Dr. Rick Wallace is the Founder, CEO & Chief Life Mastery Strategist at The Visionetics Institute. He created the Visionetics concept for optimal personal development based on nearly three decades of academic study, research and experience in the areas of behavioral psychology, neuroscience, personal development, metaphysics, quantum physics, neuro-linguistic programming, psycho-cybernetics and spirituality.
Dr. Wallace is one of the leading minds in the area of personal change --- achieving an exceptional rate of success with his clients.
The Reticular Activating System and How It Influences Your Behavior and Performance
The Reticular Activating System
I am sure we all know people who never seem to get what they say they want out of life. Or, maybe you have a lot of aspirations, but you always seem to be stuck in a particular rut. What you should know is that your mind is the most important and the most powerful force in the universe. In fact, your mind is the genesis (origin) of your destiny (future achievements). You should also know that your mind works in direct harmony with your brain and other neurological functions to create your reality. If you have a perpetual situation in your life, it can, without fail, be traced to your thinking.
One of the major neurological influences on behavior is the Reticular Activating System (RAS), a bundle of neuro-connectors and nerves that connects the brain stem, cerebrum, and cerebellum and mediates your overall level of consciousness. You can view the RAS as the gateway keeper of the data and information that is allowed into your conscious mind.
Your subconscious mind and the non-conscious brain are bombarded with over two to four-billion bits of information per second, far more than your conscious mind can process at any given moment. Your RAS operates as a filter to remove any information that it believes is not important to you at a given time. Your RAS is always at work performing this responsibility.
All your senses, except the sense of smell (which is wired to your brains emotional center), is wired through this network of neuro-receptors that determine what information you will be exposed to at a conscious level. The RAS plays an immense role in controlling the sensory information that you are forced to perceive on a daily basis.
Your sensory organs are feeding billions of bits of information to your brain every second — far more than your conscious mind can process; therefore, your RAS serves as the gatekeeper to your conscious mind — determining what information will be allowed in and what will be kept out. For the next 20 seconds, take the time to really listen and watch to see just how much is going on around you that you never really notice. Now imagine attempting to manage your thoughts if you had to process all that activity every second of the day.
The RAS determines what needs to be funneled into your conscious mind and what can be safely ignored. Being that the reptilian brain, the most ancient part of our brain, is wired for survival, you can imagine that the RAS is highly trained to recognize information that is representative of a threat of harm or death. This type of information will always be given the highest priority. Apart from the sense of smell, all sensory information, including visual stimuli, sound, touch, and taste are processed through the RAS.
The term “reticular” means “net or web-like. So, the RAS is a net-like formation of nerve cells and neuro-receptors that are embedded within the brainstem — lying between the brain and the spinal cord. While the RAS does not play a role in interpreting sensory information, it does play a vital role in categorizing it and filing it away. It also works to activate the entire cerebral cortex — making it more alert and increasing its level of readiness to interpret incoming data, simultaneously preparing the brain to take the appropriate action.
Depending on how the conscious mind interprets a specific bit of information, the RAS will ascribe a level of importance and priority to it, primarily based on the amount of attention you consciously give to it. Because the RAS does not have the capacity to interpret the information, it does not determine what is bad or good, but simply what you give the most attention to. This is why it is important not to focus on things you don’t want or like. While your conscious mind may be able to determine that you don’t want to focus on the negative situations in your marriage, your RAS only notices that you are spending a lot of time thinking or talking about the negative situations in your marriage, it cannot determine that you are actually saying or thinking that you don’t like to focus on it, only that you are, by constantly addressing it and focusing on it.
Whatever you give the most attention to is what your RAS is going to expose you to in the form of supportive data. If you are constantly thinking about the problems in your marriage, your financial struggles, your dead-end job, etc., your RAS is going to give you a heavy dose of what you are focusing on — serving to amplify the negative feelings associated with that current reality.
Your RAS plays a role in almost every decision you make and your habitual behavior. Not only will your RAS help you identify those things that are important to you but it works hard to find information that aligns with what you have placed emphasis on. This ability of the RAS to identify information that is aligned with those things that are important you means that it is your responsibility to make sure that you are giving mental attention to the right things. If it is financial issues that you are looking to rectify, don’t focus on what is wrong, focus on the results that you desire.
“Your mind is always eavesdropping on your self-talk.” ~ Jim Kwik
Your self-talk plays a major role in establishing what your RAS determines as being important to you, subsequently determining the sensory information it will allow into your conscious. If you are constantly saying that you are not good at something, your RAS will constantly expose you to information that will support that belief and influence the behavior around that belief.
The combination of your RAS and your beliefs will shape your behavior and work toward creating the rituals and habits that will determine the results that you get in life. It is important for you to understand that you have the ability to control your performance by controlling your beliefs, thoughts, and self-talk. You will get out of your mind what you feed it consistently, so you may need to change your mental diet. You should focus on the results you want and identify with anything that supports the suggestion that you can have what you desire.
Keep in mind that you don’t get what you want, you get what you are. If you want something that you are not currently getting, you will have to become the person who is capable of producing those results. The thing is that it is always possible to become what is needed if you are feeding your mind the proper diet that supports the development of self-confidence in that area, and the RAS plays a major role in that process, but because it does not have the capacity to interpret data, it needs you to determine what is vital for you and what is not. You determine what is important or vital to you by what you focus on consistently. If you are focusing on the negative side of the equation, the RAS will find everything associated with that negative reality — creating a negative state and a negative environment that serves to perpetuate negative decision making and negative behavior. Conversely, when you focus on the positive, those results that you want for yourself and the elevated standard of excellence that you are holding yourself to, you will send a clear message to your RAS that these are the things that are important to you and you will begin to experience a constant barrage of positive information that will support your personal growth. ~ Rick Wallace, Ph.D., Psy.D.
