THE SCIENCE OF SUCCESS – PART 3

Welcome back to the real value podcast, the podcast about business, life, success; about finding value in anything and everything, and about creating absolutely as much of it as you can with the short time we have. Good morning my friends, my name is Blaine Feyen, founder of The Coaching Academy and your host for this, and every episode, of the always sponsor free Real Value Podcast. As always, absolutely thrilled to be hanging with all of you again this week and especially excited to be bringing you another episode, the final episode, on this topic, what I’ve referred to as the Science of Success. Of course, that title is meant to be a positive one so as to place the emphasis on the good news about this science. The good news is, of course, that we have control over the programming in our brains and bodies and can, in an instant, choose something different to see, feel, experience, be, do, and have in our lives. However, just knowing this stuff isnt enough. Like any information we’re given throughout our lives, its what we choose to do with the info that decides the outcome and the impact of the information. There are millions of people in the world that read everything they can on success tactic, positive thinking, self help and self improvement ideas and techniques, they go to seminars with Tony Robbins and whoever else they believe can give them some direction on making changes in their lives, and never make any changes. Is this the fault of the literature, the information, or the teacher? In most cases, no. In almost every case where somebody is presented with information that could change every aspect of their lives and they don’t get any results, its simply because they didn’t apply the information. Take this show, for example. We’re on our second full year of the Real Value Podcast revamped and built solely for appraisers and real estate professionals. Its packed with information, techniques, exercises, and instructions for how to improve your business and life and yet, we still get emails and messages every week from listeners asking how they can improve this, that, or something else in their life and business. Of course, I love the questions and the correspondence with the listeners. Don’t mistake what I’m about to say on this point. I LOVE the interactions I have with listeners. In fact, when somebody reaches out to me with questions about life or business, I know that it’s because they’ve been listening! They’ve been taking in the info that I put out each week but maybe just don’t know how to go about applying it. Just know, however, that for every person who reaches out to me for some help, there are several thousand people who may have heard the info and have done nothing with it every though they’re struggling with the exact thing that I talk about in this show.

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We’ve been talking for two weeks now about how we get what we expect, we see what we are programmed to see, and we miss seeing and experiencing all of the things we don’t believe are for us and the things that we cant imagine. You cant imagine a certain amount in your bank account, you wont ever see it and experience it. You cant imagine ever having the relationship you tell yourself you’d love to have, you’ll never have it. Its that simple! We run on a program that is 95% subconscious, which means below our conscious awareness of it. What’s worse, the 5% of thoughts we are conscious of are almost all the same thoughts we had yesterday. We tend to think the same thoughts day in, day out, and thus experience, more or less, the same things each day, with only slight variations based on the weather, the amount of caffeine in our systems, what we had for breakfast, and maybe the people we interacted with that day. However, even with slight differences in our schedules or experiences day to day, we tend to have the same thoughts about those experiences as we had about similar experiences. This is one of the really important concepts to grasp in all of this. Your days may be slightly different day to day. Appraisers see different kinds of houses each day, they meet different people, they see a variety of scenery, and they’re having unique experiences day to day. But deep within their brains there’s not much different going on because we’re a pattern seeking species so, although you’re meeting different people and seeing some different things day to day, your brain lumps all of it together as part of a larger whole of experiences that we judge as ‘just another day, just another homeowner, just another house.’

Now, here’s what you need to know about how to use all of this information to your benefit. As I just mentioned, to rewire your brain and body, you have to start with thinking about what you’re thinking about and identifying your patterns and addictions. If you don’t like the word addictions, sorry, I’m not going to replace the word to make you feel better because that’s exactly what it is, an addiction to a way of thinking, feeling, acting, and being and a way of staying comfortable in your patterns. You behave become addicted to the chemical and hormonal cocktails that you have been habitually releasing into your bloodstream for decades now. So get used to the word addiction! I see your some of your addictions every day, as does the world. If you’re one of those who is constantly chiming in on the doom and gloom, the bashing of others, the impending demise of an industry, or anything else that might be considered negative, you’re addicted! You’re addicted to a pattern that is comfortable for you. In fact, I’d better restate that so that I don’t let some of you off to easily. Even if you’re not somebody who expresses your negative addiction for the whole world to see on social media, you might still be suffering from the addictive patterns based on your past programming. It’s comfortable for you because it’s familiar and predictable. In other words, you don’t even know what it would feel like or even mean to be positive in when there’s so much evidence in your external world of the opposite. You cant even wrap your head around the thought of NOT commenting, even if only to yourself or your friends and family, and adding to the negativity because you don’t have the internal wiring yet for how to change it. Its not familiar and its not predictable which signals the brain that its not safe.  If you want change, you have to Identify all of your patterns and addictions and never stop working on them. You have to get to the root cause of all of your behaviors and thinking patterns before any change can occur. Remember, these are all chemical patterns that have been embossed neurologically in your brain and body and have created addictions to the familiarity, the predictability, and the safety of those patterns. You literally have to break the addiction to wanting to suffer, to some degree, before any of your bigger life goals can be pursued and achieved. Now, I already know what follows this because I’ve seen it and heard it a thousand times. This is the point where your brain comes up with a response for me that sounds something like this, “But Blaine, I’m not addicted suffering, I don’t WANT to suffer, stuff just keeps happening and it sucks!” You think because you have a desire or a want for something different that that is an indication that you aren’t, in fact, creating all of your own suffering. Remember when I told you that the subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between a penny and a million dollars, or that it doesn’t judge, quantify, or qualify our conscious thoughts as good, bad, or indifferent? It doesn’t judge, it just takes orders, sends them to the RAS, it activates all of the cells in our body to believe what we just told them, which signals our genes to make our body’s mold into the belief that we have about the thing. When you use the words, “I want…”, you are signaling your subconscious mind, your RAS, and every cell in your body to create and make real a state of ‘wanting’. By the way, the subconscious mind doesn’t understand negative speech so it filters out the ‘don’ts, nots, and no’s’ of your internal statements. If you constantly tell yourself that you ‘don’t want to suffer’, your subconscious mind filters out the ‘don’t’ part of that statement so that it only hears, ‘I want to suffer’, which is why it programs everything within you to create a state of wanting and suffering.

