Don’t confide your dreams in people unless you have the fortitude to deal with them not responding in a resourceful manner.

Note: This post isn’t going to change your life, but it may entertain you. Baseball, “America’s favorite pastime” has fallen on hard times. While leagues like the NFL and NBA have taken measures to make the game more entertaining and appealing, especially to young people, change in baseball has evolved at a snail’s pace. Just this week, Chicago White Sox Manager Tony La Russa chided rookie slugger, Yermin Mercedes–get this–for hitting a homerun. Yes, a homerun on a 3-0 pitch while his team had a big lead in the 9th inning, but a homerun no less. Most people agree that baseball’s “unwritten rules” are just plain awful. Take a look at the fan response to this Tweet, for example.

Fans want MORE homeruns, and LESS salty pitchers plunking opposing batters for “showing them up.” Fans simply don’t care about the ego of pitchers, who make the game unwatchable with their unhittable fastballs and “sweet stuff.” The chart below tells you everything you need to know. As you can see, viewership of baseball’s flagship World Series event is on the decline, and it gets even worse the further you go back in time.

If you are waiting for the MLB to change, you will probably be waiting until the next pandemic, hence why I hereby propose an alternative XLB league designed with the fans in mind. Kind of like Vince McMahon’s XFL experiment minus the CTE. Here are the rules of the road!

XLB Rules:

• 6 inning games because 9 innings are three too many. No game should last longer than a motion picture.
• 2 strikes you’re out, and 3 balls and you walk. People will think of new idioms for life.
• A flat mound. Let’s not make it even harder to hit a 90 MPH fastball.
• Mic’ing up of players. Trash talk encouraged in-between pitches. And showboating.
• 8 players on the field, and no more than 2 outfielders. Groundballs are for T-ball.
• Corked backs not only allowed, but encouraged.
• Parks are 300 feet so you can let it fly. (See previous two rules.)
• No extra innings. A homer off instead, where 3 chosen power hitters get 3 pitches a piece from a pitcher on their team.

Note: Some of these suggestions were crowdsourced from my brothers and friends, but that’s OK, because it doesn’t take a genius to put this together.

Tag your bored billionaire friend! And let me know in the comments what XLB Rules we missed and/or got wrong.

OHH, and there’s this video for added inspiration. . . (NSFW!! Turn the volume off if foul language offends you.)

For those of us who are people of faith, the best is always yet to come.

Seeing is believing but sometimes you have to see it in your mind before you can believe.

When I was in grade school, my teachers had inspirational quotes and affirmations spread all over the wall. For example: Watch your thoughts, for they become your words. Watch your words, for they become your actions. Watch your actions, for they become your habits. Watch your habits, for they become your character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny. To me they were just bland decoration that I read over and over again to pass time and because they were right there in my face. Now I’m a little older and wiser, and can appreciate the power of words. Words (and thoughts) shape beliefs, emotions, health, character, and destiny. The most important conversation is the one we have with ourselves.

Today I am intentional about the words I let into my life. I filter my music and media and don’t tolerate bad company. I am also intentional about rehearsing positive affirmations that I believe are both fact-based and life-giving. In this article, I share 15 of my all-time favorites. These are the gems I have gleaned from a lifetime replete with many challenges and setbacks. Not coincidentally, I have published several articles in the last year expanding on their importance.

Which of the following most resonate with you? Let us know your own personal favorites down below!

