How to think positive in the panademic | Slimpod
Personal-development practitioner Brian shares his 25-year-old goal-mapping system for staying positive during COVID-19. Positive thoughts trigger serotonin and strengthen brain connections, while stress releases cortisol that inhibits immunity. He demonstrates his platform for combining words and images into visual maps you review daily.
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So welcome, welcome to our SlimPod Club live chat, and tonight is all about being positive just because we are— we need it. We need every bit of positivity we can get at the moment. So I've got Brian with me and we are going to um, talk about, um, the— Brian joined us in March and we were entering into the whole COVID lockdown, the first lockdown. It was rubbish, rubbish, rubbish, and, um, and Brian did an amazing goal map to help us with all of that. And, um, I thought it would just be the most amazing thing if Brian came back and we We just did it again, but in a different way, just because we need some happiness right now. We need some positivity and we just, you know, we need every single tool in the box to get us through the next few months. So you've got your SlimPods and now we've got Brian with us as well. And so you can't go wrong. So welcome, Brian, and thank you so much for joining us. You're a real star in SlimPod Club. And anybody who doesn't know, Brian changed my life 15 years ago, and we've been great friends ever since. And I really do, you know, I run my life with Goldmaps, and they've got me to where I am today. 10 years, Brian, would you— can you believe it? 10 years this month, we launched 10 years ago.
I didn't realize it was that long.
10 years, that is also long ago since we met, actually. I know, 15 years ago, and then 10 years ago I started I started SlimPort. Yeah, it was 15 years ago that Damon introduced us, and then I went on my voyage of self-discovery, and this is what's happened. So look, there we go, everybody. So look, I'm not going to waffle on anymore. I just want to now hand over to Brian, who is going to kick off, and let's just all enjoy the next hour.
Okay, thank you. It's really, really nice to be invited back to share. Nice, nice to feel the friendship as well and to make it casual. I'm sat at home here obviously and just really pleased to be able to reach so many people. Through the technology available these days. My journey started 25 years ago in terms of personal development. It wasn't something I was looking for, it was sort of a big life change for me, and the life change was sort of quite forced upon me, if you like, in that my circumstances changed and I needed to find answers to problems. I was in a million-pound debt, I was homeless, my car had also been repossessed, my marriage had broken down, I had no qualifications because I left school at 13, I'd never learned to read and write. So life was looking pretty grim, and when I discovered personal development through joining a, a direct sales team, it gave me a lifeline to hold on to, much more than the hope. It also gave me practical tools that I could use to start influencing some of the change in my life, rather than the change just happening to me. Change is is constant, and I often use the analogy, it's like the wind that blows. We can't control the force or the direction of the wind, but if you imagine you're like a sailing boat on the ocean, what is always in your power, if you're a skilled sailor, if you've learned your craft and you understand how to read the conditions, you can adjust the set of the sail the angle, the attitude of the boat, and in that way, regardless of which direction the wind blows or how strongly, you can capture the opportunity created by the wind and you can use that to move you on your journey. What's essential is that you know where you want to go, otherwise the wind is wasted and In life, it's the same. We are, all of us, on a journey through life, and every so often the conditions change. And this year, really, a storm has come for so many people in the form of COVID-19. And for a lot of people, they are in fear of where the storm will take them. But as long as we keep calm and we do the best we can in setting a good sail, we are still able to make progress in life. And in life, the set of our sail, the way that we're able to capture the opportunities created by change— and the bigger the change, the bigger the opportunity— The set of our sail in life is our outlook, it's our attitude, and it's our physical behavior. And just like in the analogy of the sailing boat, we need to know where we want to go. And so if we learn the simple principles of life and creation and success, and we are clear about our intentions— and they don't need necessarily to be physical things we want to create It can be mental-emotional, so a level of happiness, a level of self-esteem, a level of well-being. If we are clear about those things, then we can use the changes in life to our advantage. And this has been a really challenging year, and it's meant a great deal of change for everyone, me included. And since we last spoke, which I believe was probably March when you invited me to talk, although it's been a very challenging time, and normally I travel around the world somewhere every week to make a presentation at a big conference, all of my work's been online, and