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 A FEW
YEARS ago, I went to a big event at the Key Arena in Seattle.
Tony Robbins was the main speaker and master of ceremonies, but
it was an all-day event and many speakers were on the roster.
Brian Tracy, the author of some of my favorite audio programs
(including The Psychology of Achievement: Develop the Top
Achiever's Mindset), was one of the people giving a talk
that day.
Most of the speakers talked about changing
your state of mind. This was a “motivational seminar”
and I enjoyed it tremendously.
But after it was over I thought, “Here
are the best motivational speakers in the world — corporations
pay them thousands of dollars to talk to the company’s top
executives because what these guys teach is so valuable —
and the principles they talk about are the same ones Napoleon
Hill wrote in Think and Grow Rich seventy years ago!”
At first I was disappointed. I thought
after all these years they should have come up with something
new and better.
But then I realized the same few principles
that worked on human minds seventy years ago still work on human
minds today. Human beings haven’t changed. We’re still
human. What will change your state of mind is exactly
the same thing that could change your grandfather’s state
of mind.
One of the principles Tony talked about
was what he called “incantations.” That means changing
your state of mind by saying positive things to yourself with
feeling. Napoleon Hill called it “autosuggestion.”
This is the same principle as “thought
practice.” This is slotralogy.
The only thing that has changed in the last seventy years is
the explanation of why it works.
Napoleon Hill believed your “vibrations
of thought” influenced the world and other people and your
own subconscious and that’s why it worked so well. Now the
explanation is “you are practicing a thought until it comes
naturally to mind.” The “how to” is the same and
it still works, regardless of why we think it works.
Although the principle hasn't changed,
we've learned a few things about how to make it work better.
The most important of these is the value of using your face.
Use Your Face
 Paul
Ekman, author of What the Face Reveals, has been studying
facial expressions for a long time. He and his colleagues have
created a detailed catalog of 43 “facial-action” combinations.
They know exactly which tiny muscles are used in any facial expression,
and their system of identifying facial expressions is now the
standard for use in many different fields, including psychology
and criminal science. Ekman literally has facial expressions
down to a science.
As part of the process of finding out which
muscles are used in which facial expressions, one day Ekman spent
part of his day at the lab trying to reproduce an authentic look
of sadness on his own face. When he got home that evening he
realized he felt depressed.
Ekman explored further into this and found
when he made his facial muscles create an authentic smile, it
improved his mood.
Another researcher, Patricia Ruselli, did
an experiment completely unrelated to Ekman’s work, but
got similar results. Ruselli asked volunteers to watch a slide
presentation designed to produce sadness. Half the subjects were
told to frown while they watched it. The other half were told
not to frown.
For several hours afterwards, the people
who frowned felt more depressed than the people who didn’t
frown.
Fritz Strack, a psychologist at Mannheim
University in Germany, took a group of volunteers and told them
he was going to test their physical skills. He showed them a
series of cartoons and told them to rate the cartoons’ funniness.
But they had to hold a pen in their mouths while they did it.
Half of them were told to hold it between their lips. The other
half had to hold it between their teeth.
The ones with the pen between their teeth
rated the cartoons as funnier.
Apparently, when they held the pen between
their lips, they couldn’t smile, but when it was between
their teeth, the pen forced at least some of their facial muscles
into a smile, and that changed how funny the cartoons seemed
to them.
Still another bit of evidence comes from
a pilot study that found when people were injected with Botox
to get rid of furrowed brows, it improved their mood — it
especially reduced symptoms of depression.
Even when your facial expression is changed
with a paralyzing toxin, it can alter your emotional state.
The point of all this is to realize when
you change your facial expression, you influence your feelings.
Use this
fact. When you practice your slotras, say them with feeling —
feeling in your voice and with emotion on your face.
In Henry V, Shakespeare displayed his knowledge
of human nature, as he did in so many of his plays. During a
break between skirmishes while they are attacking a city, King
Henry addresses his troops. He gives his men detailed instructions
on what to do with their facial expression (and their breathing).
In Act III, Scene I, King Henry says:
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the
blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let it pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide;
Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
To its full height!
Basically, King Henry is telling his soldiers
exactly how to get their body and face in a good fighting spirit.
He tells them how to change their face and body so they feel
more courageous and aggressive.
King Henry instructs his men to make themselves
tense and hardened, to put a look of rage on their faces, to
make their eyebrows low with their eyes glaring out intensely.
He tells them to clamp the teeth, flare their nostrils, and to
blow out forcefully when they breathe out. If you do this, even
while sitting here reading, you’ll notice it does, in fact,
make you feel more aggressive, more grimly determined, more ready
to fight.
Repeating a slotra is the most basic principle
for taking advantage of the awesome power of your mind and fulfilling
your potential. When you use it, remember your face. Say your
slotras with feeling. And use your tone of voice, your face,
your body’s posture, and your breathing to help you intensify
those feelings.
The article above is a chapter from a book
entitled, Slotralogy. Click
here to check it out on Amazon.
Read the next chapter: Think
Of Slotras As Training
This article is part of a series on Slotralogy.
Read the first section here: Slotralogy
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