How The Human Mind Works

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Welcome to Think It Be It the podcast. I'm Kelly Hatfield.

Hey. And I'm John Michell. So Kelly, here's the topic today, how the human mind works. What do you what do you think about that?

This sounds like a pretty meaty topic.

I think so it you know, it might be a good idea to understand how the human mind works, don't you

think? So I think and you know what's so funny you say that, John, but like, I didn't really understand how the human mind works until I was introduced to you and you started sharing your work with me. So I mean, like I we say that? Yeah, kingly. But it's so true that like a whole new world opened up to me once I understood how the human mind works. So I'm excited to dig in today.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, what inspires me as as you know, last week, I went and spent some time in person with the mental coach for the USC football team. His name is Tim kite, he was the mental coach for Ohio State and Urban Meyer, they want to national championship. And now he has taken over the USC program. And just to show you the power of what he does, USC was four and eight, the prior year, Tim chi comes in with and Lincoln Riley, the coach at USC, body, man, they went to 11, and three, so from four and eight to 11, and three in one year. And as you know, I got to know Tim, bout three years ago, as I was trying to bring him into the University of Texas with the idea of making the University of Texas the gold standard for mental training and conditioning. And I'm still working on that. But he and I have really developed a great friendship. And so I went and I never met him in person. But so went and spent a couple of days in Hilton Head last week and really learned some some interesting things. And and, you know, I was talking to him about this thing that I've mentioned to you before that, that I feel like there's a bifurcation in society today, between the people that have control over themselves, and the people that don't win. Do you agree with that?

Um, yes, at the 30,000 foot level, definitely.

Right. Right. Well, and you know, as I've, as I've thought about this, you know, if you really look at what the average life is, today, in the United States, you know, you see that 67% of people don't have $400 to their name, which is, you know, stunning. And then you see that two thirds of people either obese or seriously overweight. And then you see that only according to Gallup, only about 35% of people are happy. And if you drill down a little further, you'll see that only about one in 10 people has a have a great romantic relationship. And I don't know, this is my interpretation. You tell me what you think. But But I see that all that reflects a lack of control. You know, it's again, that that division between people that have control over themselves, and the people that don't and the people that don't get the average life, am I oversimplifying it. Well,

now you're that's one of your superpowers, I think, is taking something that's a much bigger, you know, that's a big idea or concept and, and simplifying it and breaking it down into that small piece. So no, I don't think you're simplifying it. But just to give an example. So let's just use the statistic about obesity that you mentioned. So when you're talking about control and the difference between the people who don't have control and the people that do it Will you make that connection point to that statistic you just mentioned about obesity? For example, how does what do you mean by?

Well, obviously, the people that are obese, can't control what they eat and probably can't control their ability to exercise? I mean, I think it's literally that that simple.

Yeah, I think for a good portfolio portion, you know, for a good percentage of them. And I think there are others. There's all kinds of research happening now on some other things that are happening chemically, you know, in the brain, but I think for the most part, you're right, as far as that's concerned, so Okay, nope, I just wanted to make sure I understood when you're talking about control, relating it to one of the statistics you just talked about, and kind of helping, you know, bridge that gap, or anybody who may be like, I'm not quite sure what he means by that.