I've actually been able to help more people this year in more ways than I've ever done before in the previous 25 years, but it has needed me to engage even more fully in my own material and in particular to use my maps to help myself steer my path, keep my balance, hold positivity and more than just being positive, to engage both sides of my brain. Because I believe that if we are going to not just survive but thrive through this COVID-19 crisis, we need absolutely a holistic, whole brain approach. We need to hold a vision, a picture of promise of us coming out the other side of this in a good way, and we need to work with our logical left brain to find easy, effective strategies that help us make the journey. And, and one without the other is ineffective. If we have only, uh, a good vision but no plan, we get frustrated. If we have a good plan but don't know where we want to go, then it's a little bit pointless. So it's about using both sides of our brain, and the techniques that I've created over the last 25 years— goal mapping is only one, there are actually 4 different techniques— they are designed to help stimulate both the right creative mind as well as the left logical mind. And by doing that We're able with our logical mind to be clear about what's most important to us in our life. And then with our creative mind, we have a good access and are able to command our subconscious, which works like our autopilot and helps us step towards our goals and intentions. Am I able to share my screen? And I'll show a little PowerPoint presentation that explains it in a simple way, and it's what most helped me to make the big changes in my life. So do you see my screen now? Yeah. I have 4 different mapping systems, and these all came to me in a single flash of insight. The first one was goal mapping, and then the others afterwards. And the reason why there are 4 different systems, and it's taken me 25 years to understand it, and I'm still learning, is because there are different elements of success within us. While we are all different and unique We are each of us a combination of thoughts, feelings, and actions or behavior. Our regular thoughts become beliefs. So a thought you repeat over and over and over and you accept it as true becomes a belief. And sadly, sometimes we create negative beliefs— I'm stupid, I'm not good enough, etc. And other times we create empowering beliefs— I can, and I'm a good person, etc. Our thoughts in turn influence our feelings, and repeated feelings we have over and over and over solidify into our attitudes. Repeated actions form behavior and habit patterns. And these three elements— beliefs, attitudes, physical habits or behavior— shape ourself, who we are as a person. And when, when you examine people more closely, you know, it is their beliefs and attitudes and habits that form their ways of being and qualities of character and personality that all makes up their self. And then through these elements, we influence our life. So goal mapping really is about thought and intention. Then my second technique, life mapping, is all about feelings and attitudes. The third technique, action mapping, is about physical behavior. And then self-mapping, which is the deeper level of my work, is about soul and authentic true self. And by working with these different elements, we bring ourself into balance. Our high self connected to spirit and our low self connected to body and ego And when they're in balance, we become our true self. Each of the mapping systems focuses on one of these aspects. So here, a goal map— always words and pictures. The goal map is really focused around what do you want to have and what you need to do in order to have the things you desire. A life map is much more focused around who do you choose to be, to do, to have. So if you know what you want to have in life and you've worked out some of the things you need to do, it's really important you get clear on who do I need to be, what are the qualities of leadership, self-leadership, that will help me be the person to walk the path, to do those things, to have what I desire. Here in the Action Map, it's focused on changing habit patterns, and always this combination of words and pictures to help stimulate both sides of the brain. All that we are starts with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make and shape our world, and our thoughts trigger the chemical release both from our brain and also different elements in our body that give us feeling. In turn, they also affect our physiology. So when, when we're feeling very down and sad, we have a low physiology, and when we're feeling much more happy and elated, we have a, a more higher and energetic physiology. And you can see this in children. My youngest daughter, as soon as she could walk, would do that sad walk where she'd hunch over and swing her arms as she walks. And of course, she also would do that happy walk when something had happened that really pleased her. Together, all three form holistic success and well-being. A true well-being is always going to be a combination of body, heart, mind, and of course a feeling of connection to our soul. And so the different techniques I've created over the years apply to these different elements. The lead technique is goal mapping, but all of the techniques have the same root element of using words and pictures, because this