These are big concepts, I know! You will have to listen to this 3 part series every single day for the next 18 weeks to really understand these concepts. I don’t say that because I don’t think that you’re intelligent or that you aren’t capable of grasping the science. I say it because it takes a while to reprogram your brain to start building a present future that you deliberately and intentionally create instead of one that is constantly being created for you and by you based on your external circumstances. So the very first step to changing all of this is simply to begin thinking about what you’re thinking about. When you start thinking about what you’re thinking about, I recommend that you start writing down what comes up. “But Blaine, I don’t like to write because my handwriting sucks”, fine, you can type it. “But Blaine, I’m not that great at typing so I dictate all of my notes”, great, dictate them! “But Blaine, I’m so busy with orders, and files, and my kids, and the PTA, and bowling league, and then hunting season comes around, and then…, and then…’ Listen friends, make whatever excuses your addiction has you making and just keep doing what your doing then. It doesn’t change my day! I do this stuff almost every single day and will continue to whether you decide to do it or not. I’m just giving you the steps to creating a different tomorrow than your today. Its completely up to you whether you choose to do anything with the information or not. “But that sounds like so much work Blaine, I just don’t have the time or the energy to do all that work!” Cool story! Carry on then. This info is not for you. This information should be resonating with every human being listening that wants something different tomorrow than what they’re currently experiencing. Its really that simple. If the info doesn’t resonate with you because you have your dream life already, that’s great! Hopefully you’re teaching others how to do what you do each day to have your dream life. By the way, just a small stick in the stomach for all of you who have people working for you, it is absolutely your responsibility to be elevating the lives of those who cross your path and choose you as a partner, a boss, or whatever capacity they’ve chosen to be in your cosmic windshield for whatever time they’re in it. “That’s not my job Blaine, my job is to make sure they have work, make sure they do their job, make sure I can pay them, and make sure they don’t steal from me and screw me over!” Ok Scrooge, don’t count on any boss of the year awards any time soon and I can almost predict with 99.72% accuracy what will eventually happen. Hopefully you all can too based on the last 3 hours of learning about how we create our own realities based on what we think about, where we place our attention, and what we focus on.

So lets talk for a minute about why this simple first exercise about thinking about what you’re thinking about is so important. I mean, you could start thinking about what you’re thinking about and then do nothing with what you uncover. However, the reason this first step is so important is because energy always follows attention. Whatever and wherever you place your attention, energy will always follow. That’s why tracking and measuring your food intake is so vital when you’re dieting. Its why we spend a good amount of time in the coaching program learning how to track and measure our financial indicators, our income, our time, and our energy output. Wherever you place your attention, energy follows. You turn on the news addiction of choice and hear about the Democrats or the Republicans, you hear about impeachment or Syria. You get an email or text from an AMC and it triggers all of the emotions you have a bout them and now your attention is on that thing. Your attention dictates your energy and the energy of the negative is low energy. It’s the lowest vibration and wave pattern on the spectrum as far as emotional states are concerned. You watch the news and your attention, energy, and focus trigger all of those same thoughts you’ve been reinforcing for the last 20 years which, of course, trigger chemicals in your body that you’ve become addicted to. This is called conditioning and its no different than running sprints at the track or lifting weights in the gym. What you do repeatedly you condition into your neural pathways and eventually your physical body. When both the brain and the body are in rhythm we say there is coherence. What your brain eventually believes, your body is sure to manifest and make real. I’m using the words brain body coherence, but the word I should be using is brain heart coherence because research has shown that the heart is one of the most powerful and intelligent electrical systems known to man and when the brain and heart are in coherence, or resonate together, we are in a powerful state of creating. It doesn’t matter if the state is sadness, pain, suffering, and hatred, or happiness, joy, excitement, and pleasure, when the brain and heart vibrate and fire together in the same state we are in the act of creating. The problem for so many is that they are constantly placing their attention on the external, the information from their outer worlds to dictate how their inner emotional world should be thinking and feeling and that’s the exact opposite of how you should be doing it! By doing the first step of this practice and beginning to think about what you’re thinking about you’re deliberately and intentionally placing your attention on your inner world first. After a while of doing this you’ll begin to see how what is going on inside might just be creating the outside stuff instead of the other way around. Where you place your attention and your focus will be what gets your energy. Whatever gets your attention and your energy expands. Pretty soon, your outer world matches your inner world perfectly and it reinforces your thoughts about how your outer world dictates your inner world of thoughts and emotions. The goal is to start pulling your attention away from the external and start putting some of it where it belongs, which is your inner world of thoughts and emotions. The more you can do this, the more control you’ll start having on making your outer world deliberately match your inner world.

