David Chiu

It has been estimated that we have 50,000 thoughts a day. How many of yours are positive?

This morning I was feeling a little on edge as I was driving to work:

“I gotta make something happen. I’m sick of being a slave to corporate America. I gotta make some films, I gotta get myself out there. I need more auditions. I’m getting older and I’m not doing enough to achieve my goals. I…”

I was getting anxious and I had to force myself to stop my internal chatter. I know part of my problem is that I get so anxious to achieve my goals that I end up going in a million different directions with no focus. My focus right now needs to be changing myself and my thoughts about self. I need to find confidence and power in who I am as a person and as an artist. I need to be able to be unabashedly true to myself and my feelings. If I can’t do this, how do I expect to reach my full potential as a person and an actor?

So I started meditative breathing. Then I started thinking: How do you fundamentally change who you are?

Believe. I remember my friend Matt whom I grew up with through high-school and college. We went to the same oppressive Baptist church and participated in all the church activities. We were decent kids and didn’t get into a lot of trouble, but then we went to college and rebelled. Matt got involved in the typical college life of partying and drinking. Then one night he got in a really bad motorcycle accident and his life started to change. Eventually he went to seminary and now he’s a pastor. Back in college I would have never imagined him as a pastor, but he fundamentally changed his life through his faith and beliefs. The same thing happened with rapper Kanye West. Kanye was a hot beat producer for people like Jay-Z, but he wanted to become something more. One night he got in an almost fatal accident that landed him in a hospital for months with his broken jaw wired shut. There in the hospital he found his faith in God and also found his voice as an artist. That experience transformed him into the mega-star he is today.

So to me, faith and belief are one of the most potent catalysts for transformational change. Whether it’s a belief in God or choosing to believe in yourself or even choosing to believe in the goodness of others. Belief is a powerful force.

Breathe. If you focus and control your breathing you can positively affect your own physiology. This has already been proven by Asian monks for centuries.

Think. This is tied closely to belief. If you think different, you will behave different. If you think positive, your actions will be positive and will eventually lead to success.

Move. Life is filled with movement. Movement effects emotions and physiology. If you want to think different, feel different, move, dance, throw your body into the rhythm of life.

Eat. What you eat determines how you feel, how you think, how you act. Food is fuel for life. Do you think race car drivers put generic gas in their race cars on racing day? So why should you fuel yourself with bad food?

So these are the things I must strive to do to fundamentally change myself for the better: believe, breathe, think, move and eat. I can feel myself changing already.

Like usual I’ve become distracted by other things in life and have not proceeded past Day 1 in Anthony Robbins “Get the Edge” series. So tonight I decided to listen to Mr. Robbins seminar on Day 1 again to refresh my memory and get me back on track.

If I were to give a summary of Get the Edge Day 1, I would say the over-arching message is that you create success through motivation and discipline. You need to train yourself to be successful. Just like Olympic athletes train everyday to compete in the Olympics. So if you want to transform your body, mind and spirit, which in result is your life - you have to train all of these things everyday. This leads to Anthony’s Robbins “Hour of Power”. Regardless of the funny name, the concept is to invest in yourself and to empower yourself by holistically training your body, mind and spirit. I think of it this way - on airplanes during the safety demonstration they always remind you that if the oxygen masks are ever deployed that you MUST secure your mask on first BEFORE you help your child. Is this selfish? No. How can you save your child or anybody else if you cannot save yourself first. You will be useless if you end up passing out before you are able to help your child. So by training yourself to invest in yourself you are actually increasing your capacity to help others and achieve success.

So the first step in the “Hour of Power” is to roll out of bed and start an aerobic warm-up. This gets the blood flowing which helps you to wake up. The second step is to spend some time being thankful for the things in your life. Whether it’s giving thanks to God or just being thankful to the universe. Personally I really like this suggestion because it trains you to start the day with a positive attitude, helps to connect you spiritually and reminds you of all the blessings you already have in life. The third step is performing meditative breathing during the warm-up. There are many benefits to meditative breathing and learning how to control your breath. It’s a key focus in Yoga, Martial Arts and even bodybuilding. Focused breathing helps in relaxation and focus. By changing your breathing you can affect your emotional and mental state as well. The fourth step is focusing on your goals and visualizing yourself achieving them. How else can you achieve your goals if you don’t stay focused. It also stimulates your subconscious to help you achieve that success. The example Mr. Robbins makes is when you are looking to buy a specific car. All of a sudden you see the car you want to buy all over the place. Those cars have always been out there, you just never saw them till now. The same thing applies to focusing on your goals. If you focus everyday on your goals all of a sudden you will start to see opportunities that can help you achieve your goals. The fifth step is what Mr. Robbins calls “inCANtations”. A red flag went up inside my head when I first heard it because it sounds mystical. But “inCANtations” is a way to program your mind to think and act positively. They are just phrases that you come up with that help you focus on your goals or helps you change your behavior. I will eventually go into this concept a little further once I myself have a better understanding, but basically this technique of repeating these phrases out loud is part of a study called NLP or Neuro-Linguistic Programming. More on that at a later date.

The last step in this “Hour of Power” is capturing and remembering “magic moments” that happen in everyday life. In other words, training yourself to see the beauty in life no matter what it might be. To me this is like self motivation by focusing on the positive because as Mr. Robbins says, “success begets success” and “happiness begets happiness”.

So the last couple of days I’ve tried to discipline myself to have my “Hour of Power” every morning and have had had moderate success. I’ve not quite embraced all the ideas here yet, but the idea is to just do it and create that momentum that will turn into discipline and eventual success.