Continuing with beliefs this week, we’re discussing how thoughts turn into beliefs. We use the brain to practice thoughts, in order to turn them into beliefs. We then use our belief to drive our actions, which will then reinforce the belief that gives us an emotion.
In this episode we learn a technique called “ladder thoughts” and why it works better than positive affirmations. An overly positive affirmation is often rejected by the brain.
Thinking a thought that’s further than where you are, but close enough to your current thought will help transition your thinking into more positive thoughts.
Want to know more about what I do and how I can help you? Sign up for a free 45-minute session with me, and I’ll show you how this works!
What You’ll Learn From this Episode:
- How we can use ladder thoughts to progressively reprogram our thinking
- How our internal and external shifts always come from the story we tell ourselves
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
- Learn how you can enter to win one of five FREE coaching sessions here!
- Sign up for Unleash Your Alpha, your guide to shifting to the Alpha mindset.
Announcer:
Welcome to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast, the only podcast that teaches men the cognitive mastery and alpha mindset that it takes to become an influential and irresistible man of confidence. Here’s your host, certified life coach and international man of mystery, Kevin Aillaud.
Kevin Aillaud:
What’s up, my brothers? Welcome back to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. I am your host, Kevin Aillaud, and I am in Arizona. I’m still in Arizona. I’m doing the construction for holding seminars and retreats just south of the Grand Canyon, okay?
Kevin Aillaud:
If you guys know the southern rim of the Grand Canyon, north of Flagstaff, it’s super fun and it’s really cold actually. It gets below freezing here at nighttime, and I’m camping out here until we get the basic structures built, so most of the time, I’m out in the middle of nowhere, right? Kind of out in the middle of the wilderness, and I came to record this podcast and upload it to my editor so that all of you can continue to get the goods even while I am doing my bushcraft thing, right, even while I’m out in the wilderness. I’m making this happen for you guys. What you guys can do for me is go to iTunes and leave me a five-star rating and review.
Kevin Aillaud:
If you’ve already done that, continue listening. This is going to be an amazing episode. If you haven’t done that yet, just go ahead and hit the pause button, head on over to iTunes, hit the five-star rating, hit the review, and you know what? If you’re not listening on iTunes, then go ahead and send me an email because I’m getting a lot of those and I love them. I love …
Kevin Aillaud:
Those are kind of like reviews, right? I know you guys can’t leave ratings, but those are reviews, and I love them. Okay, so let’s get into this, guys. Now, we’re talking about beliefs, because we’ve been talking about beliefs in March, and March is kind of belief month. It is how to believe new things or believing new things, and we’re working on that as a team, as a school in the Spartans, and I’ve been talking a lot about it on the podcast, and so what I want to kind of get into a little bit here in the first half of the episode is the distinction between a thought and a belief.
Kevin Aillaud:
I talked a little bit about that in What Is A Belief? a few episodes ago, but I want to go a little bit deeper into that. Then, I want to talk to you guys about how you can start to shift your brain from one belief to another, okay? I’m going to deliver, I’m going to give you a tool and teach you a process that you can use, so let’s get into this. Let’s talk about this. The real difference between a belief and a thought, going back and kind of reviewing what I’ve already told you is that the defining characteristic of a belief is really like, it’s like this thought that you think is a fact, so for you, like you don’t even know it’s a belief, right?
Kevin Aillaud:
Because it’s a belief, by definition, you think it’s fact, so beliefs are sort of hidden from us. We think our beliefs are facts, so they’re hidden from us. We don’t know their beliefs. We don’t know that they’re thoughts that we’ve thought over and over and over again, and continue to look for evidence to support externally so that we can kind of convince ourselves that what we are thinking is true, so that we can convince ourselves that our thoughts, this thought that we have over and over is a fact, right? It was not a fact, it’s a belief.
Kevin Aillaud:
That’s number one, and number two, the belief gives us an emotional experience. It gives us an emotional response. Thoughts do not. I’m going to talk a little bit about that today, but understand that part of the reasons why we think that beliefs are facts is because they feel true. They have a feeling of truth to them.
Kevin Aillaud:
It’s almost like the belief is how we connect ourselves to ourselves and the world, and so through that connection, that’s what feels like truth. That’s what feels real, and so real, in fact that it feels like a fact, right? It feels so real that we don’t even know we have the option to change it. That’s going back and reviewing, but think about it. You can think about it this way also. A thought is the function of the brain, okay?
