Mindset: How the Mind Works

Welcome to the Enrichment show by Aruta. We're really excited to kick off our first show. First, a little bit about Aruta. At Aruta, our focus is on personal and professional development. We train leaders. Everybody has the ability to be a leader. The best leaders develop the mindsets necessary to manage their intrinsic resources. Your intrinsic resources are you, your time, your energy, your discipline and your focus. We strive to raise the standards for individuals and businesses so they can be the best versions of themselves. We're a hub for vast amounts of knowledge in the form of strategies from experts all over the world. The key to results is not only knowledge and strategies, but the application of that knowledge that usually requires accountability. Strategies which we specialize in. We combine both innovative and time tested principles to inspire you to expand your boundaries and challenge you to be the best version of yourself. And also to take your business to the next level and beyond. Some of the services we provide are life coaching, business consulting, executive coaching, health coaching, group coaching, webinars, ebooks, seminars and apps. Okay, now let's get to it. The topic we're going to discuss today is Understanding the power of the human Mind. How about tackling a nice challenging topic? Many say that the human mind is the most powerful force in the universe. If that's true, then the only other thing that can be more powerful is the one who controls it, and that's you. But can you control it? Willpower or self control? Control of the mind to me is the ability to get yourself to do what you should be doing, when you should be doing it. And the most important part is as whether you want to or not. As Mark Twain said, let's eat the frog first, meaning let's handle the most difficult topic first. It's a great basis upon which everything else will flow from. They say that a key to a good teacher is the ability to break the complex into the simple. And if that's not hard enough, the speaker needs to be entertaining. A vigorous challenge. Let's see how we do with this. All right. There are countless quotes about the power of the mind. I love the following quotes because they've so powerfully set us up for a mission which is to understand the mind and how to use it. It unfortunately doesn't come with a user's manual, so we need to create one. Here are the quotes. You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength. That's from Marcus Aurelius. For the one who has conquered the mind, the mind is the best of friends. But for the one who has failed to do so. His very mind will be his greatest enemy. The Bhagavad Gita. The mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. That's Ravan Sharma. These and many other stages, philosophers, scientists, poets, religious figures throughout history have made it clear that the mind is a tool for us to master. They've paved the way and their message is clear. Go figure out how to control your mind and that as Nike says, just do it. So what are these great powers of the mind? Here's just a few. And by the way, we're referring to the mind in general, right? There's both a conscious mind and a subconscious mind. We're referring to it in general. The subconscious has more power than the conscious mind does by far. Right? So in any event, here's things that the mind can do. It handles all processes of the bodily function such as beating your heart, breathing, digestion, healing your immune system, reverse reproductive processes, etc etc etc. It has an unlimited memory. It never sleeps or rests. It dreams, rebuilds, repairs yourselves while you're sleeping. It converts inputs like food to energy to be used by the brain and the body. It's created miracles such as flying through the air, going to the moon, speaking to anybody anywhere in a little tiny handheld device, endless miracle inventions. The bottom line is the power of the mind is unlimited. Whatever the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve. That's from Napoleon Hill. My life's work and Roota's objectives come down to answering two simple questions. Number one, why don't we do what's in our best interest all the time? We don't. We know we don't yet. We still don't. We don't do what's in our best interest all the time. And then the second question is, how do we do what's in the best interest? What's in our best interest all the time? Very simple questions to understand and I hope, you hope you realize they're a little bit more difficult to figure out, right? So we're going to figure out the answer and apply it in your life. Your fulfillment, happiness levels will soar. So let's get curious and let's get after it. So what is the mission for being here? Right, for us being here, what is that mission? First place to start with any project is a mission statement that answers the what question. What you want to be doing. So what is the mission statement for our mind? What is it trying to do? The answer is that the mind has a prime directive, meaning the master program. Our mission statement that all of our motivational behavior can be traced back to and that is survival of the species. I'll say it again. Survival of the species. That's the Prime Directive. That is our motive of the mind. All of our fears and desires can be traced back to this. We could stop the program right here because this is the answer to the primary question. I told you I'd make it simple, right? You