You see things in life as you are.

And so the more you alter you, the more you begin to see things differently, which is amazing about this is, we control who we are by what we think about.

When you're obsessed with what you want, you begin to hear those conversations.

When you're not obsessed, you miss them.

Or you'll see something that you wouldn't see.

You'll see the prospect, you'll see the situation, you'll see the opportunity.

It literally reveals you.

It's almost like the matrix.

It changes our world.

This is the power of what we think about.

It's the most misunderstood thing in the world.

Do you ever think about what you think about?

Because if you did, and if you took control of that, you could alter the direction of your entire life.

Most people never take the time to take an inventory about their thoughts.

Yet our thoughts control our world.

Our thoughts are like magnets.

They literally draw towards us.

That's which we obsess about.

And so most people never take the time to analyze what they think about.

The most successful people I know are the most self-aware, meaning they're aware of what they do, and they're also aware of what they think.

They're aware of how they're perceived.

So today's message is about thinking.

Here's some stats you need to know.

Number one is, average person, you and I, have about 75,000 thoughts a day rattling around in this thing we call our brains and our minds. 75,000 of them.

The crazy thing is 91% of those thoughts are identical to the previous day and are identical to the day before that and the day before that and the day before that.

And then we wonder why our life seems to repeat itself over and over again.

So really the difference in our life, if we have 75,000 thoughts a day, here's the crazy thing. 91% of them are exactly the same.

The separation in our life is in those 9% of their thoughts because remember this, these magnets are pretty powerful.

That's why I'm always saying that your obsessions become your possessions because they do.

You draw into your life exactly what it is you think about.

It's a physical reality that you attract to yourself what you think about.

So the difference in our life is 9% of our thoughts.

That's why people say all the time, the difference between winning and losing is so small, it's almost too scary to talk about.

And really we have identified what it is.

It's 9% of what we think about alters the direction of our life.

So what I'm here to tell you today is you've gotta hone in and get aware of what you think about and then alter those 9% of the thoughts that are variable on a daily basis to serve you.

Because if you don't, these thoughts become like viruses.

They're viruses in our minds.

What happens in a computer when it gets a virus?

It slows down.

It becomes sluggish.

It doesn't function at its optimal level.

Same thing with our thinking.

If we don't get those 9% of our thoughts to serve us, our lives go in a completely different direction.

So remember this.

You don't see things in your life as they are.

You see things in life as you are.

And so the more you alter you, the more you begin to see things differently, which is amazing about this is we control who we are by what we think about.

Think about this just for a second.

Wherever you're sitting watching this, the chair that you're sitting in, if you're sitting in a chair, if you're driving in a car and you're listening to this, that seat you're in started in someone's mind as a thought, right?

Every detail of it, the fabric, the cushions, the way it's structured, every single piece of that started in someone's mind as a thought and then became a reality by putting out the pieces together.

See, everything in life is that way as well.

It always begins with a thought.

When we think a new thought, here's what literally happens.

Thinking a new thought literally opens a space up in our minds, in our lives that never existed before prior to having that thought.

It's like a brand new space you've created just by thinking it.

And what happens is your unconscious and subconscious mind goes to work on filling in that space with the people, places, resources, and things to fill it up like a room in an architect would, to fill up that space and fully furnish it.

That's the power of how we think.

So literally everything that exists started as a thought in someone's mind and then became a material matter.

And so you've got to begin to think about the things you want to materialize in your life on a regular basis and think about it repetitiously.

Literally the things that we obsess about become the things that we possess in our lives.

Most people, those variable 9% of their thoughts is the new thing they're worried about, the new fear they have, the new response to an email they have to make, and they never dictate the terms.

Remember this, your mind is a weapon and you've got to begin to use it and pick that weapon up and control it.

Most people are out of control with their mind.

They don't point it at something.

They let the world point it and they misfire all the time.

So today I want you to pick up that weapon that is your mind and begin to point it at the things you want, knowing that it's a magnet that draws to you the things in your life that you would most like to have or that you would most not like to have.

And that's where most people make the mistakes in their life.

So today I want you to begin with first taking an inventory of the thoughts you have that don't serve you.

And I want you to write them down.

And I want you to eliminate them.

Step one, write down the thoughts that don't serve you and eliminate them.

How do I eliminate them?

By replacement.

You eliminate them with replacement, by thinking a new thought.

It's as simple as saying, what thought would I need to have that would serve me to get this goal or dream or vision that I have?

And get that thought, write it down, repeat it over and over and over and over again.

Because there's a part of our brain called the reticular activating system.

And it's the filter that we see the entire world through.

I talk about it a great deal in my book Max Out Your Life.

You can click the link here.

There's a little bit of the description in the bio as well.

Or go to maxoutbook.com.

You can get the book or go to Amazon.

But I talk about this in the book.

The reticular activating system is the filter through which you see the entire world.

It's powerful.

And so that's why it filters out all the things in your life that aren't important to you.

So that you can be sane.

You don't feel the blood rushing through your left ear.

You're not conscious of your breathing.

A million stimulus would hit you.

If you couldn't filter things out, you'd go crazy.

This allows you to only filter into your consciousness what is most important to you.

