Before I knew anything, I actually had no idea that our minds could be reprogrammed and modified to better serve our needs.

Instead, I used to just believe: “this is the brain I have, and this is the brain I will always have.” It was a passive thing – something I had no control over. It just was.

But the more I learned about personal development, the more I learned our mind is actually very flexible and very capable of changing itself.

In fact, our mind is always changing. Every new experience we have, and every new thing we learn, changes the neural pathways and structures in our brain. Today, scientists call it “neuroplasticity.”

The key to personal development is to actively change the structure of our brains by conditioning and reprogramming our mind in new ways. And we can actually achieve this using a variety of different strategies. Here are some things you can start working on right away:

Change your perspective. Try having more solution-oriented thinking instead of problem-oriented thinking. When you think only about the stuff that sucks in your life, it’ll often make you feel worse. But when you start feeling capable of finding solutions and overcoming obstacles, you condition your mind to find the answers you need.

Modify your self-talk. We all talk to ourselves inside our heads – that’s what thinking is. The problem is some of us talk negatively about ourselves, while others talk positively about themselves. The more you tell yourself something, the more likely you are to believe it and act on that belief. So the more you feed yourself healthy and motivating thoughts, the more those thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes can have a positive effect on your life.

Take risks. Sometimes the best way to learn something is to step outside of our heads and experience it. You might be used to getting a cheeseburger at every restaurant you go, but until you take a risk and try something new you’ll never know what else life might have to offer. Will you fail and make mistakes sometimes? Sure, but it’s a part of the growing process.

Use your imagination as practice. Studies show that imagining yourself taking a course of action is a really good way to motivate yourself to take that action in the future. So by practicing visualization techniques on a regular basis we can actually reprogram our thoughts and behaviors. One great example of this is professional athletes mentally rehearsing before a game or match.

Stop victimizing yourself. One of the most common traps our culture teaches us is that we are helpless victims of circumstance. In other words, we have no control over our destiny; instead, reality rears its ugly head and we get whatever we get. As a result, we become programmed to shift blame to external factors and never seek responsibility for our lives.

Stay present with your goals. By taking small and gradual steps on a daily basis, we can end up covering a lot of ground in the long-run. The most important thing to remember, however, is that the only real power you have is in the present moment. Only in the “now” can you think, decide, act, and make changes to your life. Don’t dwell on the past or wait for the future – start making progress today.

By applying these things in my own life, I have improved myself dramatically over the years. I now have a different perspective about life, I think and talk to myself differently, I take smart risks more often, I visualize my future more clearly, I take responsibility for the direction of my life, and I stay focused on what matters the most to me in each and every moment.

And in return – I’m happier because of it.

Social Dynamix covers all the bases for how to reprogram your mind more effectively, but it also makes a crucial point about achieving happiness for yourself:

“The only person that your happiness is dependent upon is you. You have to start being happy from within, and not look toward externals things or people to make you happy. Even when you’re in a relationship you want to be a whole person instead of this ‘you complete me’ thing. External things may make you happy for a little while, but it often doesn’t last. People and things can be taken away from you in a moment – but if you are happy from within then that is a very hard thing to take away.”

You have to remember that your happiness can only be achieved by you and you alone. No one else can take control of your mind and make you happy.

Program yourself for happiness.

Everyone from Buddha to modern day positive psychologist like Dan Gilbert understand that we synthesize our happiness by reprogramming how we think about ourselves and our world. As the William James quote adequately puts it, “The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.” If you understand this simple fact, then you are halfway down the path to personal development. The other half is now taking action and making it all happen.

Social Dynamix

Before I mentioned Social Dynamix. It’s a personal development product I just recently got a copy of and I’ve been really impressed with the breadth and depth of information in it.

So far, I’ve only watched the first module – “Mind Jack” – which is three 20 minute videos explaining how your thoughts, perception, and attitude affect your life (a lot of the stuff I’ve been talking about in this article). The 2 other main modules are “The Shyness and Social Anxiety Annihilator” and “Social Re-Boot.”

I’ll definitely be sharing more about these in the future once I watch them. You can stay updated by joining my newsletter.

The product also comes with a slew of other related bonuses that I would like to write about at some point (about a dozen other PDFs, audio files, videos, etc.) If you want you can head over to the page and check it out.

Buyer Awareness: If you happen to buy it, I will get paid a % of the commission for referring you. But please remember that I don’t work for the company (so please don’t send me e-mails for customer support – but you can send me an e-mail if you want to talk about the content in more depth) and I only recommend it because I have tried it out myself and found it to be valuable.

Questions.

• What do you do to help reprogram your mind to be healthier and more positive?
• What were some old thought patterns and beliefs you needed to change in the past?

Please answer these in the comment section below!