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My Top 10 Books on Personal Finance & Personal Development
My Top 10 Books on Personal Finance & Personal Development for the 30-Day Read & Run Challenge
Here are my top 10 books on personal finance & personal development for the 30-Day Read and Run Challenge. Hopefully, you have made the decision to participate in the 30-Day Read & Run challenge sponsored by The Visionetics Institute and Master Fitness 21. You are designed to function in harmony with yourself—mind, body, emotions, and spirit. This is what becoming one with yourself means — being in absolute equilibrium with the totality of who you are. When any part of you falls out of alignment with the rest of your existence, you will experience dis-ease, which is where the word disease comes from.
There is a wealth of pragmatic and empirical evidence that supports the fact that your mind directly impacts your body — something that is known as psychosomatics. It works the same way in reverse. Understanding this powerful dynamic makes it imperative that we do everything in our power to strengthen our minds and bodies. The 30-Day Read & Run challenge is designed to help you develop the habit of effectively training your mind and body to not only perform optimally but to operate in sync with one another, creating a synergistic force that has the capacity to accomplish anything you put your mind to.
The key is not only reading but reading things that will inspire, encourage and empower you. Your mental diet is just as important as your physical diet. Below you will find my top books in the areas of personal finance & wealth building, as well as personal development and personal empowerment.
I have literally read hundreds of books in each category and those on this list have had the greatest impact in shaping my life. I have learned that while the average person reads two to three books per year, highly successful people read three to four books per month. Well, it’s time for you to get started.
Personal Finance & Wealth-Building
The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason
Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker
The Money Book for the Fabulous & Broke by Suze Orman
Money: Master the Game by Tony Robbins
Total Money Makeover Dave Ramsey
The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko
I have read hundreds more, but these are the top ten that I still revisit to this very day. Some of them have been around forever and others are more recent, but all the books that I have read have certain things in common, which is also true for the list of personal growth books. One thing I learned is that there are many strategies and paths to wealth — some slow and others faster — but the mentality and psychology of wealth-building always trump the style of investing or the business strategy being used. You can have the best strategy in the world, but if your psychology does not align itself with the strategy, you will consistently self-sabotage your efforts.
For instance, T. Harv Eker, author of Secrets of the Millionaire Mind goes straight to the heart of the matter when it comes to developing the capacity to build wealth — pointing out that wealth is the result of a mental state of mind.
“The vast Majority of people simply do not have the internal capacity to create and hold on to large amounts of money and the increased challenges that go with more money and success.” T. Harv Eker
Eker also points out that poor people make matters worse by programming their children to be poor — through presenting them with a worldview that makes wealth accumulation impossible. I see this all of the time. One such worldview is the one that supports the idea that the accumulation of things translates into wealth, creating youth who become consumer-minded instead of investor-minded. Consumerism is one of the most destructive forces there is when it comes to attempting to build wealth. Yes, you need to understand how to make money, but more importantly, you must understand what to do with the money you do have.
I know multitudinous poor people who are perpetually poor and yet they will not sacrifice even a little of what they believe are comforts and rights that they have earned for the sake of advancing themselves and their families to a point in which those same comforts would be second nature and no longer considered luxuries.
Many people remain in a state of poverty because they are determined to use the money they earn (regardless of the amount) to sustain their current lifestyle. In fact, any increases in earning potential are immediately spent on raising their current standard of living. The idea of temporarily lowering their standards in order to invest in their future never crosses their mind, and if someone mentions it, they immediately dismiss it or find some way to discredit the messenger. This is why the person who makes $30k a year and the person who makes $150k a year are both less than three months away from being homeless should they lose their current job.
Many people who have read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki forget that his poor day (biological father) actually had a six-figure income and was the director of the board of education for the state of Hawaii. If you don’t get the mentality right, the amount of money you generate will not matter. Yes, you might get more toys, but at the end of the day, you will likely be passing on debt instead of an inheritance when you die.
My Top 10 Personal Empowerment Books
Some books are transcendent — meaning that they offer guidance in more that one area of life. Therefore, you will find a couple of books from the finance book list on this list. You will also notice that my upcoming book, Critical Mass: The Phenomenon of Living Life at the Level of Your Design is in the number one spot. While the confidence I have in myself to help others achieve massive results in redesigning their futures plays a role in placing my book on this list, that is not the only reason its there. I believe the book is one of the most comprehensive resources on how to completely create the person you want to become in every area of life. It is my 20th book, and I leave no stone unturned. I take you through all of the disciplines, techniques, and steps I use with my clients. Whether you are looking to improve your performance in your marriage, grow your business exponentially, or increase your capacity to build wealth, you will find something in this book to help you.
The books that follow the number one spot are the books that have most emphatically impacted my life.
The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vicent Peale
The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck
You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay
The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Bonus listing:
The Answer by John Assaraf & Murray Smith
Awaken the Sleeping Giant by Tony Robbins
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High
The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino
Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
Your Erroneous Zones by Wayne W. Dyer
Super Bonus
The Unseen Essential by James P. Gills (…an inspirational novel of the power of faith—an absolute must-read.)
I have read even more personal development books than books on finance. I have provided you with an additional eight books to get you off and to the races.
When I began studying the distinctions between people who were extremely successful and those who were not, I quickly learned that there were distinct patterns associated with success, and to my surprise, there were distinct patterns associated with failure. If you are a person who has struggled with mediocrity and perpetual failure, if you are able to identify the patterns that contribute to your struggles, disrupt them and replace them with patterns being used by people who are successful, you will experience a drastic change in your life and the results that you consistently get.
