A mega life achievement you wish to come true. Or simply to solve a long standing problem.
Typically, you have in your mind a final outcome – fame, money, awards, freedom to live your life, less struggle and more success, issue sorted forever, you happy.
Your endgame is lodged in your mind and so you set about considering how to make that happen. To do that the normal approach is to think about what you want to accomplish, how you go about getting there, what’s in the way, who could help, what resources you will need, and a proposed timeframe it will take.
Regular or normal logical thinking we can call it.
But, there’s a new radical kid on the mental block that’s busting up this thinking. And it’s not only a surprise approach, it’s completely counterintuitive to how thinking has previously been done.
Welcome to Reverse Thinking.
How to NOT get what you think you want.
Take a look at that header line above again.
Re-read it and take it in. It’s not as confusing as your head first thinks. That’s because yours is currently a mind that is set in rational thinking mode. One that’s been set to operate in only that process. This phrase is anti in nature to its thought recognition and calculation. You feel befuddled.
This, though, is where we start moving into the reverse mindset world.
Default thinking is often at fault. It regurgitates the same old advice that has been around for some time. Tried and tested, you may shout. But, firstly it may not have been updated for the modern world (you wouldn’t advise a Victorian the same as a Gen Z would you!!). Secondly, established thinking doesn’t fit everyone. Some people require more creative approaches or are seeking success in an unusual field or packed market place and need to stand out as different. Or they face a unique complication with various factors causing headaches.
At this point I take it you are reading this blog post because you yearn for success. Or, more likely, you have been trying to break through in some way and it’s just isn’t coming together. Either way, you have an interest or skill or product you want to make more popular (and yourself with it).
And I bet you have looked at, or even been through, the usual routes to promoting it/you. With nada results.
Excellent.
Because now we are going to flip the thinking on its head.
Flip Reverse Thinking.
Let’s go rogue in the mind!
We are going over to the other side.
Marketing traditionally is based around promotion, advertising, profile building and customer acquisition through pushing out your message. The accepted manner by which you sell a product or individual. But, in 2009 Scott and Alison Stratten took on this concept when they wrote a book called, ‘Unmarketing’. Their chief premise was to focus instead on building relationships with customers and people through engaging, listening, and communicating with them rather than chasing sales and profit growth. Giving big value gets their big value multiplied back.
It was a raging success. It broke the mould on the way many approached business thinking.
This flipped mentality is how you can win at life too.
Take your common thinking over a matter and ‘go opposite’. Come at it from the other side. Or it often only takes a changed word or two to succeed at this. Don’t overthink. Simply think tails instead of heads. Learn to think the other way round.
Like this….
Don’t imagine a dream life to inspire you, dream what it would be like in ten years if you did nothing and everything stayed the same as now.
Don’t study how to find love, be more loving ‘as if’ you already had a life long partner.
Or don’t try to be rich and make money for yourself, look to create money for the good of everyone by what you set up or do.
Reverse thinking covers virtually every subject you can think of.
Think again in reverse.
Now it’s your turn.
Take any situation you want to improve or are stuck fast on and apply the flip factor. Reverse think.
How do you stop drinking too much alcohol becomes how to start enjoying different drinks without alcohol (by tasting drinks from around the world).
Desperate to lose weight is reversed to be enjoying fresher natural food (by trying good food of 5 different colours each day).
You can almost make a game of it (TikTok channel anyone????).
It really is endless. I spent years attempting and failing to write a book until last year when I stopped trying to write long meaningful passages and simply wrote ONE PAGE a day and no more. I thought it would kill my creativity. The total opposite actually happened. Every day my mind was ready to go again and full of ideas. The book was written and with it a fully edited second draft in 11 months!
**(I later found out that Ernest Hemingwaywrote in a very similar style)**
It was like a firework of possibility going off in my mind. BANG!
So, go activate your own BANG. Reverse your thinking and with it reverse your fate that appears stuck and your prospects slipping away. If you change your mind in the reverse progress will start coming back to you in a myriad of mega ways.
Reverse thinking gets you going magically forward in life again!
References – UnMarketing.com
Turnerstories.com – Ernest Hemingway’s Tips on Writing.
As 2025 comes to a close and 2026 is on the horizon, thoughts turn to the future. To OUR own future and how it could be happier, more content, become more meaningful, and one we will love to get up each morning to enjoy.
