How To Think With Dan Henry How to Become Smarter by Creating a Second Mind
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Is your mind operating with stock programming?
Let me explain.
The beliefs we are raised with are often carried into our adult lives. These can be beliefs about religion, politics, money, really any aspect of life.
Those beliefs come from our parents, friends, family, and experiences as we are growing up. They are meant to guide us and protect us from harm.
This is the stock model of our minds.
While some of those beliefs serve you, some could be holding you back from reaching your full potential.
Let me share what I call the Second Mind.
Learn to challenge your beliefs and upgrade your mind!
In this episode, I am going to cover:
- Where the minds’ default programming comes from and how it can hold you back as an adult
- Why it’s important to challenge your beliefs and make them your own
- The Second Mind technique; what it is, and how you can use it to upgrade your mind
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— TRANSCRIPT —
In today's episode, we're going to talk about how to become smarter by creating a second mind.
All right, so what could I possibly mean by creating a second mind? So here's the deal. When you grow up, when you go through life, you have a set of beliefs that are instilled in you from your interactions with your parents, your environment, your friends, your family, things you see on TV, music, movies. You've watched things you've heard people say, and these beliefs become your default programming, the default beliefs in your mind, and what happens with most people, they go through life, and they never ever challenge their default beliefs, sort of like buying a brand new motorcycle and never changing the pipes, never changing the grips, never doing one thing to it. I don't think I know a single motorcycle owner that hasn't done some sort of modification or upgrade to their bike. And it's the same thing with your mind. You know, your mind requires upgrades.
It requires you can't just go with the stock programming. And the reason why you shouldn't do that is because it's not yours. It was given to you. It was just put in your brain. It really wasn't yours, especially the first 20 years of your life. And when you go through life, and you don't challenge those beliefs, you don't grow, you don't learn, and you do not become smarter, or at least as smart as you could have become. And when you challenge your beliefs, you create new opportunities, new ways to grow and think better. And so I have a little technique that I created, and this is a practical technique.
This isn't woo woo, I call it the second mind, and how it works is this whenever I'm dealing with something, or I have a belief, no matter how strongly I believe that thing, I close my eyes, and I go, okay, I believe this thing I create a second mind. And that second mind challenges the first mind and says, "Are you sure? Why do you believe that? What evidence do you have? What about this? What about that?" And then I take that mind, and I go, and I try to find evidence to argue it.
Actually, one thing that I'll tell you that I did back in college was I took a debate class. And I talked to my teacher one day, and I really wanted to, we had like these, you know, competition debates and I really wanted to win the debate. And I asked her, I said, "You know, what's your number one tip for winning this?" And she looks at me, and she says, "Listen, the number one thing that will...", like, there are all kinds of debate techniques, but she said, "The number one thing that will allow you to be a good debater is to learn to let go of bias. To learn to be non-biased because if you're biased, then all those debate tactics don't really work. Like you won't be able to work them. You have to learn to remove bias."
And I said, "Well, how do you do that?" And she says, "It's simple, practice arguing with people," or not argue she didn't say argue. She said, "Practice debating people on a particular belief from both sides." I said, "Well, what do you mean?" She says, "Well, for instance, let's say you are a Christian, okay? Or you believe in God, right? Or you're a Republican or your Democrat, whatever it could be anything. Let's say you're a Republican. When you're in the presence of other Republicans, argue from a Democrats' perspective. And when you're in the presence of Democrats, argue from a Republican perspective and try to win."
I said, "So let me get this straight. If you're a Republican, or if you believe in God, you're supposed to argue with some random person about, you know, that God doesn't exist or that, you know, whatever those conservative-liberal views are, you're supposed to argue?" She says, "Yes. Now, listen, I'm not telling you to do that if you don't personally want to do that, but you asked me, how do you win the debate? That's what you asked me." I said, "Yeah, that is what I asked you." She says, "Try to argue something that you at your core do not believe in and try to win the argument from the other side. And once you do that, you will learn to, at least in the context of the debate, learn to let go of bias. Learn to use actual debate tactics. Then whatever your actual bias is, you can then use your new-found power, your new-found debate technique, to better argue that what you believe because if you don't understand the other side's perspective, then it's going to be very difficult to argue it."
So if you don't understand why somebody would say God doesn't exist, then you're not going to be able to properly argue that he does exist and vice versa. You have to be able to argue the other side. It's sort of like that old saying you shouldn't tell your kids not to smoke pot unless you've at least tried it once that way, you know what it's like. There's a lot of arguments like that, and so I, that was one of the things that reminded me of. And I thought it was very interesting and so I tried it, and I got kind of addicted to it.