So step one is to simply start thinking about what you’re thinking about. Eventually, you’ll start to indenting some of your addictions to the negative. Along with identifying and examining your patterns and addictions, you’ll want to dedicate some time every day, even if its for a mere 10 or 15 minutes, to live in the memory of a world and life that, up to this point, has only been imagined and dreamt about. I know that sounds weird, but stay right with me on this because this is the secret that’s not a secret. Most people believe that memories are always thoughts about the past. A past event happened, you remember it, or literally put it back together (you ‘re-member’ it), and that triggers some chemical reaction called an emotion. We call that whole process having a memory. What we also know from science is that 50% of our memories are either made up or misremembered to fit a narrative that we’ve created and reinforced all of these years. We also know that the thoughts and memories we have can make us sick. We know from extensive studies on the placebo effect that the mere thought of something disgusting can make us wretch and the thought of disease can give it life in our bodies. So the vital question that researchers have been asking (by the way, monks and mystics were asking these questions 7000 years ago) is, if our thoughts and emotions can make us poor, make us struggle, make us sick, and create disease in the body, can thinking and emotions also make us well, make us experience abundance, wealth, prosperity, health, happiness, and all of the positive things as well? I say all the time in this podcast and in coaching that the quality of our questions will determine the quality of our answers and, unfortunately, not enough people know to even ask that question: If our thoughts and emotions can make us sick, which we know they can, can they also make us well? And the answer is unequivocally YES! Our thoughts and emotions have the power to do both! So when I say that step number 2 is to start to ‘live in the memory of a life that, up to now, has only been imagined or dreamt of’, I’m telling you to start creating ‘memories’ of the things you wish to experience as if they are happening right now. The reason most people never experience what they want is because they are taking their cues from their external world about how to feel instead of creating the feelings first internally and making their external world become what they want.

You literally have to imagine the life you want, the things you want to experience, the person you want to become, the business you’d like to have and then get into the feeling of what every aspect of that life feels like as if it existed right this moment, because it does. It exists for somebody in the world so you know its possible. The more detailed you can make your brain believe it knows what that feeling is, the more emotional embossing is taking place. The more emotion and vision around this thing you desire or this state of being that you can imagine can be felt, the bigger the emotional footprint you’re creating and the more firing and wiring of neurons and cells is occurring. The more firing and wiring, the more chemicals being released into your body and a new imprint of this imagined or ‘remembered’ world is being created within your body. The science of epigenetics tells us that the environment has a lot to do with how our genes are signaled and expressed in the body, and our genes make proteins, so we are literally building a new reality in the moments we spend thinking and feeling all of the things we want to be, do, and have. You can literally change your gene expression by changing the chemicals flowing through your body and one way to change those chemicals is by giving them new emotional instructions based on a new way of feeling. The longer you can extend those moments out into your day, the bigger the emotional and chemical footprint and the faster you are building those new neural pathways to the thing you’re imagining. When you place attention, energy, and focus on the emotions of the thing you want to be, do, and have, you are signaling the RAS to be on high alert for all of the things that may be connected to this thing. Just like the white teslas all over the road, you will begin to see all sorts of things that support your new ‘memory’ of this new world you’re living in. The new support helps reinforce the emotion, which helps reinforce the actions you’re taking, which helps reinforce the new reality you’re building. With new thoughts, a new focus, new emotions, old emotional patterns dissolving, new energy being put forth toward a new reality for you, their will be an inevitable change in your personality. With a change in your personality will come a change in your personal reality. When you change your personality, you will have no option but to see the changes in your personal reality. Remember, we said that our thoughts, beliefs, actions, and patterns over a long period of time create what we call our personality. Our personality, for good and bad, makes up our personal reality because our personal reality is being dictated by the decisions and actions we take moment to moment. Remember, the decisions and actions we take moment to moment are based on the bundle of beliefs we have about thousands of things, typically from a partially misremembered past, and those things give explicit instructions to the RAS about what to be on the lookout for to either make us aware of or completely discard as irrelevant to our survival. The penny I see laying in the parking lot is the same penny that was stepped over by hundreds of others before me. The opportunity I see in life and business is available to everybody with eyes to see it, but if your reticular activating system is turned off to those things as opportunities you simply wont see it and your RAS will discard the information as irrelevant.

