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📚 Hey, let’s talk about why positive thinking is overrated and what to do instead.

I was actually shocked to learn that the author of this book died recently.

He was only 48, and his X account is still active (run by his team), so I just kind of assumed.

It actually wasn’t until today that I found out about Trevor Moawad’s death, but his book is one of the best I’ve read so far in 2024 (I’ve read 26 as of today).

It’s about neutral thinking, and it’s called It Takes What It Takes.

Trevor was actually Russell Wilson’s mental conditioning coach (football quarterback), and all the top guys in sports and business were either his clients or his students.

Some people actually took issue with the book because of this: they say he name drops all over the place, which honestly, I didn’t even notice.

I was too busy thinking about all the ways I could apply neutral thinking to my life to overpower any obstacle and choose the correct response to any challenge.

It’s a phenomenal book about seeing reality clearly, and building the mental toughness necessary to confront it and thrive in it.

Reality remains undefeated, so you really can’t do much against it. Except flow with it, which Trevor teaches you how to do.

Stoics will recognize some of these techniques for sure, and neutral thinking certainly shares some similarities with mindfulness, but it’s a distinct practice and Trevor does a phenomenal job of showing you how it’s done.

The full breakdown is available right here for free, and then in a few weeks I’ll be putting it back behind the paywall, then it’ll be just for Premium subscribers of The Reading Life and members of The Competitive Advantage. 

And now let’s get into it…

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This Book is For:

*People who are looking to increase their mental resilience, and those who would be willing to exchange an easy life for the strength to endure a difficult one.

*Elite athletes looking for an edge over their competition and a mental performance enhancement that will help them dominate the field.

*Business professionals seeking to upgrade their focus, mental toughness, decision-making skills, and their ability to handle top-tier pressure in the toughest situations they'll face.

*Anyone who is interested in exploring the highest reaches of human capability, and in determining where exactly their true limits lie.

Summary:

What is reality? Reality is that which refuses to go away, even after you stop believing in it. Philip K. Dick was certainly right about that.

At the basic level, It Takes What It Takes is a masterclass in accurately assessing the nature of reality in front of you and building an effective strategy to help you deal with it, no matter what.

No. Matter. What.

The author, the late Trevor Moawad, was a top mental conditioning coach ("the world's best brain trainer") who worked with superstars in the NFL, elite professionals at Harvard Business School, Fortune 500 companies, the military - basically anywhere you see ambitious strivers and world-class competitors pursuing their potential, you would have found Trevor Moawad, helping them manage their negativity and achieve any goal they set for themselves.

His life's work was to motivate the motivated. Not by pumping them up with fake positivity or silly affirmations; not by wishing and hoping for performance improvements, and not by instilling a blind faith in positive thinking.

Instead, he helped these elite individuals return to reality, face the very real obstacles in their path, and come up with a plan for what to do in the very next moment, which is the only time when any of us have any real power.

Importantly, he wouldn't let them get too high or too low. Negative thinking works negatively 100% of the time, naturally, and just because you're thinking negatively doesn't mean you're being realistic. But positive thinking often has very little to do with reality either, and it's in navigating between those two extremes where we can find that next gear.

Just like in bowling, where beginners often have those bumpers on either side of the lane to prevent the ball from ending up in the gutter, neutral thinking can help you stay centered and stay on the path taking you where you want to go.

Neutral thinking, as Trevor would say, is a high-performance strategy that emphasizes judgment-free thinking, especially in pressure situations. It acknowledges that the past happened. However, the past isn’t predictive. It can influence the present and thus, the future, but it doesn't guarantee it.

Neutral thinkers calmly and coolly assess challenges, take inventory of their unique strengths and abilities, and determine the best path forward, often with incomplete information about the true nature of reality, but never running from it.

The past doesn't determine your future; what you do next determines your future. Neutral thinking is about gaining as much clarity as possible, reclaiming as much control as possible, and then asking, "What would a winner do in this situation?"

One of the strongest lessons in this book is that winners behave like winners, and average performers exhibit average behaviors. You can't behave like an average person and expect to be anything more than average. You have to think like a winner, and most importantly behave like a winner if you want to stack the probabilities of success in your favor.

Another strong lesson is the absolute imperative to reduce the flow of negativity into your life - for the sake of your performance, sure, but also just for the sake of your sanity and your quality of life too. A staggering experiment that Moawad ran a few years ago illustrates this point well.