I would go to these parties and, you know, I would do stupid stuff. Like if I loved Marvel and you know, or I love DC, I'm a DC guy. I would argue that Marvel was better. And then if I was around, you know, Marvel people, I would argue that DC was better. And then I would do things with the politics. And I would do things with just whatever the topic was. I would find somebody, and I would debate the other side. And it really helped me understand how to properly, not just debate, but think. And that's what eventually led me to the second mind concept was that, Oh, and by the way, I did win the debate. I did win the debate after she told me to do that.
But this is what led me to the concept of the second mind is, here's, what's going to happen. You have a belief, and you create a second mind that debates your first mind's belief, whether or not the second mind wins, here's what happens. You validate your belief and learn how to better argue it, or you discover that that belief is false, and you adopt a new, better belief.
For instance, I used to think that people wouldn't buy a consulting from me for more than a thousand dollars. Well, I had that belief for a long time, and so I never charged more than a thousand. I never even tried to learn. And then I thought in my mind, like, you know, I, in my second mind said, "Well, maybe you can, you know, what makes you think you can't?" My first mind said, "Well, because I just know it." And my second mind, "So what do you mean you just know? You can't just say that you just know it. Have you looked it up? Have you tried, have you consulted anyone? Have you talked to anyone that charged more than you? Have you had conversations?" And my first mind said, "Well, no, I kind of just like, thought that," and my second mind went, "Well, that's just absolutely just ignorant. Like, basically you have that belief, but you just have it. You never, like actually went out and tried to do your due diligence on that belief." And my first mind went, "Oh, I guess so." Right?
Cause here's the thing. When you have a belief, and you've never challenged that belief, you've never actually gone out and put effort into making sure that's true. It's kind of a lazy belief. You know what I mean? Because you're just like accepting it. And so I went out, and I spoke to people that charged more than me, and I developed friends in the industry, friends like Myron Golden and Alex Harmosey, and I learned through that, that I could charge more. And now I charge anywhere from 10,000 to 55,000.
And I don't, you know, I don't sell anything for a thousand dollars. I haven't in years, and we have more customers, we get better results. And our clients love our programs more. And I charge 10 to 50 to, you know, 55 X the price. And I never would have learned how to do that. If my second mind didn't challenge my first mind, which then allowed me to go out and do that due diligence, do that research, develop those relationships, have those conversations, and learn how to do it. And you know, what, if I did do all that, and it ended up that that belief was true. Well, now it's a solidified real belief, not just a default belief, default programming, and I know how to better argue it. So the second mind will allow you to not only challenge your existing beliefs and learn and become smarter, but it'll also allow you to argue your beliefs that you have.
You know, I mean, if you want to debate someone on, and trust me, I think it's 100% okay when someone disagrees with you. You shouldn't say somebody is evil or a bad person because you don't share the same views. I'll just go out and just say that. But if you're a Christian and you want to better argue the existence of God, you know, understanding how Atheists' debates will help you debate that better and spread your message and flip that around. You know, if you are an Atheist and you feel the same thing if you feel that you, 'cause I've read these articles about how they feel that they need to, you know, liberate religious people from what they believe, whatever you believe.
I'm not saying you should believe one or the other. I'm just saying whatever you do believe at the end of the day when you create that second mind, and you challenge that belief, politics, religion, business, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. You, you always win. Cause you either learn how to better debate your belief and you solidify that belief, and you validate it, or you learn something new, and you change your belief. And that's why when I have conversations with people, and they disagree with me, I always listen because I'm like, all right, well, I either want to know what I'm missing so I could potentially change my belief, or I want to know what you have to say so I can better argue my belief the next time I come into this situation.
And so I always try to be mindful of creating a second mind, closing my eyes and having the second mind talk to the first mind, and challenge my beliefs constantly because that's how you grow. That's how you develop a winning mindset, and you grow by constantly challenging your beliefs, not in a way that, well, you know, doubt, self-doubt. I'm not saying to self-doubt. I'm saying to have an intelligent conversation with yourself about what you believe because if you have a belief, it's not, to me, it's not really yours until you challenge it. It's just your default programming.
So if you'd like to learn more about mindset and about how to develop a winning mindset, you can get on the waiting list at howtothink.com, a new company that I've started. And I think you're going to enjoy that very much. We're going to be doing daily mindset mentoring for just $7 a month that the first 500 founding members when they launch. So get on the waiting list. It's howtothink.com. And I think you'll really, really enjoy that. So see you in the next episode.