Mind Magic

Highlighted Quotes

• Location 84: manifesting is defining an intention such that it gets embedded into our subconscious, which functions below the level of consciousness.
• Location 97: Manifestation is about cultivating a fierce belief in possibility.
• Location 158: Manifesting is essentially the process of intentionally embedding the thoughts and images of the life we desire into our subconscious.
• Location 165: Visualization works because, amazingly, the brain does not distinguish between an actual physical experience and one that is intensely imagined.
• Location 169: Once we have done everything we can to manifest our goal, we must accept that is all we can do and no longer have attachment to the outcome.
• Location 184: detach from my thinking enough to see it for what it was: just thoughts,
• Location 195: Changing your brain takes time.”
• Location 344: A person can’t possess more than they can love, and I had not opened my heart any wider than when I first wrote my list.
• Location 387: I forgot to be present for my own pain, which was driving the desire for each new shiny thing.
• Location 568: she could not direct her attention toward her intention.
• Location 592: Human beings were not designed to be stressed out all the time.
• Location 609: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
• Location 610: It is our ability to choose that allows us to focus our attention and influence our unlocked subconscious to manifest our intention.
• Location 622: Essentially, we are responding to a passive-aggressive comment in a colleague’s email through the same system that was designed to process a saber-toothed tiger attack.
• Location 665: There are over one hundred neurotransmitters in the brain that have evolved to regulate a variety of functions, most of which operate at an unconscious level, including heart rate and blood pressure, digestion and the sense of hunger and thirst, and our response to stress.
• Location 667: Four of these neurotransmitters are primarily responsible for our sense of happiness, well-being, and positive feelings
• Location 695: I had to break out of that mode, open my heart, and reflect on how much of a difference I could make to my future patients. This allowed me to transform my fear into compassion.”
• Location 750: the brain is bombarded with somewhere between six and ten million bits of information per second, while being able to consciously process only fifty bits per second.
• Location 751: 99.9995 percent of the stimuli reaching our brain are processed below the level of consciousness.
• Location 968: It has also been demonstrated that the heart sends more information to the brain than the other way around.
• Location 1016: They needed to calm their minds, open their hearts, and come back to their intention.
• Location 1057: the moment, these forces feel overpowering and travel deep grooves carved by long-standing habits. The reality is that we can cultivate practices to reclaim our influence over countless processes that appear automatic and inaccessible to conscious control.
• Location 1065: you will discover that your beliefs about yourself are one of the few areas you do have control over.
• Location 1066: In the end, it’s not about the universe: it’s about you. We may have come to believe that our inner power is limited by our external circumstances or our past conditioning, but it starts in our own minds.
• Location 1077: Social media companies succeed by capturing as much of our attention as they can through psychological processes that mirror addiction, then selling that attention and data to the highest bidders.
• Location 1080: The typical American spends about 1,460 hours per year on their smartphone, which translates to about ninety-one waking days.
• Location 1081: Our devices are designed to exploit a psychological phenomenon known as a variable ratio reinforcement schedule.
• Location 1094: When we lose the power to direct our attention, we can sink into despair and feel we do not have influence over the course or quality of our lives. Deep down, we know that selective attention is the key investment in building the lives we desire.
• Location 1107: in our society we are suffering not from a crisis of agency, but from a crisis of the sense of agency. Self-agency is the superpower we have forgotten we possess.
• Location 1116: The humbling truth is that our conscious mind does not have access to most of the subconscious processes by which we carry out actions (such as our ability to perform movements), and therefore it can only set an intention, watch its effects, and then interpret them accordingly.
• Location 1118: our sense of agency is a story our brain tells us about our experience.
• Location 1134: the sense of agency is really a perceived subjective experience that can be influenced by our own thought processes.
• Location 1135: the depth and efficacy of our sense of inner power comes down to the story we tell ourselves about our ability to express that power.
• Location 1138: the strange thing about the subconscious is that it runs on beliefs. What we subconsciously believe is often what limits the possibilities of a given situation.