Kevin Aillaud:
A thought is the function … A thought is the purpose of the tool. It’s a purpose of the machine. The brain is a thought-producing machine, or a thought-creating machine, and a belief is the product of that function, so if we have … The function of the brain, running thoughts, right? The brain’s job is to run thoughts, and the product of that function, the product of running thoughts over and over and over again is the belief.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, the belief is the super-thought, but the belief is more than that because the belief is what we turned into our identity, right? The belief is what we turn into, how we view ourselves in the world, so really, the belief as a product of the function that is of the brain, as long as we are in control of the brain, as long as we take control of that tool and teach it what to think, teach it the thought that we want to repeat over and over to create the product, which is the belief, then we can reshape and determine the identity that we want. Think about it this way. Cooking food is the function of a grill. The experience of a meal is the product of that function. Okay, so how we experience that meal for that meal taste delicious or that meal taste horrible, that experience, that subjective experience we have is the belief, and we think that is real, but when we have that experience of the way that meal feels to us, whether we like it or dislike it, we’re not thinking about how it got to the plate, right?
Kevin Aillaud:
We’re not thinking about all the steps it went through to get there, right? We’re not thinking about that it was cooked, that it had to go through, if it’s a steak, originally it was a cow, and then it had to be slaughtered, butchered, sent to the grocery store. We buy it, we take it home, we cook it on the grill and so on, and we have all these functions that get the experience of the meal to our present moment, but we’re not thinking about that. We’re just thinking about the experience, and the experience feels real. It’s the same way in the belief is that experience. The belief feels real, and we just think that the belief is a fact, but really, the belief is a product of all the things that it took to get there, so it’s the function of that grill, which is the brain, that had to cook the food.
Kevin Aillaud:
It’s the function of the butcher, which had to butcher the cow and so on. Maybe it’s a strange analogy, I understand, guys, but understand that we’re so wrapped up in the experience that we’re not really going into how the experience came to be, how we created the experience for ourself, and how that experience is a product of our past. We use the brain to practice thoughts, and we practice thoughts in order to turn them into beliefs, which then create emotions and we continue to the universal truth. those emotions drive our actions, our actions determine our results, and then our results reinforce those beliefs. One of the way you could think about beliefs is that they are an identity, right? They are a construct, whereas a thought is a sentence in your brain, like words in your mind.
Kevin Aillaud:
Sentences create a story. The story is the belief. Without the story, there’s no emotional experience. You read a sentence on a page, it gives you nothing, right? It’s like, “Okay, it’s a sentence.” You put that sentence into paragraphs, into chapters into a book, now all of a sudden, you have a story.
Kevin Aillaud:
You have an emotional experience, right? You’re connecting with this identity that you’re engaged with. That’s the difference, right? Sentences are sentences, so the story is like a house. Like your belief system is a house, and every room in the house is a different thought, is a different sentence.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now again, I’ve used this analogy before so it’s very clear that what I want you guys to do when we get into coaching is you go into each room, and you turn the light on. You become aware of what those thoughts are, right? You become aware of what the brain is telling you now. Usually, when you turn the light on, you’re like, “Oh my gosh.” You see what you see terrifies you, in whatever way that is. I mean, we’re all …
Kevin Aillaud:
We all kind of are shunned by different things, so whatever you see when you turn that light on in that room, that’s kind of like most people want to turn the light back off. They want to go back unconscious. They want to avoid. They want to go into their buffering. We turn the lights on, we clean up the room, we go to the next room.
Kevin Aillaud:
Turn the lights on, clean up the room, so we’re cleaning up sentence by sentence. That’s how we work the model. That’s what I’m going to teach you in this tool today, but the entire house is what creates your identity. You live in this house. This house is you.
Kevin Aillaud:
It’s all of these sentences. It’s the entire story. It’s the sum of the parts, and so how we believe new things is through the process of cognitive mastery and emotional ownership, and ladder thoughts or the tool that I’m going to teach you today, the ladder thought tool is essentially what we use to accomplish what is cognitive mastery, right? It’s the first part, cognitive mastery and emotional ownership, and cognitive mastery is going from thinking one thought to thinking something else for the purpose of creating intentional results, for the purpose of creating the life of your dreams, and there are really two parts, right? There’s the cognitive mastery and there’s the emotional ownership.
