Trickle Down Mindset Read online

  I strongly encourage you to adapt your philosophy to this Law. Always take it into account, because it surely won’t ignore you. There are shortcuts to success, no doubt about it. You can see those rare rags-to-riches stories in the media all the time. Every week there are also new stories of lottery winners. Both kinds of stories are hard to replicate.

  Don’t count on luck or a rapid breakthrough. Create your own luck or breakthrough by sticking with your simple disciplines for a long time.

  Start thinking in terms of simple daily disciplines that can positively affect you and those around you. It’s a surefire way to create lasting change in your life. When it’s small and simple, your brain doesn’t resist the action. It judges it as something “easy to do,” and rightly so. When this action is repeated many times over, your brain learns to accept and embrace it. With time, the discipline will become an inseparable part of your constitution. And, most important, it will drive your results, because that’s the law of the universe.

  Knowledge Items:

  - Create your own luck or breakthrough by sticking with your simple disciplines for a long time.

  - Your brain doesn’t resist action if it’s small and simple.

  The Ten-Minute Philosophy

  back to top

  “The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour,

  whatever he does, whoever he is.”

  ― C.S. Lewis

  I called my personal philosophy The Ten-Minute Philosophy, because it’s built around ten-minute activities. It’s based on The Slight Edge philosophy, but modified to my personal needs and circumstances. It was not fully formed initially. I just tried different things and kept what was working. It was the trial and error process.

  When I read The Slight Edge in August 2012, I decided to give the philosophy presented there a try. I had quite a lot of time to spare. I started new habits, six of which were ten minutes long. Others varied in terms of time investment, but at the beginning, the longest—listening to podcasts and motivational materials—was only fifteen minutes maximum.

  Once I gave this new attitude and these new habits a chance, my life changed rapidly. And at the core of my transformation were those ten-minute activities, which I considered easy to do (or to not do). It was amazing how such tiny actions repeated over time revolutionized my whole life.

  While developing my new habits, I was determined to stick with them for a minimum of 30 days. However, in the case of studying the Bible, I was determined to form a lifelong habit.

  The basis of my determination was my frustration. I wasn’t satisfied with how my life had turned out so far. My recent philosophy hadn’t brought me much closer to the things and qualities I desired. I needed something new. My past experiences convinced me that there was a lot of merit in The Slight Edge philosophy. And at the basis of this philosophy lies the law of errors and disciplines.

  So the core assumption of my new philosophy was this Law. The longer I adhered to it, the better results I observed, up to the point where I was fully convinced it was true and universal. Then I committed to it even more. I built a multitude of disciplines, just for the fun of it. And there were always some results.

  Developing my new personal philosophy, I didn’t mimic big gurus and their systems of belief. Firstly, I’m highly skeptical about anyone who claims to want only good things for me and then asks for money to help me. Also, my culture does not worship success the way Western culture does. We received our unfair share of communist indoctrination about blood-lusting capitalists and then the transformation of my country, which I’m sad to say, confirmed a lot of these stereotypes. Lots of people with no remorse abused the system, abused their employees and clients, and made fortunes. We experienced in Poland over a period of fifteen years the kind of wild capitalism that prevailed in America throughout the nineteenth century.

  But an even greater factor was that I very quickly realized that the advice of millionaires applies best to millionaires. Most of those people live in ivory towers. They enjoy levels of freedom that are unattainable for most people. They share solid advice worth millions of dollars, but they aren’t applicable to the 9-to-5 worker.

  I was (and still am) a slave of my past choices. I have a mortgage that will be paid off over the next 35 years. I have a wife and three kids. I cannot abandon everything and start a full-time writing career from scratch. Writing is my passion. I knew that as soon as I examined my soul for the first time in fifteen years. I’m amazed each time someone praises my style and it has happened more times that I can count in this past year. But I had exactly zero experience when I started publishing at the age of 34. It took me eight months to earn serious money. And throughout this time, my past obligations were holding me to my old life. Job. Bills. Mortgage. Family. Lifelong addictions. Poor physical shape. Poor spiritual growth. I needed to untangle the web of past obligations before I could apply millionaires’ advice in the wider spectrum. I needed to fix my relationship with God, finances, body, professional position, and bad habits all at once. I was not in a position to pick pieces of gurus’ advice that were most effective. I picked those that could be applied immediately in my life.

  And a “personal” component in this concept means that your philosophy is individual, unique, one-time, just-for-you. You can’t simply take someone else’s ideas and use them effectively. You must own them in order to have them work for you. I took ownership of the concept of small errors in judgment and consistent disciplines by examining my past experiences. I discovered several instances successes and failures and realized I could credit them to the small errors in judgment or simple consistent disciplines accordingly. I found The Law actually worked in my life before I even knew the concept. I desired change, so I absorbed this Law as a part of my perspective, albeit temporarily.