Nothing in life happens inside of a vacuum, the Law of Cause & Effect is always at play. Although the world around you may appear to be in absolute chaos, the truth is that underneath the surface is “absolute-order” that is governed by seven universal laws that govern all activity in the universe. When you gain an understanding of the seven universal laws, you will be able to better understand yourself and the world around you. You will learn that life has not been happening to you, but it has been responding to you — meaning that you are absolutely in control of your destiny.
One pattern of highly successful people that I quickly identified when I first begin to study them is that successful people read far more than people who perform poorly or those who are considered average. The average person reads approximately two to three books a year while highly successful people read about four books per month (an average of a book per week). You are probably saying that there is no way that you can read a book per week, and I will tell you that it is more than possible. There are techniques that will help you increase the speed at which you read as well tools to help you remain focused so that you retain more.
Between 2004 and 2011, I made the commitment to read 100 books per year (an idea I got from the revivalist, John Wesley). During that period, my lowest book count was 115 books. It is amazing what we have the capacity to do when we set our minds to it. Did I mention that I was pursuing my doctorate in systematic theology at the time? Your brain is like a physical muscle, the more you use it, the better it performs.
Hopefully, you have made the decision to participate in the 30-Day Read and Run challenge to initiate a cycle of change that will lead to astronomical growth is record-setting time. Remember, it all begins with making a decision and committing to seeing it through to the end. ~ Rick Wallace, Ph.D., Psy.D.
The Surprisingly Powerful Links Between Your Posture and Your Emotional State
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It is absolutely impossible to overestimate the power of the human mind. The person who is able to effectively manage their mind, which begins with effectively managing their mental diet — actively controlling what enters the gates of your mind through your senses of perception — will find that they are able to have a much more emphatic impact on their world and those who exist in their periphery.
Before moving forward, it is important to distinguish between the brain (organic matter) and the mind (immaterial force of compact energy — the seat or center of the soul). The brain can be viewed as the world’s most powerful supercomputer — possessing the capacity to easily process four-billion bits of information per second. The human mind should be viewed as the user who determines the program and software that will be run on their personal organic supercomputer. The brain and the mind are inextricably connected and work synergistically to produce your current and future realities.
“Your mind is always eavesdropping on your self-talk.” ~ Jim Kwik
There is so much truth is the adage, “as a man thinks, so is he.”[1] Your thoughts are literally the seeds of your destiny. Your thoughts are ultimately a reflection of your beliefs, which are formed based on your personal philosophy and the paradigms through which you view and manage your life. This is why you can get completely different results from 10 people that experienced the same event.
I am often asked what creates the distinction between the victim and the victor, and my answer is immensely succinct — “perspective.” The victim has developed a proclivity to view life as something that is happening to them, completely surrendering the ability to effectively impact any situation that may be negatively influencing their lives. The victor or winner sees life as something that is responding to them, so when they are not getting the results they want, they make the necessary adjustments to create change. It is really that simple. One person (the victor) operates from a place of personal sovereignty while the other person (the victim) has surrendered their sovereignty and trusts chance to provide consistency in their life.
There is another adage that is accurate in describing the human condition individually and collectively — “perception is a reality.” While countless people have argued against this idea, suggesting that perception does not overrule facts, science has proven that the mind is so powerful that it has the ability to completely overrule the presence of facts to hold its current position based on how it perceives any situation. I have a saying that states, “facts mean absolutely nothing to the conditioned mind.”
Science has proven that the mind cannot distinguish between what is real and what is being imagined; therefore, how one perceives any given situation is paramount to determining how they will interpret and process it. If you decide that life is happening to you, you will relinquish all the tools and assets you have at your disposal to change those things in your life that you are not satisfied with. Like millions of other people in this world, some of you go through life believing that suffering, loneliness, poverty, sickness, and so many other negative life experiences are your lot in life. Because you have surrendered your personal sovereignty, you lack the capacity to create the type paradigm shifts that produce massive change and the awesome results that you so desperately desire.
I tell my clients at The Visionetics Institute that while pain and disappointment are inevitable, suffering is a choice. When pain, depression, poverty, physical illness, and any other type of negative reality moves from being a temporal event that you overcome to being a part of your permanent reality, you have surrendered your personal sovereignty and placed yourself at the mercy of chance. People who play the game by chance rarely win, and they definitely do not win with any consistency. However, when you decide to become actively involved in “minding” your reality — using your mind to control the path that you take in life, there is literally no limits to what you can accomplish when you set your mind to do so.
Pay very close attention to what I am about to share with you here. The only limits that you have in your life are those you have accepted with your mind. God (The Universe, Life, Energy or however you personally refer to the infinite power and infinite intelligence that has brought this universe into order) will only meet you at the level of your expectations. Your beliefs set the parameters of your performance.
When working with a client, it is my goal to determine the exact outcome (results) they are looking for with remarkable specificity. One of the most common causes of the inability to bring visions and dreams into the realm of reality is because the vision is out of focus, meaning that they fail to generate an image of what they want that is so vivid that they can easily recall it and see it on a consistent basis. For instance, a person that is looking to escape poverty will normally tell me they want to be wealthy, but wealth will mean different things to different people, and the ambiguity associated with that term leaves too many variations for the mind to narrow down what it should be focusing on to produce the desired result.