Kevin Aillaud:
The emotional ownership is recognizing that how you feel is coming from how you think, and it’s not coming from the environment and knowing how to process, knowing how to feel emotions rather than react, avoid or resist them. That’s the emotional ownership piece. Cognitive mastery is really about identifying, exposing the Beta condition, exposing the thoughts that have been keeping you safe and determining the thoughts that will help you grow, right? Choosing the thoughts, changing that belief system, and so that’s what ladder thoughts help you do. That’s what this tool is really designed for, is really more for cognitive mastery than emotional ownership.
Kevin Aillaud:
Although, emotional ownership does play a role. You’ve all heard me talk about changing thoughts and the so-called positive thinking doesn’t work, but I want to revisit that quickly because I want you to understand how ladder thoughts work correctly. There are really two reasons why people fail when they try to use positive thinking. One is that they’re trying to believe something that is too positive, right? Like they don’t believe it.
Kevin Aillaud:
Positive in the word positive thinking makes it sound like it’s a good idea, but the problem is that the human brain is actually really good at lying to themselves, right? The brain loves to confuse. The brain loves to hide itself as the cause of the problem because the cause of the problem is always a thought, but the brain likes to hide that, and create an illusion that the cause of the problem is coming from the environment, so it’s very clear that that’s because the brain likes to lie to itself, and that’s because you can think something that you don’t believe. It kind of sounds crazy, but if I say to you like … Check this out.
Kevin Aillaud:
If I said to you that the entire human species is being run telepathically by underground subterranean rats, and I want you to think that. Don’t say it out loud, just think that in your mind. Imagine it. Like kind of picture it in your brain. You can even think those words in your head or see the images.
Kevin Aillaud:
You can say it to yourself, but you don’t actually believe it, unless you know something I don’t. Of course, unless you know that … I just kind of came up with that. If there are actually subterranean rats that are controlling the entire human species telepathically, then how could I have even guessed that, right? If you know something I don’t, you know something I don’t, but if that is not true, like we know that is not true, and the same is true for overly positive thoughts when you’re trying to believe, and you don’t.
Kevin Aillaud:
Like if you’re trying to believe the thought, “I’m worthy no matter what,” or, “My life is perfect,” or, “I can have anything I want in my life,” I believe all those thoughts now, after several years of thought work, but you probably don’t. Most people probably don’t. Now, you can think those thoughts, right? You can say them in your mind, but if you don’t believe them, you’re not going to get an emotional response. Of course, that has nothing to do with whether they’re true, guys.
Kevin Aillaud:
I want you to understand emotional responses have nothing to do with truth. They have to do with whether we think they are true. They have to do with our subjectivity around repetition. We’ve thought it over and over and over and over again, so much so that now our body believes that it’s true. That doesn’t mean it’s true.
Kevin Aillaud:
Those three things, like if I repeat them, those three things that you’re worthy no matter what, that your life is perfect and that you can have anything you want in your life, those are actually true for each and every one of you. I know that. I believe that, but for most of you, it’s too much of a stretch. You don’t believe it. Most of us cannot jump from a bad from like the thought, “I’m a bad person,” to, “I’m worthy no matter what I do.”
Kevin Aillaud:
Right? If you believe that you’re not good enough, jumping to, “I’m worthy no matter what I do” is going to be huge. It’s like a huge leap. It’s like trying to jump across the Grand Canyon, or, “My life should have been this way,” to, “My life is perfect.” Right?
Kevin Aillaud:
“This shouldn’t have happened to me in my past,” to, “My life is perfect.” That’s going to be too much of a jump. If you’ve been thinking over and over and over about your past and about things that you think should not have happened to you, then to think that your life has always been perfect and always will be perfect and that life is perfect is like a huge leap. People try to think thoughts they don’t believe, and they don’t know that they don’t believe them because they don’t know the difference between thinking something and believing it, right? That’s positive affirmations.
