Episode 971 Scott Adams： A Micro Lesson on Affirmations. Can You Program Your Reality？
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Summary
In this episode, Dr. Bruce Lipton talks about the power of affirmations and how they can be used to rewrite your reality. It's a mind-bendingly simple technique that involves writing down your objective 15 times a day and repeating it out loud.
Transcript
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Hey everybody! Come on in here. Do you want something weird? Do you want to have a really weird 30 or 40 minutes?
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It came to the right place. You will be tantalized in the brain area. You'll be amused. You might be shocked or amazed.
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You might think the whole thing is just too weird for you. You never know what's going to happen in the next 30 or 40 minutes.
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But it's going to be good. Those of you who stay to the end, you may never be the same.
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For sure you'll be a little older because, you know, 30 or 40 minutes. But maybe even better than that. We'll see.
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All right. Today I'm going to talk to you about a thing called affirmations.
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Now, affirmations, I think, mean different things to different people.
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I'm not talking about the affirmations where you look in the mirror and tell yourself that you're a good person and, you know, gosh darn it, people like you.
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Now, the real version isn't much less cartoony than that, but it's different.
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And the real version is that you just write down or repeat in your mind, you could do it out loud, I suppose, 15 times a day, some specific kind of an objective that you have.
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And the idea is that somehow, and it's the somehow that we'll talk about, that's the fun and weird part, somehow, simply repeating or writing down your objective 15 times a day seems to make it happen.
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Full disclosure, I've been talking about this topic for decades.
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And so lots of people have tried it, and they've reported back to me.
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I didn't do any kind of a scientific poll, so I can't tell you how often it works or doesn't.
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I feel like people would more likely tell me if it worked, so I probably have an oversized sense of how often it worked.
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But I will tell you the story from my personal perspective.
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Some of you have maybe heard it or read about it.
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And that will form the basis upon which you can judge my credibility.
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So I'll tell you how I was introduced to this idea, how I used it, what happened.
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And then I'll tell you a little bit more about the technique.
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And then we'll talk about what kind of a universe gives you even this conversation.
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So we're going to get weird after we talk about it, okay?
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So first of all, I wrote about this just for background in three different books.
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God's Debris in fiction form, 2001, came out on 9-11-ish that week.
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And then more recently, it had failed almost everything and still went big.
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If you wanted to just get the closest explanation to what I'll be giving you today,
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So I was a young man in my 20s, and I had a friend who was in Mensa.
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And she was very smart, because you have to be in there.
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I don't remember the title of the book, but she was talking to me on the phone about it one day.
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And she said it taught something called affirmations.
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And it was this idea of writing down 15 times a day what you wanted.
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And she said that she tried it, you know, skeptically.
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And a series of coincidences happened, like just bizarre coincidences,
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that caused her to get the thing that she was affirming, that she was writing down.
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And I think she tried it a few times, and she talked about somebody else's experience.
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But, you know, I'm not a believer in any kind of supernatural power, luck, magic, horoscopes.
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So how did she talk me into trying something that has no scientific basis whatsoever
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And if it works, you'll be able to basically rewrite your reality.
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And you might even recognize the technique from Steve Jobs.
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When Steve Jobs was trying to hire, was it Scully?
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Because Scully was the head of Pepsi at the time.
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And he said, do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or change the world?
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And he basically resigned that moment, I think.
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I'm probably not going to be convinced that your seance is real
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She said, pick something that you know is not going to happen anyway.
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You'd get your thing that you had been writing down 15 times a day.
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well, that probably would have happened anyway, you know.
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So I picked something I thought was pretty unlikely,
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which was to, I'll keep this rated G in case somebody's watching it later.
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I wanted to, let's say, date a specific woman that I didn't even know.
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Somebody who was in the company, it was a big company.
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I didn't know her, didn't know where she worked, didn't know her name.
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Just somebody I'd seen in the hallway a few times and decided, oh my goodness.
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But I picked her as the object of my affirmation because she was so far out of my league.
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You know, if I'm being properly modest, it wasn't really close.
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You know, the two of us should never have gone on a date.
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And it was because of a series of coincidences that I won't get into.
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I mean, how do you just meet the one stranger in the whole planet you want to meet?
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And then the next thing you know, we're in the elevator at the same time.
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And when it was all done, what did I say to myself?
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Did I say to myself, those affirmations worked really well?
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I got something that I knew could have never happened in any other way.
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What I said to myself was, huh, I guess I have more game than I thought.
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I guess I had more buying power than I thought.
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So, of course, the experiment was a complete failure.