And what's most important to you is what you think about all the time.

And it creates a filter.

For example, that's why if something's important to you, the reticular activator reveals it to you through vision, sound, touch, you name it.

And so, for example, you ever buy a new car.

You've got a new blue Honda car.

All of a sudden, don't you see that car everywhere?

It's on the third, it's gonna be three lanes over, other side of the freeway.

You see blue Hondas all of a sudden everywhere.

They were already all over the road.

Why do you see them all of a sudden?

You ever notice that before?

Because that's become important to you because it's part of your reticular activating system now.

So what if you could program your mind that the blue Hondas of your life are your goals, your dreams, and your visions?

And the way we do that is repeated thinking, looking at our goals, visualizing them, seeing them over and over again.

So let me give you a couple tips to do that.

Number one, your smartphone, you check about 400 times a day, 400.

The most important thing you could do is on your screensaver, program the thoughts that would serve you, the goals that would serve you.

That gives you 400 triggers a day.

Every time you pick up this phone, you're looking at your blue Hondas.

You're looking at what's most important to you.

And what happens is when you put that down, the RAS begins unconsciously to help filter into your existence, the people, the places, the conversations, the things that will help you materialize that space you've created with the thought.

It fills it with the furniture of your life, the furniture of the people, places, and things.

So the second thing is to program your phone with your goals and dreams.

That's 400 triggers a day to begin to alter those 9% of your thoughts.

That's my challenge to you.

As you program that RAS, what's gonna begin to happen is you're gonna begin to, you'll literally be sitting in a restaurant three or four tables over as you're in a conversation.

You ever had this happen?

You just can't help but hear somebody in that restaurant three tables over.

You shouldn't be able to hear them, but you do.

And sometimes, it almost drives you crazy, doesn't it?

Like, I can't get these people out of my head.

Why is it sometimes you can hear these conversations in a room or on an airplane away from you, and other times you can't?

Because somehow that conversation became important to you, and the RAS filters it into you auditory through your hearing, and you begin to hear it.

When you're obsessed with what you want, you begin to hear those conversations.

When you're not obsessed, you miss them, or you'll see something that you wouldn't see.

You'll see the prospect.

You'll see the situation.

You'll see the opportunity.

It literally reveals you.

It's almost like the matrix.

It changes our world.

This is the power of what we think about.

It's the most misunderstood thing in the world.

It's literally taking control of your thoughts and pointing it at your life and your goals and your dreams as a weapon to magnetize towards you what you want.

So my challenge to you is number one, get control and be aware of the thoughts that don't serve you and eliminate them by replacement with the thoughts that do serve you.

These thoughts are the things that you want in your life.

We do that by repetitious thinking, and we do that by programming them in our phone, having some sort of vision board up in our lives.

You can put your goals on your mirror in your bathroom, but you've always heard these things before, but you've never understood why they work so most people don't do it.

It works because it reprograms that filter in your mind to begin to find those things in your life.

If you don't take control of them and you think you're just gonna work your way into it, you will work yet another year, another month, another decade, and that life's gonna look an awful lot the same because we become what we think about, and if we don't alter those 9%, our life ends up looking exactly the same.

So my challenge to you is to program your RAS, to write those goals down, and to repetitiously program them into your thinking as much as you can.

I used to walk this beach as a kid and say this is where I wanna live someday.

I knew exactly what beach, I knew exactly the area, and the more my brain went to work on that specific thought, that specific place, the more likely it was to happen.

So remember this, the more specific you are with your thinking, the more intentional you are with the thoughts, the higher the probability of it happening and your brain can go to work, that RAS can go to work on finding the people, places, things, and resources to fill in that very specific thought that you have.

So don't be general, be specific, and repeat it over and over and over again to yourself, and you got a whole lot more likelihood of happening.

The other thing is this, your brain likes to gravitate towards what it's most familiar with.

The brain loves familiar things, okay?

So the more you think about something, the more you place yourself on that beach, in that house, with that amount of money, with that body, the more repetitive it is that you place yourself in those things, those places, and those situations.

The more your brain becomes familiar with it, the more it gravitates towards it.

You can't think about it once.

It's the repetition over and over again.

Your brain begins to think, oh, I belong here.

We belong here.

You actually eventually convince yourself, literally, that you belong in your dreams by the repetitive and specific thinking and visions of them over and over again.

One thing to be conscious of is the RAS doesn't reveal to you necessarily what you need, necessarily, because what you need has always been there.

What it does is it opens you up to seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting the things that you need in order to attract them into your life.

The last part of the steps that I wanna share with you is that you've gotta control the beginning and the end of your day with your thinking.

And so one of the first things you need to do when you wake up, after you do your stretching, your prayer, your meditation, whatever it is, is to take a five-minute window and control your thinking, whether you, you know, after your meditation, your prayer, whatever it is, but you take a five-minute window and you visually see your goals and dreams.

Picture them as videos in your mind.

Picture them as you possessing them and see them written down on a sheet of paper.

This will begin to control your mind for the day.

And then at the very end of the day, what I do, one of the last things I do after my prayer when I'm laying in bed at night is I read through my goals and my dreams, I picture them, and I allow my RAS and my subconscious mind to go to work on them.