On today’s show, Chris Cox Au.D., and Riley Bass Au.D. continue their series on Beyond Positive Thinking by Robert Anthony.
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Read the transcript:
We are back with another exciting edition of our book series on Beyond Positive Thinking by Dr. Robert Anthony. We’re going to spend this episode talking about programming your mind for the best and techniques for imprinting. So all of that thinking that we did in the last episode, we’re actually going to put down onto paper and get a plan in action.
CHRIS COX: (IMITATING ROBOT) You have to program your mind.
RILEY BASS: Are you a robot?
CHRIS COX: I’m trying to be a robot. I’m doing the moves right now. No one can see me doing the movies right now, but–
RILEY BASS: I can see you, and you’re doing a really good job of being a robot.
CHRIS COX: Thank you.
RILEY BASS: Congratulations.
CHRIS COX: I always wanted to be a robot.
RILEY BASS: I’m glad that you’ve programmed your mind to be a robot, and you’re doing a really good job.
CHRIS COX: Thanks. I was thinking positively about it, and then I thought beyond it.
RILEY BASS: All right. So there’s an equation for programming your mind.
CHRIS COX: a plus i plus e equals s.
RILEY BASS: Perfect. That makes sense.
CHRIS COX: So that’s it. That’s all you’ve got to do.
RILEY BASS: OK. Bye, guys.
CHRIS COX: So we’re looking specifically in the– back on our book, Beyond Positive Thinking, Chapter 6. It discusses a certain formula to help you program your mind for the best. Again, we were talking earlier about the self-image that we have and how we talk to ourselves about what our future looks like, and our attitudes about being happy, or whatever it is. And then writing down those goals and making them come out in the real world from being– just living inside your brain.
So let’s break down what those different letters that we just said are. Why don’t you go through that for us?
RILEY BASS: A for affirmation. Affirmations the ideas and thoughts that reflect our quality of life. If we raise the quality of our thoughts, we will raise the quality of our life.
Imagery. Imagery is the conscious process that has pre-determined attitudes and beliefs that are used to support achieving a certain end result or goal. So imagining– closing your eyes and taking a step back and thinking, how am I going to reach this goal? What does that success look like?
CHRIS COX: And it’s different from daydreams. Because a lot of times, we sit there and think about, oh, what would it be like to be on a boat, and own a boat, or whatever it is. And we think about it in this daydreamy sort of thought, this really non-substantive thought. It really has nothing behind it.
The idea behind visualization is to– the imagery, I guess, is really what this I stands for. But the idea behind the imagery or visualization is to really see the picture of what your affirmations are telling you– see the picture of that goal, see the picture of what it could look like if dot dot dot.
RILEY BASS: So if the affirmation is you owning a private practice, then you need to visualize yourself in that role and visualize yourself being in that position.
CHRIS COX: And the last part of that–
RILEY BASS: Emotion. You’ve got to have feelings.
CHRIS COX: You have to have feelings. Otherwise, you are a robot. Right?
RILEY BASS: Right.
CHRIS COX: So what we do with that imagery is we have to attach the emotion to it. What would it look like if I owned a practice.
RILEY BASS: Not just what would it look like, but how would I feel.
CHRIS COX: Exactly. So that’s the next part of it. So what would it look like if I owned a practice is the imagery part. How would it feel to own a practice? How would it feel to have a staff? How would it feel to impact the community? That is the emotional part that you have to be able to make a change in what your mind state is and your self-image.
And all that equals–
RILEY BASS: Success.
CHRIS COX: Success. So the affirmation part is huge. That really has a lot to do with, again, that positive thinking. And it really comes down to– the book talks about the self-talk. How are we talking to ourselves? Are we calling ourselves idiots and dummies, and worthless POS and all that? Or are we affirming good things about ourselves and encouraging ourselves from the inside to be– go after it more, do better in a positive way?
