Brain Food for this Week..

I think a lot of my life I have really focused on how my actions make other people feel and how I can alter myself to make other people happy. However, it just isn't the most satisfying way to live. Anyone who consistently lives in a state of "people pleasing" and doing things in their life based on other people, will never be happy. This honestly led me to reading "Change Your Thinking Change Your Life" by Brian Tracy. I bring this up and I want to write about it because a lot of what people read flies under the radar and a lot of times you don't put actions behind your learning and your words.

With that, I wanted to discuss some of the things I have learned and the things I am going to intentionally implement in order to retain the information. This is going to be my first step in taking action on what I have read. I think it can help, so just read this or don't totally your choice. Choose to use these or read the book or don't. I am merely explaining (maybe even putting you on to a book).

To be honest, a lot of this book is based on the Laws of Life pretty much. A lot of different laws were brought in to add credibility so when I mention them, I will research them further before fully explaining how I will implement them. The overarching theme is how to live the most fulfilling life. And I think ultimately, that's everyones goal. So here are my takeaways:

Live for yourself and be true to yourself, these are two things everyone always hears but almost NEVER implements - probably because we don't know how, right? Well the book discusses some ways to which I think would be the easiest ways to begin (again, we are convenience seekers). Now, the book doesn't directly state this but it's something like this- take your values and STOP altering them. If you don't know your values, figure them out. These are things like honesty, integrity, physical fitness, health and wellness, etc. But it doesn't need to be a long list, and your list of values CANNOT change. These are the ways by which you build your character and stay true to yourself.

Now take this or leave this but, the book discusses that the two key values to being the very best you can be. These are integrity and courage. I can say that after reading about what integrity is... I CANNOT lie and say that I am fully living my life with integrity. Integrity isn't just not stealing, cheating, or being unfaithful. It's being honest with yourself and fully trusting yourself. It is also how you act under pressure, how you act in every area of your life and even how you act toward yourself. I am going to focus mostly on how this impacts acting toward yourself. Although and I am going to go off on a little tangent here, integrity is how you do one thing must be how you do everything (my dad also used to always tell me this), this is the only way that you actually are showing who you are. If you write a mediocre paper because you don't care, you are going to do most, if not all things mediocre. This isn't saying that you are a bad person or not honest because of it. It is just saying that you are probably taking on more work than you think you can or you shouldn't have done that one thing at all because you weren't going to give it much effort. This is especially true for extracurriculars or work. Just say "no" if you aren't willing to give it your all.

Now, TRUST ME, I know this is hard with students because most of the time, you aren't going to want to write your paper, but if you want a degree, and you want to be in the field you are working toward, take it seriously, or at least take some of it seriously for now. I see this with myself all the time in school, I always look for the easiest or quickest way to get things done, because we are busy! But in all honesty, I think that this can lead to lack of fulfillment and it can trickle into other areas of your life. So my best advice- try the one percent rule that I know we have all heard about. Instead of cold turkey making every area of your life perfectly integral, try just changing one of the habits you know you are doing mediocre and each day just change one percent of your life to be less mediocre. Or don't, entirely up to you. Again, this is unsolicited advice.

But off my tangent, integrity is the act of knowing what you believe and not backing down. Having your list of values and not letting ANYTHING make you go against them. If something isn't right for you, you trust that you are making a decision that won't be wrong because it doesn't align with you. He discusses how Aristotle believed that "courage and integrity" are the basis of people's values- essentially what everyone must live by to be fulfilled. You must have full faith in yourself and that the world is conspiring with you not against you. Don't have situational values- when you say one thing but do another. Make your values show in everything you do. You are a product of your actions.

Overall, don't let people or literally anything disrupt your values once you know them. Learn them, write them down, organize them in order of importance. The order of importance matters because this is how you discover who you are as a person. If your main value is your family, then your family will come before everything and that will show in all situations.

This brings me to the Law of Correspondence. And like I said, because this is stuff I am interested in, I would do the research when a law is brought up. This law is stating that "whatever you are on the inside, you will soon see on the outside". As I researched this a bit further (which I will admit, I did briefly), it means that what you want to be needs to be changed from the inside out. If you feel that you want to become something that you aren't already, try changing how you do things inside and behind closed doors first, then the results will show (i.e. when someone is actively working to lose weight, you may not know but eventually the work they did behind closed doors will show). Your thoughts, emotions, and beliefs will in turn shape how you see and feel about reality. If you want to feel good you have to take the actions to make yourself feel good inside and the outside will follow, you just have to be patient.

Onto another take away, make goals, write them down, and act on them. The books goes more in depth as to how you should go about doing this but I'll give the run down here and why it works according to the book. In the book, he discusses writing your goals in the form of a question with a specific time frame. For example, if your goal is to lose weight in a year. This cannot be how you state your goal. Try writing it in the form of a question.

Question: What will I do to lose 40 pounds in the next year? Now, after you write this question, come up with a minimum of 20 answers to the question. This is a simple example but you can apply it in all areas of your life. The first few are easy but then you get further down the list of answers and it gets much harder. Take one of these answers that you can take action on today and START.