For the majority this takes the form of New Year Resolutions.
The self promise of what you are going to commit to personally changing so that life can change too. You know the sort!
Go to the gym three times a week. Eat healthier. Update the CV and search for a higher paid job. Get out and socialise with the right people. Date more of the right people. And so on. The usual fayre that never lasts past the end of January.
But, did you know there is ONE change that you can make that will not only last all year round but for the rest of your life?
Yes, ONE change that will make life better for ever?
Well you are about to find out and it’s one you can start making TODAY!
New You = New View.
Have you a New Year goal in mind?
One, perhaps, you’ve been promising yourself you would tackle for some time?
The scenarios I gave above fall under that category.
The vast majority (around 90%) tend to choose to sort something – lose weight, take more exercise and the like. Or they are wanting to end something – smoking, or drinking too much and similar.
But, in aiming to do so they are only altering the end result and not the root cause. The habit of eating 3000 calories a day, using the car rather than ever walking, or lighting up a packet of cigarettes a day is the end behaviour. The guaranteed outcome of a certain cause which is rooted elsewhere.
In the mind.
The craving for cake or carbs or cigars is a stimulus from the mindset. One that makes the large slice of cheesecake or Cuban special the desire to match an inner mental need or insecurity that gets met through the habit. A resultant want fed by a wrong wish.
And if you want a new you in the new year, it’s your mind where you need to look fora new view of things.
Mind reset.
2026 has to be your year of a new mindset.
Or in reality terms, a mind reset.
The mindset controls and governs everything else about you. It has longed dictated your actions and behaviours. The level of your self worth and what you deserve lies in its hands. Who you have been, the people you have allowed into your life, the job roles you have accepted, and the environments you have lived and socialised in, ALL flow from the state of your mind.
While today you will swear blind life has just been unlucky and those you got to know let you down or hurt you, in truth trace that all back and your mind set all that ball rolling long before.
What it believed you lived = Mindset 101.
And right there is where a very different life must commence. Right in your mind and its beliefs on life, the world, and you.
Take a look at your current habits and see your mindset echoing back. Bad partners = don’t deserve someone special. Awful diet = comfort food to satisfy your low self image. Smoking and drinking too much = to dull the pain of how bad life is or has become = trying to remove or smother the mentality that happiness isn’t meant for you.
Your life is the mirror of your mindset.
Relook in the mirror.
Take a look again at what you believe.
Relook in the mirror within you.
Take your main 3 or 4 areas in life that have never amounted to much. The ones that have left you in a lower paid job, no or unsupportive relationship, financially pressured, in average health, or poor shape physically. Or whatever ails you.
Now the key mindset part.
PERSONALISE them.
You have to face down your own mental beliefs that are putting you there.
This will revolve around views such as, ‘I’m not worth much’, ‘No-one good looking will fancy me’, and ‘I have no skills to get a better job’.
THESE are your mindset mirrors. You have to look at them squarely in the eye. You MUST NOT be uncomfortable at what they show you and walk away. It’s only a belief rather than a truth. See them for that and nothing else.
As the New Year comes spend every day telling yourself the opposite. EVERY DAY. First thing at night, during the day, and before bed. Write your new higher beliefs down and repeat them so your mindset changes into a stronger mode.
Reset and rewire your brain.
Your Life is a Statement.
It’s said your life is a statement.
If someone saw your circumstances or story it would make a statement to them about who you are. You might want that to be, ‘this person is a talented at understanding people’, or ‘he/she is a fit and healthy looking man/woman’, or whatever you want it to say where it matters to you.
Your life probably doesn’t make the best statements somewhere currently. That’s OK. By following the mirror mindset exercise above, once you’ve gotten over the embarrassing feelings of seeing how badly you believe about yourself, you can begin re-writing them. Re-write and then repeat, repeat, repeat. This will ensure you override the previous beliefs like a new software programme taking over a computer’s operations.
Make sure you write down and speak the best statements about yourself. If you struggle with that let me show you the idea to help you progress –
‘I have many skills that make me great with knowing people’,
‘Everyone has people who are attracted to them and so do I’,
‘I have lots of value as a person and am worthy of all good things that come to me’.
A slight twist and switch of beliefs into self statements that you can readily state and begin to feel AND ACCEPT as the days go by. This is your one goal to make 2026 your best year for a long time….or ever!