The way up and out is by thinking about what we’re thinking about and then recreating thoughts and memories that put us in a state of ‘remembering’ an up to until now forgotten past, which will eventually become our future. In essence, becoming conscious about the unconscious. Becoming an observer of your thoughts. Its easier to distract ourselves with TV, social media, games, physical activity, and a variety of other things in order to avoid thinking about what we’re thinking about. Change really requires becoming uncomfortable to a certain degree, and familiar with the unknown and the uncomfortable. Once you make that choice, or as we say, to decide. Once you decide, with the act of deciding comes a certain powerful energy and all of the necessary resources for the attainment of a particular result. You absolutely must start to become aware of your thoughts and subsequent emotional patterns because those are the firing and wiring patterns that give instructions to the RAS to go out and find evidence and support for those thoughts, and by the way, it always will. If you think the world is going to hell in a hand basket, just go on facebook and you’ll find the support for that belief. Turn on the news and your RAS will tune you into all the supporting information about how the world is crumbling. If you believe the Appraisal Foundation is paying people too much and, somehow, that is negatively affecting your life, you’ll find the support for it. If you think all Realtors and Loan Originators are scammers, you’ll find the evidence for it and your personality ends up being the result of those thoughts. As we’ve now said a bunch of times, your personality creates your personal reality so, if you think those things, your RAS will constantly place evidence in front of you that those things are true, your actions will be congruent with your thoughts, your results congruent with your actions, your thoughts about your results reinforcing your beliefs, and the loop is locked into your neural pathway. Let the addiction begin. If, however, you think a different thought, one that says something like, ‘maybe some realtors are idiots, but so are some appraisers, and there must be some good ones out there.’ What do you think your RAS system is going to go find for you? Its absolutely going to go find evidence of that reality and place opportunities in your way to make that belief a reality. If you think the appraisal industry is in decline and its time to run for the hills, your RAS will absolutely go find all kinds of evidence to support that belief. It will find things like facebook posts about the decline of the industry, articles about the foundation presidents salary that have nothing whatsoever to do with your prosperity. Did you make less last year because David Bunton was paid more than you feel he should’ve been paid? It didn’t affect me 1 cent. My businesses have grown every single year since I first started a business in 1994 and I didn’t even know who David Bunton was until two weeks ago, nor do I care. He does not affect my personal reality and I’ll be damned if I’ll let that information affect my personality.

“But you should care Blaine, because he’s the president of the T…. And he makes…. And they’re…and the appraisal foundation… and over regulation…and its not fair” No! Sorry folks. If you want to come to me because you just listened to the latest Voice Of Appraisal podcast and you’re all up in arms about how much money the appraisal foundation has, or how much Dave Bunton makes, or how corrupt to the system is I welcome it. My first question to you will still be, ‘show me your written goals for this year.’ “Wait, what?! I’m taking about how corrupt the system is and how it’s ruining my industry and I cant make enough, and AMCs, and portal fees, and bottom feeders, and, and, and…” ’Do you have written goals or not? No? Then forget about the appraisal foundation and go home today and start writing my friend because the appraisal foundation has zero to do with what your wealth accounts looks like, what your retirement account looks like, what your client list looks like, what your monthly sales look like! ZERO!’ I’m not suggesting that you be ignorant to the world. What I am suggesting is that you place your attention, energy, focus and emotions on things you can control and things that raise your emotions and energy levels. If that kind of information leaves you feeling helpless, angered, in fear, no hope, and ready to change industries, then you have information with which to ask some questions and make some decisions. Am I going to keep letting myself get distracted by information and things that don’t make me feel good and bring me down, or am I going to start focusing on things that raise my energy levels, and then take some action to change my world? You see, I care about my clients and customers, I care about creating opportunity for myself, my friends, and my family. I care about adding value to the market and my people. I care about teaching others these principles. I don’t care how much somebody else makes accept to the degree that its information supporting my belief that I can make as much, and more, and whatever somebody else makes doesn’t take money out of my pocket. Why? Because I have a belief and an understanding that I create my own reality based on my thoughts and emotions so I guard them like Area 51. I choose what gets in and what gets sent out to the world. I choose who gains access and who is denied entry. You must be deliberate about your thoughts and corresponding emotions my friends! Your future literally depends on it. What you give your time, energy, focus and emotion to will expand in your life. What you take your time, energy, emotion, and focus away from will wither, walk away, leave, or die. Take that information for what it is. It applies to the positive influences and relationships in our lives, as well as the negative ones. If you don’t give your dog any of your time, energy, emotion, and focus, it will do everything in its power to leave, if it can, or die if it doesn’t get some attention. Your significant other better get some of your time, positive energy, focus, and attention or it doesn’t go well. What you focus on attracts more of the same into your RAS, it doesn’t matter if its positive or negative. Take a long hard look at what you choose to focus your energy and attention on.