was the key thing that helped me to make conscious changes in my own life and to find the benefits created by change and to keep myself stable during turbulent times. In essence, All of us have a great many brain cells. It's estimated we have 100 billion brain cells, and each one of our 100 billion brain cells, represented here by the little black dot, grows these arms or branches called dendrites. The little wiggly tail here in blue, which is called an axon. And when we have a thought, it starts in the middle of the black dot, the brain cell or neuron, and it travels out along the axon, and it wants to connect with another brain cell and dendrite, but there's a small gap that separates them all. It's called the synaptic gap. The important thing to understand is this: if the thought you choose to think is positive in its nature. And I'm really choosing each of my words carefully because each word has, has meaning here in the sentence. If the thought you choose to think— so sometimes something happens in our day and we will have an instant negative response. Maybe someone's been rude, or, or there's some disturbance that goes on, or something unexpected happens. And that negative response can be almost automatic. It can be programmed in from a past time. Within a moment or two, it's a choice. The more aware we become as a person, the more we realize we have this choice. In, in unaware people, you hear them saying things like, 'I can't help it, it's not my fault, that's just the way I am, I've always been that way.' And the more aware you become, the more you realize that language is not only disempowering, but it's fundamentally untrue, because there is always a choice. Often our choices over the physical situation will be limited. Our choices around COVID-19 are limited on the physical level. At a mental and emotional level, there's always a choice. We can choose to look for what is right, or we can choose to look for what is wrong. So if you choose to hold a positive thought about yourself, about your life, about your ability to not just survive but thrive, over the coming months, or your ability to lose weight. Absolutely. That positive thought, which is our unique quality of free will that we have in a way that no other life form on the planet really has, starts in the middle of the brain cell as a spark, and it travels out. It's like a divine spark. It travels out along the arms and branches and it stimulates a neuroreceptor to release a chemical into our brain called serotonin. Serotonin, most people have heard of it these days, it's the happy chemical, same chemical that's triggered if we take antidepressants. The challenge is we become dependent on them and quite often the effect they have is, is gradually lowered. Whereas if we train our brain with positive thinking strategies, we build our serotonin release. And not only does serotonin give us a good feeling— so if you focus your mind onto something very, very happy that's happened to you, maybe recently, maybe years ago, within a few moments you'll release serotonin and you will start to feel happy. Because by thinking the positive thought, you release the chemical, the chemical gives you the feeling. But the other important function of serotonin is it's a neuroconductor. It bridges the synaptic gap, it joins the brain cells together, it allows the thought to continue on its happy journey, and we build this positive brain cell connection. And it's this joining of the brain cells and forming the connections that gives us that aha moment where we come up with an answer to the problem. All of us are facing challenges around changing the way that we conduct our everyday life, and we need to work with both sides of our brain to those creative solutions that help us to be at our best during this time of great and rapid change. And positive thinking is a key survival skill for the 21st century generally, but it is the vital skill, I believe, for this time with the pandemic.
Yeah, without a shadow of a doubt.
We form those connections, but they break apart again. And this is why it's important to set our intentions down as goals, whether that's our intentions about our physical well-being, our emotional well-being, or our mental well-being. When our thought is positive about life, we form the connections. It helps us to have new ideas. And we release the serotonin, and it gives us a good feeling of motivation. When the thought we have is a positive thought about ourself, it actually helps us in greater ways. Not only do we have a good vision for the future with lots of ideas and that aha moment, as well as engaging the left brain so we can form a strategy, make a plan, and follow through with effective action. If the positive thought we have is about ourself as a person, so if our positive thought is, I like myself, yes, I'm okay, because, because the essence of good self-esteem is that you are happy with yourself. So if you are capturing the mantra I like myself, or I love myself, in the form of a goal, then the serotonin release builds your self-esteem. The measure of high self-esteem is how much you like yourself. People with low self-esteem really don't like themselves. They are constantly seeing what they believe is wrong with them, or they're self-critical. About aspects of themselves, whether that's aspects about their body or aspects about their behavior.
Yeah.