The mind is immensely powerful and highly effective in producing the results that you communicate you want. The Reticular Activating System (RAS), which is a part of the nervous system that sits at the base of the brain and the top of the spinal column, serves as a filter for information traveling from the conscious mind to the subconscious mind and non-conscious brain. Remember, I told you that the brain is like a supercomputer that has the capacity to process four-billion bits of information per second? Well, 98 percent of that is done by the subconscious mind and non-conscious brain. Think about all of the things that are going on around you at any given time. If you were to attempt to focus on all of that at one time, it would literally drive your crazy. So, using certain variables, the RAS determines those things that are most important to you and filters out the rest based on an organic system of prioritization.
Once you start reading or studying, why don’t you hear that second-hand on the clock just above your head? Wait, you suddenly hear it now, right? That is because I mentioned it and made your conscious mind aware of it, which was communicated to your non-conscious brain which immediately located the sound. Have you ever saw a car, shirt, or outfit that you absolutely had to have? You had never noticed it before, but now that you have determined that you like and want it, suddenly you see it everywhere. The truth is that it has always been there but until it became important to you it was filtered out by the RAS.
At The Visionetics Institute, I use several distinct disciplines that I have mastered to help people use their minds and their bodies to create an optimal environment for success. You must know that a state of mind in which doubt, fear, anger, anxiety, stress, and uncertainty exists cannot be a state of mind that is primed for optimal performance. I use a combination of psycho-cybernetics, psychology, neuro-linguistic programming, neuro-associative conditioning, quantum physics and neurological remapping to help my clients bring their beliefs, thoughts, ideas, rituals, behavior, and even their posture into perfect equilibrium and harmony with their expected outcome.
I will not get into the totality of how these different disciplines work together to help people achieve their goals at this point, but I do want to share with you the power of one discipline (Neuro-associative conditioning) that can help you achieve massive shifts in your emotional state in a matter of seconds.
Basically, neuro-associative conditioning is a discipline that focuses on shifting internal representations associated with certain behaviors to create new behaviors, as well as reestablishing the desired emotional state. When used effectively, NLP can create significant changes in human emotions. The primary premise that guides NLP is the belief that there are two determining factors that guide human behavior — the desire to gain pleasure and the need to avoid pain.
When you are able to associate pleasure with a certain desired behavior, you will naturally begin to model those behaviors until they become habits. Conversely, when you associated pain or displeasure with certain behaviors, you will begin to see behavior that works to avoid the displeasure. The truth is that these neuro-associations determine our representation of reality — directly impacting our behavior. But there is more…
Let’s focus on one specific way that neuro-associative conditioning can work to help you manage your emotional state — the use of your physical posture — a neuro-associative philosophy known as embodied cognition. Everyone knows that being happy has the power to make you smile, but did you know that smiling can actually make you happy. While closely linked with neuro-associative ideology, this particular reality is actually known as embodied cognition, which is a psychological philosophy that suggests that the mind and body run in both directions, meaning that not only can the mind impact the body, but the body can also influence the mind.
Have you ever had a very bad day or week, and you share it with someone you know, and they tell you to keep your head up? Well, that is a very old phrase that has proven to be powerful over time. While the phrase is viewed in more of a symbolic context today, it was once literal. See, while people were not able to explain it, they understood that it was virtually impossible to hold your head up and feel sad, depressed or unhappy. One could not take a posture of confidence and feel helpless. When you hold your head up and square your shoulders, you begin to feel almost invincible.
Basically, your mind associates certain physical positions and postures with certain emotions and the body instinctively takes on these postures based on a perceived reality by the brain. So, if the brain perceives a loss of some kind, a feeling of sadness will begin to take over and you will drop you head and slump your shoulders; however, if you simply force yourself to hold your head up and sit or stand in an erect posture, your mind will search for the emotional state to match the posture. It is simply the way we maintain equilibrium and sanity. By forcibly holding a particular posture, you are forcing your mind to come along for the ride. This technique is not designed as a tool for escapism, but it will allow you to find a place of confidence through which you can effectively take on whatever you challenge you are currently facing.
Not only can you use power-posturing to shift your current emotional state, you can use it to set your state each day. In 2012, Amy Cuddy presented one of the most popular TED Talk segments of all time, in which she introduced an idea that just two minutes of “power poses” each day can completely alter how we feel about ourselves, and how we feel about ourselves (self-image/self-esteem) has a direct impact on what we expect and demand from ourselves.
So, what begins as a practice of mimicking a certain state serves to produce that state emotionally, psychologically, and physiologically.
Remember, I told you the brain has a hard time distinguishing what is real from what is imagined, and it is the same when it attempts to distinguish real confidence from the confidence that is created from simply standing up straight and holding your head up. As I stated earlier, emotion, confidence, and happiness are linked to your posture and the influence travels both ways. While your emotions have the ability to influence your posture, your posture also influences your emotions.
Now, ask yourself what is easiest to control during a disruptive moment, your mind/emotions or your physical posture? The mind must be convinced that what it is perceiving that is causing the negative emotional reaction is not as bad as it appears, but you can simply make up in your mind that you are going to take on a posture of confidence and refuse to acquiesce to the urge to slump and drop your head. The longer you hold that posture, the greater the impact it will have on your emotional state.
Something else I teach my clients to do when they are practicing this exercise is to accompany the posture with positive speech. Consistently speak what you want, not what you don’t want. As you stand up straight, tell yourself out loud, “I am built for this.” “I will succeed.” “I am a winner.” “I will find a solution, or I will create one.” There is no end to the different positive affirmations that you can speak into your life each day. Also, don’t wait until you experience something negative before you practice these techniques; make them a regular part of your day.