Are you focusing attention, energy, and emotion on how AMCs are ruining your industry? Cool! No judgment, you’ll just have lots more opportunities to see that in your daily world than I will because I don’t give it any of my energy or my focus. Are you focusing on how much the President of the appraisal foundation makes? Cool, use that inflammation as motivation and then go make as much as he does and shut up about it. Do you think negatively about all of the potential strategic partners in your world like Realtors, lenders, Attorneys, Estate Planners, Financial planners, direct lenders, small community banks, credit unions and mortgage companies? Awesome! Than you just guaranteed that you’ll have to do almost all of your business with the first category. Do you see how that circle fulfills itself? You hate the AMCs and what they’ve done to the industry. That hatred is a thought that triggers an emotion and an emotion that triggers thought. That emotion has a very specific chemical signature in your body and brain and you’ve become addicted to it by your constant thoughts about that thing and the emotional chemical dependency it has created in your bodymind. Its become so familiar and predictable to you that your RAS is constantly making you aware of and bringing you information that supports that belief. Every time you see it the chemicals spill into your body and you get a familiar addiction hit that supports your beliefs. The cycle is complete and we’re back to looking for more evidence to prop up our belief system. This goes on every second of every day folks! Don’t believe it? Just look around you! Everything you have, or don’t have. Everything you are, or want to become but haven’t yet, is based solely on how and what you think and what you feel about those thoughts. Your income, your love life, your relationships, your business, your clients, your day, all of it has been created by you and the familiar and predictable results you get every day based on the thoughts you think every day which were the same thoughts you thought yesterday and the day before. When your RAS lets in more information to support what you believe, it will simply reinforce those beliefs and now you’re thinking the same thoughts you thought yesterday. You must become aware of your thoughts and patterns first, then start thinking new thoughts and creating new emotional patterns if you want to create change.

Unfortunately, the time that most people start to change their thoughts, and subsequently their lives, is when tragedy strikes. Most people are waiting for something from the outside world to give them an emotional signal that its now time to make a change. You’re diagnosed with cancer and now, all of the sudden, its time to start thinking, acting, eating, and being different. Somebody dies suddenly and now, all of the sudden, you’ve become the guy who knows all about life’s blessings and telling everybody else to hug their loved ones because they could be gone in a second. Yesterday you were calling somebody a bottom feeder and railing against all the Taco Bell employees who send you work each day. Your personality dictates your personal reality my friends. Guard your thoughts and emotions with all of your might! More importantly, take deliberate and intentional control of what you are thinking and feeling as often as you can since this is what programs the RAS what to on the lookout for. Its also literally what is giving your genes the information and chemical tags they need to begin making specific proteins that build that reality for you from the inside out. You have a choice! You have a choice of whether you are controlling your own thought or if you are unwittingly letting the outside world dictate how and what you should think and feel when you let stupid shit like Facebook posts and negative blog posts dictate how you think and feel. It’s the cause and effect model of emotion and life management. Unfortunately, its backwards. That method of living life is like trying to start a campfire by saying to the fire pit, “you start producing some heat and flames and I’ll start putting some wood on you. Until you show me that you can be a real fire, I’m not going to waste this fuel.” Of course, the non existent camp fire can’t give you any heat and flames until you feed it so your external world says, ‘hmmm, I don’t see any flames, I don’t feel any heat…just as I thought! You get no wood!’ Your external world is dictating your internal world and your actions are always in alignment with the internal world. How silly does that sound to you? If it sounds silly to think of campfires that way, then why are you living your life waiting for and letting external events and circumstances dictate your suite of emotions? Remember, it goes thought, emotion, action, result.  Something happens that creates a thought in you, which then triggers the emotion about the thing, which makes you act a certain way and you get a familiar response or result to that action, all heavily predicated on what you expect to happen, by the way. It’s a pattern that has been deeply engrained in your body chemistry and your neurons and you’ve been reinforcing it for decades.

We have to learn how to first generate the thought about what we think we’d like to do, be, and have before expecting it to just appear in our lives. When you generate the thought about something, an emotion will follow like clock work. Its this thought-emotion pair that you need to start deliberately taking notice of and rewiring. If you have the thought and the thought triggers a negative emotion, you’ve just been delivered good news! Its good news because you’ve just become aware of the pattern and you’ve been given the ability to start asking powerful questions to get to the bottom of the pattern. ‘Why do I have negative emotions about making more money?’ ‘Why do I have fear around finding somebody to love me?’ ‘What happened in my past that made me believe I don’t deserve to have or be anything more than what I am right now?’, ‘Why do I care what somebody else earns as a salary?’, ‘Why am I wasting valuable emotional energy focused on somebody else’s experience with a Realtor or loan officer?’ Think of this awareness as a gift! And awareness is a gift, by the way! Awareness is literally the difference between a life of struggle and a life of ease with all of the prosperity and resources one could ever ask for. Once you start becoming aware of your thoughts, the subsequent attached emotions, and how those two dictate your actions, you are breaking neurological patterns that have been built up over many years, in some cases many decades. Its this conscious and deliberate, lets call it intentional thinking and awareness process that triggers the uncomfortable growth that leads to change. The change that follows will eventually become a new pattern of firing and wiring in your brain that eventually transcends the brain and your body takes over. We call this a habit and a benevolent addiction to that new familiar feeling. Anything less than this new feeling feels bad and uncomfortable and we should reject it and focus back on what we truly want.