Things that they think are wrong with them. In turn, the combination of positive thoughts and positive feeling influence us at a cellular level and help us to have a positive physiology. And science now for many years has established the psychosomatic connection, that our mind, that our emotions directly influence the quality of our physical well-being, right down to a cellular level. And it's been proven now beyond a shadow of doubt. The challenge at a time such as this— and we're hearing more and more experts saying it on the news and it was my big concern back last March when we went into the first lockdown, is that when people fall into the rut of thinking negatively, again, it starts in the middle of the brain cell, but it releases different chemicals like cortisol, which is our fight or flight chemical. And it's a great chemical to release into our brain and body when we are facing a danger such as a wild animal that we need to run away from really fast, but when we're facing a danger like COVID-19 or an economic downturn or, uh, a worry about our ability to get through this situation in a good way, then the natural survival system becomes counterproductive. Because there isn't a wild animal to run away from. We can't run away from the bills, we can't run away from COVID-19, we can't run away from habit patterns and behaviors that we want to change. And when our body goes into the fight or flight but we don't run, what happens is it sends our body into stress. And when we are in stress, our immune system, lymph system they are all suppressed. And that's why people in prolonged stress get sick, because their body's ready to run but they're not running, and their secondary systems that are meant to keep them in balance are all shut down. And so they start to pick up colds and flus and then more serious illness. The problem in their mind looks bigger and bigger and bigger because when we go into the fight or flight response, the brain closes down. Serotonin joins the brain cells. So when we think positively, we expand our brain. But when we think negatively, the other chemical release, cortisol, is a neuroinhibitor. And so as the brain closes down, if we start to think negatively about ourselves, if we're thinking, I'm not good enough, or I've messed up, or I'm I'm crap, or I'm this, I'm that. We've all got the bad things we say to ourselves. We shrink our self-esteem. The more we don't like ourselves, the lower our self-esteem becomes, and it reflects in our physiology. And I've experienced this firsthand in my life of, of making myself sick in the past with worry, and I've seen it in so many of the people that come to me, of course, for help. The solution is really learning to stay positive, and one of the best ways of doing this is simply by setting goals. There are lots of types of goals we can set. Some people have a very fixed picture in their mind about what a goal is, but people are setting health goals and wealth goals and relationship goals and hobby goals and spiritual goals and contribution goals and and just goals around 'I'm okay,' for instance.
Yeah.
When you focus on your goal, what you're actually doing is you are reminding yourself, you're re-establishing the brain cell connection of what it is that you desire. And because you're focused on a desire, it's going to be a positive thing. We don't desire negative things, we desire positive things. And that triggers the release of serotonin. And the more often we remind ourselves of the goal, the greater we grow our self-belief, because belief is simply the established connection between two or more brain cells. When we first form the connection, the belief is weak, so it's an opinion. I think I can do it. And you can hear the weakness in, in the words and the tonality. But then as we really establish a brain cell connection, it grows stronger and, and it becomes a full belief. And then look at the goal more often, more often, more often. Keep it up for a few months and we grow a conviction. And at the same time, we're releasing serotonin, which is building our self-esteem. Using the combination of words and pictures does this in a really powerful way because it helps to stimulate both the conscious mind that thinks in words, the subconscious mind that responds to pictures, and we're engaging logic and creativity. It is of course natural— pick up any children's book and you're going to see A is for Apple, words and pictures side by side, because this is how our brain likes to work. And this is why a goal map works so amazingly well. 5 million people now over 25 years. And as you will know, Sandra, I really have not engaged in marketing over the years. I've been very— absolutely casual, actually, in the way I've run the business. Although huge organizations such as Microsoft, Siemens, Disney, Coca-Cola, British Telecom have all engaged in goal mapping and used it with their employees. Microsoft sent goal mapping out to 70,000 of their managers around the world, British Telecom 40,000 people, and I could reel off loads and loads of organizations.
Yeah, and Brian, let me just interrupt you because one of the people in the group, Joanne, her dad was at BT when you did your presentation. How amazing is that?
Yeah.
And I just wanted to say, actually, guys, I'm looking— they're all mesmerized, actually, because nobody's saying anything at the moment. There's lots of people in the group, but they're all— you've hypnotized them all. If you want to say, give me a thumb across the screen if you're actually just still with us and still I know, I know it's massively engaging, I just want to know you're there. And also if you have any questions please, please— oh look, there's loads of thumbs coming, so you— there's loads of thumbs coming across the screen Brian, they're all there, that's fantastic, they were clearly mesmerised by you. But if anybody's got any questions, please do ask because we will— I'll present them to Brian and we will answer them. Anyway, you can crack on.