15 Powerful Affirmations To Live By

1. I Create as I Speak

2. Words Make Worlds

3. Forgiveness is Strength

4. Every Day is a New Life

5. The Past Is My Creation

6. My Biology is My Belief

7. Courage is the Key to Life

8. Discipline Equals Freedom

9. On the Other Side of Fear is Freedom

10. It’s Never to Late to Have a Happy Childhood

11. All I Need Is a Word to Change Everything

12. Love is the Most Powerful Force in the Universe

13. The Immaterial World is King of the Material World

14. The Mind is the Most Powerful Tool I Have to Change My Life

15. Whatever I Hold in My Mind Consistently is Exactly What I Will Experience in Life

In the Jewish creation narrative, God spoke the heavens and the earth into existence. In the Biblical Proverbs, words are said to have the power of life and death. In Christianity, Jesus is introduced as the Word that God sent to manifest his power on the earth. Ancient cultures keenly understood the connection between words and the events that took place in the material world. The words of the Creator were of the utmost important. Kings, generals, and commoners sought out divine oracles by which to govern their lives. They labored in temples, churches, mosques, and prayer rooms expressly to persuade God to utter a word in their favor. It was also said that man was created in the image of the Creator. The belief was widespread that a man’s destiny would in some measure be determined by his own words.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness.

Genesis 1:3-4

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:27

Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

Proverbs 18:21

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:1-2

The truth is that your life and my life up until this point are the manifestation of words that we have spoken and words that have been spoken over us by others. The seed of every word is a thought. A dumb person may go an entire lifetime without speaking a syllable, but the power of words operates in his own mind. And not all words have equal power. A man may think 70,000 thoughts in a day. But only the thoughts he believes take up root in his mind, reproduce themselves, and have a powerful effect on his material reality. This is something that Jesus Christ understood.

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

Mark 11:24

The thoughts we believe are the source of everything else that happens in our life. They are the prism through which we interpret reality. In every moment, the brain is flooded with far more information than it can possibly make sense of. The brain has what’s called a reticular activating system, whose job is to filter information from the environment by only holding on to information that confirms existing beliefs. This is why someone who believes, “I am successful,” constantly finds evidence to support their belief in the same manner as someone who believes, “I am not good enough.” There is a famous sequence that captures the powerful impact thoughts (and the beliefs that empower them) have on our lives.

Watch your thoughts. They become words. Watch your words. They become deeds. Watch your deeds. They become habits. Watch your habits. They become character. Character is everything.

Experts estimate that human beings think between 60-80,000 thoughts and speak between 10-25,000 words in day. If words are the building blocks of life, it follows that every human being is constantly creating their life. And they are doing so at an incredibly prolific rate. We often don’t see it this way because our brains are on auto-pilot and many of our thoughts are repetitive. The bottom line is that the key to all self-improvement is changing the way we think.

Abracadabra. We’ve all heard this word before. It’s what magician’s say when they perform a trick. It’s from Aramaic and means “I create as I speak.” Abracadabra is the main takeaway of this article. And the main takeaway of this website. Remember it if you remember nothing else.

The city of God is an imagined place in which everybody lives the way they ought to live. Everything in the city of God is held constant—including nature, weather, geography, and technology—but one important variable changes: human behavior. I initially intended to create a visualization exercise where I would invite you to meditate on the city of God as I conceived of it. However, I quickly found myself short on ideas. I also realized that people can approach the ideal from many different angles. Instead of sharing my own fragmented view, I decided to survey 10 of my friends instead.

You can find the prompt I sent them and their recorded responses below. The diversity of responses reflects the diversity of people I surveyed: the US, Africa, Latin America, and East Asia were all represented. What struck me the most was how practical most people’s ideals are, and the real possibility of making individual progress toward them. I invite you to think about how you would answer the prompt—and to share what you come up with in the comments.

There is an ideal in literature called the city of God or the virtuous city (Plato, Al-Farabi, etc.)–a place where everyone lives the way they should. How does the city of God as you define it differ from the world as we know it?