And that imagery is the same thing. How are we looking at that? And we really have to sit down and think about this stuff. And if you can’t attach the emotion to it, then you’re– it actually gives statistics in here about how successful you could be without any of the either affirmation, imagery, or emotion. And you really have to have all three of these things for you to be able to find that success.
And the other part of it is that– I think it’s interesting that he says it here– but where he provides no known benefit. It cannot change what will happen tomorrow, but it can weaken your faith and cripple your actions, destroy your inner peace of mind, and make you feel powerless.
RILEY BASS: That’s not good.
CHRIS COX: You never worry about anything, Riley?
RILEY BASS: Sometimes I worry about stuff.
CHRIS COX: I don’t ever worry about anything.
RILEY BASS: I worry about looking like an idiot sometimes.
CHRIS COX: Hey, hey, hey, watch that self-talk.
RILEY BASS: But what I do know is that the cornerstone of all of this, and what makes all of this work, is belief. And if you have a positive belief, then you know that you are able to achieve what you’re looking for. That’s one of the things that we talk about all the time and is one of the key words that I think you hear around here at Audigy, is belief and raising your belief. Because if you don’t have the belief that you can do these things, then you can’t. And if you believe that you can, then you can.
CHRIS COX: It comes back to that river of life concept. If you believe that you can bring something or take something from a river that’s bigger than a thimble, then you can do that. And you will be able to get more out of life because of that belief.
So that’s how you can work on changing your self-image. That’s how you can work on getting these things in your head intentionally and start growing this idea of what your destiny and your future can look like.
If we look at the next bit here, he talks about imprinting and techniques for imprinting. What is imprinting?
RILEY BASS: Well, it is basically deciding to do something– that it’s often not going to automatically happen just because you say I want to do this. You have to actually think it, out and write it down, and put it into concrete evidence that that’s what it is that you’re trying to achieve.
CHRIS COX: It’s one of those things– we made a joke about last time about when a duck hatches, and it sees a chicken and thinks it’s its mom. It’s like that first idea of– for the duck or for– I think it’s just fowl in general, they imprint on their parents– whoever they see first, or whoever is there when they hatch, then they imprint on them.
RILEY BASS: It works for humans, too.
CHRIS COX: Does it really?
RILEY BASS: Yeah. If a duck sees a human first, then it– so you could get a baby duck egg and hatch it. And if you’re the first thing it sees, it will think that you are its parent.
CHRIS COX: Right. Well, I knew that. I was just meaning that– I don’t think– I thought you were saying that humans do the same thing whenever they hatch.
RILEY BASS: No. Ducks will think that humans are their parents.
CHRIS COX: Right. Yeah. And I’ve seen– actually, I had a little pet duck once. His name was Henry.
RILEY BASS: Did it think you were its dad?
CHRIS COX: Yeah. We watched TV together. It was great.
RILEY BASS: That’s actually the cutest thing I’ve ever heard.
CHRIS COX: Yeah. Sad story, though.
RILEY BASS: What was his favorite show? Duck Tales?
CHRIS COX: That would have been hilarious. That would have been on at the time. We only had, like, two channels at the time.
Anyway, imprinting is a deliberate control of our thoughts and pictures concerning the kind of changes we want to make.
RILEY BASS: And making the decision to make some kind of change or set something into motion is only the first step. Once you decide to do it, that’s great. But I’ve made a lot of decisions in my life that I have never carried out until I actually buckled down and wrote them out.
CHRIS COX: The second part of it is you picture the end result. So you write your intention statement, which is basically a goal. You picture the end result, and then you feel the emotion that goes along with accomplishing the goal.
Going back to that formula that we talked about earlier with affirmation–
RILEY BASS: Imagery.
CHRIS COX: Emotion.
RILEY BASS: Equals success.
CHRIS COX: This is how you’re doing it. This is how you get to that point.
So your affirm your goal with an intention statement. And this is just a statement of fact or belief that is written out in a personal, positive, present tense form as though the goal were already a reality. I have a donut.
RILEY BASS: There it is.
CHRIS COX: Now I don’t have a donut. I intend to have a donut, though.