Look, you don’t have to take my word for it or the word of the multitudinous people that I have helped. In 2009, Dr. Richard Petty and his colleagues conducted a study of 71 college students who were instructed to either sit up straight and stick out their chest or sit slouched forward. Then he gave the students a short survey that asked them to evaluate their expectations for the future as it pertained to their career goals.[2] Dr. Petty and his colleagues found that how the students rated themselves depended heavily on the posture they were in when they wrote out their self-evaluations.
The students who were in the upright and erect postures — the confident position — demonstrated confidence not only during their evaluations but in the evaluations, themselves. On the other hand, the students in the slumped postures not only failed to demonstrate confidence in their assessments of themselves, but they failed to have confidence in the accuracy of the assessments they had made. Can you see how indecisive the lack of confidence will make you? So, making a conscious effort to maintain a confident posture can prove to be a decisive tool in achieving the desired results you want out of life.
Conclusion
Our emotions and thoughts have an immense power to affect our energy levels and our posture, conversely, energy and posture affect our emotions and thoughts. There is one study that showed that two minutes of skipping as opposed to walking in a slouched position can completely shift energy levels and thoughts. It only takes about two minutes for your brain to shut off the production of one hormone and turn on another.
If you are having a bad day, you can literally take a break from your desk or station, or pull over to the side of the road and make a quick readjustment in less time than it takes for a restroom break or to heat up your lunch. All of this can be done through adjusting your current posture.
It is important that you train yourself to pay attention to your posture so that you can recognize when your posture is not reflecting the state that you desire to be in. The cognitions that often lead to negative emotions and a negative mental state can be so subtle that they are hard to recognize until they have gained momentum; however, you know when you are slouched over and moving in a sluggish manner. Raise your physical energy level and correct your posture as soon as you recognize you are off course. Use your body to rescue you from your negative mental state.
We live in a culture that naturally promotes poor posture — inadvertently supporting a poor emotional state. Think about it. Many of us sit in front of computers for long periods of time, and how many of us square our shoulders and create an erect posture? We are also constantly looking down at our cell phones (one of the greatest thieves of our personal sovereignty there is), meaning our heads are in the hung down position. There is a wealth of empirical and pragmatic evidence that supports that this change in lifestyle culture has resulted in the rise in the diagnoses of depression in the Western Hemisphere. Slouching has also been proven to result in frequent neck and shoulder pains, as well as frequent headaches.
Even where we place the photos of our loved ones in our office has an impact on our posture. The more things that you have hanging above head level, the more you will be forced to look upward throughout the day — resulting in a higher level of energy and a more positive state of mind and emotion.
Look, you are human, which means that you are going to experience negative stimuli in your life. There is no circumvention of life’s vicissitudes; however, how much gravity you give those moments, and how much you trust those negative thoughts will determine the impact they have on your life. When you can arrest negative thoughts and dismiss them as soon as you recognize them, you will neutralize the impact they have on your life, but if you allow those negative moments and the thoughts associated with them to go unchecked, the impact they have on your life will increase with each passing moment. The thoughts you trust the most will have the greatest impact on your life.
There are many ways to positively impact your current state, with the most powerful being “priming,” the period in which you prep yourself for your day, subsequently setting your state before you ever engage the first task of the day. You can also use posture manipulation to rescue yourself from a negative encounter during your day. You should make it a habit to never stay in a negative state for longer than 60-90 seconds. Remember, once you reach that two-minute mark, your brain chemistry will begin to change.
You have far more control over your life than you ever imagined. Now, it is time for you to start exercising your personal sovereignty by controlling your state at all times. ~ Rick Wallace, Ph.D., Psy.D.
References
Allen, J. (1903). As a Man Thinketh. New York: James Allen.
Assaraf, J., & Smith, M. (2008). The Answer. New York: Atria Books – Simon & Shuster, Inc..
Petty, R. E., Brinol, P., & Wagner, B. (2009). Body Posture Effects on Self-evaluation: A Self-Validation Approach. European Journal of Social Psychology, 1053-1064 – DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.607.
Reclaiming Your Sovereignty and Restructuring Your Core Philosophy!
The moment we awaken in the morning we reach for our cell phones, turn on the television or radio — never realizing that we are giving away our sovereignty before ever having the opportunity to set our mental and emotional states. In others, we are allowing external influences to dictate how we feel at the onset of our day.
How you start your day will heavily impact how you engage your day and how effective you will be in meeting the challenges that you will inevitably face during the day.
The first hour of my day is void of external interruption and influence. I don’t check or scroll my phone — something I had to work very hard at. I take the first hour to set my state. Visit The Visionetics Institute site to learn more about priming (setting your emotional, mental and spiritual states at the beginning of each day).
The state that you are in at any given moment will impact how you interpret events throughout the day. When you are functioning at an optimal state — emitting a high frequency and vibration, you will possess a greater capacity to engage challenging moments without becoming frenetic and unglued.
Perception is reality, and how you perceive things will have a massive influence on your ability to effectively manage any particular situation. Smartphones are designed to create dopamine rushes, which make you feel good. There is a reason that most people cannot put those phones and tablets down. It is because they are literally addicted to the feeling they get when they have them. The neuro-association between the brain and holding the phone literally provides a certain sense of well-being just by picking it up. The problem is that the information (text messages, likes, dislikes, shares, comments, etc. can create negative responses if they are not favorable).
The earlier in your day that you experience negative stimuli, the more of an impact that stimuli will have on how the remainder of your day goes; however, when you take the time to set your state (With me, it is at least an hour before allowing outside influences into my world), you will be in a better position to manage negative situations while maintaining your your equilibrium. ~ Rick Wallace, Ph.D., Psy.D.