Respondent #1: Everyone would be happy. Employers would take care of their employees. Employees would treat each other better.
Respondent #2: The world would be a place full of justice, equality, and health. And no more animal instincts.
Respondent #3: People would treat each other better and wouldn’t be so focused on money.
Respondent #4: Each part would be conscious of it’s relation to the whole, but we live in a world of fragments.
Respondent #5: Love would be the norm. Love changes everything.
Respondent #6: Everyone would have a lot of empathy, and development would be defined by cooperation, not competition. And there wouldn’t be violence. As a result, everyone would have access to technology and its benefits (health, culture, traveling, etc.)
Respondent #7: I guess for me it’s the Taoist way—no strong government control, not many people, natural, moral-oriented. . .
Respondent #8: God’s kingdom would be manifest, There would be righteousness, justice, and peace. God would be king of that city.
Respondent #9: Tolerance and acceptance for others. There simply isn’t enough of it in our world.
Respondent #10: I think it would be a stress-free world. I think the majority would be happy. No killings. The world we live in is filled with greed and selfishness. The rich get richer and the poor stay poor.

Many cultures across time and space practiced ancestral worship. Some still do today, as we see manifest in African tribal religions and Japanese Shintoism. These cultures hold that ancestral spirits continue to exist and exercise influence over human affairs. There is also typically a reverence for ancestors that transcends immediate self-interest. This reverence is based on the recognition that ancestors, in general, and one’s ancestors, in particular, were in large part responsible for creating the world that their descendants inherited. Ancestors also deserve credit for having completed the universal challenge that is life. As a result, descendants owe ancestors a debt of gratitude and honor.

American society today places little emphasis on ancestors. Our society is founded on the enlightenment value of individualism–the idea that the individual is supreme. In theory, the individual has the power to create their destiny and bears sole responsibility for their success or failure. An individualistic worldview diminishes the role of parents, grandparents, siblings, and relatives, and pays even less attention to ancestors.

However, even in a country as individualistic as the US with the least theoretical underpinning for ancestral reverence, I see it all the time. Millions of Americans use the services of Ancestry and 23andMe and are greatly eager to discover information about their relatives (especially if any one of them was the least bit famous).

I always remember the instance when a friend in grade school told me that his ancestors were kings and queens. I had no reason to doubt his story. I have heard my own family members make similar claims. The only difference is my family members tend to go further back in time since the more recent evidence on our family lineage suggests otherwise.

Human beings seem to have a need for a strong self-image–call it identity. In individualistic societies like the US that have relatively weak family networks, many people find their self-image lacking in meaningful ways. People turn to sports teams, political parties, musical groups, and social causes as a source of identity. Some resurrect nationalism, nativism, and xenophobia. And yet others swear allegiance to gangs and mafias. When people find these avenues deficient, they may even go further back in time like my friend, my family members, and the countless Americans suddenly fascinated by their ancestry.

The myriad ways people craft their identity betrays the fact that identity is socially constructed. If identity is individualistic, it is so in the sense that every individual ultimately chooses how to self-define. Some people even lie or delude themselves in the process, as I alluded to earlier, but their misconceptions may form as strong a foundation for their lives as someone who only operates with cold hard facts. For me, the truth is important. I have a hard time ignoring evidence or believing something in the absence of it. And when people realize the truth they built their life around was actually a lie, then a second-order identity crisis is usually the end result.

When I first started writing this article, I wasn’t sure where I was going with it. But now I think I do. It all goes back to the power of the mind. Just as words have the power to create, they also have the power to change. Somebody who lacks identity has the power to develop a positive one that situates them as a meaningful, contributing member of a community. Similarly, someone with an identity built on resentment, exclusivity, or lies has the power to radically reform it. But there is only one captain on every ship. I can’t do it for you the same way you can’t do it for me.

Telling somebody it’s possible may sound like cold consolation. But the biggest obstacle to change is the belief that the way things are is the way things will always be.

One of the most common pieces of advice ever given is “Just be yourself.” And it’s often just what we need to hear. We as people too frequently modify our personality to please others. We say, do, and act a certain way to win their approval rather than from a place of authenticity. If this describes you, “Just be yourself” can be great advice. However, there’s another sense in which we all rightly want to stop being ourselves. What if we struggle with anger? What if we’re depressed, anxious, or peak stress all the time? What if we’re simply not living the life we know we’re capable of? That’s when not being ourselves is in our best interest.