RILEY BASS: I wish I could have a donut.
CHRIS COX: Yeah. You’re on that weird diet.
RILEY BASS: But I made a conscious change and wrote down and went to the grocery store and planned out to do this Whole 30 diet. And I am serious, and I’m not cheating on it, and I’m staying true to it.
CHRIS COX: That is a bigger thing than I could ever do, and it’s impressive that you’re actually buckling down and doing that.
RILEY BASS: I’m literally having dreams about marshmallows, just eating handfuls of marshmallows right now.
CHRIS COX: With everything you could dream about, it’s marshmallows?
RILEY BASS: I don’t know. And I like marshmallows, but not that much, not I’m like, ooh, marshmallows.
CHRIS COX: Your subconscious is trying to tell something.
RILEY BASS: Right. So no donuts.
CHRIS COX: We’ve talked about this before as far as goals go. When you write down your intentions, you’re really programming your subconscious to look at that and force it to see what you really want to do. And your subconscious mind, as the book says, isn’t different to that. It will move to what you believe. So if you believe negatively, it will sway negative. If you believe positively, it will sway positively.
Step 2 is picture the end result. You picture an experience in your mind, the accomplishment of that end result. What’s it going to look like? What’s it going to look like, Riley, when you get done with that 30-day crazy diet of yours?
RILEY BASS: Hopefully, it will look like I don’t want to eat marshmallows anymore, that I would rather eat carrots or broccoli.
CHRIS COX: That sounds like such a great replacement for marshmallows.
RILEY BASS: I know, right?
CHRIS COX: I’m sorry to try to make you fall off. I think that’s a great visualization of what this could do for you, Riley.
RILEY BASS: Thank you.
CHRIS COX: Picturing that end result.
And then the third part is the emotion. What’s it going to be like for you when you get to that point and you’re hitting your goals for whatever your goals are?
RILEY BASS: I’m going to be in great shape. And I am not going to use half a cup of coffee creamer in my coffee anymore.
CHRIS COX: So that coffee creamer is in the fridge. Can I use that, then?
RILEY BASS: Yes.
CHRIS COX: Cool. You’re not going to using it at all for a while.
RILEY BASS: No.
CHRIS COX: All right. So what’s that going to be like for you?
RILEY BASS: Well, those first 30 days are hard. I’ll tell you that much.
CHRIS COX: But once you accomplish it, what’s that going to be like for you?
RILEY BASS: I think it’s going to be pretty rewarding. I’m looking forward to the day that that finishes, and I can make some more goals from there.
CHRIS COX: I’m trying to get an emotion out of you. Rewarding and looking forward to isn’t quite an emotion. What’s an emotion that you’ll have with that?
RILEY BASS: Relief.
CHRIS COX: Relief, OK. I’m digging in deep here. I’m digging in here deep in some PFL, Patients For Life questions. What’s it going to be like for you when you achieve your goal?
RILEY BASS: It’s going to be very satisfying. I’m going to be very happy with myself once I accomplish that goal. We always set these goals to eat healthier and be healthier. And this is something to kickstart that that I think I can really be proud to do and proud to say I did.
CHRIS COX: You’re going to be happy. You’re going to be accomplished. You’re going to feel proud.
RILEY BASS: And I’m going to feel relief.
CHRIS COX: And relief as well, because you’ll be done with it.
RILEY BASS: And I’m going to eat some ice cream and some marshmallows.
CHRIS COX: Is that going to be your celebratory thing, is ice cream and marshmallows?
RILEY BASS: Maybe. I don’t know.
CHRIS COX: So you can see how you can use this to solidify your intentions. And it’s just these three things to create that success, as we were talking about with that equation.
The intention statement is surprisingly not complicated, but there’s a lot of things that he talks about here on how to create a good intention statement. Because people can say things, and they can intend to do things, but it may not necessarily be in alignment with either what their final goal is, or it’s not specific enough, or it’s too specific.
