rehab. One of the processes that we went through was to write down our feelings, write down our beliefs, talk about what was coming up on our mind so that we could kind of analyze our thoughts to reflect on. Many years later that I learned the process of visual and writing down goals at 17 years old. Just write down what comes to your mind. What do you believe about something? What are you scared about? Why are you scared about? How old is that fear? Where did that come from? And just continue to audit your thoughts, your words, you'll start to build a self reflection process. Like for me, that is literally how I've brainwashed myself to success, is by being able to look on a piece of paper what I was thinking and even go back to last year and see the upgrade in my mind and actually teach yourself the process of upgrading your mind. One process is I have the list of all my top 12 goals for the year and I review it three times a day. Why? Because I use that as a reflection process to ask myself, where am I at today? What do I want to achieve this year and am I on pace? What do I need to think about? Who do I need to become to create that future? That is one of the most important processes of journaling is the self reflection. What is up with me? Because I don't feel that way. But why would I say those things so oftentimes, you know, we are not our reality, we are the thoughts that we have. Journaling is one of the strongest ways to brainwash yourself to success, like programming your mind. So do 20 minutes every day as a daily habit. Which brings us to step five, which is to take massive, imperfect action. You know, one of my life mottos is jfdi, which stands for just effing do it. I have this belief that if something speaks to my soul, I have to take action before I overthink it. We already know the right path, we just gotta move towards it as fast as possible. When I got outta rehab, I had a plan. I worked on the plan every day and Every night, I took action. You know, that was one of the biggest things. When they would report back to us, when we do our groups, we always had to share, like, what did we move forward in our life? People actually know what they got to do. Eat less than you're eating. You probably got to move your body. You probably should read some books. You should get around positive people. Like, a lot of these things are known. But what is the first next action? See, oftentimes we're paralyzed because we haven't been clear. But what is the one next action I need to take to actually move things forward? And that is why, for me, brainwashing my mind is making a commitment to the next step. But what is the next logical step to move this outcome forward? And I'm just making a commitment to it. And before I can overthink it, I just move, I take action. And. And that's why I think that action is one of the best ways for you to brainwash yourself to success. Which brings us to step six, which is dream big. You know, when I started my first company, Spheric Technologies, I had a pretty modest goal today. At the time, it felt massive, which was get to 5 million a year in five years with 25 people. That was aiming higher than high. I thought if I could do that, I could do anything. That would be the craziest thing ever. And within the first year, following the process of brainwashing myself to success, we did almost a million dollars in the first year. Here's the Big dreams inspire people. Small dreams don't shoot for the stars, because even if you only land on the moon, at least you're amongst the skies. Dreaming big forces you to stop caring about what other people think, because it would be impossible for you to go for something that other people think is impossible and you actually care what they think. That allows you to speak your future into reality. Every person you admire, every social media influencer, every celebrity, every athlete, you admire them because they've spoken their dreams out loud. You know their goals. They tell you this is the shot they call their shot. And those shots are not little because they wouldn't inspire anybody. So think about this. You need to build the process of not only thinking big, but actually speaking big out loud to yourself, to your friends. Find people that are going to protect the idea and not shoot it down too quick. But is the process of allowing myself to continue to upgrade my thoughts, upgrade my dreams? Because I'll never expand past the bigness of my ideas. If you think about it, all the People you admire from Gary Vee. What does he want to buy? New York Jets. Elon Musk. What does he want to do? Colonize Mars? Jeff Bezos. What does he want to do? The largest bookstore in the world and now the largest retailer in the world. Essentially, Amazon.com is the number one place for people to buy. These are all things that they said publicly. They called their shot. They first dreamed big, but then spoke big. That manifested, that created those things into their lives. That is why this process of dreaming big is one of the best ways for you to brainwash yourself into success. Which brings us to step seven, which is dedicate a thousand days. See, most people, they're only thinking in the next 90 days, the next six months. If you actually dedicated yourself to an outcome, what could you do within that timeframe? So here's my invitation. I want you to consider thinking bigger. This is about actually doing it. If you showed up every day, eating well, working out, focusing on positivity, any action towards your habits, towards your dreams, towards your goals, if you did that every day for a thousand days, I actually think you'd wake up and you'd be living a completely different life, which is kind of crazy if you think about it. In three years, whatever dream goal you want to achieve is actually possible. If you can dedicate yourself to a thousand days of execution, a thousand days of discipline, a thousand days of being consistent, give yourself permission to think bigger. Make yourself really focus on what you say yes to. Because saying yes to something that isn't aligned is a no to your dreams. But saying no to something that isn't aligned is saying yes to your dream, right? When I say a thousand days, that's three years. That's not a long time. Imagine being rich, being healthy, being an incredible relationship, you know, having an incredible group of friends that you can celebrate life with. Those are all things that are available to you. On the other side of showing up every day for you, for your dreams, for your family, if you're that person, you're going to stand out so much quicker. See, the work instills the worth. So when you show up and you do the work, you're telling yourself that you're worth it. And that is why for me, dedicating myself to at least a thousand days for change and anything meaningful in my life is how I brainwash myself into success. If you want to learn the eight habits that are keeping you poor, click the link and I'll see you on the other side. If you like this week's episode, be sure to visit itunes, leave a review that'll help us get in front of other founders just like you. And if you're looking for more resources and video trainings, be sure to check out dan martell2lsmartell.com to subscribe. Keep up the hustle, keep stacking your growth, and I'll see you in next Monday's episode. Peace. Grow Peace. Bye Bye.