Kevin Aillaud:
People say, do positive affirmations, and when people do positive affirmations, they just do them and they don’t know the difference between positive affirmations in terms of thinking, like I’m saying this and truly believing what it is that I’m saying. When you think something, you’re just saying the sentence in your mind. When you believe it, it’s because you get an emotional difference in your body from thinking the thought. You have a vibrational change, or you have a cellular change that creates that vibration, and when you think a thought, you don’t believe it does nothing. You don’t get any relief from any negative emotion or you don’t generate any positive emotion, you just …
Kevin Aillaud:
You don’t even feel neutral. Actually, what happens is sometimes you feel worse because now, you have a lot of thoughts and feelings about how changing your thoughts doesn’t work, or that you’re doing it wrong, where that is pointless, so you can have all these other thoughts come in kind of doubting the process of change, and so it actually makes the whole situation worse. This is where the thought ladder comes in, right? The thought ladder is a tool for helping you develop neutral thoughts or a new thought you want to practice believing, even though it may not be the ultimate thought you want to have forever, right? A ladder thought is not the be-all and end-all thought necessarily that you want to believe forever because that’s your goal thought, which is the belief that you want to use to create your intentional results.
Kevin Aillaud:
Ladder thoughts are thoughts on the way to that goal thought, on the way to that forever belief, that limitlessness. I’m going to explain how this works. I’m going to get into the ladder thought tool now. The thought ladder is very simple. At the bottom of the ladder …
Kevin Aillaud:
Just picture a ladder, right? At the bottom of the ladder, you put your current thought. That’s where you begin, right? That’s what you think now, “I am not worthy, but I’m not good enough.” Now, notice that I said that thought, right? That’s a singular.
Kevin Aillaud:
I want you guys to understand that right away, we want to just use one thought. No compound thoughts, no long thoughts. You’re going to notice that you don’t believe it, but it’s just one thought, one sentence. When you get to that, at the top of the ladder, put in the thought that you want to believe. This is your goal thought.
Kevin Aillaud:
Your goal thought is a thought that you would like to believe. You don’t believe it yet. I know you don’t believe it yet. That’s why it goes to the top of the goal thought. Now, that can be confusing because it’s like, “Well, should I pick something that I feel that I believe now, that I want to believe, that I could practice believing?”
Kevin Aillaud:
No. It’s something that you do not believe. You will not get an emotion, so some of you are like, “I don’t know what my goal thought is.” Right? Right away, because then, that’s okay. That’s totally fine, but if your brain is telling you that it’s too hard or it’s confused, then we’re not going to do that, right?
Kevin Aillaud:
If you don’t know what your goal thought is because you’ve never thought about it, this is the time to do that. You’re not going to let your brain pretend to confuse you, you are going to determine what you want, and one of the ways you can do that is you can just ask yourself one thing, which is, “What is the opposite of my current thought?” Right? If your current thought is, “I’m a bad person,” you could just ask yourself, “What would be the opposite of that thought?”, or I mean, which is, “I’m a good person,” which would be the goal thought, or you could imagine someone who sort of is kind of that person you want to be, so you have the feeling you want and you know they have this feeling that you want, and they have the result that you want, or they have the beliefs that you want. They have whatever it is, right?
Kevin Aillaud:
What would they be thinking? If your current thought is, “I am shy around women,” what is someone who is not shy around women thinking? Then, you can kind of ask it that way. You can kind of play with it that way. “What would they be thinking?”, and then you can adopt that thought.
Kevin Aillaud:
It’s okay if your goal thought doesn’t seem super amazing. Like it doesn’t have to be super amazing. Your brain may not be ready to come up with a truly positive goal thought yet. It’s okay. It’ll be there. One of the most important things is not to get too hard on yourself and to understand the truth.
Kevin Aillaud:
I mean, what is the universal truth, my friend? There is no right or wrong, right? You cannot make a mistake. Honestly, your goal thought doesn’t matter that much because we’re really just trying to give you some idea, like I want you to understand that your thoughts are optional, period. Your belief system is not a fact, period.
Kevin Aillaud:
That’s what you want to understand. The thought ladder is really just that way to, “What kind of thoughts?”, like brainstorming, maybe being creative and clever about it. Now, also remember that you are not supposed to believe these thoughts. That’s also very clear. Like if you’re looking for thoughts that you believe now, you’re not going to find them.
Kevin Aillaud:
I know I’ve said that, but I’m going to say it again. When you think your goal thought, “You will not feel better, brother,” you won’t. If you feel better when you think it, like if you have your goal thought and you think it and you feel better, then you just accidentally discovered a thought that you can already believe and you can just stop doing the ladder and just practice that thought, because you already have an emotional response to it. You already have some belief attached to it. You could just practice that thought and feel it, and act on it, and then it will become very quickly that new belief.