Change your mind about who you are and you will change your life. A new statement to the world that this is YOUR life and you are leading it as yourself.
2026 is the year everything changes because you changed your mind. Changed it by you and about YOU!
It’s a special time of loving and giving, caring and sharing, family and friends, food and fun. Work stops and we get to rest and enjoy quality time with each other, often seeing people we haven’t for a while.
But the really special part of Christmas isn’t happening in the heart.
It’s occurring in the mind.
And for the mind, that can be absolute magic.
Come with me into the Christmas mind and experience it.
Do you hear what I hear?
Now that’s another famous line from a Christmas song (by Bing Crosby).
A line then followed by, ‘Do you see what I see’?
This typifies someone already sensing the magic and spirit of Christmas. A mind alive with possibility, with good imagination, with seeing and feeling and believing in positive expectation. For them they have nothing but great thoughts and happy emotions about what is about to unfold over the coming couple of weeks.
Not so most of us.
We fear everything going pear shaped.Horrors fill our head.
Family will be each other’s throats. Someone will be unhappy with their present or plain underwhelmed with what they were bought. The food won’t turn out right – the turkey all dry, the veg has been under or over cooked, fussy eaters turn their nose up at their plate. Add to that everyone gets sozzled, the party games become competitive, and guests outstay their welcome.
Oh the joys of Yuletide.
You see Christmas is a micro version of the rest of the year. We imagine issue after issue and act accordingly. We give no possibility for lovely surprises actually taking place. For family or food problems at Christmas, we continue on into the year making it work colleagues or the weather that represents our expected nightmare.
Christmas is the rest of the year shrunk into two weeks.
Merry Mindsets.
Christmas is more about the mindset than anything else.
Yes we give, and appreciate, and love, but only because we let our mind see and feel these in the first place. We awaken magic in our mind that we then use to light up other people’s lives, and our own as a result inside.
Before we buy a gift we have the vision of the person receiving it and their happy face beaming with the wonderful emotions it makes them feel. We activate a perceived future and make it real in living colour. We access key areas of our mind to fire up our creative field that we project onto the screen of our imagination like a Christmas tree light switch on. And we then go do day after day what is required to bring that into actual reality i.e. find those presents.
Now, we can do this any day of the week or time of the year. It’s not season or Santa dependent.
What we haven’t noticed is that it’s quicker to come true in our lives at Xmas.
You imagine Xmas morning and your loved ones smiling and joyous at what you presented them. You then use that believed outcome and found the gift to match that picture. Time from seeing it in your mind to it coming perfectly true? A few weeks to even a couple of days.
To you that’s Christmas magic only. In normal life that magic won’t or can’t work.
But, that magic is in your mind permanently and can work anytime you allow it to cast its spell.
Magic is real.
Magic isn’t some supernatural invisible energy.
It’s a real living power in your mind. A power you can use whether it’s a Spring day or Autumn evening as much as a Christmas season potion.
Christmas shows what can be created in no time by the mind can be formed with good time in the very same way.
Take out the vision of your family and their wish appearing on December 25th, and in its place add YOUR vision for what you wish coming to you in your life instead with the same sure faith and expected conclusion.
Remove it being a Christmas gift delivered for others, and make it a personal fulfilment brought to you sometime soon. BOTH envisioned, felt, acted upon, and made real by you. YOU and your mind are the magic that sees and delivers. The Santa for others and yourself.
In the film The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy tells Glinda, The Good Witch of The West that she wishes to go back home to Kansas. Glinda reminds her, ‘You have always had the power my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself’.
And so do you my good friend reading this.
You have always had magic in your mind. Christmas helps you learn this.
Use your magic mind.
Christmas will soon be over, but the magic continues.
The key is to use that magic in your mind on an ongoing basis.
Start having more ideas – bigger ideas, ideas for yourself, business ideas, ideas for products, ideas of how you wish to live and who to be. They are like your family’s wish list for Christmas you went looking for. Now do the same for yourself and your future.
Hold the vision together with all the excited emotions that will happen when it all comes about.
THEY ARE MAGNETIC.
They pull it all together, the glue to the big plans. And they powerfully fuse it into your whole psyche so that you carry it with you day and night. Every single day you think about your wish. See it, lock into it, follow it. Just like you couldn’t let go of finding that doll or trainers for your kids.