Power vs. Outcome: The Unlimited Potential of a Purpose-Driven Life
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What I wish to convey here is the idea of developing a clear understanding of what drives your actions. It is immensely important that you, first and foremost, have a lucid perspicacity of why you’re doing something. When you understand why you’re doing something that “why” or your “purpose”that will drive or push you through the difficulties that you will inevitably face —driving you through the challenges, driving you through all of the obstacles that you’re going to face as you move through life. When you have a sense of why you’re doing something you will possess a clarity of the motive. The motivation revealed in your “WHY,” as I call it, will be so strong that the momentum will literally carry you through even the darkest of situations and circumstances.
When you are certain of your “why” and your “why” is so huge that it will be bigger than any moment that you will ever face, you will develop a sense of certainty that is inextricably connected to your destiny that assures you that you will accomplish everything that you have set out to do. You’re going to be successful because when you arrive at these difficult moments you are going to be able to push through them because you going to look at it and your “why,” your purpose is going to be bigger than the pain that you are experiencing at any given moment.
Your “why” is going to be greater than the delay that will sometimes stand in your way. Your “why” is going to be greater than the complex nature of the enigmatic issues that you have to solve to keep moving.
You will consistently find yourself facing challenges but you will find out how to overcome them each and every time when you understand your “why!” When you truly invest in understanding the reason why you are driven to do something — your purpose — when you are determined to become committed to living in that purpose, then anything you face in life will be engaged with the confidence of knowing that you are built for the battle.
When you are driven by purpose, all of the answers to the problems to the problems you will inevitably face will be there and if they’re not there you will create them. Successful people wake up in the morning and they are not looking for someone to do something for them They understand that if there is an opportunity out there they will find it. When successful people wake up in the morning looking for that opportunity that they need to advance their dreams, their causes, their campaigns, and their desires, there is a sense of urgency in finding what they are looking for and they refuse to give up until they find it. If they can’t find it, they have such relentless tenacity associated with what they are doing and the reason why they are doing it that they decide to create the opportunity that they need.
One thing that I learned over the course of my life and that nothing happens in a vacuum. The Universal Law of Cause and Effect are always in play. There are no insignificant moments and there are no coincidences; everything has a cause and everything has a cost. When you understand the cause, you understand where the effect came from and you can now either repeat the cause if you like the effect or change the cause if you desire a different effect. You possess the power to disrupt and change the cause if you don’t like what it is producing. You are never stuck in any situation. Reality is a dynamic force, meaning that it is in constant motion — being shifted by the influences and perceptions of those experiencing it.
When you are driven by the outcome you desire, the outcome becomes the most important thing in your life and you risk losing sight of your purpose. More importantly, you risk getting caught up in the chase, which can lead to an abandonment of core values for the sake of achieving the goal. There is nothing inherently wrong with goals, but goals must always remain in the context in order to protect your character — the ultimate reflection of your value system. When you are purpose driven, you are still headed in the same direction, but you are being driven by something with greater purity, your purpose. When I first decided to allow my purpose to drive me instead of the outcomes I was looking for, I took on a mindset that declared, I’m going to start moving in the same direction accomplishing the same things but instead of being focused on myself, I am going to focus on serving and helping others.
What I found when I shifted my paradigms is that I still achieved the desired outcomes, but there was a greater sense of fulfillment and accomplishment because I was making others around me better in the process. You are in control of your destiny, you are the master of your fate, you are the one that has been given the reigns of the direction you are taking a life. There will be all types of external influences that move against you as you progress through life. There will be all types of things that you’re going to encounter, but you have the ability to discern, evaluate, and interpret what these influences and impulses mean and to determine how you will respond to them. They will not control you; you will control them.
When you are purpose-driven, your purpose is immediately, directly, and intimately connected to your identity. What you identify with impacts what you believe, the manner in which you operate and function, and what you do when you face adversity, disappointment, disruption, and delay. When you have a clear sense of what it is you are here for and how you are going to make the world better, you will develop the capacity to effectively engage adversity in a manner that produces consistent and efficacious results.
When you truly understand your purpose, you will immediately abandon the idea that someone owes you something, and you will stop expecting others to do for you what you have the power and gifting to do for yourself. When you start looking inside, you will immediately feel the weight of frustration and disappointment lifted. When you stop placing making other culpable for your current state and embrace your power and capacity to determine your own course and state of existence, a huge weight will be lifted.
As you start to embrace the idea that you are here to offer the world something that will leave it in a better situation than you found it and you consistent look to add value to others, you not only make your situation better, but you make everyone in your periphery better as well.
The awesome idea of purpose is that it is connected to your identity, which reveals that you are a part of a design and if you are a part of design then there is a specific reason that you are here. It further reveals that because you are here for a reason, the provision for the fulfillment of your purpose is at your disposal — you only need to access it and activate it.
When you become aware of your purpose in life, you don’t become frenetic and unglued when things seem out of place or you encounter certain challenges. Your ability to identify with your purpose assures you that if you simply persevere while remaining true to your purpose what you are seeking will manifest itself in time. For this reason, I am able to experience the delay without experiencing discouragement. When you become determined to operate in your purpose, you will find that all of the “outcomes” you are seeking in life will automatically fall in line when you stop worrying about the outcome and start living inline with your purpose. ~ Rick Wallace, Ph.D., Psy.D.
In observance of Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, I will be offering all programs at The Visionetics Institute at a 25 percent discount. Yep, every last one — for today only and for the first five people who contacts me to sign up. (Purchase has to be made today in order to qualify.) (Extended through Cyber-Monday)
Simply click on the Life Change Courses & Programs tab and find the one that works for then email me a LifeChange@rickwallacephd.link to initiate the process.