So lets briefly recap the vital steps necessary to begin creating change in your life. And, by the way, I have no expectation that my voice and this podcast is all you’ll need to bring about lasting change in your life and business. This 3 part series was meant as a wake up call and to plant some seeds that will have you doing some more research. I never want anybody to take what I say as law. In fact, I want you to doubt what I say so that you’ll go on a search for yourself. I likely can’t convince you of anything because of everything we’ve been talking about the last 2 weeks. You have brain and emotional patterns that will only allow certain thoughts and ideas in. Now its up to you to prove me and yourself wrong. So that we’re clear on what I’m asking, I don’t need you to do anything. My life and business are not dependent on you taking any action. My life and business wont change if you don’t believe any of this stuff. My life and business wont be affected if they start paying Dave Bunton $1,000,000 per year. But if yours will, then I challenge you to do some more research and begin taking some of these steps we’ve been talking about.

So to recap the steps I’ve talked about so far, the first one is to begin thinking about what you’re thinking about. And I recommend that you keep a small journal with you at all times to catch yourself when you’re thinking and write down what you’re thinking about. Again, this may sound funny to you initially but when I describe how this works, hopefully you’ll start to see why this is valuable. I recommend you take small breaks throughout the day to give some time to this exercise. For example, set several timers throughout your day and give yourself 15 minutes of thinking time with each timer. “But Blaine, I’m super busy and the bills, and the…” Cool story, don’t do it then. I have no expectation that most people listening will ever do this exercise which is why the ones who do are typically referred to as 1%ers. Less than 1% of people listening will ever actually take the time to do any of the stuff I talk about on this show and that’s ok. I’m used to hanging with the 1%ers so that’s the primary group I speak to. So, for those of you who are super busy but want to be, do, and have something different tomorrow than you had today, start tracking your thoughts. What is important is not necessarily the first thought you decide to write down, it’s the second and third order thought that results from that initial thought. For example, maybe you have an experience during your work day that triggers something in you that is unpleasant. You have a less than pleasant experience with a real estate agent or maybe a homeowner and it makes you upset. Your thought about the experience is that your disdain for certain aspects of your career is reinforced time and again with these damn Realtors or pesky homeowners that think their house is worth more than everybody else’s because they built it with heavy duty nails. You’re about to whip out your dopamine device to tell the Facebook world about your experience. So, lets say this is the one where you take Sensei’s advice and you write down the thought in your thinking journal. This is called the ‘first order’ thought. Write it down just as you thought it. You’ve just changed the cells in your body by even doing this part. How? You might ask. Because you’ve broken a pattern. You’ve chosen to do something different than you had done before and that decision alone changes things. But the real value comes from the second and third order thoughts that issue forth from the initial thought and you’ll have to help by coaxing these second and third thoughts out with a powerful secret technique called questions! What questions do you ask? Well, I learned these from a tiny little Indian man high atop a mountain at the edge of a cave while I was searching for the meaning of life. I came across him just sitting there meditating and, after asking him what was the meaning of life, he just kept uttering this word, “wyhoowatow, wyhoowatow…” I said, “I don’t understand what you’re saying, I don’t speak mystic!”, he simply uttered again, “wyhoowatow…”

I climbed down the mountain more thoroughly confused than before my quest and I fell into a deep exhausted sleep. And in my dream while sleeping, the little Indian man came to me and said this magic word again, this time even slower, “wyhoowatow…why who what how…” and then it hit me! He was imploring me to ask 4 questions, why, who, what, and how. Why, who, what, and how! Once you write down your initial thought, you then ask 4 questions I call ‘wyhoowatows’. You ask yourself, ‘why am I having this thought?, who does this thought help, what is the thought doing  for me, and how can I have a better thought. That’s it! Its that simple yet not so easy to do. Its not so easy to do because you’re likely not used to examining your inner thoughts this way, which is why less than 1% of people will ever do it. But that’s step one. The second step is to spend some time in imagination. If thoughts and words are the language of the brain, and emotions are the language of the body, then it makes sense to start crafting a deliberate and intentional story that speaks to both parts of that whole. You must take some time to sit in imagination and begin to feel. You say, “I feel all the time Blaine! I feel like shit! I’m busy, I’m hungry, I’m scattered, I’m rushed, I’m tired…”, whatever it is. The problem is that those are habitual patterns of feeling based on your external world. Most people let the external world dictate their emotional state to them. They look around and see what they expect to see in the world and then they have a thought about what they see. Since emotions are always the end product of thoughts, you then have a chemical response in the body we call an emotion. Your emotions dictate what actions you take next, the actions you take will dictate the results you get, you’ll have a thought about the results you get, emotion follows and so on. All of this based on the external world telling you how to think and feel. This is one of the reasons the news, social media, politics, and tv are so dangerous to our mental states. If you don’t have the internal scaffolding to begin designing your inner world in order to begin building your outer world, you’ll let all of those things contribute bricks to the construction project that is your life. You’re letting the external world dictate your inner thoughts and emotions. Your inner thoughts and emotions are what program your RAS and bring you information and experiences that match your inner world. Thus, your outer world is being created ALWAYS by your inner world. I’m simply telling you to flip the process on its head and begin crafting your ideal inner world of people, places, things, events, experiences, relationships, words, income, assets, travel, and wherever else you can imagine, and then spend some time there. Spend some time really imagining what all of those different things will feel like while you’re experiencing them. If you cant imagine what it would feel like to lay on the beach in the Maldives, you’ll never experience laying on the beach in the Maldives. “I don’t want to go to the Maldives Blaine, I like staying at home!” Great! How about imagining something you WOULD like to do, be, or have and then spending a little time imagining what that would be like. “Well, I would like to have my own little space to do my crafts and things…” Perfect! Until you can imagine what it would feel like to have your own little space to do your knitting, you’ll never have it. Your inner world dictates what your outer world looks and feels like moment to moment. If you ever want to know what you think about moment to moment, just look around. Your outer world matches your inner world.