So if you're new to it all, my recommendation is start with a goal map. All four of the systems are freely available to engage in. There are free paper templates and instruction where you can download the PDF and you can print out the templates, follow the instruction, and create your map. My recommendation is to use the online program, and here on the screen you can see one of my maps that I created online and some of the pictures are my own drawings, but with the online program you can upload a drawing, you can upload a personal photo, or you can download stuff from the web. The real advantage with the online program is that you can make changes, and, and this has supercharged the power of doing a goal map, because if you're going to look at your map once a day And even though I now create mine online, I also print them out. I've got mine in my folder here, and I have more than one. So I've got my happiness goal map is right here, and in the sense I've got a picture of me on the beach earlier this summer, and I've got my other maps including my work goal map, which is here. When you have your map online, if you are looking at the pictures and saying the words and you do it once a day and it only takes a moment, that brings new insights and ideas. And when you have your map in a digital format, it's a click of a button and you can update it, and it has absolutely revolutionized the power of goal mapping by being able to make those daily small changes. Quite often they will be weekly changes. In, in the first few days it might be daily, then it slowed down to, to weekly. And with a goal map such as a happiness goal map or a self-esteem goal map or a well-being goal map, my recommendation is that people have that for a minimum of 1 month, sometimes 2 months or 3 months. Because if you're looking at the map once a day, and as you look at the pictures, you say the words, it forms the brain cell connections into beliefs. Remember, when you have the thought, it creates the brain cell connection, but then they part again. So looking at the map— and that's why mine are here in my folder— look at them on a regular basis. I have, I've I actually print out a couple. One goes in my folder and another will go on the refrigerator door or onto the back of my bedroom door by the bathroom mirror, somewhere where it will remind me to look at it and just for a moment. And this map here is one that I created back in 2018, and originally this was a map that, that was going to be just a 9-day cleanse. But I ended up keep on changing the map, changing the map, and I felt so good at the end of 9 days that I continued to cleanse on in the end for more than 100 days. I went for 6 months all through the World Cup and several festivals. I was teetotal and I was juicing every day, and just, uh, it was just amazing. And it was the ability to keep updating the map with new photos and changing the words slightly. The words of the map always want to be in the form of an affirmation, and of course the images are a visualization. And you can look at the most ancient spirituality around the world in Hinduism and Buddhism and other faiths, and you will see this combination of affirmation, where the priests would chant, and visualization, where they're meditating on a picture to engage both sides of their brain. And this same principle, of course, is just as important for us today when we wish to ingrain a deep command to our subconscious and superconscious mind about who we choose to be, what we choose to do, how it is we wish our life to manifest. If I come out of this PowerPoint a second and I instead bring up my goal mapping website, I'm just going to—
can, can I just, um, can I just ask a question? Because it's been asked in the group by Rachel. Um, so some people I find this a lot, people have limiting beliefs around setting goals. They've set goals so many times and they've not achieved them that they then have, you know, a limiting belief around goal setting and it just becomes a scary thing. And so how do you avoid feeling a failure? If you haven't quite made your goal? I mean, my answer is always use it as feedback rather than failure, but what would your advice on that one be?
The first thing to understand is that all of us are setting goals all of the time, whether we like it or not.
Right.
That's bottom line. Anyone that says to me, I don't set goals, It's just crap. I'm sorry, it's— it is a lack of understanding about how human beings operate and how the principles of creation work. Every thought we think is a command to our subconscious mind. Yeah, superconscious mind. Our dominant thoughts become the thoughts that our subconscious accepts as the goal and starts to make them true. And that happens whether our dominant thought is of what we want or what we don't want. And when people don't achieve goals, it's because their dominant thought is they can't.
Yeah.
Or they haven't given enough time. Because I see sometimes people set a goal you know, I want a million pounds in my bank and I want it by next Tuesday, and at the moment they've got nothing in their bank, right? So if it's possible for you to have that million pounds, is it possible by next Tuesday? No, right? So we, we just need to balance it out. Start with goals that can be easily within your control because then you're building your belief. Here's, here's my goal map that I'm working with at the moment, and it's not about physical things. It's about me claiming my bliss in my life. How do I claim my bliss in myself and my life? I choose my thoughts.
Right.
I meet with disappointment often. I had a big disappointment yesterday.
You did.
Chosen my thoughts about it rather than allowing the disappointment that came to influence me into being sad.
Guys, just a, just a very Very quick one. Brian was actually in hospital yesterday having a heart intervention. That's all I'm going to say. I contacted him late in the day and said, how are you? Hoping that he was still alive, and he was more concerned about my live tonight, and I just wanted to make sure he was alive. So he's still alive and we're very, very happy he's alive, but yes, that was the disappointment. It didn't go as well as he wanted it to go.
