i am a behavioral psychologist what you do is you find out what essentially you help per a person establish their aim then you break down what they're trying to do into attainable units and you negotiate with them you say well look you know um well i'm not me they say i'm not making use of my time very well spending three hours a day playing video games you say okay hypothetically how much time would you like to spend playing video games and they say well i could probably spend an hour a day without it interfering with
the rest of my life which is kind of the issue right because if you play video games fine but maybe three hours means that you're not doing your homework or something and that's not a good game so you say okay well i want to play for an hour a day it's like okay well can you shift to an hour a day right now and this is supposed to be an honest conversation and the person says no i've tried that lots of times every time i try i just fail and so you don't say well quit
failing go play one hour a day and the problem will be solved that's a stupid strategy you say okay well look you think about this and don't agree to do this unless you think you will do it because otherwise it's just a waste of both of our times it's like do you think that you could track how much time you've spent playing video games for one week don't change anything just track it and they think yeah i could probably do that but i might miss a couple of days and think okay fine so here's the
deal five out of the next seven days you just track how much time you spend playing video games and the person says i think i can do that because that's what you want them to say you want them to succeed at the improvement it's not much of an improvement but it's something right then they come back and they say well yeah i was playing about four hours a day and so you say okay well fine good work man you've got it tracked now we know what we know the parameters of your problem it's actually a
little worse than you thought but at least you had enough sense to measure it we know where you're at okay do you think you could cut that down to three and a half hours every day and the person thinks no i'm pretty weak willed i don't think i can manage that you say well how about this do you think that two of the next seven days you can only play for three hours you think you can manage that and you don't you're not cynical about this you're not insulting the person any of that it's like
because you don't care all you care is that they make some incremental movement towards their goal and the person thinks about that if they have any sense and they take their weakness into account and they think i think i could probably do that and then they come back the next week and they say i managed to spend three hours a day playing video games for three days and the rest were four hours and you say good work man you've just got rid of 12 and a half percent of your problem you're one eighth of the
way to fixing it in one week and you know the person isn't going to be all that thrilled with themselves because they don't do the arithmetic and they don't do the projection they think well i'm still pretty damn useless i'm playing 25 hours worth of video games a week it's nothing to pat myself on the back for it's like yes it is it's definitely it's a marked measurable improvement and it's a move in the right direction you know and then you say okay well on the days you succeeded how did you manage to succeed and
is there a way that you could do it for four days next week how about that or maybe you could even try five days you think you could do that and then you also tell the person look the other thing you've got to understand is you're not going to improve like this you're going to improve like this so some weeks you're going to come back and say geez i backslid completely and i like played for four hours a day for seven days it doesn't matter because that doesn't mean you failed it just means that you
slid back you want to calculate it over a month or something like that and you know generally speaking a month later the person's down to something like two hours a day and you've figured out ways of filling their time in with something productive otherwise and they're on their way and the general consequence of that is that every time they manage an accomplishment they get a little stronger in character they get a little bit more confident in their ability they get a little bit less racked with self-disgust they get a little bit more hopeful about the
future and they get more confident that they can make another change and if you're patient and you have to be patient with yourself that way it's like you reward those incremental improvements and you don't get all cynical about them and you think okay just imagine what would happen if you kept doing that every week for 10 years and the answer to that is things would be so much better for you that you can't even imagine it with that much improvement or maybe even with half that much improvement and so that's a that's a very good
way of progressing i remember a friend of mine that was incarcerated in and for years she had thrown her life away in alcohol into drugs and i said what was the moment that you turned your life around she's been sober now for 21 years and she said one day she was cleaning the toilet of the warden of the prison and she said while she's cleaning the toilet and and she flushed the toilet she said it was like an aha moment that she said to herself if i stop doing drugs i'll never have to clean a
warden's toilet again isn't that interesting with that that was like an awakening for her and from that time to this time she never touched a glass of alcohol from that time to this time she stopped using drugs from that time to this time she stopped associating with her friends who were still into drugs and many to this day those that are not in jail or those that are not dead yet that that moment all of us have moments in our lives when it's a wake up moment i remember i was 10 years old and working
with my mother and she was on miami beach and working for families wealthy families and cooking for them and we ate the food left over from these families that she cooked for they were kind and generous people they would say maybe whatever food is left over you can pack it up and take it home to those children that you have adopted and i remember looking around these big beautiful homes and i said mom on she said leslie what is it i said one day i'll buy you a big beautiful home just like this now where
did i come from now i have a twin brother and i i think that what happened for me that did not happen for my brother the part of the mansion that he worked in he didn't have exposure to something that i had the owner of this home this wealthy man he was playing motivational messages every day i had to keep his office clean and the ashtrays clean of his cigars and and had to vacuum and dust the bookshelf but while i was doing that i was listening to these messages we become what we think about
by earl nightingale all of us are self-made but only the successful will admit it always strive to get on top in life because it's the bottom that's overcrowded i did not know at the time that my mind was being programmed see if you look at yourself and look at your goals and look at your dreams here's what i know you have to really program your mind for success you have to program it deliberately because of that exposure my brother didn't get that he was another part of the house but because of that exposure it did
something for me it changed my mental blueprint and and i can say to you that as you take a time take the time every day just if you didn't do anything but one hour a day listen to things to build your spirit up listen to things to fortify your faith listen to things that will cause your mind to grow and to expand i can tell you based upon my own experience you have things that you can do that you don't even realize you want to keep a social distance from poverty social distance from hard times
social distance from being poor social distance from living a life of mediocrity social distance from people who are not going anywhere a social distance from people who don't want anything social distance from people do not have goals and dreams why because they rub off on you this road that you want to get on this life that you're seeking it's it's uncommon it's different and sometimes it's lonely i choose not to be a common man it's my right to be uncommon if i can i seek opportunity not security i do not wish to be a kept
citizen humbled and dull by having the state look after me i want to take the calculated risk to dream and to build to fail and to succeed i refuse to live from hand to mother i prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence the thrill of fulfillment to the still calm of utopia i will never cower before the master nor been to any threat it's my heritage to stand direct proud and unafraid and face the world boldly and say this i have done you know why you're listening to me because you're uncommon everything i'm
saying is common sense but common sense is not common practice you're different get over it understand that everybody's not gonna get it [Music] [Music] you
