170. dwelling
No one is a stranger to creeping negativity, however some are better than others at figuring ways around what is troubling them. Changing the way we think is key to capturing what we’re after instead of wandering into something we don’t want.
Everything is energy, including your thoughts. Whatever you let your mind dwell on is what is going to expand. For instance dwelling on what makes you angry is only going to bring up anger within you; whereas thoughts of gratitude for the good things in your life, as well as what you desire from it, will widen your consciousness within that area, manifesting the positive things that you seek.
The trick is when those inevitable negative thoughts start creeping in, learn to view them as feedback for what you don’t want in your life because worrying is a form of praying for what you don’t want. Once you understand this insight, you can shift your attention to what you want, and create a more fulfilling path forward.
84. physical power of thought
What you think about is important, not only in life, but training as well, because it literally has the power to manifest physical change. As I’ve said before, bodybuilders are the original “biohackers” as they are always looking for ways to push the boundaries of what is possible and consistently improve their performance. It is from their tireless effort that we get the mind/muscle connection, or thinking about the muscle helps it grow exponentially more than just placing it under tension alone.
Why?
It comes down to the fact that the mind is the sum total of the central nervous system functioning, whereby its endocrine secretion is called a thought. That secretion can directly affect cellular activity and protein formation, which, very simply, means a thought has a tangible action. It may sound woo but there is research to back it up.
A study reported in the New Scientist entitled Mental Gymnastics Increase Bicep Strength took ten volunteers and asked them to imagine flexing one of their biceps as hard as they could for five times a week. The researchers recorded electrical brain activity during the participants sessions and assessed their muscular strength every two weeks. Those who only imagined flexing, increased their biceps strength by 13.5% in just a few weeks, compared to the control group.1
The power of thought can go a long way. Take a look at another study published in the Journal of Neurophysiology that had subjects divided into three groups. The first was asked to exercise by contracting and relaxing one finger on their hand for five sixty-minute training sessions a week for four weeks. A second group, following the same training schedule, was instructed to only mentally rehearse the same exercises, without physically activating any muscle in their finger. The control group neither thought about, nor exercised their finger outside of their daily routines. At the end of the study, researchers found that the group who actually did the the physical exercises exhibited a 30% gain in strength over the control group. No shit, right?! Well, the crazy part is that the second group, who only mentally rehearsed the exercises, demonstrated a 22% increase in muscle strength over the control group!2 The mind produced a quantifiable affect on the body.
None of this is meant to say that simply thinking about an outcome is going to be a substitute for doing the work, but that if you combine both intent and physical effort you can create the best outcome.
83. rigidity
We’re tribal. We gravitate toward people, ideas, or things that resonate with us and captivate our sensibilities. It’s a safety mechanism to want to be part of a group, as there is safety in numbers, just as our inclusion makes us feel a sense of acceptance were we are more comfortable to take on tasks that further promote the group identity as a whole. Tribalism is a self-fulfilling prophecy, that provided us the security to culturally evolve over millennia. Yet, where there is one tribe, there is another with competing ideas or beliefs. And, while the world is probably the safest its ever been, we are more at war — not physically, but ideologically — with one another than ever before.
The tribal mentality that paved the way for modernity to take hold seems to be the same thing that is keeping us from taking the next great leap forward to creating a better world. We are all beholden to the tribes we belong to and the beliefs they’re based upon. It’s become our identity. Any thing that challenges those believes is a strike against our identity, so we lash out and double-down. No longer can I share my opinion on one thing, while you hold an opposing opinion, and accept it without a judgement or prejudice on me as a person or my level of intellect. What happened to free thought, openness, aggregation? Isn’t that how we creatively solve novel problems?
Your ideas equal you, but they shouldn’t define you. You should be a thing that thinks, collects new ideas, through new experiences, by seeking to understand new viewpoints, so that you can develop new strategies. Bruce Lee said it best; “absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own.” We’re all too fucking busy defending our beliefs to actually listen to a different viewpoint that may give way to a better course of action. When differing opinions are presented, you should be able to entertain the idea without accepting it, not take offense because it’s contradictory. Yes, there are a lot of stupid people, but denouncing them straight away not only does a disservice to you, but also the other person. You’re both going to want to prove each other wrong, search for studies that confirm your ideological bias and go down the rabbit hole of separateness.
When you look at anything through the lens of ideology, you have strict boundaries that limit your capacity to be open and accepting of alternative thoughts and a chance to connect the dots in a different way. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism brought upon by the challenge a conflicting idea has on our identity. We’re fearful that all that we have identified with may be wrong. We’d rather be safer in our thoughts, thinking we’re right by defending all opposing ideas, than to entertain something new. But this rigid mentality is only going to keep us from being able to come up with the best path forward.