• Location 1140: many of us suffer from the opposite of the patients with anosognosia: we labor under the delusion that we are paralyzed, when we are in fact fully able to act effectively!
• Location 1151: One must focus one’s attention and make salient that which one wishes to embed in the subconscious by first embedding it into one’s working memory. It is sustained selective attention through what is called effortful control that results in its power to embed in the subconscious.
• Location 1155: many people do not believe they have such energy and thus end up defining their lives by their limitations and believing change is not possible.
• Location 1167: In order to produce the results we want, we must first believe in our innate ability to affect the outcome of situations through our actions and will. This process starts with our attention.
• Location 1175: reclaiming the power to choose our response to discomfort that we access our power to manifest.
• Location 1193: Inner power arises when a person learns to discern between their negative conditioning and their inner awareness, and thereby discovers that the emotional reaction is conditioned and not hardwired. The discomfort in the body and in the mind gradually loosen as their sense of identification with their habits dissolves.
• Location 1197: It is these habits learned as children that determine how we respond to so many experiences we face as adults.
• Location 1199: The first key is to transform our relationship with discomfort: we must become aware of our thoughts about it and recognize our ability to work with them.
• Location 1222: When we calm down enough to see them clearly, we make a startling discovery: there are gaps between the stimulus and our response.
• Location 1229: There is the standard way in which we respond to a stimulus, but now we also have a new way: we can jump off the train.
• Location 1233: you have more power over your thoughts than you think, and for that very reason, you have more influence over your reality.”
• Location 1236: Every day is an opportunity to change how you perceive and react to the world.
• Location 1244: When you set your mind to a good result, the pathway is exactly the same, but the software is updated through positive neurofeedback.
• Location 1246: it is not events that disturb people, it is their judgments concerning them.
• Location 1268: While the task may be simple, the activity of doing so engages those brain processes that are associated with embedding intention into the brain. This is the power of tiny habits.
• Location 1280: There is no favorable wind for the sailor who does not know where to go.
• Location 1310: the false narrative of our culture, which promises that achieving material success will fill a sense of emotional emptiness.
• Location 1312: there is nothing about manifesting that is inherently about acquiring material possessions.
• Location 1408: Sometimes you need to use your imagination to experience something for the first time. This prepares us to experience it in reality.
• Location 1409: although the images we create are unreal, the emotions we experience when we give ourselves fully to our visions are real.
• Location 1413: experiences of elevated positive emotion, whether imagined or recalled, teach the subconscious to pay attention.
• Location 1543: They discovered that meaning (separate from happiness) is not inherently tied to social benchmarks such as comfort and wealth, while happiness (separate from meaning) is.
• Location 1544: major differences between a life full of pleasure and a life full of meaning.
• Location 1546: happiness is usually experienced as transitory, while the satisfaction of meaning is longer lasting.
• Location 1593: When we do not believe we have the power to change our situation, we are bound by subconscious habits of a mind rooted in fear.
• Location 1655: I began learning how to work with the amygdala.
• Location 1656: we can learn to accept that the amygdala will accompany us on our journeys, doing its job of trying to protect and care for our physical survival, but we do not need to let it make our decisions for us.
• Location 1674: evolution typically does not discard, it includes.
• Location 1675: in modern society it results for many in a negative ongoing dialogue in their head.
• Location 1676: negativity is the first language of our species, and we must learn, slowly and painstakingly, to speak a new one.
• Location 1678: Where the fight response may once have helped us defend ourselves against a marauding tiger, it now causes us to fight against the parts of ourselves that we believe do not measure up, triggering overpowering emotions of shame and the feeling that we are not good enough.
• Location 1684: From the point of view of the SNS, positivity has no purpose for survival, so it does not merit our attention in the same way as a threat.
• Location 1686: in the process of coming into ourselves as a species, negative self-commentary became classified by the mind in the same way as actual dangers.
• Location 1693: our body and mind have become addicted to the powerful negative emotions of fear, anxiety, and despair, which at one time were associated with self-protection.
