The Anti-Secret #3/6: Overcoming Linear Thinking

In this talk (#3/6 in the Anti-Secret series), we'll pull back the curtain on one of the most significant invisible obstacles that almost all of us humans have to big success: LINEAR THINKING. This may not be something most people think about, but that's exactly why you will excel after you learn to overcome it!

Transcript

Today we're going to get into obstacle number three,

The third important reason why your typical the secret law of attraction,

Mind power kind of stuff generally does not work very well,

At least not for most people most of the time.

The first reason we covered was subconscious blocks and gave you some solutions.

We highlighted attachment to result and gave you some action steps to overcome that attachment.

Today we're going to talk about linear thinking.

Most of us don't realize it,

But our over-linearization of complex systems is holding us back.

It's causing us to fail.

And this is one of the primary reasons why people fail with manifesting law of attraction,

Energy healing.

But it's not just the new age stuff,

It's everything in life.

Relationships,

Your business,

Your investments,

Your physical health,

Your emotional health,

Your social life,

All of these things suffer when we over-linearize.

So what does that mean?

Let me give you a clear definition of exactly what I mean by linear thinking.

Then we'll talk about how it shows up in your life and then I'll show you how to get past it.

A good example of a linear process would be this.

Let's say you're driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas,

Which is about 300 miles,

Right?

Assuming there's no traffic,

Which of course is a terrible assumption,

Right?

But assuming there's no traffic,

There is a linear relationship between how fast you drive and how long it takes you to get there,

Right?

For example,

If you're going 300 miles and you're driving an average of 60 miles an hour,

It will take you five hours to make the trip,

Right?

Pretty simple,

Right?

Five hours times 60 miles an hour equals 300 miles.

If you drive twice as fast,

If you drive 120 miles an hour,

You'll get there twice as fast,

Right?

So 120 miles an hour times two and a half hours equals 300 miles.

If you drive twice as slow,

It'll take you twice as long,

Right?

If you drive in an average of 30 miles an hour,

It'll take you 10 hours to get there,

Right?

30 miles an hour times 10 hours is 300 miles.

Pretty easy,

Right?

That is a linear system.

If you drive twice as fast,

You'll get there in half the time or vice versa,

Right?

Here's the problem.

Almost nothing we really care about in life is a simple linear system like that,

Right?

Even driving from LA to Vegas in real life isn't like that.

Why?

There's traffic,

There's road construction,

There's cops that give you a ticket if you try to drive 120 miles an hour,

Right?

So real life is almost never as simple as that linear system.

But here's the thing.

Your brain thinks it is.

Our brains try to turn everything into a simple linear system,

But it does not work that way.

Many systems are not linear.

They're what's called nonlinear.

Maybe they will be polynomial.

And again,

Don't worry about the math words,

Right?

For example,

The area of a circle,

Right?

We all learn pi r squared in,

You know,

Sixth grade or whatever they teach that.

If you double the radius of the circle,

It does not double the area,

It makes it four times bigger,

Right?

Because the r is squared.

If you make the radius three times bigger,

Then the area gets nine times bigger.

So many systems in life aren't linear,

They might be polynomial.

An example of a real life thing would be,

How much space do you need to stop your car,

Right?

It's not linear.

So if you're driving 100 miles an hour,

You need a lot more than twice the space to stop than if you're driving 50 miles an hour.

The relationship between how fast you're driving and the braking distance is polynomial,

It's a square,

Right?

So if you're driving twice as fast,

It takes you four times as long to come to a stop.

If you're driving 10 times as fast,

It takes you 100 times as long to stop,

Right?

So that's what's called a polynomial system,

An example of a nonlinear.

There's also what we call exponential,

Right?

People talk about it in terms of the internet,

Oh,

Exponential growth,

Right?

That means instead of being x or x squared,

It's two to the x.

Again,

Don't worry about the nerdy math unless you're a geek like me,

Right?

I just want you to know that it's not that simple.

A simple linear equation does not work for most of the things we care about in life.

Because here's the thing,

The truth is not linear.

It's really complex,

Right?

Your health is not linear.

It's way more complex than that,

Right?

As an example,

If you cut your diet in half in terms of calories,

You won't lose half your body weight,

Right?

