have you ever considered that you might
be living your life based on dumb ideas
or obsolete ways of thinking that were
passed to you from past generations
there's a beautiful quote i saw on the
internet that says this
tradition is peer pressure from dead
people
but as we live life we tend to operate
based on tradition that comes from
religion from culture from society from
parenting that enforces a certain way of
living onto us ways of life that may no
longer be relevant in today's
fast-changing world now i call these
rules that we blindly follow from
indoctrination
rules or rules but the question
is how do you escape
this idea how do you create a life
that's truly original where you're not
boxed in or shamed into following the
conventional way this is an extract from
my upcoming program with mindvalley
called be extraordinary
[Music]
now the question is how do we take on
these rules well there are five ways we
take on the beliefs that confine us the
first is childhood indoctrination
so
when we are born as kids we are highly
malleable yuval hariri in the book
sapiens say something really interesting
about human beings he says that almost
every animal is born as a tiny print of
the adult animal but not human beings he
says human beings are born like molten
glass this is why we can train and raise
a child to be a buddhist or a muslim to
be a socialist or a capitalist to be
confident or to be broken
we are molded as children one of the
core parts of being human is the
cognitive field the field of thoughts in
our head and that my friends is
implanted in us by our upbringing so we
often take on beliefs from parents from
teachers from grandparents and from the
people who are around us as we are
children the second thing that implants
rules in us are authority figures
primarily politicians
if you've been watching the news lately
you'll see that there are huge scandals
happening in governments around the
world where politicians have blatantly
lied to win votes politicians have used
facebook ads targeting us to get us to
believe things that are simply not true
so you want to be very conscious about
how we take on blindly the ideas
implanted into us by politicians when
human beings perceive someone as a
leader we automatically take on their
beliefs the third is the need to belong
just this morning as i was reading the
news there was a video on cnn.com of a
lady who escaped an outright cult
and she was asked what made you join
this band of white supremacist and she
said that she thought that almost
everyone who got sucked into this cult
did this because
they felt lonely and isolated she said
it was isolation there's a lesson here
you see we sometimes take on rules that
hold us back because we want to conform
so that we can fit in with a particular
group of people it may be the company
culture of the company that hires us it
may be the religion it may be the
beliefs of the ethnic group that we want
to belong to but very often while these
groups give us a sense of belonging some
of these groups could have really
dangerous rules and you want to be aware
of that so our brains are not perfect
rational machines when we are first born
we are highly trainable and when we are
adults we tend to obey leaders and third
we will often suppress rational thought
to fit into a group keep these three
ideas in mind because they will help you
identify when you are making irrational
choices and suppressing your own soul's
desire
but there are two additional ways we
take on rules social proof you want to
be conscious of this think about this
why is it that billions of people across
the world willingly put high fructose
corn syrup into their bodies
and consider this normal i'm talking of
course of coca-cola if you look at
brilliant marketing engines like
coca-cola they basically use social
proof to sway you their advertising
essentially says look everyone is doing
this so you ought to do it too
and they use all sorts of tricks of
advertising if you watch any coke ad you
see people happily chugging cokes
running holding hands down a hill they
associate coke with positivity and they
suggest that if everyone's doing it hey
you got to do it too now of course
beautiful thing is happening on planet
earth as we are waking up we are
starting to see how companies like this
misdirect us we already have seen this
with the tobacco industry and today very
few americans actually smoke however the
whole smoking epidemic started through
the application of social proof to
implant a rule into people's heads in
the early 60s and 70s cigarette
companies would pay hollywood execs to
show heroes smoking on the giant silver
screens that is social proof if
everyone's doing it i ought to do it too
be very attentive to how you sometimes
take on behaviors beliefs and practices
because everyone else seems to be doing
it now the fifth way we take on a rule
is through our own internal insecurities
this is the meaning making machine in
our head and as we go deeper into this
program we're gonna fix those
insecurities but here's how it works
you're at work you do really good work
but somebody else gets the recognition
because you are not fully yet unfuck
withable you create a meaning i'm not
worthy or
i am not recognized or my boss is an
or you come up with an excuse
that other person looked better and
spoke up more so that's why they got the
praise life is unfair our internal
insecurities make us create rules and
then we live under these operating
systems without realizing that we made
it all up so when you pay attention to
these spy by dears you learn to identify
and pluck out the rules that you've
irrationally taken on
so if this brule idea resonated with you
join my upcoming master class on
mindvalley it's completely free to go on
to the next level where i'm going to be
talking about four levels of
consciousness and how
99 of people are operating at level one
two and three but the real changes
happen when you move to level four check
out this master class because i think
the ideas here are going to change the
way you show up in the world