Thoughts > feelings > beliefs > actions > habits > your life.
I didn’t come up with that hierarchy, but I have something to add to it.
Firstly, it’s a fascinatingly simple device for mapping out your day-to-day, and thereby mapping out your year-to-year. If you’re someone who’s ever said, “I’m going to do it differently from now on!” only to find yourself doing it…exactly the same from then on, this hierarchy is why. Doing things (from whenever on) falls squarely in the actions category. But unless our beliefs about doing something have changed, our actions will, in the end, remain unchanged.
Secondly, this isn’t bad news. It’s actually incredible news. The hierarchy is a tool that we can leverage.
What we have to do is dig into what in the chain of events (thoughts >>> your life’s outcome) that we can control.
At first, you may think you can control every part of the chain. But you’re wrong. You can control only one part of the chain: your actions.
Seriously.
Don’t believe me? Well, let’s start at the end and work backwards. Your life’s outcome is not in your control. Not even if you are the most devout and ascetic Buddhist monk. No matter what you do, you just won’t fully control the environments you find yourself in, and therefore never control the outcome of your life.
What about habit? Well, your habits are literally and physically hardwired into your neural matrices. That which you repeatedly do gets physically grooved into your brain and strengthened over time, making it easier and easier to do what you repeatedly do. This can have beneficial and detrimental effects. If you’ve read this newsletter before, you’ll know what I mean. You can’t control what is already physically built into your head.
And beliefs? Beliefs govern our actions, but we don’t consciously choose our beliefs. We form them unconsciously, though with the help of the conscious mind. A simple example would be someone who had a car accident on the I-405, not once, but twice. He will likely believe the I-405 is a uniquely dangerous highway. OR he will believe that the drivers on that highway are terrible. He may not even consciously believe this to be true. But subconsciously? There is almost certainly some sort of aversion to that highway. Either way, he didn’t create the belief. The multiple accidents created it.
But what about feelings? I wish I could control my feelings. And if I ever learn how, I’ll make billions. But you can’t control your feelings because you can’t control your subconscious mind. Let’s take the above example of the person with two card accidents. How do you think he feels when he gets on the I-405 highway? Not good. Probably super anxious. He probably flashes through a supercut of the two accidents and then looks forward to getting off the highway as soon as possible. He didn’t choose to replay the events of the accidents or feel anxious. That was his subconscious reminding him in its own perverted way that he better be careful. No one can make themselves feel the way they consciously want to. It doesn’t work that way. It’s not a two-way street.
And thoughts? Well, here we come to heart of the matter. No one, and I mean no one, can control their thoughts. It’s just not how the human brain is wired. The conscious and subconscious minds are in a constant tango of push and pull over what to do with their thoughts, but the “me” or “you” as we know ourselves to be is never able to say, “I choose to think about puppies for the next hour.” Instead, if I say pink elephant, you think of a pink elephant. And the whole of your waking life, by way of your senses, the world around you is throwing out infinite versions of pink elephants. The line where “your” thoughts as “you” would have them and the thoughts given to you by the world around start and stop is…tough to find.
So, okay, well then what can we do to improve our life’s outcome? If we can only control one part of the flow chart of our life (our actions), but given that our actions are influenced by things we can’t control (beliefs, feelings, and thoughts), how do we take control of our life?
Here’s a good place to start: Exposure.
Nope, I don’t mean taking your clothes off in public. I mean exposing yourself to new information. Particularly, informed viewpoints.
Exposure to informed viewpoints is the easiest way I know of for improving your life’s outcome. Because this kind of exposure has a critical function: it influences your thoughts. Everything about your life’s outcome is downhill from your thoughts. So, why not go to the source?
How do we get this kind of exposure? Well, it depends on how you want to change your life. For my customers at Quit Kit, the number one thing they care about is getting their life back from drug addiction. They feel like they don’t have the ability to stop taking their drug of choice. Even though they can control most every action in their days—going to work, cooking, taking care of their kids, practicing instruments, building a business—when it comes to the drug, they can’t escape a voice in their head that says use. And they give in to the command. Every time.
Dealing with this voice is essential to overcoming addiction. And by dealing, I don’t mean eliminating. I don’t even mean coping. I mean relegating it to where it mentally belongs: in the mental basement along with all the other garbage we collect throughout our lives. Like the time we got bullied during recess in third grade, or when we fell off our bicycle in front of a group of strangers and they all got quiet and stared.
Useless shit like that. You can’t ever get rid of those images/voices/memories. But you can put them where they belong.
And exposure to books, videos, and audio recordings from people who have an acute understanding of just how to accomplish this is the key to dealing with the voice that says use.
The more you listen to people who have lived your experience and escaped the clutches of the drug trap, the more you start to absorb their thought processes. Simultaneously, you learn about the reasons your thought processes are what they are. You see why you are the way you are, and why you don’t have to be that way. And through this, you start to significantly influence your thoughts. Right under their noses. If thoughts have noses.
I mean this. This isn’t some light piece of advice. I know it works because it’s absolutely, no holds barred, how I quit 4 addictions. I didn’t know what to do with the voice in my head that corralled my thoughts into one loud message: use. But I knew that other people had quit what I was using, and that there was nothing they have that I don’t have. If they could do it—I could do it. I just didn’t know how until I started listening to them.
I exposed myself. Audiobook after audiobook, video after video, podcast episode after podcast episode, until I started to see my drug of choice in less and less of a favorable light, and more and more in a “this is kryptonite” kind of light. And the voice in my head that said use got lost in the new information I was learning. My thoughts changed. They started focusing on other things—things I was learning by exposing myself to stories and information that so many people had put together just for others like them.
The voice never went away, but it lost its volume. It’s now like a depressed teenager, sulking in his room. He’ll make a stink if you open his door and try to reach out to him. He’ll make you feel like if you close the door, it’ll be really hurtful. But unlike the teenager, the voice will never grow and mature and will absolutely never come out for family dinners. So there is absolutely no reason to open that door, reason with the voice, or even pay attention to it. Let it rot in the mental basement with all the other useless stuff we pick up along the ways of our lives.
Once your thoughts change, your feelings about the drug will change, and then, so will your beliefs. Once your beliefs about the drug have changed, it is simply remarkable how much easier it is not to use. It’s like someone turned off autopilot in your brain. What once was done routinely is now undesirable. And over time, what is undesirable is no longer done. Our actions change. And when they’ve changed for long enough, so have our habits.
And when our habits change, so does our life’s outcome.
If you’re struggling with addiction, or even feeling stuck in your life, here are some books you can expose yourself to right now that will help influence your thoughts for the better:
Start there. Come to me if you need any more suggestions.
As a bonus, both books are available on audiobook, so you can just listen to them whenever you have free time or are doing mundane things.
Expose yourself, and you change the way you think. Change the way you think, and you change your life.