Step one, devote some time to thinking about what you think about. Step two, devote some time to crafting your ideal inner world in order to craft your ideal outer world. If you always take your cues from the outer world first, stop it! Start making your outer world take its cues from you! You are the master of your inner world so take control of it and watch what happens to your outer world of experiences. The third step, and the last one I’ll give you in this series is simply a challenge for you. The challenge is to catch yourself saying 7 words: “don’t, not, no, won’t, wouldn’t, can’t, and couldn’t”. I’ll say them again, “don’t, not, no, won’t, wouldn’t, can’t, and couldn’t.” Every time you catch yourself saying any one of those 7 words in your daily language, you have to follow it up with 5 words, ‘So what_________ I do’, meaning, when you catch yourself saying, “I wouldn’t do that”, you follow it up with “so what, you place the opposite of the awareness word, which in this case is ‘would’, in the blank space, and then end it with “I do?”, as in, “what WOULD I do?” The opposite of no is yes, the opposite of not is am or are, the opposite of don’t is do, the opposite of wouldn’t is would or will, the opposite of can’t is can or could, and the opposite of couldn’t is could, can, or will. Every time you catch yourself saying one of those nasty 7, you immediately follow it up with, “so what WILL I do”, or “so what COULD I do?”, or “what CAN I do”, or “what SHOULD I do?” and so on. “I don’t want to work with AMCs!, so what kind of work do I want?” Or that could be phrased as, “so who do I want to work with?”, or “what kind of work do I want?” “I could never say that!”, turns into, “So what could I say instead?” “I absolutely WILL NOT talk with borrowers or homeowners who call me about their appraisal!” This becomes, “so who WILL I talk with” and “what COULD I do instead?” You see friends, thoughts and words are the language of the brain and emotions are the language of the body. Questions are the fuel we throw on the campfire to get it burning hot and heavy. Most people are either asking the wrong questions of themselves, or they already know all the answers and don’t ever ask any valuable questions. This exercise begins the process of, once again, breaking a pattern we have carved into our neural pathways, about how we speak to ourselves, even if all subconsciously. This is about taking control of your thoughts, the words you use, the ideas you reinforce, and flipping the script to a more positive and empowering one that starts to change your inner world which will eventually change your outer world. All of the work is yours to do my friends! I’ve given

There it is my friends, likely the most important information you will ever hear. I have no doubt whatsoever in my mind that there is no more important information you could ever have than the knowledge that we create our own reality by what we think and feel and that those thoughts and feelings are either based on a record of the past or a memory of the future. Sounds odd to say, but its absolutely fundamental to be constantly creating memories of a future that we choose! You’re already creating your future but, for most, its based on memories from the past, 50% of which are made up. You get to choose my friends! You get to choose whether your brain and body respond from thoughts of the past and information from your outer world and surroundings, or act as a powerful map to a future only limited by what you can imagine. The choice is literally yours and I just gave you all the science behind it. Its not conjecture, its not metaphysics, its not just think it and it will happen, it’s scientific information about how the brain, the body, the conscious and subconscious work, how that little servant and sentinel at the base of the hypothalamus, the RAS, goes out and finds support for your thoughts and feelings, AND how it blocks all of the information that is contradictory to those beliefs. All of this happening in every moment of every day. Become aware of what you’re choosing to focus on moment to moment because the cells that fire together wire together and patterns are being cemented all the time based on your physio-emotional programming. Take control of it! Create something new with it! Focus on the good, the prosperous, the healthy, the happy, the joyful, the exquisite, the divine, the benevolent, the abundant and your brain has no choice but to move in that direction and place in your view all of the things that correspond with those thoughts, ideas, and emotions. Take control of the words you use and what you think and say to yourself. Catch yourself saying the nasty 7 and replace them or follow them up with, “so what WILL I do” or “So what CAN I do”.