• Location 1698: the walls start coming in on us as we believe every negative thing we are told about ourselves, and by doing so we give up our agency to manifest change.
• Location 1713: the truly unhelpful aspect of the inner critic is that it is very distracting. It drains the energy out of your attention and impedes your ability to focus on your intention. The reason we become discouraged is that the inner critic’s cruel tirade steals our inner resources and diverts them away from our positive and healthy life goals.
• Location 1717: Then, once we are distracted away from our goal and fail to achieve it, the inner critic has a field day torturing us for that, and so on in a vicious cycle.
• Location 1728: This sad set of lies starts to define the very way we see ourselves, the way we see the world, and, ultimately, the view of our worthiness to have what we want and need. The negative thoughts become the walls of our prison.
• Location 1740: For many of us, the biggest obstacle to our inner power to manifest what we desire is this negative inner voice and the fear it evokes in us.
• Location 1758: we must soothe the primitive nervous system and make it feel safe enough to allow us to take the healthy risks that make us grow.
• Location 1768: Once we get the hang of being OK in the present moment, we can cultivate self-compassion, the inner critic’s kryptonite.
• Location 1774: Self-compassion has the power to heal the parts of us that make us feel chronically unsafe and unloved and transform them into vital sources of wisdom and compassion to share with others.
• Location 1814: Negative beliefs about ourselves are like mushrooms: they grow in the dark.
• Location 1959: solitude is different from loneliness.
• Location 1974: Realize that the negative self-talk is not you. Understand that from our evolution over thousands of years, negative thoughts and events stick to us to protect us, but in the modern world they only limit us and cause us pain.
• Location 2006: Once we start to loosen the distracting grip of the inner critic and consciously care for our wounds of the heart, we become empowered to teach our salience network what is important to us.
• Location 2028: you can fail at what you don’t want so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”
• Location 2059: The brain is constantly blocking stimuli and deliberately filtering out most of our experiences.
• Location 2061: the brain resists new experiences that might force it to alter its complex circuitry that has served a purpose, be it healthy or not, over time.
• Location 2063: The adult human brain represents about 2 percent of our body weight but, remarkably, accounts for about 20 percent of the oxygen consumed, and therefore the calories—significantly more than any other organ.
• Location 2065: Within the gray tissue crisscrossed with spongy coils there are over one hundred billion cells, and each of them makes over ten thousand connections within the vast network woven between brain cells. This web produces a thousand trillion synaptic connections, greater in number even than the stars in the universe.
• Location 2084: In some ways, our brains are not processing machines so much as predicting machines,
• Location 2086: If your desire is so unfamiliar to the brain that fulfilling it would be a new experience requiring a tremendous amount of energy, your brain would just as soon look the other way.
• Location 2090: The brain is only doing its job to make your system run smoothly, suppressing all the information it does not classify as salient.
• Location 2092: fear is the brain’s way of guarding against the novelty of experiencing your desire.
• Location 2093: visualization practices is teaching the brain to become intimately acquainted with our desire so that it recognizes it instantly.
• Location 2097: cognitive ease. The more the brain already knows our desire intimately down to the last detail, the less energy it will have to spend to welcome it into our lives.
• Location 2128: the subconscious maximizes the meeting between attention and opportunity
• Location 2132: We teach our subconscious what is important through repetition and positive emotion.
• Location 2140: We might think of the subconscious as comprised of a filing clerk and a bloodhound.
• Location 2146: What the subconscious seeks, the conscious mind finds.
• Location 2153: This means that about 99.9995 percent of our brain’s bandwidth is not available to our conscious mind.
• Location 2154: the brain is wired for inattention and inertia, rather than attention and choice.
• Location 2213: The paradox of flow is that you are going toward the goal but the goal is irrelevant.
• Location 2218: When we practice visualizing our intention with full sensory detail, we strive to enter the flow state in our imagination.
• Location 2225: In flow, we have a special kind of access to the deeper resources of our subconscious and can draw upon them more directly.
