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Most people wander through life believing they are thinking, when in reality, they are merely rearranging their prejudices. They let the outside world—the news, the weather in Columbus, the number in their bank account—dictate their internal state. They are reacting, not creating. It is like watching a movie and yelling at the screen hoping the ending changes. The movie is already filmed. The past is history. If you want to change the sequel, you have to go to the writer's room.

You possess six higher mental faculties, "mental muscles" that most people never bother to unwrap from the packaging. You have Perception, Will, Imagination, Memory, Reason, and Intuition. These are not just abstract concepts discussed by philosophers in tweed jackets; they are the tools of creation.

Consider your Imagination. This is not just child's play or a way to pass the time during a boring meeting. It is the workshop of the mind. It is the mechanism by which you turn non-physical energy into physical reality. Everything you see around you—the chair you sit in, the phone in your hand, the concept of "internet"—was once just a picture in someone's mind. As we discussed with the Stick Person, you must build the fantasy. You must be like the architect in Inception, building a world so real that your subconscious cannot tell the difference.

Then there is the Will. Most people mistake Will for grit or force, like trying to open a pickle jar with greasy hands. Real Will is the ability to hold one idea on the screen of your mind to the exclusion of all outside distractions. It is the mental equivalent of a magnifying glass focusing the sun’s rays to burn a hole in a leaf. If you scatter the rays, you get warmth; if you focus them, you get fire.

The problem is your Paradigm—that multitude of habits and beliefs fixed in your subconscious. It’s the autopilot that keeps bringing you back to the same results, year after year. You know you should do better. You know how to do better. But there is a gap between what you know and what you do. This is the Knowing/Doing Gap. Your paradigm is a cybernetic mechanism, like a thermostat. If you try to heat up your life with a new goal, your internal thermostat kicks in and says, "Whoa there, we don't make that kind of money," and cools you right back down to your comfort zone.

To change this, you must engage in Praxis. You must integrate your belief with your behavior. It requires constant, spaced repetition of your new ideal. You have to overwrite the old software. It feels awkward at first, like writing with your non-dominant hand. But as you persist, the more you read my emails, the more success you will have in rewriting that code. It becomes automatic.

You must stop looking at your current results as the final truth. Your current results are just the echo of your past thinking. Use your Perception to change your point of view. If you see an obstacle, shift your mental stance until you see a stepping stone.

When you start operating from the inside out, rather than the outside in, the universe responds with mathematical precision. You will look back at this moment and be grateful for having clicked the links in my email, realizing it was the turning point where you stopped reacting to life and started commanding it.

You are a creative center, operating in a field of infinite potential. The only limits on you are the ones you have accepted in your own mind.

Bradley Woods

Which of these six mental muscles—Perception, Will, Imagination, Memory, Reason, or Intuition—do you feel is currently the weakest in your own life, and what would happen if you started training it today?

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