Further into goals, he discusses the five steps to this personal power. First, to idealize; second, to verbalize; third, to visualize; fourth, to emotionalize; and fifth, to realize. I won't go too in depth for these but idealizing is imagining that you are already there and that all the conditions are right. You have to do this by eliminating self-limiting beliefs of not being who you want to be because of x, y, and z. Next, you need to verbalize, and this, generally speaking, means that you put whatever your goal is into words through positive, personal, and present affirmations. This is where another law comes in! (The Law of Subconscious Activity) I'll explain in a minute. The third, is to visualize, and everyone knows how to do this if you play a sport. You have to visualize everything as if you were already succeeding. You will believe it if you imagine it or see it. The fourth, emotionalizing, you have to feel the feeling of success when you imagine accomplishing your goal. Emotions are an energy source and if you have positive emotions toward your goal instead of negative ones this will help you really succeed at achieving your goal. And the last, realization. The book discusses the idea of being an "inverse paranoid" and this is opposite of a paranoid. Instead of believing the world is conspiring against you, believe that it is conspiring for you. Realize that you are doing everything you can to achieve this goal and that in time, whether it is days, weeks, or months, the universe will give them to you at exactly the time you are ready for them.

Now, I mentioned the Law of Subconscious Activity. This is the idea that when your mind accepts an idea and makes it a reality. This is true for good and bad ideas, repeating over and over again, negative thoughts, brings negative outcomes. However, the same is true for positive thoughts, repeating over and over again positive thoughts forces your mind to accept that idea and make it reality. Meaning that, if you continually repeat how you can achieve your goals/positive affirmations or assertions, you will eventually experience them when your mind finally accepts/believes them.

I plan to use this in my life by ensuring that the way I talk to myself is positive or at least constructive. And UGH that can be like so seriously hard. Especially in times when you like lowkey know things are horrendous. But instead of wanting to stab my eye out I can maybe just say it was "an opportunity" or a "lesson". Not like "yay I tore my ACL now I can focus on other things". I don't want to make this lesson a spoonful of rainbows, but I do want to see the event as a chance to take responsibility and perhaps grieve for a second (or a month) then like lock in and stop being negative. Emotions are inevitable and you can't really control having them but you can regulate them.

The book emphasizes that you need to take responsibility for everything that happens in your life. Look, I didn't purposely jam my leg the wrong way and tear my ACL but I am responsible for the way I react to the situation. I am responsible for the lack of motivation I had to fix it. I am responsible for my mindset while recovering. I am responsible for how often I choose to rehab. And once you accept responsibility, the feeling of control will help you to now control the actions you take moving forward. So its less of a positive and more of an opportunity to strengthen other areas that maybe I wasn't so focused on before. My mental health, my mindset, my knowledge, my education.

This idea of control was also mentioned when planning your day. Taking time at night to plan the day ahead can help you feel a sense of control in your life. We all love that. The brain searches for certainty. So, planning your day ahead and making sure you know what you have to do by priority, will help ease your mind before bed or going into the next day. Also, don't start your day with a negative thought. It's the worst way to begin. Just say that you love waking up (and I KNOW you don't) but it will force your subconscious to accept it the more you say it.

These were just two of my favorite ideas brought up in the book but there are so many others that I can honestly touch on briefly because this book kind of is mind altering. I finished the book and lowkey felt untouchable. I know everyone says that when they read something good but I seriously believe a lot of the ideas brought up in this book. Maybe it has something to do with me being a psychology major and being intrigued by the findings of psychology and such. I more think that it's just better to try it because the worst that can happen is you become more positive or realize it isn't quite working for you.

But some of the ideas I instantly put into action were:

• starting my day by reading 30-60 minutes of something beneficial and non-fiction (the book uses the term "inspirational" but that's kind of corny to me sometimes).

• writing my goals as a present, personal, positive question and answering the question with 20 answers

• positive spins on negative situations (i.e. I just tore my ACL and absolutely shredded my meniscus resulting in my lacrosse career ending- this is an opportunity or lesson, not a negative)

• reading up on the different Laws of Life

• learning everywhere I go, a podcast in my headphones, a book when I am dong nothing, reading about things I am interested in

• planning my day ahead of time

Overall, the book kind of altered my brain chemistry, hopefully this enticed you to read it and like I said I would, here are a few more laws and theories that came up in the book that intrigued me so you don't have to do the work to learn about them when they come up.

The Law Of Attraction: the energy of your thoughts manifests your experiences. Positive thoughts bring positive experiences. You quite literally manifested everything you have right now. If you are thinking negatively about your relationship, your capabilities in a sport, or even just the path your life is taking, you will manifest negative outcomes. Same goes for positive. Everything you think is in your control.

The Law of Use: If you don't use a skill, you'll lose it. This is pretty self explanatory but I figured I'd mention it. You need to continually be expanding your skills and looking for ways to come back to them in order not to lose them. If you want to make your mind a positive place, you need to continually work at making it one.

The Theory of Constraint: In every process or series of activities, there is a limiting factor. The book states that 80% of your constraints comes from you internal, while only 20% is actually caused by external factors. This means that 80% of the time, it's your own mind stopping you from achieving what you want.

• Off of this, the book doesn't want you to think life is butterflies and rainbows, it wants you to realize the reality of your situation. There will be negatives, life is a constantly trying to get you to break. If you can control your reactions and how you view negative event or series of events, by reframing it to a lesson or opportunity, these negatives become a lot more bearable.

Hope this helps! Enjoy my brain food for the week.