There are far too many people that are victims of ongoing hostage situations. They are being held hostage by their past failures, past traumatic experiences, the wrongs of others towards them and so much more. They struggle to move forward but they refuse to deal with their past and then release it.
Some of you are sitting around still holding on to a hurt caused by someone you loved and trusted years ago. Maybe you are simply waiting for that person to admit that they were wrong and apologize. Here is the truth: they may never admit they did anything wrong and it is likely that they will never apologize, but that is because of an internal issue that they have. It has absolutely nothing to do with you.
If you are waiting for someone from your past to make amends, you may be waiting for the rest of your life. You need to process what happened and then put it behind you. The weight you are carrying from your past is holding you down. Your past hurts are literally holding you hostage. You are emotionally and psychologically under siege.
Instead of living life, you have been doing time, just doing whatever it takes to get by. There is nothing that you are pushing or striving for, you are just trying to get through each day. You have got to break free and become what your design demands of you. Your design is indicative of your purpose — study it and embrace it. Your design is filled with the potential to accomplish extraordinary and phenomenal things, but you must break free from the psychological and emotional chains of your past.
In many instances, you are being held hostage by memories of people who have moved on with their lives. They may not even be the same person anymore, but you have allowed yourself to become trapped in a holding pattern because you refuse to free yourself from the hurt.
Pay very close attention to what I am about to convey here. Pain and suffering are distinctly different. Pain in this life is inevitable, but suffering is a choice. Suffering happens when you choose to identify with your pain — when your pain becomes a part of your identity. Suffering transforms you into a victim. Suffering is the perpetual state of misery you experience when you refuse to release the past to embrace the possibilities of the future.
Some of you were molested and abused as children, and as horrific as that is, you have to take ownership of your life and reclaim the power and innocence that was stolen from you. You don’t do that by constantly pointing back to what was done, you do it by actualizing the potential that is inherent within your physical and spiritual DNA.
Some of you were betrayed by a lover you trusted and that betrayal tore your heart apart, and you now find it hard to trust and love anyone else. It is time to love again and love hard and free. You reclaim your power by reclaiming what was stolen in that moment of betrayal.
Some of you are still struggling with the fact that you didn’t know your father, or maybe both parents abandoned you, and that really hurts. I know because I have been there; however, the worst thing you can do in this situation is to become a hostage to the sins and failures of your parents. You were not a mistake nor an accident, the purpose of your presence here is DIVINE in nature. It is time to rescue your destiny from the pits of your past hurts. It is time to live life at the level of your design.
Have an awesome day,
Rick Wallace, Ph.D., Psy.D.
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“Your mind is always eavesdropping on your self-talk.” ~ Jim Kwik
Due to the fact that over 90 percent of our behavior and habits are governed by our subconscious mind, it is immensely important that we guard the gates of our subconscious in order to carefully manage what enters in influences our beliefs. Our words and thoughts are immensely powerful in dictating our behavior, and subsequently outlining the path to our destiny.
“Your mind is like a supercomputer and your self-talk is the software you will run!” ~ Unknown
I tell my clients that our minds are the genesis of our destinies and our thoughts are the seeds of our future circumstances. If we fail to properly manage our self-talk, we will literally talk ourselves into a future filled with failure and frustration. What we say about our marriages, parenting, finances, careers and more all impacts how we perform.
Our beliefs dictate our behavior because no one consistently does what they believe will not work, so your beliefs literally set the parameters that determine the effort and energy you invest in any situation, and your effort will have a massive impact on the results you get. And, those results will serve to reinforce the original belief — leading to a continued cycle. These dynamics can be applied in the negative and positive.
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If you don’t believe that you can save your marriage, your effort and energy will reflect that and it will be witnessed in the result — ultimately resulting in the substantiation of the original belief that your marriage is beyond saving — culminating in a steady decline in the effort to work on your relationship with your mate. If you believe that there is some force stopping you from achieving wealth — that poverty is your lot in life, it will be reflected in your behavior, energy, and actions — resulting in poor results that reinforce the initial belief — resulting in you living in a constant state of lack.
Conversely, if you believe that you can save your marriage, it will be represented in the amount of effort and action you invest in working on it. The massive action and effort that you invest in saving your marriage will be transformed into corresponding results that reinforce the belief. The reinforced belief will cause you to work even harder building forward momentum as you move toward your goal of a stronger more fulfilling relationship with your spouse. This same principle applies to any area of life.
With all of this being understood, you can easily see why your self-talk is so powerful. Life is about energy and rhythm and when your self-talk is not in alignment with your desires, you consistently disrupt the natural rhythmic expression of your life. When you expel all of the limiting beliefs that are holding you captive, you will find that your rhythm and energy becomes more steady. ~ Rick Wallace, Ph.D., Psy.D.
Meeting Your Essential Needs Drives Your Behavior!
Something that I share with my clients at The Visionetics Institute is that there is no such thing as insignificant or inconsequential moments. We have a tendency to dismiss this we don’t understand or can’t find relevance in, but dismissing or ignoring something does not eliminate its meaning or impact.
All human behavior is need-driven, even when we attributed it to desire. If you want to understand and manage your behavior, you must first develop a lucid perspicacity of what drives that behavior — your fundamental needs. Every person on this planet is driven by certain universal and fundamental needs. These fundamental needs are “certainty,” uncertainty (which actually combats the boredom and feeling of unfulfillment associated with absolute certainty), significance, and connectivity (which includes the feeling of being loved and respected by others).