  Then I started to expand my philosophy. I was going through a vast amount of personal development materials—audio, videos, and books. I had a contact within the personal development industry in my teens, but I only scratched the surface then. I didn’t just blindly accept everything I read, heard, or saw. I absorbed only those elements of new teachings I could easily adapt to my current lifestyle. For example I had (and still have) a thing called a job with a four-hour commute, something that no millionaire I know has to put up with. I’m in relationships with people whom I could easily have labeled “negative,” starting with my wife and finishing with my workmates. But I refused to label them. I needed to work out my own methods of dealing with them. The standard advice—“ditch the losers”—was hardly applicable because according to millionaire’s standards, everyone around me is a loser.

  I took the ideas, tried them, and gradually incorporated those that I found helpful. That’s the way I recommend you develop your philosophy, too. It’s the only sensible way. You can only do what you believe is true. If you don’t believe that the universe is constructed of energy and that the human brain is a system receiving and sending vibrations through the universe’s layers of energy, you won’t focus on your vision consistently enough or strongly enough. For every effort you consciously put into making this Law of Attraction happen, you will use twice as much subconscious effort to sabotage it.

  I practiced new ideas almost always in “probation mood” and almost always, they became permanent. I was trying new things and looking for confirmation that they worked. I read about paying yourself first in David Bach’s book and stashed away 2.8 percent of my income. It went against my gut feelings and lifelong indoctrination, but I did it anyway. Within a few months, I saw that it was really working, that my savings were growing. I read in The Compound Effect by Warren Hardy about a gratitude journal he wrote about his wife. In The Slight Edge online community, I met a guy who did the same. I started the gratitude journal about my wife with one entry a day. It took me less than six months to recognize the soothing effect gratitude has on my whole being, and I expanded it to my kids and then to my whole life. Nowadays I write down
no fewer than 25 entries in my three different gratitude journals.

  Action Items:

  - Practice new ideas in “probation mood”

  - Take the ideas, try them, and gradually incorporate those that you find helpful.

  - While developing new habits, resolve to stick with them for a minimum of 30 days.

  Three-Dimensional Philosophy

  back to top

  “A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance

  with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment.”

  ― Maxwell Maltz

  Personal philosophy is a system for conduct of life. It consists of thoughts, experiences, interpretation attached to those experiences, relationships, emotions, data, data interpretations, and a myriad of other things. Life is complicated and complex; so is a system for conducting it. So in order to make it more bearable, easier to comprehend, and manageable, I will describe this concept in a way the human brain loves to act: with generalization and simplification.

  I recognize three main elements shaping personal philosophy: people, data input sources, and your individual interpretation of data. Because everything matters and everything affects everything else, it’s enough to focus on these three elements and develop a successful personal philosophy.

  As previously explained, if your personal philosophy doesn’t bring you closer to the outputs you really desire, it is stale. All you need is to refresh it a bit and keep changing it in the right direction. It’s enough to get involved with new people, to alter a bit the sources of your data input, and attach a new interpretation to the data you receive. It will transform your personal philosophy and transform your life.

  People may be regarded as data input sources too. But there is something distinct in humanity. It is stronger to hear the information from another man than to read the same information in a book. Relationships and interactions stir more emotions and thoughts than any other way of receiving information. People have a profound influence on your philosophy. People are special and cannot be treated like a radio show or a book. I’ll expose how it works by sticking with the example of the process of reforming my philosophy in 2012.

  I met new people. A month after reading The Slight Edge, I joined its online community. It is now sadly neglected, but it was quite alive when I signed up. As you know, the idea of my gratitude journal was partly born out of reading about the experiences of a member of The Slight Edge community. It is just a single instance showing how meeting new people may affect your worldview.

  However, interaction in that community was an experience very similar to those I had in the past with online forums. I was involved in communities gathered around my hobbies: computers and card games. It is a nice feeling to meet like-minded people and exchange experiences. Nice, that’s all.

  At the beginning of 2013, I joined another online community and it was a transcending experience. I took part in the Transformation Contest organized by Early to Rise. There were about 40,000 participants from all over the world. We spent three months together in the deeply committed online community. I met new friends there. We shared our life stories; we hid nothing. Deep stuff like life and death, like losing someone or falling in love. Those people know some things about me that even my family doesn’t.

  Within a month, this event transformed from a simple contest to an encouragement volcano. We cheered up and encouraged each other. We prayed for each other. We offered comfort to each other. It was an empowering experience. It fostered an amazing level of trust between the participants. I met half a dozen friends there from all over the world. “Friends” in a Polish meaning of the word—people who I am ready to die for. I met a lot more acquaintances. To this day, we hang out together and we are ready to do a favor for any member of the Transformation Contest.

  Just two concrete instances of how much this experience altered my life.