Kevin Aillaud:
In some way, you already believe it because you already have an emotional response, but if you’re doing a ladder, usually the reason is because you can’t believe the goal thought, so it’s not supposed to feel good. It should probably feel like nothing, right? I hear this a lot from my students. It’s kind of like, “Sure, it’d be nice to believe that, but I don’t,” like … That’s what the goal thought is.
Kevin Aillaud:
In fact, that’s what I want you to think about it as. It’s kind of like, “This is the thought that I would love to believe, but I just don’t.” Like if I were to suggest it to you on a consultation call or if you’re in the Spartans, you’re enrolled in the team, and we’re looking for that [T-line 00:18:37], that intentional model, it’d be like you would sing to me, “Yeah. Okay, coach. Sure, that would be nice to believe that, but I don’t.”
Kevin Aillaud:
“My brain has all these objections, right? I don’t feel anything. When I think that thought, I don’t feel anything. My brain is just objecting to it.” That’s what you want, so your goal thought, so you take that goal thought and you’re right at the top of the ladder.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, what we do is we figure out all the thoughts that are going to take us from the bottom, that current thought up to the goal thought, at the top of the ladder. To do that, we need to brainstorm neutral thoughts from the Alpha state. This is where separating thoughts from facts becomes so important, because you won’t be able to ladder a fact, bro. Like you can’t ladder a fact. Facts cannot be changed, right?
Kevin Aillaud:
Facts are out of our control. They cannot be changed. You can only ladder thoughts. Thoughts are optional, so you have to know that what you are thinking is a thought, not a fact. You have to know it’s a belief. Ladder thoughts are not usually like super inspirational, okay?
Kevin Aillaud:
There’s small steps. They’re just thoughts you can believe. In the Spartan March workbook, we get a whole lot of prompts for how to do this, but one thing that you can do, kind of give you a couple of tools right now, one thing you can do is to attach what I call like an opening phrase. Like I’m going to like, “I’m open to believing.” We can put that in the beginning of the goal thought, “I’m open to believing,” or, “I’m learning to believe.”
Kevin Aillaud:
If your goal thought is, “I’m inherently worthy, then you could practice thinking as ladder thoughts getting to that like total absolute belief, “I’m inherently worthy.” You can practice thinking,” I’m open to believing I’m inherently worthy,” or, “I’m learning to believe that I’m inherently worthy.” That’s attaching an opener, and your brain likes that because your brain is like, “Well, I’m not totally committed to that,” so it’s like … I’m not saying that that’s an absolute. I mean, you can’t deny that. That’s actually what’s happening.
Kevin Aillaud:
I am open to believing this. I am learning how to do this, so your brain doesn’t come up with obstacles and rejections and resistance. That’s attaching the opener of the goal thought, but here’s the goal thought, and then we put just like this little thing in beginning. We can also attach an opener to the current thought like, “It’s possible my brain is not reliable when,” okay? You could think, “It’s possible my brain is not reliable when it tells me I’m not worthy,” because then, now you’re starting to like doubt your doubt, right?
Kevin Aillaud:
Your doubt is, “I’m not worthy.” You doubt yourself, but now you’re doubting that thought. Now, you’re doubting that doubt, and that helps you move up the ladder. That’s kind of the opener you can use when it’s attaching the goal thought or it’s attaching to the current thought. You can also try depersonalizing the thought.
Kevin Aillaud:
Our thoughts are most painful when they are about us. Like that’s the core. Like when we think about a baseball and how a baseball is made, like the outer layer of that baseball, that leather and the stitching, those thoughts are usually about the outside, the external, but when you get to the core, our thoughts are always about us, and they’re always the most painful when they’re like that. If you have a thought … Like let’s give an example. Like the thought is, “I’m a bad father because I sometimes yell at my kids.”
Kevin Aillaud:
Right? You’re saying you’re correlating that. Like yelling at kids is bad, and you may not be able to believe that you’re a good dad. Like it may just not happen because you think that yelling at your kids just by definition is inherently bad, but what you might be able to do, you might be able to believe a thought like, “There are good fathers who yell at their kids sometimes,” or, “A person can yell at their kids and still be a good dad too.” You’re making the thought be about other people who share something in common with you, right?