There are multitudinous ways that people meet these specific needs, with some being good and others being bad for everyone involved. For instance, some people achieve certainty in life through their sense of identity. Because their self-image is such that they believe in themselves, they have developed an understanding that they have the capacity to overcome any challenges that they may face. Others find certainty in their faith in a higher power, believing that their relationship with the higher power provides the resourcefulness necessary to overcome the obstacles they face.
Conversely, there are those who choose to use deception and cheating to provide their sense of certainty. They seek unfair advantages that tend to create weighted situations where things fall in their favor. Of course, there are always negative consequences to this type of behavior but rarely do these individuals make the connections.
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Fortunately, there are two principles that also serve as character needs — not part of the essential needs cluster, but needs that help guide behavior to produce a more positive lifestyle. Basically, the way that I ensure that the behaviors I exhibit in order to me my essential needs are acceptable is by using the fifth and sixth needs as a collective barometer. I ask myself if the behavior that I have exhibited is leading to personal growth — is it expanding my capacity and reach to help empower, inspire and encourage others?
Next, I take an introspective examination of my
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behavior to determine if it is serving needs outsides of myself. Is my behavior facilitating my “work” and not solely meeting my own fundamental needs. This means that when you are working to live life at the level of your design, you are living to impact the world around you in a positive way that sees people grow as well as become inspired and empowered.
If your behavior is not producing personal growth and you are not expanding in the area of external contribution, you are not living life at the level of your design. You are not fulfilling your purpose. You may be meeting those essential needs, but you are doing it using a modality that does not possess any intrinsic value. How you meet your fundamental needs is immensely important to the process of optimizing your impact on those in your periphery, which is the key to personal fulfillment and happiness! ~ Rick Wallace, Ph.D., Psy.D.
Dare to be different! One of the saddest things that I witness on a regular basis is people attempting to fit in — trying their hardest to be like everyone else. There is a reason trying to be like everyone else seems so difficult and uncomfortable — you were not designed to be like anyone else on this planet. You are unique in some very important ways that determine your complete makeup as a person.
When you attempt to squeeze into a box that was not designed to hold your massive potential, you force your potential to go dormant and unactualized. You literally squeeze the vastness of your existence into something that is not designed to hold or support it. Dare to be different. Dare to live in the fullness of your design. Dare to become the fullest expression of your potential and purpose. Dare to step outside of the marginal expectations that others have placed on you to live in the effusiveness of your God-given capacity to elevate and become great.
Dare to Be Different!
Your voluminous potential is pregnant with awesome wonders and extraordinary accomplishments, but in order to birth these things, you must be willing to escape the proclivity to bend toward mediocrity for the sake of fitting in. There is nothing honorable about making yourself small in order to make others more comfortable in your presence. There is nothing befitting your purpose and potential about the complacency so common in a culture that is replete with mediocre performers who take solace in being average.
There is nothing respectable about being average. “Average” is a human default reality. If you simply wake up every day and do what everyone else is doing, you will definitely be average. Being average does not require any great effort of focus. It does not require focus and commitment. You can sleep in and be average. You can show up late to work and be average. You can whine and complain and be average, but if you want to experience achieving the level of phenomenal, then you better be prepared to get up earlier than everyone else. You better be prepared to raise your standards higher than others. You better be prepared to spend more alone time with yourself, as you will inherently separate yourself from the pack. Dare to be different.
The people that you look at and admire now are visible to you because they chose to be different. They stand out and tower among most people because they chose to do things differently. If you want to live a life that most people are not able to live, then you have to be willing to do things that most people are not willing to do — dare to be different. ~ Rick Wallace, Ph.D., Psy.D.
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Redefining Your Self Concept & Centering In on Your Destiny will open an entirely new world up for you. When you learn how to control your thoughts, there is absolutely nothing in this world that you cannot achieve. Most people walk around their entire life living a life that has been defined by someone else’s opinion of them.
Often, when I work with certain clients at The Visionetics Institute, I literally have to help them redefine their self-concept — how they view themselves in relationship to the world around them. Far too many people live within the confines of boxes that others have placed them in — often responding to names, titles, monikers, and associations that are not conducive to achieving massive success.
If you are a person who consistently finds yourself wanted more but struggling to get past the limited and low expectations that consistently govern your life, then you need to redefine your self-concept, which will completely shift the manner in which you view the world around you.
Your mind is infinitely powerful in what it is able to create, but it is neutral in that capacity until you set the direction you will travel with the beliefs and expectations that you have for your life. If you want something more, if you want something different, then you are going to have to change how you see yourself, which will immediately impact what you think about yourself and the world around you. When effectively reconstruct your self-concept in a manner that explores your power to effectively impact and change the world around you, you will learn that you are never stuck in any given situation. You have the power within you to change it, no matter what it is.
Maybe you are a person that believes that your background is what is holding you back from achieving your dreams and pursuing your passions. You have bought into the idea that because you come from a state of poverty, or you never knew your father or mother, or you struggled with your grades in school that you are trapped in a life of mediocrity and substandard living. But, you could not be further from the truth.
Where you come from does not determine where you are going, you do that. The only thing that your origin has to do with your destiny is that it tells you how far you have to go in order to get there. Where you start in life simply establishes how far you have to go to get where it is you want to go.
When you set your mind that you are going somewhere and know within yourself that it is possible. That commitment, that personal decision to go all-in will literally move the universe to bend to your will. The universe will literally conspire on your behalf to bring you the things that you demand of it no matter how outrageous it may seem to others.
You are truly the author of your destiny and the master of your fate! ~ Rick Wallace, Ph.D., Psy.D.
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