Here is a very simple exercise in divergent thinking:

1) Grab a piece of paper and draw 30 circles (5 columns with 6 circles in each row). Each circle should be about 1 inch in diameter.

2) Find a timer and set it for 60 seconds.

3) Time yourself to see how many different drawings you can come up with using the circles. For example: a baseball (1 circle), a planet (1 circle), glasses (2 circles), a face (3 circles – two eyes and a mouth), etc.

The goal is to incorporate each circle into a drawing within the 60 seconds. It doesn’t matter how exactly you do it: you could have 30 drawings with 1 circle each, or 6 drawings with 5 circles each, or anything in between. It all depends on what you can think of.

And don’t worry if you don’t finish, most people don’t. At the end of it count up how many circles you completed. Put that # over 30 – that is your score.

I did this same experiment in my Research Methods class at college. Our group chose to measure differences in creativity between males and females, and this divergent thinking exercise was a great and simple way to quantify creative thinking. Given, creativity is an incredibly difficult thing to quantify, but for purposes of the class this experiment worked well (in case you are interested: we didn’t find any differences in male vs. female creativity).

This idea of divergent thinking can be extrapolated to any object or thing. The only limit is your imagination. Other common practices include thinking of how many different uses you can come up with for:

• A shoe.
• Duct tape.
• Paperclip.

If you think about it, this is really what a lot of creativity boils down to: using objects or things in unconventional ways than how they are usually used. Just like how Rosabeth Kanter describes: “Creativity is a lot like looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. You look at a set of elements, the same elements everyone else sees, but then reassemble those floating bits and pieces into an enticing new possibility.” That’s the same thing we do during these divergent thinking tasks. We look at a common element of our world that everyone else sees, but we utilize those elements in a way that wasn’t thought of before.

1. Close your eyes and vividly imagine yourself in a counselor’s room. Choose a definitive purpose for your meeting and what situation in your life you want help or guidance in.

2. Choose between 5-9 individuals (alive, dead, fictional, non-fictional – it doesn’t matter) who you would like to receive advice from regarding this particular situation.

3. Ask whatever questions you want to any of the individuals at your meeting. For each question, keep your mind open, and be ready to hear any response that comes back to you.

The stronger your imagination, the better. But don’t worry if you’re not naturally a creative or imaginary person; like most things, this skill can be developed with practice. You may not receive any insights the first time you meet with your counsel, but with practice you will get better at listening to your subconscious.

For a great explanation on the history and application of the Invisible Counselors Technique, this video does a bang up job (although there are some things I disagree with which I will address below, watch it first):

While I find this video really helpful in explaining how to do the Invisible Counselors Technique (and also how it relates to other people’s creative strategies), I don’t quite understand why it feels the need to bring up multiverses or quantum mechanics. The video originally quotes Hill as saying this is purely a fictional exercise, but then later tells how he changed his mind because the characters began to take a personality of their own.

I think the false assumption here is that our mind is a single, unitary personality. But in truth I think our personalities are much more multi-dimensional, partly because they are heavily influenced by other figures in our life: family members, friends, teachers, coworkers, celebrities, politicians, musicians, artists, actors, as well as fictional characters in movies, TV shows, books, plays, etc.

Thus, when we imagine our best friend or Mom or Abraham Lincoln in our mind’s eye, it isn’t as though we are actually channeling them into consciousness. What we are doing is projecting a vision or “archetype” of them that we have learned through prior experience with that person. Thus, I believe it is still technically a “fiction” – a projection of our imagination – although, it happens to be a useful fiction when it comes to creativity and problem-solving.

In truth, the effectiveness of the technique has little to do with whether or not these projections are “real” in some other dimension or simply “imaginary.” I think Occam’s Razor (choosing the theory that makes the fewest new assumptions) tells us that The Invisible Counselors Technique is a working of our imagination.

Given, I’m not an expert in Quantum Mechanics, but I do know that the popular consensus from most quantum physicists (and psychologists, for that matter) doesn’t support the notion that we can literally connect with the consciousness of dead minds. I won’t say it’s flat out wrong (because I don’t know), but I am certainly skeptical.

Skepticism aside, the technique is valid in its own right, and I highly recommend trying it. In all honesty, I find that our imaginations are an incredibly undervalued resource in today’s society. In addition, I think in many ways ideas remain dormant in our subconscious, and an exercise such as The Invisible Counselors Technique helps us bring these subconscious ideas into awareness. When we draw upon these different archetypes that exist in our minds, we become introduced to different perspectives that we may not have previously considered. I consider it a very useful technique in cognitive empathy.