Then keep taking action to get closer (like searching the internet or visiting store after store in December to get those wanted gifts – oh, yes, you couldn’t let go!!). Take some steps every day or week to get to that present. The gift to yourself for every day of every year to come. Be Santa for yourself.
Make the magic come to life.
Through using the magic of your mind that you always had.
We can believe almost anything could or will happen to us. Plus, we can imagine that we are better or worse off than we actually are adding all manner of people for or against us and what they ‘are doing’, ‘or thinking’ and ‘up to’ into our mental mix. Meaning we get all mixed up as a result.
Now you would think that we could just flip to using it as much to dream a little as concern a lot. You know, seeing everything working the odd time, and some days viewing less problems and more happier happenings ahead. Well, that makes sense, but us humans don’t act that way.
We tend to focus on one side over the other. Generally we envision either great or not so great as our chief imagining activity. Rarely do many people hip hop between them.
We are either an optimistic sort, or a true pessimistic thinker.
And guess which one most of us fall under?
Worth our weight in worry.
There’s a famous phrase we say when we see people who clearly have heavy stuff going round their head.
‘They have a weight on their mind’.
This means their circumstances are pulling them down mentally. Their mood has become low, their mindset is troubled, and their imagination can’t see many positives. They are in a mental slump.
Instead of being someone worth their weight in gold, they are a person with worry taking the shine off everything. In fact, it’s a common daily experience for large chunks of the world. Minds turned to worry rather than any other point of view or projected outcome.
In the UK 1 in 9 adults worry or stress over their lives every day. For the USA at least a whopping 47% experience ongoing worry on a permanent basis. It gets an even scarier statistic when you look at worldwide figures. The World Health Organisation reported four years ago that globally 359 million people experienced worry based anxiety symptoms each day. At that time that is a huge 4.4% of the world’s population.
And those are just the reported figures. Numbers wise the hole goes far deeper.
Our minds are set to worry.
The true cost of worry.
These statistics are costly.
Well, financially costly if you watch or listen to the media which is preoccupied with money and figures all the time. Less so about human lives where the true cost of this mental malaise hits hard and home. Making it difficult at home and life for everyday good people trying to do their best to live and raise families.
Worry affects a person individually but also, just like a virus, spreads to touch those around them. The very air becomes nervous and full of angst. People in regular contact with this worrier start to develop an anxious edge themselves. A kind of mental telepathy has taken place and infecting others. From families to work colleagues, sports team mates to business contacts, worry is working it’s way through people…all from one person.
The person who is the source of the worry doesn’t get off scot free. They internalise the negative sensation feeling. Their body becomes the victim. Stress, headaches, poor sleep, bad concentration, erratic decision making, skin complaints, heart issues and various other medical conditions stem from worry.
Which brings me to my main point.
Why worry when you can wonder?
Worry has a more magnificent counterpart.
Wonder.
Wonder is to see the incredible. It’s like witnessing magic come true. The real ‘Wow Factor’ but in the mind. Imagination that feels good. A full colour vision in front of your eyes (but mentally). It is the mind at its most alive and aware of everything that can be.
As I said it’s the opposite to worry which does the very same in reverse. That is the mind at its most fearful and despondent seeing only all tragedies and failures that could befall a person. Wonder invites sunshine and smiles and yellow brick roads.
There are two choices of the mind – to worry (and effectively begin dying inside) or wonder (and actually commence thriving everywhere). Wonder takes nothing to start, it costs nothing, it requires no-one else to be involved, and it’s permanently available.
Plus it has HUGE benefits. Take the list above of health problems caused by worry and flip them. That’s wonder at work. Feel good, look good, think good. Hey, it’s all good.
Wonder works…er, wonderfully (sorry, not sorry!).
What to Wonder?
Wonder is a word we tend to use in only one manner.
When we’re confused a little. We wonder what just happened or why someone said what they said. But true wonder is to open our eyes, and most tellingly, our minds to all that’s good, great, and awesome about life and being alive.
We worry about what the day will bring when we can wonder (imagine and see) on positive surprises happening to us.
We worry about the work we have to do while instead we could wonder about the work or life or role we would adore.
And we worry about our family or relationship all the time but we could wonder about the love, and pleasure, and happiness they bring and plan in our head how to make the most of it more.