Kevin Aillaud:
There’s just something in common with you yelling, but you’re distancing yourself from your brain judging you as bad, and your brain won’t put up as many objections when you’re distancing that. Then, over time, your brain kind of adapts and applies the thought about other people to you, like almost like a subconscious or unconscious way. Those are a couple of tools I like to use, a couple of examples, but there’s no right or wrong way to come up with a ladder thought. Like that’s the truth. There’s no right or wrong way to do this.
Kevin Aillaud:
It just needs to be slightly moved towards your goal thought and slightly away from your current thought. It just needs moving up the ladder. That’s it, and I really encourage you to brainstorm several thoughts at a time. Like anytime you do a thought ladder, try to get as many as you can in there. There isn’t a right answer.
Kevin Aillaud:
Come up with a few, and then read each one to see which one starts to feel a little bit to you, like the feels the best to you, and it’s so important, guys. When I say feels the best to you, understand that we’re doing thought ladders, right? We’re moving away from feeling bad, those negative feelings, so when I say feels the best you, that best, that “Best” might be feeling like nothing. It might be feeling neutral. That neutral might be best, or it might be just not feeling as bad as you had been, right?
Kevin Aillaud:
Take anxiety for example. Sometimes a neutral thought will just be moving from eight to a four on a scale from one to 10. It’s like my anxiety was at an eight. With this new thought, my anxiety is at a four. I still feel bad. Like I still have that negative anxiety, that uncomfortable emotion, but it’s less intense, because the thought is different.
Kevin Aillaud:
That’s still good. A four is better than an eight. That’s the whole point of the thought ladder. It doesn’t do you any good to kind of like, “I have to feel good,” like, “I have to feel great,” “I have to feel perfect or nothing will work,” looking for that magic potion, that magic sentence that’s going to solve all your problems. It’s much better to practice a thought that improves things a little bit over time, and it will get better and better, so just going for feelings a tiny bit better.
Kevin Aillaud:
It’s like, again, our brains want that instant gratification. We see a destination, like we want to climb a mountain. We want to teleport, right? We just want to have it. What’s the thought? How do I feel good now?
Kevin Aillaud:
The truth is, to get to the top of the mountain, we have to take several little steps. We have to walk it. We got to get there. I mean, even if we have an ATV, like an all-terrain vehicle, we still have to drive. We still have to cover the distance.
Kevin Aillaud:
There is no teleportation, right? There is no, “We’re going to start here and be at the destination instantaneously.” These little steps, these little ladder thoughts is how you do it, how you move and how you rewire your brain. Rewiring your brain is not about ripping out your brain and putting in another brain. It’s about changing each thought, breaking each circuit that has been created, that has been wired together, separating those thoughts and creating new thoughts incrementally.
Kevin Aillaud:
Once you pick a thought, you’ve got to practice it. That’s how you do it, is with repetition. I don’t know if you’ve heard me say this before, but those neurons that wire together fire together. It’s kind of like a common mantra in neuroscience because the more you practice a thought, the more that thought becomes a belief. The more that thought becomes real and true and gives you an emotional experience.
Kevin Aillaud:
You can do this in many, many ways. You can use an app. You can download an app on your phone that will remind you to think certain thoughts. You can set an alarm on your phone if you don’t want to download apps. You can put Sticky Notes around your house, around your office or in your car, anything you can do to remind yourself to think the thought.
Kevin Aillaud:
As you see these notes, as you see these alarms, you’ve got to practice. Practice, practice, practice. Same way you go to the gym and you do reps. You don’t go to the gym and you watch other people do reps, so you think about doing reps. You go in there and you do the work.
Kevin Aillaud:
You do the reps. That’s how you get stronger. Practicing your thought is the same way. You got to think it. You can’t just kind of think about thinking it, right? “I wish I were thinking it, or I need to put time aside to think this.”
Kevin Aillaud:
You’ve got to think the thought. Practice, practice, practice. The biggest question I get about ladders is usually like, “How do I know when I’m ready to go to the next rung of the ladder? Like how do I practice my next goal?” There’s really no right or wrong answer about this either, guys.
Kevin Aillaud:
Like that’s the big thing. That’s the beauty of it, is really no right or wrong answer, but I think it’s kind of like when you’re ready to do that new thought, the ladder thought that you choose is once you’re thinking it naturally. Like you don’t have to practice it all the time. It’s just kind of like, “That’s what I think. That’s what I think.”
