Mind Over Matter
Everybody wants to know the secret to success in life. I won’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do have a worldview that has helped me get where I’ve always wanted to be: financially successful, happy at home, and master of my own destiny. As a child, my grandmother told me fake it until you make it. The genius of this saying is that we can change our realities with nothing more than our minds.
Virtually every aspect of your life is a mental construct. Maybe it sounds like some wishy-washy new age crap, but bear with me. The world of hard facts is not the world we live in on a day-to-day basis. While objective reality does exist, our experience is built on stories, not physics.
Think about everything you know about yourself and the people around you. Character, habits, preferences, etc. are all stories that live in the human mind. Do you have a string of failures behind you? That’s a story. Challenges in your life? That’s mostly a story too.
The “new story” aspect of rebranding applies to humans as much as corporations and requires little more than imagination and commitment. Think about your goals. What things do you want? Who do you want to be? Imagine that reality in as much detail as you can. Imagine the feeling of having and being everything that you want, and how that version of you would act in different situations. Keep practicing every day, as often as you can, and especially when you face key decisions. The more you enter this mental space, the more you train your mind to live in your chosen reality.
At this point, skeptics point out that imagining the reality you want does not make it real. But what if it could? Many of us have had the experience of using a role model to guide our lives. We spot somebody who has what we want and follow the example — what would Ben Franklin do?
Once we start acting like our role models, the world responds to us as if we were like that person. A shy person is treated one way. If he starts modeling the brash confidence of Muhammad Ali, the world will treat him a different way. It doesn’t matter if this feels fake at first. With practice, we can embody our ideal more and more. Modeling our thinking and behavior in this way is a bridge between what we want and what the world gives us.
You can also shift your reality without using a role model. The principle is that to get what we want, we need to focus on our own identities. Are you an unlucky person who struggles to play a bad hand in life, or are you a scrappy, tenacious, unstoppable businessman? Are you an overweight person, or somebody who isn’t in her natural state of fitness and needs to get back to (the new) normal?
This technique is how con artists take on false identities, and it’s also a powerful tool for regular people to define themselves as they wish to be. Choosing your identity is necessary to then manifest the behaviors that are aligned with your goals. The tenacious businessman won’t take no for answer, and closes deals. The naturally fit person who’s temporarily out of shape has an easier time saying no to dessert and yes to the gym. Choose to think and act in full alignment with the life you want and you’ll be amazed by how the world starts to fall into line.
Some people think it’s crazy, but my secret to success is looking at the universe as infinitely abundant. Everything you want for yourself is there for the taking, if you can commit to living in that version of the universe and stick with it. Believe in your chosen identity to your core and watch the world catch up to your reality.
Call me at 847-317-0077, email me at [email protected], or tweet me at @benreinberg or @alliancecgc if you can submit us a property to acquire and/or would like to invest with us. For further information on investing with Alliance, please click here.
My Best,
Ben