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Because the very thing that she told me to do didn't work.
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I didn't pick something that I couldn't later convince myself I'd gotten through my own great, you know, good looks or talent or something else.
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So, not long after that, I got in a bet with somebody at work about whether I could retake the GMATs, the test you take to see if you can get into a school to get your MBA.
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And that I would retake the test because I'd taken them before and I'd not scored very well.
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I scored in the 77th percentile, I think, which is not good enough to get into a good school.
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If I recall, I might have been a little hungover when I took the GMATs the first time.
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And the person I had the bet with had scored, I think, in the high 80s and was taking one of those review courses to beef up her ability to get an even higher score.
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And so she should have gone from like 88 to something higher, but they do tell you that you can't really raise your score that much.
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You know, it's not really IQ, but there's not a lot you can do.
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And I was telling her, you know, those review classes, they're not going to help you at all.
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She said, oh, no, these, it's going to make a big difference.
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I said that I will take the test at the same time you do.
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Because I was thinking about taking it again anyway.
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Even though I was in the high 70s, you were in the high 80s.
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And you're taking a special class to get into the 90s, which you would need to get into Berkeley, because you wanted to go to Berkeley.
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And, you know, you'd have to get into somewhere in the low to mid 90s to get into Berkeley at the time.
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So it was the dumbest bet, because what were the odds that that would happen?
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And because I had taken the test before, I knew what the little output looked like.
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You know, the mail that you get that says, here's your score, and it says in this little box.
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And I decided that I would pick, as my target for my affirmations, 94.
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So in order for this to happen, I would somehow, without taking any kind of a review course, magically go from 77 to 94.
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Now, I don't know if it's ever been done, but that's a really big ask, right?
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So I thought, that is sufficiently impossible, that if that happens, I'm going to say, you know, maybe there is something here.
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So I visualized the exact mailer, assuming it would be similar to the one before, it turned out it was.
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And I just imagined seeing a 94 in that percentile thing.
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But I did take some practice tests, just, you know, on my own, because that was okay.
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I didn't have a tutor or anything, I was just taking the practice tests.
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And every time I took a practice test, I scored high 70s percentile, just like the first time.
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So I'd take another one, and about the same, and every one, right in that zone.
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I'd take it in the morning, I'd take it with coffee, I'd take it under every condition.
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You know, a bunch of practice tests, and every time, high 70s.
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The day comes, I take the test, she takes the test.
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Time goes by, and I go to the mailbox, and there's the result.
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And I go back to my little apartment, my moldy little apartment in the hate district of San Francisco, living there by myself.
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And I opened up the result, and I looked for the little box where I knew the percentile would be.
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And I looked at it, and I thought, I'm obviously looking at the wrong box.
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And I looked at it, and I thought, it can't actually be 94.
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And I would look at it, and I'd say, I think it is.
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For hours, I would look at that piece of paper, and I would sit just all alone in my little apartment in San Francisco,
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And I would lean back, and I'd think, I'm not sure that just happened.
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And I'd have to pick it up and look at it again.
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I just kept picking it up and looking at it and saying, what have I done?
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So, I ended up going to Berkeley and getting my MBA.
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So, it wasn't long after that that I thought, what's the limit to this thing?
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And is it really doing anything, or am I just imagining this?
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So, I set myself a goal of getting rich in the stock market.
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Now, remember, I had no money, so it would be hard to get rich in the stock market.
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You know, I had maybe $1,000 that I could put into the stock market.
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So, one day, as I'm doing my affirmations, I wake up.
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I sat straight up in bed in the middle of the night with this thought in my head to buy stock in Chrysler.
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Now, Chrysler at the time, I'm not good on my years, but Chrysler at the time was bankrupt.
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So, you know, they owed the government a bunch of money, and a lot of people were betting they weren't coming back.
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So, their stock was just, you know, right at the edge of oblivion.
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So, out of all the stocks in the world, how many stocks do you think there are?
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And so, I tried to open an account with Charles Schwab, and my paperwork got lost, and it took too long.
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And in the time it took me to try to open up an account using snail mail and stuff getting lost,
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the stock had gone up, I don't know, a bunch, 20%, let's say.
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And so, by the time I got my account opened, it had already gone up a lot.
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And I thought, ah, it was a good idea, but I just missed it.
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So, I didn't buy it, because it had already gone up.
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And those of you who are old enough to remember, what was the best stock of that entire year?
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It was like the number one story stock, and of 10,000 stocks, and I picked it randomly.
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Maybe there was something floating around in my head that just came together.