It's not that simple.

If you double your calories,

You will not double your body weight.

It's not that simple.

But again,

This is the trap.

Your mind will linearize things that are not actually linear.

And then you wonder why your life isn't working,

Right?

You wonder why you're struggling so much.

The truth is,

Most things in life you really care about are complex systems.

There is no simple linear approach that will give you success.

Great example would be most of us when we're children.

Learn from our parents,

Our teachers,

Etc.

Oh,

Be a good little boy,

A good little girl,

Right?

Work hard,

Do your homework,

Do well in school,

Listen to your parents and teachers,

And you'll be rewarded with a wonderful life.

Absolute crap,

Right?

That is nonsense.

There is no linear relationship between being a good little boy,

A good little girl,

And having success in life,

Right?

It's not that simple.

There is no linear relationship between getting good grades and how much money you make.

It's not that simple.

But you can see how when your mind thinks it is,

It will lead you to disaster.

And that's what happened to me.

I always wanted to be a good little boy,

Right?

Eat your vegetables,

Do your homework,

Be kind,

Listen to your teachers,

And you'll have a great life.

No!

Most of my adult life was a freaking nightmare.

I graduated top of my class at MIT,

Right?

Perfect GPA,

Awards,

Commendations.

I crushed that place.

I didn't just graduate once from MIT,

I graduated multiple times.

And my life was a freaking disaster.

Why?

It's not that simple,

Right?

Getting a good education,

Telling the truth,

Going to bed on time does not guarantee you a good life.

Just like not eating sugar does not guarantee that you'll be slim and healthy.

There's a relationship,

There's a correlation,

But it's not linear.

That's all I want you to hear.

And the trap is we linearize things.

Your brain will try to make everything into this nice,

Convenient,

Simple,

Linear relationship.

And then you wonder why it's not working,

Right?

You'll think,

Oh,

I can get to Las Vegas in two and a half hours,

I'll just drive fast.

No!

You're going to run into traffic,

Right?

Other cops are going to pull you over.

There is not a direct line to a solution here,

Other than we take away the direct line to the failure,

Right?

Stop thinking that your relationship is linear and maybe go find a way to make it work.

Your intuition is not linear.

Nothing in life that's really important is linear.

And as long as you're trying to make it so,

You're probably going to fail.

Another great example of how we try to linearize things.

I remember after my first marriage broke up,

I needed a few years to recover.

And then when I got back into the dating game,

I thought,

Hey,

I worked with a dating coach and he'll tell me what to wear and what bar to go to,

Right?

And what pickup line to use.

And I'll get lots of phone numbers and dates and find a girlfriend.

Not that simple,

Right?

You take an unconfident guy,

Put him in cool clothes,

Point him at a cool bar and give him a pickup line.

It doesn't work,

Right?

It's not that simple.

Watch out,

Right?

Understand that things are complex and non-linear,

And then maybe you'll have success.

There's a great example of this.

One of my favorite books on software development is called The Mythical Madman.

Amazing book.

And what they talk about in the book is this.

One of the reasons why software projects fail,

Why so many of them are late and over budget and full of bugs is simple.

Most people who manage and develop software linearize it.

In the book,

They use this example.

They say that developing software is more like brain surgery than picking strawberries.

What does that mean?

Well,

For the most part,

Picking strawberries is linear in the sense that you put twice as many people into the field,

You'll get done in half the time,

Right?

There is a linear relationship there.

If you need people to pick strawberries,

You just go hire them and send them out,

Right?

And you'll get more strawberries.

Brain surgery is not like that.

You cannot take a 10-hour brain surgery and throw 10 brain surgeons at it and get it done in an hour.

It doesn't work that way,

Right?

It's not linear.

Instead,

We recognize a brain surgery works best when you have one brain surgeon followed by the supporting cast,

Right?

The anesthesiologist,

Surgeon's assistant,

Right?

Nurses,

Etc.

Similar thing with having a child.

You cannot get nine women together and make a baby in a month.

That's linear thinking,

Right?

One of the ways that we fall victim to this linear consciousness is we give meaning to things with a meaning isn't actually there.

As a simple example,

If someone breaks into your home,

It does not mean that your security system is worthless.