Kevin Aillaud:
It just kind of comes in there, and then you know you can move on to the next one. Because you’re already thinking that rung, it’s time to start practicing the next rung, and it might even be the goal thought. One of the things that I find interesting about the ladder is that I don’t usually have to go through all of them. Like usually, if I practice one thought until it’s natural, or maybe even two thoughts, like one or two thoughts that are natural, my brain kind of like makes that jump all the way because it’s so plastic, right? It’s so just ready to do it.
Kevin Aillaud:
Sometimes that happens and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you do have to go through many iterations like four, five and six, but not all the time. The other fascinating thing is the more work you do, the more advance you get with this. Sometimes you’ll get to that goal thought, and then you’ll say, “Now I can see an even better thought about this same issue, so now what was my goal thought now becomes my current thought, and I want to set a new goal thought all in the same issue or circumstance.” It’s kind of like you’re going from if your current thought is, “I’m a terrible person,” and you’re trying to get to, “I’m an okay person,” so you get to like you’re an okay person as your goal thought, but now that becomes your current thought, and now you want, “I’m an amazing person” to be your goal thought, and you just start over.
Kevin Aillaud:
The amazing person example is fairly broad. Like what isn’t apparently true when we create specific external shifts or results come from changes with cognition, so it’s not just, “I’m a good person,” “I’m a bad person,” the external result that when I create $1 million in a year, that comes from what the story I tell myself is as a person that I create $1 million a year will change when I change the story to, “I’m a person that makes $10 million a year,” because I know I’m not that person. If I was, I would already be making $10 million a year annually, right? Any external shift is always going to be preceded by a change in the story you tell yourself about yourself, and as we evolve cognitively and as we learn to love ourselves more, we see these horizons that we couldn’t see in the beginning, right? When you’re making $100,000, you’re not thinking about making 10 million, you’re thinking about making one million, right?
Kevin Aillaud:
Then, you think, “Oh my gosh, I made one million. I can make 10 million.” It’s the same with the internal shifts. External shifts, internal shifts, they all begin from the story that you tell yourself. Then, we start a whole new ladder. We just start working and practicing those new ladder thoughts.
Kevin Aillaud:
Brother, you can always check in with yourself by practicing thinking the goal thought and seeing how you feel. Your body’s going to be your guide, right? Your body’s going to give you that emotional response, so you just check in. Check back in with your body. All right, so that is the ladder thought and it’s a super effective tool for incremental thought work, for incremental cognitive mastery development, right?
Kevin Aillaud:
It’s not a revolution overnight. It doesn’t happen. It’s not an immediate transformation. It’s really like a daily grind. It’s a step-by-step process, especially in the beginning, but that’s okay. Your brain is grinding away anyway, right?
Kevin Aillaud:
It’s grinding away, making you feel terrible, you know? It’s like when my students say, “My thought work is hard or thought downloads are hard.” I’m like, “Yeah, well, thinking limiting thoughts about yourself your whole life is also hard.” If you’re going to be putting in the effort to think something, then you might as well be putting the effort into something that’s going to make you feel better and perform the way you want to, the way you choose to. That is thinking versus believing.
Kevin Aillaud:
Really believing how we get there is through practice and creating that emotional experience, and that my friends, my brothers is what I have for you today. It is late March. We’re getting to the end of March, my friends. You can still join the Spartan Academy and do all of our March work. You can learn to believe new things. You can learn to recreate your identity next month.
Kevin Aillaud:
We’re going to get into time, but every single class, every single curriculum for every month is available to all the Spartans all the time. If you have any questions, if you’re struggling with anything and you want to see how this works, if you want to see how it is your beliefs, how it is your cognition that is creating your results, you can sign up for a free 45-minute consultation with me, and I will walk you through it. I will show you that your circumstances, the circumstances of your life are not creating suffering. Facts do not create emotions, my friend. Only beliefs do, and that’s what I got.
Kevin Aillaud:
Check it out, thealphamalecoach.com. All the information is there, and until next week, my friends, my brothers, elevate your alpha.
Announcer:
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. If you enjoy what you’ve heard and want even more, sign up for Unleash Your Alpha, your guide to shifting to the alpha mindset, at thealphamalecoach.com/unleash.