Protect The Door To Your Mind

I've run an agency through four recessions, a couple of wars, and now a pandemic. In every one of those stretches, the fear on the news was louder than the fear in real life. That's not a coincidence -- it's the business model. When 9/11 happened, there was no social media to amplify it. Today, every headline has to fight for your attention against a billion other headlines, and the way you win that fight is by being scarier than the guy next to you.

We're being bombarded with information online and on the news, some of it accurate, some not. Uncertainty is at an all-time high, and it's sparked anxiety and fear. I've watched clients make bad calls on their business, their teams, and their own creative instincts because they let that noise in the door.

Stand Guard at the Door of Your Mind

So what are you doing to protect the door to your mind? Jim Rohn put it simply: "we need to stand guard at the door of our own minds." The information you feed your mind and focus on becomes your reality.

So, what are you doing to feed your mind the right stuff and protect it from the wrong stuff?

I've sat in rooms with clients who had a great idea and a room full of people telling them it wouldn't work. Every one of the ads I'm proudest of -- the ones that ran during a Super Bowl, the ones that moved real revenue for a client -- started as an idea somebody in the room thought was too risky. Doing something amazing requires one simple thing. You need to give yourself permission to ignore conventional wisdom, to block out the noise, to follow your gut. I've built a 40-year career on trusting my gut over the committee, and the committee is almost always wrong about what will actually work.

Today, if you watch the news, read articles online, or spend time on social media, you could easily be distracted and swayed by the negative information and stories. You'd think that the world is ending and all hope is lost. But why would people start to believe this? How could they shift from innovative drive to fear-driven dread? Because our personal experience of today's reality can be summed up in a brilliant formula I heard from Tony Robbins. He once wrote the following.

The Formula That Explains Everything

I times F equals PR. I x F = PR. Information times your Focus equals your Personal Reality.

That simply means the information you're feeding your brain daily, you start to focus on. Soon you experience it as being what life is about, it becomes your personal reality.

I X F = PR. So while I do believe it's important to stay informed, I also know that most of the media we are exposed to on a daily basis isn't designed to serve us. It's designed to draw and hold attention to create revenue. In my business, I know exactly how that trick works -- I've written headlines whose only job is to grab a reader by the collar and not let go. The news does the same thing to you every single day, except nobody tells you it's an ad. It's so easy to get lost in this kind of media, to spend more time than you planned (or even remember) consuming this type of content.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Think of it this way, if you wanted to get into better physical shape you'd improve your diet. But, if you still ate three bacon cheeseburgers a day, you wouldn't make any progress. That bad input would create a bad result. When it comes to media consumption, we continuously allow our brains to be fed garbage…willingly! It's as simple as garbage in, garbage out.

We're all consuming garbage right now. News isn't designed to inform these days, it's designed to grab eyeballs, attention, and advertising dollars. News is negative or over-dramatized because that's what holds attention. I've spent 40 years writing copy built to do exactly that -- grab attention and hold it -- so I recognize the mechanics the second I see them used on a population instead of a product. It's a vicious cycle because people get hooked, stop verifying what they hear and then tune in for more. The media they consume confirms everything they now believe to be true. It's why the news has become the single most divisive element in politics today…no matter what side you're on: left, right, center, or other.

Remember I X F = PR. Information times your Focus equals your Personal Reality.

News isn't bad or wrong, it just feeds the people what they respond to. Our challenge is to think for ourselves and not be led blindly off our own chosen course by media that's designed to generate money rather than improving our society.

We need to build a plan to consciously feed our minds with information that can help us grow, and make intelligent decisions and choices, to better the quality of our lives and, by extension, the lives of our team members and our family.

The world is only as dark as you feed your mind to believe it. It's time to start lightening up, by enlightening your brain. That means protecting the door to your mind, only letting in high-value data, stuff that increases your knowledge, your vision, and improves the quality of your life, your business, your relationships. I know from firsthand experience it can be hard to stay positive.

Long before any of this, I had agencies tell me a certain campaign concept would never sell, that no client would buy it, that I was wasting my time. Some of those same concepts went on to run nationally and move real revenue for the client. Those people weren't trying to hurt me -- they just couldn't see what I could see. The story in their head shouldn't dictate the story in mine, and the story in your head shouldn't be written by cable news either.

I choose not to blindly swallow the misleading or clickbait-ey information that's fed to me on social media. Instead, I pursue high-quality information that will feed me. I trust my gut and listen to it more than the people around me. You should too.

I protect the door to my mind by feeding it information that expands my thinking, opens pathways to new ideas, that increases the depth of my vision. One of the biggest challenges, and what drives uncertainty right now is the information people are consuming and the volume at which it's being consumed daily. That information makes them focus on uncertainty, which over time, becomes their personal reality. What's worse is that with social media today, the amount of Social Proof confirms your darkest fears. Social proof means that when we aren't sure about what to do or what something means, we look around us to see how we should feel and how to react. The belief behind social proof is that if enough people buy into something or if enough people do something, it's got to be right. It's 100% false.

Do you see the vicious pattern forming here? The crowd wants to push you into their way of thinking. And if you don't think their way, you're wrong, vilified.

Be a Leader, Not a Lemming

Now is the time to think differently and not follow the crowd. Now is the time to do you, and use this time to grow, to expand your thinking, to create new opportunities. Don't do what the crowd does, don't be a lemming, be a leader. Your vision is yours, you are the only one who can take it from idea to concept to reality. Focus on how to solve problems, not the problem itself. This is the same instinct that separates an agency that just agrees with whatever the client says from one that actually earns its keep -- you have to trust your own read on what's true and say so, even when the room wants to hear something else.

Feed your mind high-quality information and protect what gets through that door.

Intelligent decisions can shape your life for the positive, but we've got to get the best information. Having THAT information can change our focus, improves how we think, how we feel, and what we do with that information.

I choose to protect the door to my mind by feeding it TED Talks, content from MindValley, and focusing on CANI (constant and never-ending innovation) in my business. It's the same discipline I bring to writing a headline that actually earns the read instead of the cheap, scary version that grabs eyeballs for ten seconds and forgets you by tomorrow. I challenge you to find great information and feed your mind. It'll make your tomorrow better than today.