the switch that flipped it all

A little while back I felt overwhelmed with the quantum of work I had…

At the end of each day, I would feel tired and overworked. I did not feel like dealing with clients, internal fires, etc.

At the same time, my business wasn’t growing. I was frustrated.

Then one night, I very serendipitously landed on a video on YouTube.

 It was a video by Anthony Robbins, where he spoke about aligning your beliefs with your goals. 

One thing that he said specifically stood out for me. 

He said, “your internal representations create emotions, emotions create actions, and actions create results.”

“Most people want things in their life, but their beliefs and internal representations work in a completely opposite direction, preventing them from getting what they want.”

And this struck me like a bolt. 

I realised that the things that I wanted and the things I believed in were complete opposites. 

On one hand, I wanted to grow my business. 

But on the other hand, my internal representation of things was like:

• I have too much work

• I don’t like dealing with clients

• I am not enjoying this

And my internal representations were the exact opposite of the thing I wanted. 

If the signal that I constantly gave my brain, was “I don’t like this” and “I’m not enjoying this”, do you think I would be able to create situations where I would have more of it? 

Absolutely not. 

It was an epiphany of sorts for me. It led me down a rabbit hole of content from Anthony Robbins, and understanding how NLP works. 

And I want to share some of my most high impact learnings with you in this letter. 

Understanding Internal representation:

Perhaps the biggest learning that I have tried to incorporate into my life is changing my internal representations. The only difference between successful people and ordinary people is how they represent situations to themselves. 

People who are miserable have one thing in common. They all have terrible internal representations of situations and events. 

If something bad happens in their lives, they start to victimise themselves, and blow up the situation in their heads. This puts them into an unproductive emotional state.

Have you ever wondered why there are people who are facing the toughest of challenges in their lives, and yet you will always see them jolly and smiling?

And on the other hand there are people who seem to have everything you could ask for and yet they remain miserable. 

It can all be chalked down to how they represent situations internally.

Marcus Aurelius talks about this in his book ‘Meditations’ (I highly recommend reading it if you haven’t already).

He says there are no ‘good things’ and ‘bad things’ in nature. Things and events are neutral. Death and disease is as natural as life. It’s our interpretations of these events that make them “good” or “bad”.

Every time you represent a situation poorly internally, you create an unproductive internal state, which leads to unproductive actions and further worsens the situation. 

On the other hand, when you represent the situation properly, and in your favour, you create a favourable, productive internal state, which results in productive action. 

For example, if you lost a cricket match, you have two options. One is wallow in self pity and create an unproductive emotional state, that will lead to unproductive actions. 

Or, you create a positive emotional representation, by looking at all the things you learnt, all the fun you had and how it helped you become a better cricketer. 

Most people choose the former and that’s why most people are miserable. 

How do you think Virat Kohli represents a situation to himself after a poor string of form? 

Do you think he says to himself, “I’ve not played well for so many matches now.”, “Am I even good enough”

Or do you think he says to himself “I’m a champion player and I’m going to learn and come out of this like I always do.”

Just that small change in how he represents the situation to himself internally, will change his emotional state, which will change his actions and ultimately, the outcome. 

A few days back, I saw a very interesting carousel on Instagram. Taking wisdom from an Instagram post is a risky play, and it’s not something I do often. But in this particular instance, it was eye opening. 

On the first slide, was a man looking at dishes in his sink, saying something along the lines of “I have so many dishes to do, this is awful!”.

And on the next slide, in a very similar setting of a sink full of dishes, was the man looking at the dishes and saying “Oh how lucky I am, to have a tummy full of food and a sink full of dishes.”

The exact same situation, will create two different emotional responses based on how you represent it internally.

Pay very close heed to your internal representations. And change how you look at them. Everything else will follow in sync.

Changing belief patterns:

At the end of the day, the universe is energy. 

We create what we think, feel and believe in.

This is proven by something called the Placebo effect.

It is a well documented phenomenon in medicine, where the patient is told that they are being given medicines, but are instead given blank pills, also called placebos. 

These pills have no medicinal content. So they’re not supposed to have any effect on the body. And yet, a majority of the patients who believe that they have been given medicine, start to show signs of improvement. 

This shows how powerful belief systems can be. If you believe in the right things, you can create positive emotions and feelings, resulting in positive outcomes (as seen in the placebo effect). 

But on the flip side, if you believe in the wrong things, and create pessimistic internal representations, it will lead to negative emotions and outcomes. 

And your actions are almost completely a result of your emotional states. People produce their best work when they are in positive and productive emotional states. 

And now I have realised that I can control and manipulate my emotional state, by manipulating my beliefs and internal representations. 

Hence, I have started to be very mindful about the thoughts and beliefs that I entertain in my mind. And I have been pleasantly surprised by the difference it has made to the quality of my life. 

I strongly believe that if you change your internal representations and beliefs, it will lead you towards much better and productive emotional states, which will create better outcomes. 

Try it out for yourself and let me know if it helps.

Until next time 

- Khyatt