remember? The question is, why don't we always do what's in our best interest all the time? Well, there's the answer. Whenever you do something stupid that's not in your best interest, you can trace it back to this reason and say, why did I do that? Oh, yeah, it's because I'm programmed for survival. But it'll take a little more digging to understand why this is the answer and what that has to do with the second question. Remember we had the second question, how do we do what's in our best interest all the time? So we still have plenty of work to do answering these fascinating questions. Once answered, the they can lead you to the master key that unlocks the unlimited power of your mind. So, as a life coach, my mind always thinks in terms of process. When we have a mission, we need to generate a subset of goals to accomplish that mission. So when I said the mission of your mind was for survival of the species, some of you may have been asking yourselves, but isn't our mission my own survival? Well, the answer is not exactly. That's a goal that stems from the Prime Directive, the mission of survival of the species. In order to achieve any mission, remember, you have to have a set of goals to complete that mission. So one of the goals of the mission of survival of the species is, yes, our own survival. We must survive in order to do our part in ensuring the survival of the species. But survival of the species is the top mission, above even our own survival. Evidence of this is by our nature to provide for and to protect our own family, even before ourselves. Wouldn't you give your life for your kids? That's survival of the species before our own survival. It's also evident by another goal, procreation. These are means, goals to the end goal or mission, which is survival of the species. Now that we know that survival of self is a goal, we need to dig a little deeper to understand what needs to happen to meet that goal. The most important goal in the survival of self is energy. Without adequate energy, we won't survive ourselves, let alone help out the species. We use a tremendous amount of energy on mental exertion the brain uses an enormous amount of energy. Physiological functions like heartbeat, blood flow, breathing, digestion, metabolic and synthetic reactions, cell reactions, gene multiplications, energy dissipation. The body maintains a fixed temperature and loses heat. So we need to focus on energy big time. Okay, so now that what two goals do we need to do to ensure that we have enough energy for survival? As with any valuable limited resource, which energy is we need to do two things if we want to be sure we've got enough to meet our goal of survival. Number one is we want to renew it. Want to get some more? Number two is we want to conserve it. Don't want to waste it. So let's start with renewal. Renewal is the first goal for ensuring we have enough energy to survive. I teach a whole separate seminar on this topic. It's mainly health seminar. We not going to delve too much into it here because it's such a broad and important topic that deserves focused time. But I'll give you some of my favorite physical and mental energy renewal tips right now. Number one, inspiration. This is the highest quality energy. Do what inspires you. Find your career passion. If you aren't in it already, do what it is that you're good at, what you love doing, and for extra credit, what you believe will benefit others for the greatest good. If you can hit all three of these, that's a wonderful target to shoot for. By the way, if you do this, chances are you're going to make money too. Why? Because you'll be creating value and people pay for value. And even if you don't make a lot of money, you'll be doing something you love. What's better? Doing something you love your whole life and not making money or doing something that you hate your whole life and making a lot of money. You figure that out. The next one is sleep. This is the best investment you can make of your time. You get the highest return of your time when you sleep. I can speak of the benefits of this one topic alone for hours and sometimes I do. It's that important. Suffice to say, get your eight hours, get high quality sleep and don't go to bed too late. Your energy and focus will skyrocket if you do this. Next is nutrition. Highly controversial topic, but the bottom line is that your nutrition is literally your fuel. So we can't have a conversation about energy without discussing the fuel. The biggest key here is likely more what you shouldn't eat, like processed foods and sugar, right? Then what you should eat, like greens. More and more greens Organic ones. So next is exercise. How can something that expends energy actually renew your energy? This is a deep and fascinating topic. But in general improves your cardiovascular health so that you have more and higher levels of energy and more endurance during the day. It increases your energy capacity. It also gives you a better night's sleep. Like sleep, energy is a great use of your time and energy. So remember, conservation is the second goal of ensuring that we have enough energy necessary for survival. We have renewal and conservation. Right. Those are the two goals there. This one I always find fascinating. Conservation because it's a bit of a secret of the mind. And when we shine a light on it we can really begin to get a better picture of why we do the things that we do even if they aren't in our best interest. Right. It