Trickle Down Mindset: The Missing Element in Your Personal Success (3 page)

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“The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.”

― Walt Disney

Your personal philosophy is your most individual piece of reality. It’s more unique to you than your genotype. The way you gather information and interpret it is unique. You can live in the same place, have the same family, experience the same hardships as any other person, but you give them your own meaning.

Les Brown and his twin brother, Wesley, had almost identical data inputs in early childhood. But only one of them became a world-class speaker. We observe this throughout history—people who live in the same ghetto achieve radically different end results.

However, it’s not the external circumstances, but what you do with them that counts. It’s not the resources, but your resourcefulness, which dictates your life’s outcome. You are responsible for the end result, not the society, not your neighborhood or family. Those are just the resources and data sources you were given. However, you must actually use them to create something admirable out of your story.

This belief, that every individual is solely responsible for their own life, is, by the way, one of the pillars of many successful individuals’ personal philosophies. I’ll be referring back to this later on.

Now, let’s talk about your own personal philosophy. In order to mold it, you first need to accept that you have one and it is inseparable from your essence. If you fix those two facts in your conscious mind, it will be possible to move on and actually change your personal philosophy. If you acknowledge these facts, then the road to new opportunities will open up. If you deny them, it’s unlikely you will achieve lasting change.

I have read more than 50 books on personal development. Only a handful of them had a profound impact on my life. The difference between the information that changed my life and the information that didn’t was simple: I either rejected or accepted and took ownership of the ideas presented in the books I had read. It’s not the information, but how I digested and implemented it that made the difference. The most vivid example is
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
by Stephen R. Covey. I read this book for the first time when I was about 17. I found it interesting. And not much changed in my life as a result of reading it.

The next time I read it was in October 2012. This time I took its teachings straight to heart because I accepted the message of the book as my own. Because I saw that it is true in my life too, I took action. I wrote my personal mission statement in November 2012 and my life was changed forever.

I became an author. My savings ratio skyrocketed from 4.5 percent of my income to 20 percent. I lost weight and, at 35, I’m the fittest I have ever been in my life. I passed three professional exams and got two certificates in my day job field of expertise. I ditched my vices: playing computer games, watching TV, and excessively reading popular novels. I started to pray twice as much as before. I developed about 40 new daily habits. I could see my personal mission statement materializing in front of my eyes.

It was the same book I had read 18 years ago, but it generated a totally different outcome. The information in the book didn’t change one iota. Only my reception of it did.

A personal philosophy is a powerful tool for progress and growth that can change your life for the better, starting right here and now. But you can’t treat it as a tidbit or an interesting theory. Embrace the concept, make it your own, and you will become an invincible weapon.

So let’s get back to you. Do you believe you have your own personal philosophy? Do you own your system for conduct of life?

The answer should be obvious because you are alive, and you are somehow conducting your life in every minute. What’s your system? Ponder this question for a few minutes.

How do you react to specific kinds of events?

What situations make you comfortable and which stress you out?

For whom do you feel love and for whom do you feel hostility?

Do you realize any patterns in your answers? A system that lurks behind them?

If you didn’t just skip the above questions then I assume you reached the conclusion that you have some kind of personal philosophy. It’s kind of obvious, I know, like asking you to raise your hand to reach the conclusion that you have an arm. But sometimes we don’t see the obvious. It appears that the matter of personal philosophy is one of the things we take for granted and don’t give enough attention.

Do you know where your personal philosophy came from?

The short answer is “life.”

It was shaped by every data input and every personal interpretation you gave to that data. Everything you smelled, saw, or heard had some impact on your present state of mind. Every meaning you assigned to those impulses was also important. Sometimes meanings you didn’t assign had an impact, too. Whatever you have repeatedly ignored is more likely to be ignored by your brain in the future. Your every experience and every interaction subtly formed your present mindset.

Try to distill your current personal philosophy to make you more familiar with the concept on a very personal level. How? Simply take a look at your present actions. Your actions are determined by the way you see yourself and the world. In other words, they are determined by your personal philosophy. Analyze your actions and you will find the beliefs driving them. The same goes for your inactions.

Conduct an honest review of your actions. And please, don’t make excuses. “I can’t do it, because…” or “when I will have this, then…”
Nick Vujicic
has no limbs, but he doesn’t need excuses. He could lie in a bed for the rest of his life and rightfully claim he is disabled and needs help, but he doesn’t. So let’s make a contract: you can start using excuses as soon as you do at least as much as Nick has done with his life.

I was able to reverse engineer my previous personal philosophy by analyzing my past actions. In a nutshell, that previous philosophy said, “
Do just enough to get by and try to enjoy the rest of the time.
” I worked just to get the money to live off. My jobs offered no progress or social acceptance. I did my duty as a father and husband, the head of the family, but as soon as I could, I ducked out and played on the computer or read. I was moderately responsible, but whenever I had a choice between an obligation and entertainment, I chose the entertainment.

Make an inventory of your actions and ponder what they say about your philosophy. I know you would prefer an out-of-the-box solution. I would prefer it too. But the problem with quick fixes is that they fix you quickly, but only when you are already fixed. You know, the whole “when the student is ready, the master appears” thing.

Of course, you could get some great results from any given how-to solution. Action almost always beats inaction. It’s better to try something new and fail than not change your behavior and expect that the change will materialize on its own. Besides, everything affects everything. If you get some results from such a program, you will get different input, a different interpretation of facts, which in turn will shift your personal philosophy a bit. A tangible result will have an effect on your intangible attitude.

But we already established that such an approach has only about a five percent success rate. I consider such a percentage ineffective.

So, what should you do?

The only person who can answer this question is you. My advice really comes down to this: read this book, ponder it, digest its message, and most of all, make this message your own. Only then, act upon it. That’s the sole universal “quick fix” you will ever find in personal development materials. Your personal philosophy determines what you accept from this and every other book. That’s why you should work more on yourself than on any external material.