No, and that's how life is for a lot of people. However, I have much to be thankful for. That's what gratitude lists and those things are. The reason why people write a gratitude list is because it helps them focus on what is right rather than what is wrong. So here in my goal map, which is my happiness goal map, I've got a main goal about me claiming my bliss and being happy. And I'm telling myself to be happy and release the serotonin regardless of how my life is on the outside. I'm not going to wait for my day to turn out well so I can be happy. I'm choosing from the inside out. And on the side goals, I'm noticing what it looks like when I'm choosing authentic happiness. I'm more alive and playful with my children. I'm actually much more effective in my work, and so it does boost my earnings. I feel inspired and, and I'm energetic. Why is it important? I got— I like this: I live the life I love and love the life I live. And, uh, I want to live my life to the best of my ability. That's good. That's my driving motivation. I want to help my children fly high, and I love inspiring other people around me about what they can do. And so with a goal map, we've always got a main goal, then we've got side goals, we've got these reasons why at the top. And then if you scroll down, you've got a date, and I've got a check-in date here of 20th of November. So the 20th of November, I will have worked with this map for one month. I will have formed some new brain cell connections. I, I can feel the influence it has on me even when I'm looking at it now. And then on the 20th of November, I'm going to move on to a new map, and I will create a goal map about self-esteem. I'll keep this one or update it occasionally but my daily focus will be a new self-esteem map. And as you scroll down further on the map here on the right-hand side, so we've got a start date at the bottom. I started this map on the 20th of October, and then I've got the things I'm doing on a daily basis. So I write, review my gratitude list, I journal. I find that really helps me to maintain a positive mindset. So I count my blessings, basically. I look for what's right and I remind myself of those. I like to watch the news because it's— I believe it's important to stay informed. But my goodness, there's a lot of bad.
Oh my goodness, exactly. I was gonna say, I was gonna say, you're— I tell you what, you're a genius if you can find find some positivity in the news, I tell you.
So I find things like gratitude list, journaling really helped me. And then this one, particularly important, I consciously choose my focus and physiology. So when I first started learning positive thinking, I found it so hard. I understood really quickly, and I, I hope people watching tonight understood my explanation earlier about how the science works. When that science was explained to me, even though I couldn't read and write at the time, and, and, you know, I'd left school at 13, I could understand what was being said. It made sense, common sense. But I found it so damn hard to do because I, I was in a lot of difficulty at the time. Positive thinking and free will is a natural gift. Some people regard it as a, as a divine gift because we have it in a way that other life forms don't. But it's like a muscle. We're born with, with a muscle. That's a gift. If we don't work the muscle, it doesn't grow strong. And if we don't practice choosing our thoughts, then we don't build a strong willpower. Right, that, that willpower comes through choosing. Now my advice is choose on the little things. Likewise, set the simple goals, build your self-belief in that way. And, and with a happiness goal map, it's all within your control because it's simply you choosing. Now at first you may fall into the ruts of, of getting negative or sad about something that happens in the day. One of the things that really helped me was learning that your physiology, your body posture, and your mind and emotions are all joined together. Psychologists call it a cybernetic loop. So if I start to feel down, one of the first things that I would check is my physiology, and I will force my shoulders back and I'll lift up my head so that it's eye level, and I breathe nice and full from my chest. And within a few moments, I'm thinking differently and I'm feeling differently. Because when you force your shoulders right back and you lift your head, it sends a signal to your brain to release serotonin. The same thing happens if you force a smile on your face. But some people find that hard to do when they're feeling really down. But the shoulders thing you can always do, and if you turn your palms out so they're facing outwards, that forces your shoulders back, and within a few moments you notice it, you notice the difference. And so that's why I've got it here on my map, because these are simple tools that if I use them help me to go through the day in a more positive way. And if I keep that up over a number of days, let's say 10 days, it starts to form the basis of a habit pattern and it really boosts my power. The last aspect to the map is that on either side, so we've got the actions on one side and opposite then we've got who, and in some maps the who may be a team of people that are going to help you you take an action to achieve a goal. But in a map like this, a happiness map, the who is all me. And I would suggest for a lot of the people viewing, if they want to create their own happiness map, the who will be them. It's okay to say me, but it's not very powerful.
Quick question, quick question before you go any further. Um, Sean asks, is it more powerful— and I think it's a great time, this is why I'm asking this now. Sian's asked, is it more powerful to use personal pictures?
It depends on the person.
Right.
