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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Vincenza Russel" data-source="post: 26896" data-attributes="member: 9426">After decades of running businesses and pondering success I have finally identified the formula.It's related to how the brain is wired. There are basically 2 main states, with the majority of the population being in the first.( You can retrain your brain to be like the second if you're persistent enough AND aware of the 2 states )The What (The Theory)There are 2 circuits, and within each circuit different strengths.The first circuit, is the one that the majority of people are in.This circuit is :-Safety = predictabilityIf their environment is predictable, they feel safe, and they will function from the pre-frontal cortex.This means their dopamine pathways are active and functioning.Dopamine pathways are switched ON when they feel safe, when things are predictable.Wake up, brush teeth, go to work, do the tasks your boss gives you, have lunch with friends, come home, watch tv, sleep, repeat.They have dopamine all day long like this.Move that person into the life of an entrepreneur and suddenly, they can't work. They can't focus.But why they ask? Why could they work so easily in a job, but when it's their own business they have no motivation.Because, predictability is gone. Safety is gone. The brain is now managed by the older sub-cortical regions. The limbic system.The amygdala scans for threats and triggers fight/flight/freeze.The hypothalamus releases either adrenaline or cortisol.If your brain goes to freeze/flight, then you're truly fucked in this system. You will get nothing done. You will instead go on youtube and seek some comfort through predictability. You'll order some comfort food. You'll watch netflix. You'll distract yourself. You'll scroll infinitely.If your limbic system does fight, then you'll work, but from a high stress, high cortisol fear based perspective, not the dopamine and pre-frontal cortex.This person will succeed, and if they can create predictability in their business, they'll go back to the pre-frontal cortex and dopamine pathways.BUT, that person won't scale their business. They won't do new things. They can only function inside the prison of predictability they've created.So far we haveType A 1 - Safety = predictability - Limbic system = flight or freeze -- They can't run businesses in this state. They need a job. They literally cannot function without predictability.Type A 2 - Safety = predictability - Limbic system = fight (This is me now) - They can build a business in a state of stress and if they can create predictability quickly enough, can enjoy success and money and maintain that. They can scale, but it's harder and uncomfortable, because they have to hand control over to the fight/adrenaline limbic system brain, and why would you do that when you're already enjoying comfort/some success? So these people, in this state can reach $1mil/year, but aren't going to be able to reach $500mil/year, and if shit hits the fan, rebuilding is stressful.And there's also varying levels. There's not a pure A1, and pure A2. Some things will trigger freeze/flight in me, some things trigger fight. Others have less fight, and others have more fight.I would say 97-99% of humanity are in this circuit.And it's why we fight with success, wealth, happiness, meaning and life all the time, while there are some who just seem to effortlessly go from success to success, waking up at 6am every day with infinite energy.That's the type B'sTrump, Bezos, Musk..Not only are their brains working on a different circuit, but they are are the highest end of those circuits. Love or hate Trump, the man can deal with an unbelievable amount of shit, and not only does he not care, but at what is he now, 80 years old? He can still get up, eat some shit food and work non-stop.. lol.How?Dopamine. His brain is just firing dopamine all day long, every day like he's whistling through the forest, without a care in the world, chopping down trees, in a forest with no dangers.He has the dopamine firing that most of us have when we sit playing World of Warcraft, killing wolves, slowly levelling up, without a care in the world.But what is this circuit? What's the fundamental difference..Remember type A isSafety = Predictability.Well, type B is :Safety = Capability.This means, they almost always feel safe.It's still to varying degrees. If you push enough, even Trump's limbic system would trigger, although it might take something like, giant monsters coming out the ground and taking over the world. Complete hopelessness.Us? We see a post about SEO being dead and we're in fight or flight mode ;-)Remember, the most fundamental circuit of the brain IS safety. It is the highest priority of the brain.No safety = LIMBIC SYSTEM RED ALERT!You can't get around that. You need to feel safe.And you either feel safety from predictability (You can't grow and you're dependent on the outside world)Or capability (You are only dependent on your internal state)Now, here is the most interesting part, and the most fundamental part to all of this.Remember your brain is a BIOLOGICAL REINFORCEMENT LEARNING MACHINE.Now, if the primary goal of the brain is safety.And type A, equates predictability to safetyThen this means, your brain will REWARD tasks completed to maintain predictability.Your brain is trained to reward you with dopamine for tasks related to predictability.It will penalize you and go into panic mode if you stray from that.Type B issafety = capability.These brains are wired to REWARD with dopamine tasks related to increasing capability, because these brains have been tuned/aligned(think what you know about AI/chatgpt/LLMs) towards capability being the thing that guarantees safety.AND THERE IS THE MAGIC!It's not just that these brains won't go into fight/flight/freeze.They will literally reward you