has a lot to do with the conservation of energy goal that runs in our subconscious minds. We're literally programmed to conserve energy. How do we do that? Ah. The goal of conservation of energy leads the mind to develop two programs that run in our minds. Instincts and habits. The Great Architect developed an elegant system to conserve our energy while improving our chances of survival by developing habits and instincts. Habits and instincts are repetitive patterns of behavior subconsciously programmed to run upon stimulus. These programs are created when the subconscious mind observes either physical or mental repetitive activities. The programs conserve energy for your conscious mind to focus on other things. But presumably for survival. The conscious mind is an energy hog. If you had to think about every time you did something like walking. Right? Think about. You have to think about walking each time you did it consciously. So it take up a tremendous amount of energy that's needed for other functions of survival and to build your mental model of how we survive. Best instincts and habits are two different types of programs. They're both wired into our brains which anytime we have a repetitive action they have similar characteristics. But the big difference is timing. Instincts are pre programmed repetitive physical or mental actions. They're with us from birth. They're built into our genetic code and have basically been pre wired into our neural network as a species has evolved over time. As humans progressed over time, they encountered problems along the way and developed new ways of thinking to solve them. Rather than recreate the wheel each time which would be a very inefficient use of energy. These ways of thinking and acting are passed down genetically throughout the species. Now habits are like instincts. However they are learned in this lifetime, they're not part of our DNA. We're constantly improving our mental model with respect to survival. Even in the Current lifetime. This is kind of akin to what artificial intelligence does. Not constantly improving the model for whatever the mission is. Humans are constantly learning and improving the survival model over time, adding new habits. And over time, if these habits are widely adopted by the species, they become instincts for future generations of all humans. We're even evolving our brains, adding additional layers to the brain, our instincts. This is the instinct process. Our instincts are embedded deep into our memory banks. This is how the process works. We're faced with a stimulus. Our subconscious mind engages a retrieval process to search our memory banks for the best match of the times we've faced this situation before. It then examines all the actions we took in response to this particular stimulus, looking for the action resulting in the best outcome. From the lens of survival, this whole process is done within milliseconds. These ways of thinking, including warnings about possible dangers and threats, will were pre programmed deeply into our brains so its future generations wouldn't have to recreate the wheel, so to speak. For instance, studies have shown that phobias of spiders and snakes are instinctual. A small child is afraid of them without ever having experienced them. So it's clear that this isn't a habitual fear from this lifetime. They haven't seen it before. The evolutionary reason is that in the old days, humans had to survive in an environment that was densely populated with poisonous reptiles like these spiders and snakes. We learned that we needed to spot these insidious little creatures to protect ourselves. This phobia was passed down to alert future generations to both spot and stay away from them, as they represented a threat to our prime directive survival. Let's look at an example now to see how instincts work. 50,000 years ago or so, my great great grandfather ancestor Bello and his family were just chilling out in their lovely home, which is cave by the way. And my great grandpa spots a tiger outside the cave in the bushes. Not just any tiger, but the great saber tooth. So what happens? The stimulus, that's a saber tooth tiger perched outside the cave. The retrieval process starts. Looks for memories. Where, where is this situation? Happened in the past, right? Not just even in this lifetime, but in previous lifetimes. It's our DNA, remember our genetic code. Memories from previous lifetimes. Okay, I found a few. Let's proceed to the best program memory match process. So it looks, it's like, okay, found one from a previous lifetime with the same stimulus in one lifetime. I figured maybe if I'm nice to the big cat, he'll let us go. So I call him over here, kitty, kitty, Big Mistake. Right. Kitty ate me for dinner, but first ate my wife and kids in the cage. I won't forget that in the next lifetime. Right. That's going in the genetic code. Okay. Next program found. I run. Right. Fight or flight? Flight. Right. Darn. He catches me, but only after he has my wife and kids as an appetizer. Nice kitty. Gave me a head start. Thanks, kitty. Right. That one didn't work either. Put that one in the code. Next program found from another lifetime, one of my ancestors. I grabbed a log from the fire and threatened the big cat. Right? He runs away. Success. That's a keeper. Keep that program. Make it an instinct the next time a saber tooth tiger attacks us or we fight. In reality, all this happens over the course of milliseconds. And the program that