So for years in all of my books I was writing that it's really important to draw because I believed that the physical tactile nature of drawing help to form the brain cell connections. But in the last 5 years, this new online program and the amazing things that people have achieved using it to create goal maps has shown clearly that it's not necessary to draw, right? So a couple of years ago, I went and spoke to neuroscientists about this, and what we defined was it's not really about drawing or not drawing, it's about the level of meaning for the person. Now if someone likes to draw, and I like to draw, and I've got one of my drawings here, the little guy with his arm in the air, and so that's got meaning for me and it stimulates brain cell activity. But if a person doesn't like to draw and they're embarrassed about their drawing, it really doesn't perform that same amount of brain cell stimulation. A personal photo will create more brain cell stimulation than any drawing ever can. The reason for that is when you've got a personal photo— could be a selfie like I've got here in my main goal, or it could be a picture of a family like I've got a picture of my children here— that picture of my children or the image of me, that's ingrained deeply into my brain cell pattern. I've got a neuronet that instantly recognizes that image, and I've got deep meaning connected to it. Likewise with this picture here where I'm talking to a couple of thousand people at a conference in Brussels, uh, last September, so September 2019. Each of these pictures I've chosen have deep meaning. That means that they're triggering huge brain cell connection. Now I couldn't have achieved that in drawing. So you see here on the map, I've got a combination of my own drawings like these ones at the top in the Y, and I've got also pictures that I've uploaded into the system because they also have great meaning for me. And, and then I've got a couple of images here that I've actually downloaded from the internet because I found something that fitted well with the statement I was making. And so the last aspect, when, when it's a map like this, the who, instead of being another person, is you. It's the ways of being that will most help you follow through with the action and lead you to the goal. So I've got a way of being here. I'm dedicated. Which helps me to follow through with the action of writing in my journal, etc., and move towards the goal. The other benefit, and this is sort of final point really here with the map, is that when you've got the map in digital form like this, not only at the click of a button can you edit it, you can download it, print it, but you also have the choice of how you can view it. So I can see words and pictures side by side if I wish, or I can do the combined view where it joins them, or just pictures, just words, and I can print any of these out and I can easily share it with other people. And it's these simple things of printing it so you can see it, just, just for a moment, look at it early in the morning Say the words. You can say them to yourself. It's more powerful if you say them out loud. And if you share it with somebody else that's going to hold you accountable, and then that increases the power still further.
Yeah, it is. Um, everybody's totally, uh, hypnotized by you, Brian. And, um, we've— I think we've had most of the questions. There was one question from Michelle that said she's struggling to redo her goal map. I've asked her what specifically she's struggling with, but Ah, the whole of it, um, said the whole of it, I did it, I did it ages ago, but I think some of it has changed. So, um, so Michelle really just needs to go through the steps, doesn't it?
If, if she has done it ages ago, then it will have changed. Yeah, life will have moved on and she will have moved on.
Absolutely.
Now if she's done the map online, you simply click the edit button. I'll do it here on mine, and it will take you into the 7 steps of doing the map. So step 1, you write the goals, and if she's done her map online, she can just click on the edit button and she can change any of her goals. She can rewrite the statement. And for someone who hasn't done their map, then they can just join for free with the online program, and they will come to this first step. They write their goals in. There's a little instruction video that if they want to, they can watch the video, and it's me guiding them through a visualization so that they know exactly what to do. And then after the visualization, they write their goals in. Step 2, they put them into order. So you want to choose a goal that's going to be the main goal, that goes in the center, and then the other goals either side, and they're going to be from different areas and aspects of the life. Step 3 is where you put in your images, and you can upload these from your computer, or you can use the images that are already in the image library. Here's my personal library, so I've got loads of images in my personal library, but I've also got folders that I can access, and other people can access these with images, or they can go to the search field Oh, I think he has frozen this time.
Brian's frozen. He might come back, hopefully. Brian?
And you can keep your map as long as you want. I'm obviously on the upgrade level because it's my system, and the upgrade level, it really isn't expensive. You can just try it for a month if you want, but you can put in a to-do list at the upgrade level and you can add in more detail. And so I've got a to-do list that's attached to my map. And then step 7, who, who's going to help? Click on the last button and out pops your map. In addition to creating the map, there is a lot of other resources within the website. So if people haven't visited, they can watch the video from the goal mapping workshop. Each of the dots here on the island is a piece of video and they can even download the accompanying workbooks so they can have a full learning experience if they want. And the videos from my live workshop in 2018— people can check their life balance, they can explore their life purpose, they've got a life journal. There's a lot of coaches teaching the system around the world. We've got a whole list of them here, different countries, different people. I've had the first one joining today from New Zealand. And then we've got the to-do list. The thing that a lot of people are enjoying is the new family section, right, new this year, and my children's material such as my audiobook The children is here, parents workbook templates, etc. And of course, with the lockdown, although the schools are staying open this time, it's limited school capacity. My daughter was telling me she only did 40 minutes at school today, and a lot of parents are now accessing the materials here as a home education for their children.