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So, I thought to myself, all right, I'm just going to do the same process, except now I have my account open.
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And one day, I picked up a newspaper, and I flipped through it, and there was an article about this software company called Ask, A-S-K.
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But at the time, it was sort of a hot, new, technology-looking thing, back when, you know, that was new.
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And, oh, it became Ask Jeeves, maybe, I don't know.
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And, no, it was Ask Computer, so it's a different company than Ask Jeeves.
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But anyway, the point is, I didn't know anything about this company, and I just thought, I'm going to buy this.
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I buy this stock, it goes up, I don't know, 10% in a week.
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So, I sold that stock, made it, pocketed it a quick 10%.
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I think I made, probably I netted $100 in a month.
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And I'm thinking to myself, hey, I think I have something here.
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I just made $100 without doing anything remotely like work in a week.
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The second part of the story is that that stock didn't stop going up when I sold it.
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And it was, again, one of the storied stocks of the year.
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It was like a story that people would write about.
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What's up with this stock just going to the moon?
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So, both times, I didn't trust to stick with the thing that I was being guided toward.
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So, I thought to myself, let me try something else.
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And then I did, I, Scott Adams, will become a number one New York Times bestselling author.
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And there was also a time that I lost my ability to speak.
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So, for about three and a half years, I couldn't speak properly because of a condition called spasmodic dysphonia, which was incurable.
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So, long story short, I searched the world and found a guy who had an experimental, fairly newish, surgery and fixed it.
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But that was the subject of my silent affirmations, that I would someday speak perfectly.
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Now, of course, I don't speak perfectly, so affirmations are sort of directional.
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Then I'll tell you the fun part is, is there anything to it?
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You just write or repeat that thing that you want and use this form.
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If you're too specific, and you'll recognize this for me talking about systems versus goals,
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you don't want to be too specific because you don't want to say, for example,
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You know, you might get the thing that you're affirming, but maybe there was something better
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So try to keep your affirmations, you know, fairly general.
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Now, an exception would be there's nothing better than being a syndicated cartoonist if you're a cartoonist.
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You know, if you're going to be a cartoonist, this would be the best one, you know, of the types of cartoonists you could be.
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So shooting for the top is not so bad, because what if I'd gotten close?
00:22:00.780
Well, maybe I still could have made a little money or whatever.
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But there's nothing better in the world of cartooning than being a syndicated cartoonist.
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If you're trying to win a, you know, win an Oscar or something, yeah, go ahead.
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You know, I don't think those are terribly important, but if you want to.
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So people ask me, you know, does it matter where I write it, can I type it, can I chant it, can I sing it?
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It's only about focusing on the thing that you want and visualizing it.
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If you don't visualize it, you're not putting the most active part of your brain into the game.
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Now, here's the part where you should be saying to yourself, why would this work based on your complete lack of science and logic or anything that would connect this to the real world?
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You know, why would chanting or writing something down have any effect on the real world?
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Here are some ideas, and I'll let you decide which one you like the best.
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One of the possibilities is that somehow these affirmations change the basic nature of reality itself.
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Can we just stipulate we don't have to talk about it too much?
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Because, you know, I may have a different view of reality than you do.
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But you probably don't think reality changes because you wrote something down.
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What if I'm just good at stuff, which explains why I had some success?
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And what if I just forgot the ones that didn't work?
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Now, those of you who read this book know that I have many, many failures.
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So how do I explain that I'm acting like this works when 10 to 1 it didn't?
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I didn't use affirmations on almost any of those things.
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Now, you're going to have to take my word for that.
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But there's a reason for that, and I'll get to that.
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There's a reason why I only did it on the ones that worked.
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So another possibility is that when you're doing affirmations is you're tuning your brain.
00:25:00.920
There was a study on luck by this guy, Dr. Weissman, and he wanted to see if people had luck.
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Everybody's going to have the same luck if you're really controlling the experiment.
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But he did this experiment that was very revealing.
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He had people divide themselves into groups that considered themselves lucky
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and groups that considered themselves not lucky.
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And he said, look through the newspaper and count up the number of photographs.
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Now, the people who considered themselves unlucky counted them up.
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And on average, they got the right number that was 42.
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And it took them several minutes to complete the task.
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The people who considered themselves lucky, even though really nobody was any luckier than anybody else,
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but they considered themselves lucky, they also got the right number on average, 42 photographs.
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Whereas the people who thought they were unlucky, it took them minutes.
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The difference was that on all the newspapers for both groups,
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and the second page in big writing, it said, stop counting the photographs, there are 42.