worked the best will automatically be chosen. That will be your instinct. Saber tooth tiger equals fight. We know instinctively we can't outrun it and it'll attack us if we do nothing. If it's stalking us, we need to take action. The habit process. This is the process that ingrains any repetitive action into your subconscious mind. So the action becomes automatic and. And can even be unconscious. You don't even know what's happening, right? It happens every time the trigger occurs. So what happens? Number one, you get a trigger, right? This is a reminder to your subconscious mind about a particular behavior. It's like, oh, the trigger. What do I do when this trigger happens? A behavior, the action you take as a result of the trigger, that's what you do. And then there's a reward, right? Some type of benefit, right? It could even be a perceived benefit that you get from doing the behavior. This reinforces that behavior and reinforces the habit. More you do it, the more ingrained it becomes. Okay, let's take a look at an example of a physical habit. Remember, habits can be physical or mental. So you're walking to work, and you pass the bakery each day consciously. You say to yourself that morning and every morning for the past few weeks, I'm not going to go into the bakery today. Because, you know, it's getting close to summertime and you have to get into that bathing suit today. You close in on the bakery, you get close, and what happens? You smell those pastries. Trigger, right? You immediately walk in, buy it and eat it, right? You're rewarded. Instant gratification. Dopamine released. You'll probably do it again tomorrow. We need to remember that habits and instincts are not just physical, but mental as well. For example, mindsets are mental habits. A Mindset is a habitual thought pattern and an attitude that results from that. That's been created by experiences that we tend to believe or know about ourselves. Maybe something we know about other people or events. These attitudes are a result of thoughts that have arisen out of either the things that we believe in from indirect experience or things that we know through direct experience. Often we think we know a belief to be true, but later find out it was an erroneous belief wasn't true. What seems to be isn't always what is real. We'll see if these beliefs and knowledge shape everything about our lives as they are the determining factors about decisions we make and the actions we take. Both consciously and subconsciously. Our actions have consequences known as effects. So now we're going to take a look at beliefs, a prevalent type of mindset we instill. These beliefs are ideas or thoughts that are repeated often, usually shared by those who we associate with. For example, political beliefs. They influence our behaviors by controlling our decisions and perceptions. We see what we believe rather than believing what we see. Our beliefs become our reality. Literally. We act consistently with our beliefs because it's a natural function of the mind to act in accordance with what it is that it believes and because we act consistently with our beliefs. What we believe in in large part determines the quality of our lives. We have two types of beliefs. We have limiting beliefs and empowering beliefs. Limiting beliefs are those beliefs that hold us back from our goals. It's important I understand these. Those beliefs exist when we believe that we're limited in some way. It might be true or false, but it's usually false. An example is public speaking. Many people believe they could never do it. That's a limiting belief. They can. Many people believe they would rather die than do a eulogy. That means they'd rather be in the coffin than delivering the eulogy. Now, empowering beliefs are those beliefs that give us the confidence and conviction that we have the ability or skill to accomplish the goals that we set for ourselves. We feel confident now that we can take these risks. It's important to know that the belief may not even be true. You may be a horrible public speaker, but because you believe you can do it, you. You go out there and you take a shot. Fake it until you make it. It's important to instill these empowering beliefs, really important for your quality of life. Let's consider some global beliefs that people have just to show you that things aren't as you believe or as they seem. So a common belief is that money will make you happy. Okay. Now the reality is that money is what's known as a means, goal. The actual goal is to be happy. Not to have money, not to have all this paper. Right? It's just paper. Right? But it's potential energy. Studies show that the level of happiness only increases up to the point of the poverty line when you cover your basic needs. Above that line, more money can either make you happier or miserable. Studies show that. Another one. Common belief, a relationship is necessary in order to be happy. And in reality, this too can go either way. A loving, supporting relationship can indeed make you happier. But also remember that nothing's permanent. Single people have many friendships and other deep, meaningful relationships that can serve to provide them with the love that a single relationship can provide. In addition, they have a lot more freedom. The bottom line is that this is really up to you whether you're happy or not. Another one. I like this one. Common belief, happiness declines with age. Reality. Study after study shows that happiness actually increases with age. Older adults are more satisfied with their lives. They have more positive emotions and less stress. This is the happiest time of their lives. Another one. Happiness is based on your genetic code. Well, the reality is, while it's true that your genetic code has an impact on your happiness, so studies show that it's only 50% of the picture. 