Joe Dispenza has dedicated his career to improving life outcomes using the power of the human mind. He studied neuroscience in college and is a practicing chiropractor. Dr. Dispenza is author of the best-selling Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One. I was initially introduced to Dr. Dispensa through an online lecture that he gave on his book. I was struck by how deeply what he was saying resonated with what I know to be true from my own research and experience.

I’ve created a transcript of Dr. Dispenza’s fascinating lecture on Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. His main thesis is that to truly change is to think outside your environment.

Transcript:

Good evening. I want you to turn to the person next to you I want you to look them in the eye and introduce yourself as a genius–let’s begin. Now geniuses, so happy to be with you this evening. I have a few questions for you before we begin. How many people in this audience actually believe in the idea that the way you think has some effect on your life? You believe that, yes? So how many people here actually woke up this morning and consciously created a future? You know the biggest reason why people don’t do it is because you don’t really believe it’s true. You see if you knew on a gut level that it was absolutely true would you ever miss a day–come on– and would you ever let any thoughts slip by your awareness that you didn’t want to experience?

So your brain according to neuroscience is organized to reflect everything you know in your life. Your brain is a record of your environment–an artifact of your past. So if you believe this, then does your environment control your thinking? Or does your thinking control your environment?

If you wake up in the morning and you get out of bed on the same exact side as you did the day before, you shut the alarm clock off with the same finger, you slip into your favorite slippers, you shuffle into the bathroom and you use the toilet like you always do, then you walk over to the mirror and you look at yourself to remember who you are, then you get into the shower and you wash yourself in the same routine way, then you groom yourself to look like everybody expects you to look, then you go downstairs and you drink coffee out of your favorite mug, then you drive to work the same way as you did the day before. You see the same people that push the same emotional buttons. You do the exact thing that you know how to do, and you memorize and can do so well that you’re an expert at. Then you hurry up and rush home so you can hurry up and check your emails. So you can hurry up and go to bed. So you can hurry up and do it all over again.

Here’s my question: Did your brain change at all that day? We can say that you were thinking the same thoughts, performing the same actions that create the same experiences that produce the same emotions, but secretly expecting something to change in your life. Would you agree? So then, as the environment turns on different circuits in your brain, you begin to think equal to your environment. As you see the same people and go to the same places and do the same things at the same time, it’s the external environment that’s turning on different circuits in your brain, causing you to think equal to everything that you know. And as long as you think equal to everything that’s familiar or known to you, what do you keep creating more of? Same life. Now the quantum law is still applying to you. You’re just thinking equal to everything that you know, and you keep creating more of the same.

To change–to truly change is to think greater than your environment. And every great person in history knew this. Whether it was William Wallace or Mahatma Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, or Queen Elizabeth I, or Joan of Arc–they all had a vision. They all had an idea. Couldn’t see it, couldn’t smell it, couldn’t feel it. But it was alive in their mind. It was so alive in their mind that they began to live as if that reality was actually happening now.

So can you believe in a future that you can’t see or experience with your senses yet? But you’ve thought about [it] enough times in your mind that your brain is literally changed to look like the event has already happened. Neuroscience says it’s actually possible. Now your personality creates your personal reality–that’s it. It’s that simple. And your personality is made up of how you think, how you act, and how you feel. So the present personality who’s sitting here today–you–has created the present personality reality called your life. Would you agree? Would you also agree, then, that if you wanted a new personal reality, that on a fundamental level you would have to change the thoughts that you’re thinking, the behaviors and habits that you’re demonstrating, and the emotions that you’ve memorized that have become part of your identity?