So there are 12 things that he talks about. And we’re not going to go through each of the 12 things. But we’re going to– we’ll read them all out, but we’re not going to get into depth with each one of them. Let’s look at some of these guidelines for creating powerful intention statements.
I think the first thing that he mentions here is talking about the nega-tags. It’s basically the negative things that you can add on to the back end of your intentions statements that can negate the positive spin that you’re looking to do with those intention statements.
Let’s look at a couple of examples, and then we can go through and talk about these 12 different guidelines for it. It is my intention to forgive everyone.
It is my intention to allow myself to make mistakes. It is my intention to love myself unconditionally, no matter how many mistakes I make. He’s got a bunch of them here. But these are just what they look like or what they sound like.
It is my intention to believe that I create my own experience. And they all start with “it is my intention.” He says that that’s important to say that as opposed to just saying what you want to do just plainly. If you put “my intention,” or “it is my intention to,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, it gives you this ability to have it both be present, meaning in the present tense, but also gives you that ability to look forward with that intention.
So if we look at these– we’ll go through these really quickly. But number one on here–
RILEY BASS: Your intention statement must be in the present tense.
CHRIS COX: Two, your intention statement must state what you want, not what you don’t want. Number three is–
RILEY BASS: Your intention statement must be specific.
CHRIS COX: Number four is your intention statement must use words that trigger feeling and emotion. That’s a key when we’re talking about that success.
RILEY BASS: Like donuts.
CHRIS COX: Mmm.
RILEY BASS: Boats.
CHRIS COX: Boats, donuts. That sounds like a good party.
RILEY BASS: What if you had a boat made of donuts?
CHRIS COX: I don’t know if I would ever sail on it.
RILEY BASS: It would probably sink. Or you would eat it.
CHRIS COX: Number five.
RILEY BASS: Your intention statement should focus on the best possible outcome.
CHRIS COX: Number six– your intention statement must be a positive statement.
RILEY BASS: Number seven– your intention statement must be personal.
CHRIS COX: Your intention statement must not make comparisons, number eight.
RILEY BASS: Right. Number nine– your intention statement must be believable.
CHRIS COX: Number 10– your intentions must create balance.
RILEY BASS: Your intention statement must conform to the secrecy principle.
CHRIS COX: And just as a quick aside, what is the secrecy principle?
RILEY BASS: It means keeping your goals to yourself. If you tell other people, most likely, they will discourage you or try to stop you.
CHRIS COX: And number 12– the intention statement insurance policy.
RILEY BASS: It’s knowing that you are willing to accept, at the minimum, whatever your intention statement is, but knowing that you’re also willing to accept something even better.
CHRIS COX: So intend to have a glazed donut. But if I happen to get a chocolate donut with sprinkles, then–
RILEY BASS: You’re accepting that.
CHRIS COX: I’m accepting of that.
Those are some of the 12 guidelines there for imprinting or creating your intentions statements. And that goes to help you imprint better what you’re trying to do and solidify that to where you can find some success. We’re looking at that formula again.
RILEY BASS: Right. And one that I want to go back to of those techniques is the one about competition. We don’t need to compete. Whenever we’re competing against other people, it’s directly as a reflection of our own poor self-image.
So like we talked about earlier, if you have that negative self-image and you’re not looking at yourself favorably, then you’re going to want to compete with people to show that you are better than them. But really, the only person you’re in competition with is yourself.
So take that factor out and strive for excellence. If everybody is working together, we’re going to achieve a lot more. And that’s especially true in the hearing health care industry. There’s so much competition out there between everybody, and all these different markets for patients to obtain hearing technology, and all these different scenarios that are just at each other’s throats, almost, competing for their little piece of the pie.
And instead of competing against each other and creating this turmoil, if we would figure out a way to unite and work together, we could definitely impact a lot more lives, we could help a lot more patients, and we could achieve a lot more as a profession.