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The people who considered themselves unlucky didn't see the time saver because they were looking for photographs.
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They didn't expect anything to be there except what they were looking for.
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The people who considered themselves lucky are always looking for luck.
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So what he found is that if you open your mind to the possibility that you could get lucky,
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you actually will notice things that will make you appear lucky.
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And if you ask people about their success stories, drill down a little bit.
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If you know anybody who got successful in an out-sized way,
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you're going to find this point where they noticed something,
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or there seemed to be some kind of a luck or coincidence.
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But if you drill down, maybe they were just tuning themselves to notice it.
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Maybe they just set their filters, and it wasn't luck at all.
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I saw that in a corporate training program once.
00:27:31.220
And it's just the idea that you're familiar with the fact that if somebody calls your name in a crowded room,
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you can hear it easily, even if there's a lot of background noise.
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Why is the one word that I can hear clearly in that mumbling was my own name?
00:27:53.780
And that's because your brain tunes for things that are important to you.
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So if you use affirmations, you're really tuning into a specific objective.
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In my case, in cartooning, I noticed something on television one day that led me down a trail
00:28:09.840
to find a cartoonist who gave me the advice that turned me into a cartoonist.
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Maybe I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been doing affirmations at the time.
00:28:21.960
Here's another possibility, and a strong one, that you're not really causing something to happen,
00:28:29.680
but rather you're finding out the hard way what things you're committed to.
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And you're probably committed to things that on some subconscious level, you think you can do.
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So I think we have this situation, and this is just a hypothesis,
00:28:47.480
that you might have a rational thought about what you can pull off in life,
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but you also have an irrational opinion of yourself,
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There's your rational one saying, I don't know if you can do that.
00:29:05.620
But you might also have an irrational part that says, I got this.
00:29:12.360
And so the hypothesis is that if you can put in the time to write down that objective,
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you know, I, Scott Adams, or Philip, your name, will do this,
00:29:22.200
and you actually could do that 15 times a day for, I don't know, a few months,
00:29:26.800
that means that there's some part of you, probably your subconscious,
00:29:32.040
if there is such a thing, that thinks you can pull it off.
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Because otherwise, it's not going to let you do it.
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Remember I told you that there were all those things I failed at,
00:29:41.480
that you would think, oh, why wouldn't you want those to be more successful?
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I, of course, wanted everything I've been involved with to be successful.
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But there are some things that I wanted with a burning desire,
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There are some things I just wanted to work, like everybody wants everything to work.
00:30:03.980
And sometimes I would want those things to work a lot.
00:30:07.220
But that extra commitment of writing down 15 times a day,
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I've only done that of those things that had the extra meaning to me, I guess.
00:30:21.140
So it could be that this is a backwards correlation.
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It could be the fact that you're even willing to write it down 15 times a day
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is simply telling you something about yourself.
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that doesn't mean you have to program base reality.
00:30:53.780
So could it be that the only thing that happened in my stories
00:30:58.060
is that I programmed my filter to believe these things happened to me?
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Or did I program my filter to simply make opportunities
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More, not presentable, but more opportunities present themselves to me.
00:31:18.360
Did I do something somehow with the affirmations?
00:31:31.780
If you looked at this and you said to yourself,
00:31:38.140
It doesn't look like it has any more science than horoscopes.
00:31:47.240
But yet, there's something compelling about it.
00:32:35.940
I'm not going to tell you it's going to work for you.
00:33:01.520
I would say there's no chance it's changing base reality.
00:33:12.980
If I had to bet, that would be the most active part.
00:33:17.520
about finding out what you're willing to work hard for.
00:33:24.000
to find out if you're willing to work hard for it.
00:33:27.260
But I also think there's something to the fact that
00:33:30.020
in some ways, it's programming your filter on reality
00:33:40.580
we're only dealing with this weird symbolic level
00:33:43.160
where we think we're in the same reality, but we're not.
00:33:46.380
We already talked about the fact that everybody's walking around
00:33:52.380
You think that the other political party is crazy.
00:34:00.040
Could it be that there's a way to steer your little bubble?
00:34:10.760
within a reality that you don't even recognize.
00:34:27.460
But we're in very different worlds all the time.
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And once you realize you're in different worlds,
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then you know that those worlds are at least a little bit subjective.
00:34:37.480
And if you could change just the way you view your world
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And that's what affirmations might help you do.
00:34:57.820
Some of these lessons might not stay on Periscope forever,
00:35:03.480
but they will be on the Locals.com platform forever.
00:35:09.140
And I hope that answers some of your questions.