It's an understandable reaction,

Right?

You go and spend a bunch of money on a security system,

And then someone breaks in.

You go,

Oh,

It's garbage.

It doesn't work.

That's not true.

What it means is it didn't work in that instance,

Right?

It doesn't mean it's worthless.

It might have prevented 10 other break-ins that you'll never know about,

Right?

That's linear thinking.

In terms of medical treatments,

People will say,

Oh,

Well,

You know,

This treatment was given to my cousin who had disease X and it didn't work,

So it's garbage.

It's not that simple,

Right?

You give a hundred different people with the same disease,

The same treatment.

Some make it better and some may not.

You can't look at one piece of evidence and draw a conclusion.

But this is what I'm warning you.

This is what your brain will do to you.

Your brain will trick you into giving meaning that isn't there.

And then again,

You'll wonder why your life isn't working.

One thing that happened to me as an undergrad is so fascinating.

I,

For the first time,

Was part of a real scientific research team doing real science that was going to be published in a peer-reviewed journal,

Right?

That's kind of the golden standard of science.

And what happened was this.

I do an experiment,

Get some results,

And I'd be running down the hall,

Big smiles,

Running into my advisor's office.

I'd be all,

Lynette,

Lynette,

Look at what I got,

Right?

I did this,

And this happened,

And this happened,

And it means this,

And it means this,

And I'd be all excited.

We're going to get published.

We're going to win a prize,

All this stuff,

Right?

And this happened like 12 times.

And every time,

My advisor would say,

Brent,

Relax,

Right?

Take a breath,

Sit down,

Show me exactly what you did and what happened.

And she'd sit there with me patiently and calmly reviewing my process and the results.

And here's what happened every time.

My research,

My experiment didn't mean any of the things I thought it meant,

Not once.

And every time,

I kind of go back to my office,

You know,

Moping,

Oh man,

It didn't work.

But this is the point.

Even if you've had rigorous scientific training,

It's really difficult to draw meaningful conclusions from data,

Really,

Really difficult.

But yet your brain will do it all the time,

And it will be wrong.

And I don't mean this as an insult to everybody.

It's like asking you to build a skyscraper if you know nothing about architecture,

Mechanical engineering.

That's impossible,

Right?

Nobody could do that.

Even people that have devoted their lives to building skyscrapers still struggle with it because it's a hard problem,

Right?

So just know that applying linear meaning to results from the evidence,

The data you've experienced,

It's not that simple.

And the advertising world takes advantage of this.

You see people on the TV going,

Oh,

You know,

I bought this and,

You know,

My life got so much better.

And then you'll think,

Oh,

If I buy this,

My life will be better.

No,

It won't,

Right?

It's not that simple.

It's not that linear.

If,

For example,

Look at beer commercials on TV.

Beer commercials on TV are usually a bunch of really attractive,

Shiny,

Happy,

Single young people all in a bar and everyone's talking and smiling and having a great time.

I don't know about you,

But I've never been to a bar like that,

Right?

Not in my experience.

Why?

They're trying to create a linear relationship in your brain.

Oh,

If you buy this beer,

You'll be young and attractive and happy all the time hanging out at the bar.

No,

It's not that simple,

Right?

This is all I want you to know.

There is no obvious solution here,

Right?

But what you can do is recognize when your brain is getting overly linear and back off before you give it meaning.

That way you don't end up creating a disaster in your life.

I did this with muscle testing.

I got sucked into a financial scam.

I thought it wouldn't happen because I had done muscle testing on the guy I gave my money to.

And I thought,

Oh,

If he doesn't believe it's a scam,

It must be real.

No,

It's not that simple,

Right?

I went bankrupt.

It almost ruined my life.

So we're going to skip the rest of the drama in the story.

Just know this might be your missing piece.

Over-linearizing your life might be the one thing that's holding you back from getting good results.

And I'll show you more about how to identify the flaws in your thinking.

So you can start to get real results in your life.

Start moving forward.

Start living and experiencing those things you've only dreamed about up until now.

And I do sincerely hope this helps move you forward.

This is all I got to say for right now.

I am Brett Michael Phillips signing off,

And I hope to see you again very soon.

Until then,

Take care and namaste.