• Location 2227: When we are practicing repetitive visualization, the basic technique of manifesting, we are essentially hypnotizing our minds into recognizing that our intention is important.
• Location 2247: When we deliberately embed an intention in our minds through repeated visualization, we are making use of the same physiological pathways as hypnosis.
• Location 2263: The subconscious responds deeply to strong emotions associated with a particular behavior,
• Location 2393: starting small, returning to our core practices, activating the social power of altruism, and tuning into synchronicity.
• Location 2400: This is the nature of small changes or baby steps. They strengthen us without overwhelming us.
• Location 2414: Consciously improving our interactions with those around us may turn out to be the key factor in overcoming our obstacles to manifesting. By doing so, you are creating a team of allies to help you.
• Location 2422: When we look at the world in a different way, we move through it in a different way, and in turn the world sees us in a different way.
• Location 2427: only when we feel safe and taken care of can we truly hear another human being.
• Location 2439: our Green Zone state can trigger the Green Zone state in others because they then feel safe, relaxed, and at ease in our presence.
• Location 2478: “The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is .
• Location 2502: Once the filing clerk has classified our intention as salient and given its scent to the bloodhound, the hound will begin to hunt for any trace of opportunity to fulfill our intention.
• Location 2573: You need to keep your vibration high and put intention on where you want to go, and tune in to your intuition.
• Location 2684: part of the manifesting process is the necessity of letting go of our expectations.
• Location 2692: we have to remember that the high level of detail in our visualizations is for classifying our intention as important within the subconscious, not for actually exerting influence on our external world.
• Location 2706: When we are buying into the negativity of the inner critic inside our minds, we are very self-focused, and the way to get us out of that is to be of service and help others.
• Location 2710: we have to leave ourselves, through service to others, in order to see the world in a different way, and then by watching how people change through our service, we change and can reflect back on the inner critic and how it limits us.
• Location 2732: “Your job is not to figure out how it’s going to happen for you, but to open the door in your head. And when the door opens in real life, just walk through it. And don’t worry if you miss your cue because there’s always doors opening. They keep opening.”
• Location 2746: attachment to results is just another form of fear, and as we have seen in previous chapters, fear is the emotion that most interferes with our agency.
• Location 2761: I am susceptible to my ego, which inflates my identity and invariably leads me astray. Sometimes impatience and anxiety about where it’s all going overwhelm me, and I beat myself up for not doing x, y, or z. Other times, things do not go the way I want them to and I get angry. When I am disappointed or defeated, or I feel judged by others for my failures,
• Location 2768: I now made a new list of the ten things that open the heart: Compassion, Dignity, Equanimity, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Humility, Integrity, Justice, Kindness, and Love (CDEFGHIJKL).
• Location 2778: Cultivating gratitude is a simple and effective means to shift our focus from what we still lack to what is already working and energizing in our lives.
• Location 2810: feelings of gratitude show an inverse correlation with the feeling of victimization from bullying and the accompanying suicide risk.
• Location 2819: the sources of goodness in our lives are outside of ourselves,
• Location 2843: It is freedom from attachment that releases the magic within us.
• Location 2855: We can see equanimity as the practice of balancing and rebalancing physiological and emotional responses to events that cause us stress:
• Location 2870: kintsugi contains a profound teaching on how to reframe our so-called mistakes, as well as the inevitable knocks, breaks, and cracks that come with living an engaged life.
• Location 2872: wabi-sabi, the practice of consciously valuing marks of wear from an object’s use in order to embrace what is flawed and imperfect.
• Location 2875: Kintsugi embodies the recognition that the nature of life results at times in us being broken, but it is the very nature of this brokenness and the repair that defines who we are.
• Location 2879: When we relax with our imperfections, we invite others to acknowledge their own scars and come out of hiding to connect with one another.
• Location 2885: By being willing to forgive myself for all the things I cannot control, as well as for my own mistakes along the way, I take away the power that fear and anger have over my mind,