Wonder is always offered in the sense that the mind only needs to be directed to see, feel, and move towards it. From the wonders of the natural world to the amazing changing seasons, to the wonder that in this modern world all the tools are easily at hand to change our own lives completely. We can study, practice, learn, connect, get advice, get information, and get started in some new way in super quick time.
We don’t have to worry when we can wonder at all that can be achieved if we put our minds to it.
Excite your life.
It’s time to replace anxiety with excitement.
Cut the Netflix, TV sports, and scrolling on the phone and watch tutorials on YouTube, join a sports club to connect to others, or research a keen interest or develop a personal skill. Don’t kill your mind, galvanise it! Give it something to get it’s visionary teeth into.
Wonder is everywhere. It only requires us to switch it on. If we do we can replace worry with something that our minds can actually get fired up about. They will be animated, enthusiastic, in full 3D thinking, and pop us full of endorphin filled excitement.
You gotta wonder what that would be like??
Make your worry days over and let your wonder years begin.
References –
Ciphr.com – One in nine UK adults feel stressed every day survey.
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Standards and Values.
Times change. Society alters. Life moves on and never stands still. But despite this somethings need to remain to hold us up or humanity will fall apart. We require strong foundations to build our world and futures on. One flag bearer that has served us well for many years are standards and values. Decent behaviours, attitudes, and personal actions that ensure we are civilised. Are these still present today? Or have they begun to disappear? SuperMind Saturday decides it’s time to get involved.
1. Are we paying a price?
NFL Head Coach Mike Tomlin said, ‘You can’t put a price on standards and legacy’. A noble quote and observation. This has held true for many many years in life. But, in today’s world it seems less so. The price a growing number of people are happy to pay to let go of previous high standards is money and/or recognition. Being a someone is more important than being a good one.
Do standards and values have a price and, if so, is it worth paying to lose them?
2. Do we even know what they are?
If you were to ask your family and friends what counts as good standards and values, would most of them agree? Or would they even know what that means. Overall we link morals and ethics and levels of behaviour and language to standards and values as the core definitions. But in the modern ‘go-get-what-you-can-for-yourself’ mentality society could well be divided what makes up S +V’s. Or that we even need most of them at all.
If standards and values became a key element of life again, how would we define what they should be?
3. It starts with you and me.
We can talk about standards and values of the world for a lifetime. How they have changed or disappeared and when we have seen or experienced it ourselves. And even cite examples of the type of people who typify the loss of manners and respect. Maybe though, that’s the start of the problem in the first place. We are fast to point the finger at everyone else, but we should look a little closer to home. Look at ourselves as individuals to ensure we aren’t being the same as the people we accuse.
How often do we ask ourselves whether we are personally living by the right standards and values?
4. Selfish or Self Promotion.
It’s a crowded world out there. From the streets to the roads. And from getting a job to keeping a job. Or from making it big to making enough to survive. From online to offline. The world is fuller than ever. This means there is always someone more skilful, popular, well informed, attractive, successful, wealthy, and powerful than you. If you don’t want to be left behind you have to stand out in some way. You can’t stand on ceremony. If you don’t push yourself forwards someone (or lots of others) certainly will. That used to be seen as selfish. Today that could be viewed as sensible self promotion.
Are we selfish to be first, best, or prominent or is self promotion the only way to act on this packed planet?
5. Who do we look up to?
Perhaps there is one area where the greatest shift has occurred. Historically we looked to our leaders and statesmen for our direction on standards and values. They led the way in how to operate at the best level as a human being. This has radically altered. Where we once completely trusted such people, today we feel the very opposite. Our parents also fit that bill as people to be examples to us. But with the advent of social media younger generations are less inclined to be parent and leader inspired and more celebrity so. Which begs the final, and potentially, most crucial question.
Who should we look up to for our standards and values today? Which of type of person, if any, is the perfect role model for most of us to follow?
Let me know your views or insights to these questions. Love to hear how you see and think it!
Ok, that’s another SuperMind Saturday done. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep thinking about these. We need more minds thinking about this issue and the others issue on SuperMind Saturdays. Why? Because it’s needed. Because the world requires new thoughts and ideas. Ones from people like you!!
See you next time for more super thinking.
Photo attribution – free to use under Pixabay Content License by RingoStudio.