Right? Well, and you know, I think when you really look at it, that, and again, this is an oversimplification, but I think that about 2% of the population has control over themselves, and they have the exceptional life, and about 98% of people have the average life and don't have control over themselves. And obviously, that's that sort of an oversimplification. But I don't know that is too far off. And the point I'm trying to make is that, at the end of the day, having a successful life has comes down to having control over yourself. And, you know, as So that begs the question, well, how do you have control over yourself? How do you gain that control, and this is where the science comes in. And, and you know, I'll just share something that you already know, but I'll share something that Tim Tai Chi taught me. So the first thing I'd want our audience to understand is that, that we all have two things we have to overcome in life. The first one is being innately wired for survival, which causes the vast majority of our thoughts to be fear based. And we're reactive rather than proactive. So that's the first thing, then the second thing is that 95% of your daily actions are unconscious. And so the combination of those two things is that, as we said many times before, when you open your eyes each morning, you're on autopilot, most of the day, innately wired to be fear based and reactive, which is exactly the opposite of how you need to be if you want to be productive, creative and happy. Well, that's the problem. So that's, that's what you got to fix. And here's the other thing to appreciate. And in, you know, pursuing the, the solution, here's how the human mind works. Conscious mind sets the intention, and is influenced by logic, subconscious mind controls your daily actions, and is only influenced by repetition. He didn't care about logic. And, you know, the, the example is, you know, this idea of, if you want to lose weight, well, the conscious mind sets the intention to lose weight based on the logic of the health benefits. But as we just mentioned, the reason people aren't losing weight is not because lack of intention is because the part of their brain that actually controls their actions they're eating, and they're exercising, is controlled by the subconscious mind. And it doesn't care about the logic of it, it's just, it's only influenced by repetition. And, and so that leads us essentially, to our methodology, which is when you take your life, and you create immense intention, and clarity, exactly the person you want to be exactly what you want to accomplish, and how you're going to achieve your your clearly defined goals. And you feed that to yourself every day. That's the repetition, then, after about 21 days, then it starts influencing your daily actions. That subconscious mind then takes that constant repetition. And suddenly now, you can control what you're eating, you can control your ability to exercise, you can control, focusing on what moves the needle in your business, you can control how you are with your spouse. And so that that's the essence of why our methodology gives you a much higher level of control. And, and so if there's anybody that's interested in a higher level of success, this is scientifically how you do it. But now, let me share with you the new stuff I learned. So Tim kite tells me he says, you know, think about this, he says, when anything happens when any well let me back up. He has a philosophy. He calls it e plus r equals O What that means is each event plus response equals the outcome, e plus r equals O. So when an event happens, your response is what matters. Because whatever your response is, determines the outcome. And, and he his his whole mental approach, and he has a full system around this addresses that. And he says that what happens is that when something happens, the first thing that occurs is is you focus on it, you become aware of it. And maybe you can't become aware of a particular aspect of it. And then the second thing that happens is you have self talk. Then after the self talk, then you have an emotion. And then after the emotion, you take an action. And so the self talk generates the emotion that triggers the action. Now, I never thought about it like that. What do you think about that?

No, I think he's right on the money. I was just thinking of a couple of I was trying to, in my mind, think of, you know, an event, you know, or, you know, something recently where I kind of went through this process. And so I'm like, okay, yeah, that makes total sense. I'm gonna get this is logical to, you know, when you're breaking something down, right? It being very simple. Right? Perfect sense.

Right, right. Yeah, I've been really contemplating this, I had never thought that necessarily that self talk, drives the emotion. But I see that it does. You know, of course, this is all subconscious. When we say self targets, it's unconscious, self talk. And, you know, as, as he and I were getting into it, you know, I showed him our template. And, you know, I talked to him about how he, he applies it. Now, he's his, his mission with the USC football team is to get them to really embrace the culture, you know, and accountability and holding their teammates accountable. And, you know, that whole thing and I asked him, I said, Why? Why did Lincoln Riley, feel that it was important to bring you in, and he says, you know, the bottom line is that he couldn't get the culture to stick well enough with his players without a system, because every other coach in the country has a culture, and they're all doing it without trying to influence the subconscious mind. And if you say subconscious mind, to a football coach, they're like, you know, it's, you know, they almost freak out. What, yeah, right. Right. And they're just, you know, they're not receptive to it. But he's had so much success with it. And that's why because once you start influencing the subconscious mind, then, and since 95% of your daily actions are unconscious, you have to influence the subconscious mind. And, and here's something I think you'll find interesting. So I was, I was talking to him about how we could like, I took one of our templates, and and made it for a baseball player has been specifically for for an athlete in college, but this would apply to a pro athlete as well. And I said, you know, I showed him how you can you there's defined techniques that you want baseball players to have, when they're up at bat about to hit the ball, there's certain things you want to condition. And what happens in a game a lot of times, is they get caught up in the moment, they forget the technique. And, and then they they don't do very well, they don't hit the ball. And so I said, you know, see how I am having them repeat the technique every morning. And after 21 days, this will they'll have their their subconscious rewired. And he says, Well, you know, I do the same thing, except I have them articulate the technique, but I also have, find a clip of them performing the technique properly. And he says, so they'll repeat the technique verbally, then they'll watch a clip, then I'll go back and repeat it verbally. Watch the clip, and do that three times in a row. And I'm like, He's doing exactly what we're doing with our visualization. And as I, as one things I'm going to do, and moving forward, is build that into, you know, for the athletes that that I teach, I think it'd be apt to I'm going to dial in clips of them performing the technique and their sport properly. And, and, you know, I don't like the idea of having people reading their visualization online, you know, as opposed to a physical copy. But I think the benefits probably outweigh the negatives of that. Well, what's your take on all that?