  1. On Feb. 26, 2013, I shared on my Transformation Contest wall my personal mission statement creation process. One of my friends commented: “You should write an e-book about this.” I took her advice seriously and A Personal Mission Statement: Your Road Map to Happiness was my first work ever published. It has sold 410 copies in the last 90 days.

  2. English is not my native language and when I was starting my writing career, it was much worse than today. I needed a native proofreader but I had no funds to pay for the service and no idea how to get one. I posted the first draft of my book on the Transformation Challenge Facebook group. Diane Arms was impressed with my openness and she volunteered to edit my book. She did it with my first four works. Without her help, I could never have moved forward with my publishing venture.

  The second cornerstone of personal philosophy is data input sources. Inspired by Jeff Olson’s advice to read ten pages of a good book every day, I introduced some changes to what information, how, and in what amounts I consumed. I had a habit of doing a Weider (exercise) series for fifteen minutes each morning. So I started to listen to audio materials. I also completely changed the type of books I was reading. I replaced pulp fiction books with philosophy, personal development, spiritual, and business books. One of the first six habits I started at the beginning of my transformation was reading a book written by a saint for ten minutes a day. You can check out my Goodreads profile to observe this transition in my lectures in the past two years.

  Exposing myself to new kinds of information bore fruit within a couple of months. A few examples:

  - I read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and created my personal mission statement

  - I read The Compound Effect and started my first gratitude journal.

  - I read Start Over, Finish Rich by David Bach and was convinced I had to pay myself first, which translated into about $7000 in savings in 18 months.

  The last element—interpretation of emotions, experiences and data—is the least tangible of the cornerstones, but important nonetheless. Your internal voice is extremely significant in the process of absorbing new ideas. I could read Mr. Bach’s advice and comment on it internally—“What BS! I know everything about savings. I’ve been tracking the exact amounts on my savings account for the last three years. Paying myself first? What a stupid idea! And what will I eat, when the funds run dry in the middle of the month?” Instead, I said, “It’s counterintuitive, but this guy is a millionaire and I’m not. Let’s try it and see how this works.”

  You may move to a different state or country, you may change your social environment altogether, you may read new books and listen to new coaches, but if you don’t alter your self-talk a bit, it will all be in vain. You will disregard new information and advice and sooner or later, you will go back to your old ways.

  Knowledge Items:

  - It’s enough to focus on three pillars to develop a successful personal philosophy: data sources, people, and internal interpretation.

  Time for an Upgrade

  back to top

  “Anyone who wants to sell you overnight success or wealth is not interested in your success;

  they are interested in your money.”

  ― Bo Bennett

  I hope I drove the point home and you embraced the idea that the way your mind functions dictates the outcomes in your life.

  Can you connect the dots? Do you see how specific types of mindsets generate specific results in your life? If they are not satisfying, it’s time to transform your philosophy. The important thing here is not to dwell on what’s unsatisfactory in your life, not to beat yourself up for it, but to objectively observe your conditions and the trends.

  If you progress in specific areas, then the chances are your philosophy is not so rotten after all. The lack of satisfaction comes from impatience or your high expectations, which usually are a result of comparing yourself to others.

  Let’s say you are obese. You are 5 feet 5 inches and weigh 200 pounds. But a year ago, you weighed 240 pounds. You are doing something right. Your mindset is not all trash.

/>   Or you have $5 million in your savings account and don’t need to work if you don’t want to. That’s great. Ninety-eight percent of the population would like to be in your place. However, two years ago you inherited $25 million. Hey, there is something wrong with your attitude toward money.

  Okay, you know you need a better philosophy, so how do you change it? Should you try to revolutionize it and develop it from scratch or rather painfully discard one rotten element after another and replace them with a more healthy construction?

  I’m almost sure your intuition suggests you go on a rampage. Ditch the old, ineffective methods! Do as many things as possible as fast as possible! Your old philosophy has already cost you a lot of priceless time, which may never be reclaimed. All of that is fine and true, but you are not a tabula rasa.

  Your intuition is partly right. It is possible to entirely rebuild your personal philosophy. People do it all the time. Mark Bowness transformed his life at the age of 26. A single event —his own failed suicide attempt—made him examine all his previous beliefs and change them practically within one day. You can radically change all three elements that comprise personal philosophy. You can change who you interact with in a single moment. You can move to a different town, state, country, or continent. You can change your data digesting habits: throw away the TV, destroy your mobile phone, install a firewall app on your computer and block all the news sites. Or you can start saying to yourself whenever you encounter an unfortunate event that “every obstacle is a chance if viewed as an opportunity for growth or self-mastery.”

  However, you need to realize that such drastic measures also have a drastic cost attached to them. For example, I hate TV as it is today, but I dread to think how my wife would react if I threw the set out the window. I wouldn’t have to watch it for some time, but the price would be horrendous.