10% is due to life circumstances and the other 40% is due to our actions and choices. Like listening to webinars like this. I would also argue that many, if not most of our life circumstances are due to life choices. So think about it as half of your happiness is directly proportional to you. You are in control and thus responsible for your happiness. An important distinction between beliefs and knowings. Just important to know this. Mindsets can come from either indirect experiences in which they are beliefs, or they can come from direct experiences in which they are knowings. You know it happened. You believe it because you know it happened. Today we're only really focused on those that come from beliefs. Why? These are the ones we have control over and we may want to change. We don't want to change knowings. That's reality. So here's a good example of a limiting belief. I love this story. So nobody had run the four minute mile in the history of man. Roger Bannister did it in 1954, an example of a limiting belief mindset. So most people, including doctors, said it was impossible for a human being to run a four minute mile as a result of our own physiology. Roger, however, believed that with the right training and more Importantly, with the right mindset that it could in fact be done. He turned this limiting belief into an empowering belief. He trained and more importantly, he believed and he decided he would do it. Then on May 6, 1954, on a track where all the conditions were against him. High winds, rain, it was horrible. Roger ran the race as hard as he could. And then the announcement came. Ladies and gentlemen, here is the result of event 9, the 1 mile. The. The time was 3. And then the crowd drowned out the rest. The rest of the announcement was drowned out by the crowd delirious with amazement at the feat of human excellence that they had just bore witness to. Bannister had finished in 359.4 seconds. He did it. He broke the world record. Crushed through the barrier. He'd done what so many people believed was impossible. He'd made history. Now here's the first moro. The hurdle was not the human being's physiology. The hurdle was the belief that it was impossible. Once that belief was eradicated, Roger believed he could do it. Right. The four minute mile hurdle was also eradicated. Now what's even more fascinating, once Bannister accomplished the feat, another person did it only 40 days later. People hadn't done it in thousands of years. Right. Why? Because this isn't knowing. That is more than a belief. This is a knowing. We knew it could be done. The next guy knew it could be done. Another type of mindset that we need to be mindful of is cognitive biases. A cognitive bias is a programmed erroneous thinking pattern that has an impact on our judgments and therefore on our decisions. Cognitive biases have a direct impact on how we perceive the world. Since they are based on incorrect or incomplete information, that is that has been programmed into the mental model of the mind, they often lead us to poor decisions. There are many different documented cognitive biases. But in general, we as humans tend to have a predisposition towards negative biases. Why would the Great Architect program us in this way? Cruel joke? No. As usual, the answer always comes back to survival. We're programmed to constantly be on the lookout for dangers to us. This used to be the case in the old days when there were lions and tigers and bears all around us. But that's not the case today for most of us anyway. Our programming hasn't kept up with our environment. We're going to take a deeper look at that later in our story. So a few of the more well known cognitive biases are. Recency bias. When somebody relies on something that has happened recently. When they're making a decision or something in their judgment. For example, favoring the latest option seen rather than the best option. Anchoring bias is another one. So when somebody relies on an initial piece of information, for example, favoring the first option seen rather than the best option, then there's stereotypes, an over generalized belief and expectation about a particular group using that when you're making a decision. So discrimination based on race or gender or, or nationality. These are some examples of cognitive biases. There are many more. There's a bunch of them actually listed on our website@ruta.com so we're going to go through a summary. Now. The summary is. Remember we said the mind is extremely powerful and it's a tool for us to use to achieve our goals. We need to understand its purpose in order to use it. The purpose of the mind is survival of the species and ourselves, right? So two goals for survival are energy conservation and renewal. We renew our energy by inspiration, sleep, nutrition and exercise. There are other ways as well, but those are some of my favorites. We conserve our energy through two programs, instincts and habits. Two types of mental habits are the mindsets of beliefs and biases, cognitive biases. You have to be aware of both as they impact the quality of our decisions and thus our lives. So this