I mentioned earlier in the show an acronym that I said I’d reveal to you. The acronym is WYTABA and I’ve actually been revealing it to you throughout the show. The acronym stands for ‘what you think about, you bring about’ and I said that phrase no less than 5 times throughout the episode. You wouldn’t know to put the phrase with the acronym because your brain hasn’t been wired yet to recognize it. In essence, because you didn’t expect it, you didn’t hear it or make the connection and that’s exactly what happens in our brains with information we aren’t familiar with, information that is unwelcome to us, and information that bumps up against our already hardwired belief systems. I learned a great little life hacks from another Blaine, a named Blaine Oelker. If you google his name you’ll find his TED talk and some of his other videos. What he taught us is that studies show that we unlock our cell phones, on average, 110 to 150 times per day so your lock screen is being seen that many times. Whatever you have on your lock screen is being programmed into your subconscious so if you have nothing, or you have a picture of something, that picture and the corresponding emotions get programmed. That’s why people often have pictures of lived ones or pets. The picture is a reminder and it triggers positive chemical reactions. What Blaine Oelker suggests we do is put our goals, our aspirations, and/or our positive affirmations on our lock screen so that you are seeing and programming them into your subconscious 110-150 times per day. I loved this idea from the first moment I heard it and I suggest you do something similar.

I’d like to thank you my friends for listening to and supporting this show each week. I appreciate you investing your most valuable currency with me each week and that is, of course, your time. I truly hope that you’ve gotten a return on your investment of your time this week, or will in the coming weeks and months. I do my absolute best to add value to everybody who is willing to listen, more importantly, to those who can actually hear what I’m saying, not just listen to the words. Take some time today to start thinking about what you’re thinking about. If you’re so inclined, write down some of those thoughts. After you’ve written a bunch of them down, review that list and see just how many of your thoughts are negative, disempowering, conjure up fear, worry, and anxiety, and, of course, how many of them are empowering, exciting, happy thoughts about a bright future filled with health, wealth, happiness, abundance, and joy. My guess for many of you is that the first list will heavily outweigh the second list. If this is the case, its time to take deliberate and intentional control of your thoughts and start to raise your vibrations. It is 100% completely up to you! You choose what gets in and out. You choose what channels you tune into, literally and metaphorically. You choose what your RAS starts to be on the lookout for and what it excludes from your conscious awareness based on what you program it for. You choose what words you use and how those words affect your emotions. The common denominator in all of those statements is you! You are the programmer, you are the benevolent dictator of your own mind and the thoughts that you let reside there. And you get the choice every moment of every day about what you’re going to think about, how you’re going to program your cells, which genes are going to be activated within you based on the chemicals you’re allowing to be released in your body, those chemicals largely being determined by your thoughts and the emotions they trigger, and the subsequent things that come into your life based on the actions you take. Your actions, by the way, largely dictated by the emotions and the thoughts you have about those emotions. I’ll tell you 1000 more times if you need to hear it again and again. You are in control. Start creating your today instead of your today creating some kind of you. Start creating your future more deliberately and intentionally instead of letting your negative thoughts and negative emotions continue to create a stress and anxiety filled future that makes you feel out of control and without hope. You can do it friends, anybody can! Of course, if you need more help in this regard, just reach out, its what we do around here!

Before we go, I’d like to remind all of the listeners that I will be leading some classes at the Valuation Expo in New Orleans on March 20th at the Jung hotel. My classes are absolutely free, which is ironic because they’ll no doubt be some of the most valuable course being taught at the expo this year, no disrespect meant to any of the other presenters and teachers. I have to give a very big fist bump to everybody making Valuation Expo happen this year and for having the guts to invite people like me, Mark Skapinetz, and several others to talk on the topics we like to talk and teach on. Instead of it all being about CE credits, anti trust, bifurcation, AMCs, or whatever else gets talked about at those events, they’ve also realized the benefit of having a few people like me to teach appraisers about business, marketing, wealth building, mindsets, and all of the stuff I’ll be speaking on at the expo. What I have also decided to do is hold my own class on the day after the expo for anybody who is interested in going deeper with some of the topics I’ll be teaching on Friday. Unfortunately, as gracious as the Expo coordinators have been, they have a tight schedule to keep so I’ll only be teaching for two separate hours on two different topics. One topic is digging your well before you’re thirsty where I’ll give you 11 of the most effective techniques for building an extremely profitable business, which includes building a killer private book of business like we have. The other class I’ll be teaching is called building the million dollar appraisal business where I’ll show you the steps to building and structuring an appraisal business that can make you a millionaire. Since I only have one hour for each topic, I will be flying through the information. However, I will go much deeper on Saturday in our own private meeting room at the Jung and that too is free. The meeting room only holds 50 people and the class will be 4-5 hours of business and life building and doing what I do every day in my own business and coach others to you in there’s! I’d love to meet some of you so please feel free to join us for some coaching on Saturday March 21st at the Jung Hotel in New Orleans.

The last thing, the March teams are building for the Level 2 small group coaching program so, if you’ve considered getting some coaching, this may be the time to jump in and see what it can do for you. Its guaranteed for a full 60 days so you’ve got nothing to lose by trying it out. If you have any questions about whether or not coaching is right for you, just reach out and speak with me directly. I’d love to chat with you and help you figure out if it IS right for you or not. That’s it my friends, I hope this series has been helpful for you and that I have created some value for you and your family.

Now, go think, feel, and be wealthy my friends!  until next week, I’m out…