Yeah, and there's going to be people that have got a lot of time on their hands to go and do this now. This, um, with the— with your site has got so, so many resources, and you're going to tell us something exceptionally exciting, aren't you, about, um, about SlimPod and goal mapping?
Yeah, I think the main point generally is that goal mapping works if you work it. So we could have 6 hours together to talk and people may enjoy it or they may fall asleep, but even on 6 hours or more, it's not going to program somebody's subconscious mind for them. They need to work the map. Yeah, for the programming to happen. And so by creating the map, they're forming those brain cell connections. Having an area where you can have focused video of how to create a map for something specific such as physical well-being makes the creation of the map much more effective. And so I've had changes made to the website this year so that I can create focused areas for key partnerships, and I've created the first one for one of my corporate clients and another for one of my network clients, uh, But it's my absolute pleasure that we will be working together, Sandra, and you will be the first person or group that we're creating one of these special areas for focus towards health and well-being.
I know, it's so exciting!
But also the mental and emotional.
So this means, guys, that you're gonna have your own little place within the whole goal mapping empire, um, that's going to be tailor-made, um, for you.
You'll be able to access the rest of the site as well, but you'll have this special area that other people won't have access to. It will have specific focused video to support you in working with your SlimPod, and you'll be able to share maps there with the rest of the group and in that way use it and hold each other accountable and show what you're achieving and share successes.
Yeah, it's going to be very, very exciting and Brian and I are going to be working on that over the next few weeks and I will let you know when when it's ready to go.
I'm really looking forward to it.
It's very exciting. So look, yes, great idea, Jackie says, and lots of people are saying thank you, and there's lots of hearts going across the screen at the moment, and loads of hearts going across the screen, so I think that that's a really good place to wind up and say thank you so much again. And lots of people saying thank you. So yeah, we'll leave it at that. And look, you know, everybody, you've seen how powerful this stuff is. It really is, honestly, it's— if you do it properly, it is, it is really, really powerful. And Brian explains so well how it, or how it just, how the brain operates with it all. And it's, you know, it's, it's based on neuroscience. It's not just something that has come out of mid-air. So it's, it's just, uh, you know, I'm constantly, constantly banging on about asking people to do the goal map, Brian, and, um, and not everybody takes it.
Shared with me from your group, quite a number of, uh, of people from Thinking Slimmer have contacted me and they've actually sent me Fantastic. Their goal map. And, and with a number of them, I've engaged in conversation and sent them feedback. And, uh, I'm not, uh, saying it for any sort of effect. I've dedicated the last 25 years of my life to this, and the reason why I've got my maps here is, is they work. I know I'm using my own maps. I, I know, you know, the system inside out, but knowing it doesn't make it work. Working it makes it work, and working it means you create your map, you look at it, and when a new idea comes, you update it. And sticking it in the back of a drawer and forgetting about it, or just saying, oh yeah, that's a good idea, not doing it, that's not working it. That isn't going to help you. And, and here's the thing, you know, we're going to go through another challenging period now.
Yeah, we really are.
Wintertime and it's lockdown, and if people start to fall into fear, that dominant thought becomes the command to their subconscious.
Yeah.
Okay, your subconscious— that's why people go into self-sabotage, because they start to think about what they don't want, and the subconscious doesn't make a judgment, it just moves them towards whatever they think about most often. And so having a map focused on you being happy, you having a good feeling about yourself, self-esteem, and being in a good state of well-being is such an important thing for this time. My mum's 93, I had her do a map, and my youngest daughter's 13, I've had her do a map.
Love you.
Because regardless of which which end of the spectrum you are, or in the middle, uh, it's important for all of us to do what we can. And so invest an hour of your time. It's not going to cost you any money. Go and invest an hour of your time. If you're not already subscribed, join up. Go on the free level, create your map, and, and then print it out and stick it up as that conscious reminder. A lot of people like, uh, well, I have them as screensavers. I've got mine as a as a screensaver on my phone here.
Yeah, Jackie, Jackie Carter has hers as her screensaver too. She's our goal mapping queen. So cool. Look, let's leave it at that and yeah, it's something that works so well. With the SlimPod program. I wouldn't have included it in it if it wasn't, because there's, you know, or if it didn't.
So we're very honored.
It's all part and parcel of your success, guys. So look, I'm going to say goodbye to Brian. I'm going to say goodbye to everybody.