Yeah, no, I think that visual aspect? And yeah, so right away, I was thinking, Okay, for those that are listening, and for myself, you know, you just sharing this with me and kind of beginning to integrate this potentially into my method, you know, or to my practice, right. You know, we're talking specifically about them watching themselves. This is a this is an athlete. So let's say I'm wanting to achieve something specific in business, right? Like, where's the visual? How you implement the visual component? You know, into the mix with something like that? Or do you?

You know, I don't think you have to I don't, I don't, I don't, it's not conducive to doing it, necessarily. I mean, I think there could be like, if you're, I don't know, if you're a speaker, let's say, and, and you wanted certain aspects, and then you could show a clip of you speaking, I think that could be something, but I don't know that it's all that. That critical?

You know, I know, I do. You know, with my visualization, I will like it when I'm meditating or whatever the case may be, I will visualize myself actually doing the task. Yeah, yeah, I feel like if I'm, I don't, I don't visualize myself going over the finish line, like getting to, I visualize me doing like taking the action. And, you know, those kinds of things. And like, even with, you know, a new business that I'm starting, and that's, that's new to me, so I'm learning new language, I'm, I'm a little way out of my comfort zone, I'll visualize the conversation going really well. Or, you know, I'm, where I'm doing the right things. And so I can see where that too, in your mind, you're kind of creating that movie in your mind, where you're actually visualizing yourself doing the tasks that you need to do to, you know, I could see that there's benefit to that, because there I'm already kind of doing that, to a certain extent.

Well, you know, I think I told you this back a few months ago, I decided that every, every Wednesday morning, I was going to visualize the parts of my life, my my marriage, my health, my career, and, and not read about it, just visualize. And I do I write when I, I wake up, and and I see the power of, of pure visualization versus reading visualization. But that combination is powerful.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm going to kind of double down on some of that visualization, too. I think we're actually creating a movie in my mind, right of what it is. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna add a little bit more elements in and see whether that you know, speeds, supercharges things, things are rockin and rollin anyway, but like, all right, I'm always up or optimizing, you know?

Well, you know, I tell you if you'd appreciate this. So I want to have good posture. And in my visualization, I articulate that when I go to the bathroom, I adjust my posture, while I go to the bathroom a lot. Because I'm God. And every, every week, I would rate myself on a scale of one to 10. Well, consistently, I was at an eight, just and I would say in my visualization, that I want to be a nine, well, I was consistently at an eight and it really was pissing me off. And I'm like, why can't I get there? Then I'm like, Okay, it's, you know, just got to fix the wording. And so, you know, what would happen is I would, you know, I would get in the bathroom, and a lot of times I adjust my posture and straighten that, and then lay the bathroom. And then the last two weeks, I thought, okay, not only in the bathroom, but in the walk to the bathroom and the walk away from the bathroom. I'm going to adjust my posture, boom, that that fixed it, you know, and I was like, wow, this is so interesting. That is how you say it to yourself, how you tweak it a little, and, but, you know, it's so powerful. You know,

it is so powerful, you know, it's so funny. I Oh, you know that mirroring that happens when you know, so we you and I are on video right now and I'm watching you, you're talking. And I don't know if you notice that as you were talking about your posture, I stood, I started to stand up straighter. You know, so just through that power of suggestion, but also just that mirroring, because you as you were talking, you were starting to sit up straighter to when you're talking. Right, right. Right. Interesting how that works. Oh, I'd

say you hit it is fascinating. But to sort of close this out, you know, my, my challenge to our audience is, having a successful life comes down to having control over your life. And having control over your life, you got to overcome those two problems of of being innately wired for survival, and the vast majority of your daily actions being unconscious. Well, the only way I can see to do that is in your morning routine. So my suggestion is, look at your morning routine. And are you doing anything to impact your mindset? Now, I would dare say you're not. Now some people will say, Well, I'm meditating. Meditating is good. I like meditating. But it's not near as powerful as focusing the mind that quiets the mind, focusing the mind is what gives you control over your actions. And, and, you know, so then the question is, Will Well, what exactly will do I do? Well, how about the playing the central concept of the topic of the world on success, you know, takes 12 minutes a day, and we'll show you how to do it. And I suspect there's other ways to to increase your control, but I haven't seen anything that comes close to what we do. And that if there's something else out there, I I'd be opening here at but I'm pretty darn sure that ours is the best out there. So anyway, we will see you next time.