with dopamine for INCREASING CAPABILITY.Which means..You do new things.You take risks.You enter chaos.You do difficult things.Why do you think top entrepreneurs keep pushing themselves? They never sit still. They are always building building building.THAT IS DOPAMINE!Their brains are wired to reward them with dopamine for increasing capability.Your brain(and my brain) are wired to reward us for increasing predictability.And that's it.That is the ultimate secret to success. There is nothing more to it. Nothing more to uncover.When they were children, they had unique circumstances that aligned their brain's safety circuits with capability instead of predictability.Now, your mission is to re-align yourself. You are a biological reinforcement learning machine. You CAN RETRAIN.The How (The Practice to Change)Step 1 - AwarenessThe first step is awareness. If you didn't read The What above, then you need to. Awareness of the circuits is how you change them.Every time you feel procrastination, tension or a craving for comfort, label it."This is my predictability circuit firing"The act of doing that will recruit your pre-frontal cortex and stops the automatic limbic system taking over.How you label yourself has powerful implications.For example, if you say "I am anxious", then you are calling the power of the "I am" from your consciousness to label your identity as anxious.Instead of that, say "My system is asking for safety", or "I am currently experiencing the feeling of being anxious because of the predictability circuit".This activates not only your pre-frontal cortex, but separates out your consciousness from your brain(if you want to get a bit woo-woo, but I'm trying to keep this more brain-focused, as what we're doing is doing alignment training on the brain to put our lives on easy-mode)Step 2 - Create a micro proof of capabilityRemember your brain is a biological reinforcement learning machine. It will update the model with new weights in real time based on feedback.Normally we are unaware, and feedback is automatic from the environment and our existing brain.But with awareness we can control that feedback.Now remember here, your goal is to UPDATE YOUR BRAIN'S WEIGHTS. It's not to change your life in 1 step.1. Pick one small, but unpredictable task. Ie, don't seek your usual comfort/predictability task. No going for a walk, no meditation, no netflix, no youtube, no porn.You must pick something unpredictable.It could be, making a single cold call, sending an email, a cold shower. It has to be painful/unpredictable.Just a TINY thing that moves you towards unpredictability.2. Slow your breathing before you start. Become aware of the breaths and keep them steady in and out. Do this 3-4 times. This keeps your pre-frontal cortex ONLINE.3. Now complete the small action.4. Take out your new uncertainty journal and write "I did task X, while feeling uncertain and nothing bad happened to me."What you've done here is fed your reinforcement learning system a reward prediction error linked to capability.Repeat this 1000's of times, and you've changed your brain for life.That might seem like a lot, but..If you do that 5 times a day, for a year, that's 1500 times.What else are you going to do? Spend all day doing predictability tasks like infinite scroll, where you're actually reinforcing your existing predictability circuit?Do it 10 times per day, every day, for a year, and you've got 3650. That's your brain reprogrammed.It'll reprogram at less and get easier and easier, but the more you do it, the faster you retrain.The bigger the uncertainty, and the more you feel SAFE afterwards, the bigger the reward prediction error change.You are literally retraining your brain now to feel safety from uncertainty, and that will eventually cause your brain to reward you with more and more dopamine for doing uncertain tasks, so once you use a little will power  and awareness to start this, you will start getting more and more dopamine rewards.Step 3 - Pair Discomfort with the RewardThis is a small boost you can do.After the uncomfortable task, give yourself a pleasurable body reward.Stretch, smile, exhale slowly or play a song you like. Something in the body that feels good.Can be standing up, stretching, smiling and saying woohoo.Your journal also acts as a reward.Step 4 - Engineer Controlled UnpredictabilityIn everything you do in daily life, add low-stake volatility.Take a cold shower. Every morning. In the shower, breath, feel safe, feel ok. I have completely stopped all hot showers other than at night to relax.Walk a different way to work.Try something new.Talk to someone new.Do something silly/scary.Every time you do it, after you do it, breath, feel the safety and say or journal "I did a new unpredictable thing, and I feel SAFE"This is important. This is the reinforcement learning. You are tying it to safety, so you must FEEL and acknowledge with words/thought/voice afterwards that you feel safe. Recognize the safety. Recognize that you did something uncertain and felt safe.It's as simple as this. The brain is just a biological reinforcement learning machine.If you do the unpredictable thing, then don't acknowledge with the feeling of safety, you don't reprogram.Don't skimp on this part.Spend as much as 5 minutes after really new/unpredictable tasks. 5 minutes of slow nasal breathing. 6 in, 8 out.Feel your pulse slow. You're telling your limbic system we survived.Visualize the next challenge. Feel the safety.Use your imagination, your visuals, your feeling. This is how YOU control your brain.Keep doing this, month after month after month.And each month you'll be amazed at what happens. You will become a different person and easy-mode will switch on for you.None of you were ever broken.You just had the wrong pre-training methods and need some new alignment training just like chatgpt went through.</blockquote>

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