CHRIS COX: That competition is healthy in the business world. But at the same time, when we’re fighting over, like you said, the small piece of the pie when there’s actually a whole lot more pie out there for us to get, then it can be easier for us to focus on that positive, focus on the cooperation and collaboration in our community as opposed to competing.
Because sometimes, that competition, in the sense that you’re talking about, isn’t healthy. Because it makes us feel worse about ourselves or worse about our situation when we really just need to be looking at what we’re doing and how we’re comparing ourselves from, say, the past performance.
RILEY BASS: Let’s talk about some money.
CHRIS COX: I think it’s important that he talks about money in this, and wealth and how important money is to everybody. Because it could be very easy to go around a discussion about money and finances when you’re talking about positive thinking and going– looking at your goals and all that type of stuff. But he definitely acknowledges in one of the chapters that money is something that we are all going to have to deal with, good or bad, like it or not.
RILEY BASS: And I always think it’s interesting when we ask a group of students who got an Audiology to make money, to make a lot of money. No one ever raises their hands. And I understand the desire to help people in that. But there’s nothing wrong with being financially stable and having money to support your lifestyle and to help build your empire of whatever Audiology thing you’re going to do.
But it’s not something that you need to be scared of. And it’s not something that you need to be scared to admit. I want to enjoy the finer things in life, like donuts. I want to be able to afford to go out for donuts in 24 days.
CHRIS COX: You’re not counting down or anything.
RILEY BASS: Not that I’m counting. But there’s that quality of life that you do want to have. Obviously, that’s not where happiness comes from. But there’s also some comfort things that you may desire, and that’s OK. It’s not a bad thing to be financially stable and to be financially well off, even.
CHRIS COX: And he once again asks you to look at yourself. If you’ve had financial issues for all your life, then chances are maybe you’re not good at managing money. Maybe you need to change the way you look at money. Maybe you need to change the way that you approach what you have as opposed to constantly trying to strive for more. And I think it’s super important that he talks about, again, looking inwardly at yourself and being happy with what you do have.
RILEY BASS: Whenever you’re feeling down and out about what belongings you have, there’s always somebody that’s looking at your life, wishing that they had the things you had.
CHRIS COX: And that’s huge. And we have to acknowledge that in what we do. Some of you out there that are listening have come from maybe not so luxurious upbringings. Some of you may have. And to every single person out there, there’s somebody that’s looking at you as somebody who’s got more than they do, just like we look sometimes at people out there with the big houses and the big boats as having more than we do.
If you want that, you can go get it. Go for it. This is talking about believing in yourself and achieving those goals if that’s what you want to do. But it’s also trying to tell us to ground ourselves, and being happy with what we do have, and acknowledging that we exist in this spectrum of people with haves.
The other part that I think is important is that he talks about being able to receive things. Some of us may not be super excited about receiving certain things, because it feels weird. But he says that if we learn to receive things freely, just by saying thank you– not trying to turn it down, not trying to make a big scene out of it, but just being able to receive things– then it will allow us to be able to find more wealth and be able to give away even more in the future.
But there’s always going to be risks. With financial situations, there’s always going to be risk. And we have to be aware of that by looking inwardly at how we manage our money, how we think about money, being satisfied with where we are, and understanding that there’s a give and take when it comes to money, and using it in the right way in the world.
All right. So that wraps up this episode. We talked today about programming your mind for the best.
RILEY BASS: And some techniques for imprinting
CHRIS COX: Quack quack. Along with the importance of money and how that figures into your future and your goals.
RILEY BASS: It’s not a scary thing. It’s OK.
CHRIS COX: It’s just about achieving your financial desires. That’s really what it is.
RILEY BASS: I want to have a boat full of donuts.
CHRIS COX: No. I intend to have a boat full of donuts. That’s how you say it.
RILEY BASS: Thank you for reminding me of exactly what we’ve been talking about this episode.
CHRIS COX: You’re welcome. That’s why I’m here, Riley.
RILEY BASS: I intend to have a boat full of donuts.
CHRIS COX: But you won’t, because you’re on a diet. So good luck with that. All right. We’re out.