Your philosophy is unique. And no single entity in the universe, including God Himself, can influence your philosophy without your consent. That’s how humans are created and that’s how they function. Even if I wanted to implant my beliefs in you, I can’t do that.

The magic component of any activity that has the goal of improving your life is YOU.

What works for YOU. What YOU can apply. How YOU can change. What are YOUR values? You, you, you, and YOU! All I’m trying to achieve via this book is to help you to change your life.

I can assure you that you are capable of doing this. I have done so and so have others. We are not freaks who did impossible things unattainable to ordinary mortals. On the contrary, we used ordinary mortal powers to achieve the results each of us is capable of.

Find your own path.

Create your own personal philosophy. I can’t do this for you. Only you can unlock your real potential.

The most widely known advocate of the personal philosophy concept was Jim Rohn, but you don’t need to be his clone to harness the power of personal philosophy. You don’t need the kind of money or hardships he had. You don’t need to be raised in a similar background. You don’t even need to have the positive character traits he possessed. Well, at least you don’t need them at the beginning. All you need is to form your personal philosophy and mold it so it will generate the desired output: money, health, or appropriate traits. Whatever suits your definition of success.

Knowledge Items:

- Your personal philosophy is more unique to you than your genotype.

- YOU have one and it is inseparable from your essence.

- It’s not the information, but how you digest and implement it that makes the difference.

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“If you’ve reached the point in life where you feel you’ve got all the answers,

you better start asking some different questions.”

― Jim Rohn

We dealt with the “personal” part of your philosopher’s stone. Now it’s time for the second part. According to
the Oxford Dictionary
, philosophy is:

1.
the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline.

a particular system of philosophical thought.

plural noun: philosophies

“the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle”

the study of the theoretical basis of a particular branch of knowledge or experience.

“the philosophy of science”

synonyms: thinking, reasoning, thought, wisdom, knowledge

“a lecturer in philosophy”

2.
a theory or attitude that acts as a guiding principle for behavior.

The etymology of a word says more about the concept than the present definition of it. Philosophy is derived from “knowledge, body of knowledge,” from the old French
filosofie
and directly from Latin
philosophia
and from Greek
philosophia,
“love of knowledge, pursuit of wisdom; systematic investigation,” where
philo
means “loving” and
sophis
means “wise, learned.”

As you can see, this book is a bit skewed towards the second definition, but instead of particular behavior, it focuses on your life as a whole. It is also worth noting that one of the primary meanings of philosophy in the ancient world was “systematic investigation.”

Your personal philosophy is your life attitude formed by your all past experiences and the meanings you gave them. And
it can be systematically investigated and developed using the reasoning faculties of your mind
.

Do you see how the definition of philosophy almost automatically makes your present world view a personal philosophy? Your life experience is your knowledge and wisdom mixed and distilled into philosophy. You are designed to function this way, that’s how your brain operates. It gets the input, registers it, examines it, and saves the results. A child who touched a hot kettle received the input and gave it meaning—“hot kettles hurt” —and then formed a piece of philosophy that informed him how to conduct his life—“avoid hot kettles.”

We all need such a frame of reference to operate without information overload. You would go crazy if you needed to approach every fact like a scientist examining a new object. Extrapolating a general conclusion based on a few pieces of data from your past allows you to free up your brain capacity for higher functions.

A myriad of inputs and meanings form your way of thinking about the world and your role in it. And this way of thinking determines what actions you undertake.

Okay. I hope you’ve grasped how absolutely fundamental your personal philosophy is to your life.
It’s the filter for everything you encounter and the generator of everything you do.
It’s your sanity shield and action engine. Once you realize the importance of your personal philosophy, you can’t stop yourself from finding ways to improve it.

If you are not convinced about this, go back to the previous chapter and try to embrace this concept on a personal and emotional level. Because if you don’t, then the rest of this book may be interesting, but won’t change your life.

So to achieve tangible results you need to change your intangible thinking process. Borrowing other’s ideas won’t help much unless you make those ideas your own.

But is it possible to absorb a “foreign” way of thinking? Absolutely. What you consider your personal philosophy, your self-image, and your worldview is likely to be just a conglomerate of your parents’, your siblings’, your friends’, and respected authorities’ personal philosophies. You automatically absorbed their belief systems trying to sort out this complicated world of ours. Your brain loves generalization. If mommy said that talking to strangers is dangerous and you hadn’t any data conflicting this point of view, you just saved that information for further reference and made it part of your operating system. One more puzzle piece had been classified and your brain could put a bit more power into solving other puzzles or enjoying the present moment.

A basic prerequisite to absorbing bits of others’ philosophies is to know them. You can’t make something your own if you’ve never heard of it. So your first task is to seek new sources of data inputs. If you never watch TV, turn it on (and recognize that useful philosophies are generally absent there. Well, that’s my opinion; form your own). If you watch TV every day, turn it off and go out. If you don’t remember the last time you read a book, start reading one. If you read fiction, start reading nonfiction. If you don’t read magazines, read a few issues. If you are religious, read an agnostic’s blog post. If you are an atheist, go to church.

Break your routine, do something new. Look for new people to meet. Find data sources different to those that shaped your existing philosophy, which doesn’t serve you well enough. Approach new things with an open mind. Don’t sabotage your physical attempts (new places, new people, new sources of ideas) using your mental terrorists: distrust, arrogance, and reluctance.

Knowledge Items:

-You can systematically investigate and develop your personal philosophy using the reasoning faculties of your mind.

- Borrowing other’s ideas won’t help much unless you make those ideas your own.

Action Items:

- Start by breaking your routine by using different data sources or meeting new people.