Most people try to create a new personal reality as the same personality, and it never works. We have to become somebody else. So then, as you keep thinking the same thoughts, performing the same actions, and living by the same experiences that produce the same emotions–there’s a principle in neuroscience that says nerve cells that fire together wire together. And if you keep repeating the same states of mind and body over and over again, your brain begins to fire in the same sequences, in the same patterns, in the same combinations. And whenever you make your brain work in a certain way that’s called mind. Mind is the brain in action. So as you re-mind yourself every day who you think you are, you’re causing your brain to fire in the exact same ways. And as they fire and wire in the same patterns, over time the brain moves into a very finite signature, and that’s call your personality.

Now that box in your brain isn’t literally a box, but it’s the most commonly wired, neurologically-fired programs that run redundantly because we keep doing the same things over and over again. To change your mind, then, is to make the brain work in new sequences, in new patterns, in new combinations–to begin to make the brain work differently. And the one ingredient that allows us to do that is knowledge, or information because every time you learn something new you make a new connection in your brain. That’s what learning is. Learning is forging new connections. Remembering is maintaining or sustaining those connections.

So now, every time you have a thought, you make a chemical. And if you have a great thought, or an unlimited thought, or a joyful thought, you turn on a set of circuits in your brain that fires in a very specific sequence, pattern, combination, that produces a level of mind that turns on another part of the brain that makes a chemical for you to begin to feel exactly the way you were just thinking–great or unlimited or joyful.

Now if you have a negative thought or an unhappy thought or a self-depreciating thought, you turn on a different set of circuits, and a different combination, and a different sequence and a different pattern that produces a different level of mind. And the brain then begins to make a different batch of chemicals that signals the body for you to begin to feel exactly the way you were just thinking–negative or unhappy or unworthy.

So the moment you begin to feel the way you think because the brain is in constant communication with your body, you begin to think the way you feel. Which makes more chemicals for you to feel the way you think, and then you think the way you feel, and then you feel the way you think, and then you feel the way you think. And some people do this for 20 or 30 or 40 years.

Now the redundancy of that cycle over time creates what I call a state of being. And a state of being is when your mind and body are working together, or your thoughts and feelings are aligned to a concept. So thoughts are the language of the brain and feelings are the language of the body. And as people get caught in this cycle of thinking and feeling and feeling and thinking, over time they can condition their body to memorize that emotion as well as the conscious mind.

And whenever the body knows as well as the mind, that’s called a habit. A habit is when your body is the mind. Now 95% of who you are by the time you’re 35 years old is a set of memorized behaviors, a set of emotional reactions, beliefs, perceptions, attitudes that run just like a computer program. So 5% of your conscious mind begins to work against 95% of what you’ve memorized. So the person wants to think positively, but they’re feeling negatively. They want to create their dream board, and put up their future life, but they feel unworthy. That’s mind and body in opposition. We have to recondition the body to a new mind.

So how many people here know someone who’s memorized suffering? It doesn’t have to be you, it can be anybody. And you say that person, “Hey, did you read the book I gave you?” What do they say? “No [sad voice]” “Did you see the DVD I gave you?” “Oh, no. [sad voice]” “Hey, listen, we’re going to go out to dinner, we’re going to go see some stand-up comedy, we’re going to go for a walk along the water, do you want to come?” “No. [sad voice]” What do they say? I’m insisting on this chemical order that no person, no thing, no experience can move us from it. And we have these three brains to allow us to move into a new state of being. And the quantum-field, universal mind–whatever you want to call it–responds to who you’re being. Not what you’re thinking, not what you’re feeling, but the combination of what you’re thinking and how you’re feeling called a state of being.

Most people wait for crisis or trauma or disease or loss to really want to change. They wait until the point where the ego is brought to such a low level that they cannot go on business-as-usual any longer. That’s when we begin to look at how we’re thinking or what we believe or how we act or our attitude or what emotions we’re living by. And my message is why wait? We can learn and change in a state of pain and suffering, which tends to be the human model. Or we can learn and change in a state of joy and inspiration.

Now you want to learn the hardest part about all of this–are you ready? The hardest part of all of this–the hardest part of all of this–is making the time to do it. That’s it. That’s it–making time for your precious self.