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Of course, positive psychology wasn’t the first to emphasize the importance of meaning in living a satisfying life. Probably ever since human’s first became self-aware, they have asked themselves deep and profound questions about their life’s meaning and purpose. It is a struggle that we all seem to face, but some of us deal with it better than others. The existentialist psychologist Viktor Frankl wrote in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning” how even under the harshest conditions we can find meaning in our suffering, and live with dignity and satisfaction. When Frankl was put into a concentration camp during the Holocaust, he used to give lectures to an imaginary audience. In this way, Frankl learned to cope with his suffering by using his imagination to create a more meaningful existence to his life. He believed that by playing out his imagination objectively, he could find a deeper sense of purpose. He did.

I believe we should all exercise this capacity to some extent, and I believe imagination and creativity play a huge role. The human mind is gifted with this incredibly ability to restructure the way it views reality and experience. And as Frankl demonstrates, we can take truly awful circumstances in our life and transform them into something positive for ourselves.

I found this same theme to be very prevalent in the film Tideland by Terry Gilliam. The main character is a little girl who is incredibly lonely and lives with a very negligent father (played by Jeff Bridges). In some scenes, the little girl actually helps her father shoot up massive amounts of heroin, after which the father passes out for extended periods of time. In the girl’s fit of loneliness and desperation, she goes outside and her imagination takes over. She carries around the heads of three dolls, who all have their own personalities, and together they go on all kinds of adventures. Objectively, the life of this girl is harsh and miserable. But inside her head, she finds a way to get by.

Apparently most people who saw the film found it incredibly depressing (which is understandable) but the director Gilliam emphasizes that we often underestimate just how resilient the human mind is (especially when it is accompanied by a child-like imagination).

Of course, the examples presented by Frankl and Gilliam are extreme cases. But we all go through some kind of suffering, and by creating a new layer of meaning we can find ways to overcome this suffering.

When creating this meaning we don’t need to be as dreamy (or “delusional”) as the little girl in Tideland. Often creating meaning in one’s life is as simple as writing poetry, composing a song, dancing, or painting a picture. We shouldn’t constantly live in some imaginary existence, but using our imagination in some way can be incredibly healthy and emotionally relieving. A healthy imagination, in my honest opinion, is a crucial component to mental health and living a meaningful life.

I believe that when we participate in art or other creative activities, we simultaneously change the way we think about ourselves and our world. We begin to recognize that we are participators in this game of life. Life is not just something that happens to us, but something that we also create for ourselves. And by engaging in art and creativity, we feel more capable in taking control of our thoughts, emotions, actions, and life in general. Being creative empowers us.

Interestingly, there is some empirical evidence that shows a relationship between mental illness and creativity. Perhaps some of this is due to the unconventional thinking of those with mental illness. But I also think creativity is a natural coping mechanism. If people with mental illness are more likely to suffer than those without mental illness, art and creativity is something that the mentally ill would be naturally drawn to in order to manage their condition.

But, in truth, I think most of us are naturally drawn to some form of creativity. There may even be a hunger for it, and when that hunger isn’t satisfied I think our lives become drastically less meaningful and less satisfying.

The moral of this post is to embrace your ability to create new meaning in your life. And in my opinion art is one of the absolute best ways to do this. If you don’t already have a creative hobby, I suggest starting one. Don’t have the time? Make room for it, especially if you are in need of an emotional boost.

I personally engage in creative ways by posting on this blog, taking photographs, writing scripts for movies, and composing songs on my computer. I can’t imagine how much less fulfilling my life would be without hobbies like this. They make a big difference, they help me love life more.

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Try This Exercise!

Now we are going to take all the things I mentioned above and try them out. I want you to find a friend and tell them to make a list of 20 objects. Once they have created the list, I want you to take some time to study it…

1. Apple
2. Car
3. Guitar
4. School
5. Clouds
6…

Once you have the list I want you to use your imagination and actively build associations to try and remember the whole 20-item list.

• Let’s work with the example above:

The first pair we need to make is Apple and Car – so why not imagine an apple with four wheels, cut out inside to make it look like a car, with a steering wheel, leather seats and all.

Now, we need to add a Guitar to it – maybe you can have a nice-looking, blue and glittery Fender on the top of your new AppleCar.

Next is School – so imagine that you are driving on a road and in front of you is your old High School building.

Now, Clouds – imagine above your school are these really nasty storm clouds: raining, pouring, thundering and lightning on top of your high school building.

• Now try it with your friends.

Those associations I made above were just right off the top of my head, but you can do this however you want. Some associations are going to be more effective for you personally than others: so it is up to you to experiment and find what works best.

I apply these principles to all different aspects of my life. They can be particularly useful for studying tests that rely on heavy memorization. They are also just fun to show off to family, friends, and coworkers.

In Harry Lorayne’s book he mentions other mnemonics that help with names and numbers. I will try and touch on these techniques in future posts.