Ten Steps to Change Your Life and Become a Better Person (Part 2)

In the first part of this post series, we discussed two steps you may take to change your life and become a better person, and in this second part, we'll talk about four more.

Ten Steps to Being the Best:

3. Control your mind:

A study of 2,250 people found that our minds are distracted nearly half the time, and according to the study conducted by Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, we don't focus on the outside world or what we are doing 46.9% of the time. We get lost in our thoughts. This is known as mind wandering, which is why some people hate counting money while others love it. When our minds wander, we think about our goals without asking ourselves how we are going to achieve them or what is stopping us from doing so.

People do not like to be distracted. This means that we are unhappy half of the time that we are conscious. When our minds wander, we envision our lives without giving them much thought and base our goals on what other people have already accomplished. What dreams do you believe are unattainable, and have you come to accept this belief because someone else has told you so?

Have you ever heard of the story of the elephant and the rope? A man was passing by an elephant, but he suddenly stopped. He expected it to be tied to a tree, but he noticed that this gigantic creature was only tied to a small rope. When he asked the elephant's owner why, he was given the following explanation: "The elephants are tied with a thin rope when they are very young, which is enough to keep them from escaping, but as they become older, they continue to believe they can't get free from it."

If you accept your circumstances as they are, you are the elephant tied to the rope. Identifying and letting go of these beliefs is a great opportunity to develop yourself.

One of the most crucial characteristics that distinguishes outstanding performers, according to Beecham, is awareness: "The best competitors develop the skill of understanding and managing their unconscious thoughts by controlling their conscious thoughts and behavior."

Do you know where your mind has been wandering lately? Who said you couldn't achieve your goals? Do you believe them? What mental limitations do you believe are holding you back? Do they really exist?

4. Leverage your systems:

On March 1, 2010, an athlete named Galen Rupp announced that he was ready to break the American record for the fastest man in the 10,000-meter race, and not only did he break the record that night, but his rival, Chris Solinsky, also broke the record, and a man named Simon Bairu broke the Canadian record that night.

How did all these guys break records in one night? The moment Galen Rupp announced that he could break the record, breaking the record became possible. Those record-breakers were forced to use a part of their brain that brought them out of a state of mind-wandering. Professor Daniel Kahneman, the author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, names this part of the brain System 2.

What is System 2?

System 2 is a slow, measured way of thinking used when making difficult decisions or thinking “outside the box.” It is the opposite of System 1, which is dictated by habits. When we use the System 2 part of our brain, we instantly become more creative and challenge old ways of thinking.

• Use it to turn a fun little hobby into a career.
• Use it to turn your business idea into a reality.
• Use it to dream bigger.

System 2 is very powerful; you can use it anywhere you want, and it only requires one thing, which is complete focus. But most people are not fully focused on their dreams and goals; they are too busy having fun and wasting time.

So what can you achieve? How far can you go in achieving your dreams? Give this answer your full attention, and don't let false beliefs influence your answer. It will determine the limits of your success, and remember, the more you believe that something is possible, the more it becomes truly possible.

5. Expect luck:

Now is the time to question your unconscious expectations. Top performers think they are lucky. They believe in the power of possibilities, and this belief radically changes their chances of success. This is because their expectation of luck changes their behavior.

In a study conducted by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Columbia University, researchers found that our beliefs about luck fall into two categories: stable or unstable.

• People always think they are either lucky or unlucky.
• People believe that luck is unstable and often unpredictable.

It turns out that people who believed that luck was stable had a much higher motivation to succeed than people who saw that luck was unstable. Believing in luck makes you succeed. This is because believers in the stability of luck felt that it was under their control and used this belief to their advantage, while people who saw that luck was unstable did not care about it.

6. Understand your expectations:

Beecham's daughter was about to run a race, and on the morning of the race, Beecham gave his daughter some new athletic socks and told her, “Try these new socks on, and I bet you'll run faster than you usually do if you wear them, and your legs will feel faster and lighter.”

When Beacham said that, he officially set his daughter up for victory, and the result was that she ran the fastest race of her life. When her expectations were high, she broke the 19-minute barrier in the 5 km run for the first time ever. So whether or not you think it was luck doesn't matter according to the science. What really matters is your expectation of the outcome, and Dr. Beecham agrees that luck isn't what determines your success; rather it is expectation,  and there's a term for this kind of expectation phenomena called the "Pygmalion Effect" for when it happens.

What is the Pygmalion Effect?

The Pygmalion Effect is a phenomenon in which other people's expectations of a person change their behavior and performance. A Harvard psychologist by the name of Robert Rosenthal conducted the first study to look at expectations in the 1960s to see if the teacher's expectations would influence the student's performance in the classroom.

Rosenthal told the teachers that some of the students in class were expected to be high achievers based on the specialized Harvard test they took. But the surprising finding is that these students actually performed much better academically than their peers, and it's all because of expectations.

Expectations are unavoidable. They can only be changed. So if you're wondering, "How can I get better?" you don't have to believe in luck; just try to believe in expectations.

As the study of the daughter of Dr. Beecham and Rosenthal demonstrated, high expectations can really drive us to success, especially if they come from an influential person in our life.

In conclusion:

We discussed four measures in this article that you can do to change your life and become a better person, and we'll talk about four more in the last part of the article.