is the mission of mind hierarchy that I kind of drew out to make it a little clearer. It starts with you, right? You have this powerful tool called your mind. You control it, right? You can control it. It can also control you if you're not careful, right? But you can control this powerful tool. The mission of the mind, to understand how to control, you need to understand the mission. The mission of the mind is survival of the species. There are two goals for survival of the species. One is you have to survive yourself first. There won't be any survival of the species if you don't survive yourself first. You won't be able to help survive the survival of the species. And the other goal is, of course, procreation. Now for the survival itself, you need energy. There's two ways we can work on our energy. One is we need to renew our energy. Once we expand it, we need to renew it. Number two is we need to conserve our energy. It's a valuable intrinsic resource. A few of the ways that we can renew our energy are inspiration, sleep, nutrition and exercise. Those are just a few. And then the ways to conserve our energy. The mental ways are instincts and habits. Now with habits, there are mental habits. Three types. They're called beliefs, knowings and cognitive biases. These are programs that run in your mind. Beliefs. We have two types of limiting. Two types of beliefs. One are limiting beliefs and the other are empowering beliefs for knowings. Knowings just means those are the facts, right? They're programmed into your mind. You've seen the situation before, it's fact. Then you have cognitive biases. These cognitive biases lead to errors in judgment. You need to be aware of them when you're making decisions. So that's the mission of the mind hierarchy. So we have homework for you, right? Yes, homework. We said that one of the differences between what we do and what others do is that we're interested in getting results. And the only way to get results is to work at it. Knowledge will not apply itself. You must make the application. Okay, so we've got two assignments. The first is an assignment about identifying your limiting beliefs and then replacing them with empowering beliefs. So first, think about three goals you've been wanting to achieve for some time now, but you just can't seem to handle them. Think about why you haven't been able to do them. What's the obstacle? Most times the reason is attributable to a limiting belief. Identify that specific limiting belief. We'll give you an example in a second. Create an empowering belief that will motivate you to achieve your goal. Then write down your answers either on paper or in the comment section below. By the way, the best way to hold yourself accountable is to make a public declaration. You want to do something. Instead of goal and do something, make a public declaration. Alright, so here's an example. For instance, you want to go to the gym each day, right? That's your goal. When you think about why you don't go, why haven't I been able to go? You come up with I don't have enough time. Such a common limiting belief. We all have the same amount of time. Everybody from the President of the United States to the little kid in kindergarten, right? The real answer is that you aren't prioritizing the gym or some of the other lesser important things in your life. So your empowering belief then is I always have enough time to work out. I just need to prioritize and schedule it in. And for extra credit, remember, make a public declaration. You can do that in the comment section. You can check out some of our templates as well on this that we have available on both exercises on www.arutah.com. so here's the second assignment. The second assignment is about identifying your cognitive biases. Review the cognitive biases that we presented or the ones on our website. Then figure out if there are two recent decisions you've made that have been impacted by a cognitive bias. Identify where your bias could have led you to make an erroneous decision. For extra credit, share your comments with us. Right. Help help everybody else out. So an example. An example is a hiring decision. You interview many people for any given job and then you notice that you tend to hire those whom you've met last. What bias is this? That's the recency bias. You need to be aware of it. Realize it's better to make a rational decision based on the facts. Right. Rather than give the last person that you met too much credence in the decision, think about all of the facts in making the decision. You know? Well, thanks for joining us. We're really excited about next week's show. Next week we're going to do a little summary. First about this week to keep us in the flow. We're also going to discuss our internal GPS system of emotions that keeps us on track to accomplish our mission. It's fascinating. We'll also discuss the differences between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. We're going to discuss the dilemma caused by the speed of our environment changing faster than our brain's evolution. We'll discuss how to adapt and overcome this dilemma by reprogramming our mind. We'll discuss different mindsets that lead you to fulfillment. These are leadership mindsets. We'll discuss my favorite mindset, how to lead yourself and others in times of crises. We'll teach you how to find the opportunities in any crisis. I just released a book by the same name. Go to our website. Download it. It's free. We'll see you next.