Long story short, over the period of a few weeks, he voluntarily exposed himself to the constant stream of negativity that's breaking over the eyes and ears of basically everybody hooked into mainstream society, virtually 24/7.

The poor guy didn't even last a month.

The constant negativity quite literally broke him, and yet that's what people are living with - voluntarily - every single day! The negative news, the anger and vitriol online, the sad, angry music, etc. It was all too much. It poisoned Trevor's life until he quite literally couldn't take it anymore. The full story is in the Book Notes section of this breakdown.

There's a lot more to discuss, including the Law of Substitution, and what Trevor calls the "Illusion of Choice," all of which is detailed down below. It all adds up to one hell of a winning strategy for life, and while few books are perfect, this one has the power to help you reframe your reality, reject the negativity, and recover the astonishing power of choice you've had all along.

READ THE FULL BOOK BREAKDOWN HERE

Key Ideas:

#1: The Neutrality of Reality

Reality is no more - and no less - than the world as it actually is. Reality is not as we wish it to be; it can only be as it actually is. How could it be otherwise?

Persisting in delusion isn't going to help you, and a plan that isn't based on reality is no plan at all. It could be the most perfectly thought-out, most meticulous plan anyone's ever thought of in the history of plans, but if it's not based on reality, it's not going to work.

Wishing reality was different isn't going to change it either; reality is stubborn. It refuses to bend to your preferences or desires, but it's also here to help you...if you work with reality rather than against it. Again, reality is here to help you. That's what neutral thinking is based on.

Wanting things to be different than they are only handicaps your ability to respond effectively to changing circumstances. It's in your best interests to seek reality in its true form, regardless of how painful it is to observe or acknowledge it.

But there's also something comforting about the rigidity of reality: it's a constant. In the same way that a 45lbs bar in a gym in Canada is going to be a 45lbs bar in a gym in South Africa, reality is exactly what it is, regardless of whether you had a horrible day or a fantastic day.

You don't have to like the outcome, but acknowledging it dispassionately is what's going to allow you to formulate the correct response. Taking reality as it is, committing to facing it no matter what, will lead you to the correct choice of action. It will show you the next steps to take.

Fighting against reality, however - denying it - will get you nowhere. Reality remains undefeated.

#2: The Illusion of Choice

Arnold Schwarzenegger says that when you have a vision, everything else becomes easy. Everything becomes clear. Suddenly, you don't have a choice anymore, but you have a clear path.

You know exactly what must be done to reach your goal, to make your vision a reality. If you want to achieve that goal, you have to follow the path. That's the one choice you can make that removes all other choices.

When you have a clear path, everything that could deter you from that path becomes a lesser choice. A false path.

For Arnold, having that vision of becoming a world champion bodybuilder removed the choice he had to party on the weekends, or skip the gym "just this one time." If he wanted to make his vision become a reality, suddenly, he no longer had a choice. Neither will you. You will lose your false freedom, because you traded it for clarity, purpose, and meaning.

In your life, you think you have a choice, but you really don't. Not if you're serious about reaching your goals. There is a specific set of actions you must take, and if you don't take those actions, then you won't reach your goals. So do you really have a choice about whether or not you take those actions?

The goal that you choose determines the path you must take to get there, and that path will determine what kind of choices will become available to you. If you want to grow a successful business, you certainly have a choice about whether you want to run Facebook ads or YouTube ads, but you don't have a choice regarding whether or not you work on weekends and holidays.

If your goal is to get into fantastic shape, you have a choice about what kind of workouts you perform, but you don't have a choice regarding how much sleep you get, whether you drink water or not, or whether you eat Doritos four times a week. Those are only choices available to people without fitness goals. And those are perfectly fine choices! People can do what they want. But you don't have a choice anymore.

Competing against your own choices means to sabotage your own efforts to follow the path that leads to your ultimate goal. You sabotage your original decision whenever you decide to do something that will take you off that path.

Your choices have to align with your desires, or else you're just deceiving yourself. To realize your vision, you need to sacrifice what you want now for what you want most. That's the deal. That's the price that reality demands that you pay.

By committing to that path no matter what, you may lose your "choices" but in their place you gain your freedom.

#3: The Law of Substitution

Your mind can literally only focus on one thing at a time, and one of the most explosive psychological discoveries of all time is that you get to choose what that one thing is. And whatever shape that dominant thought takes, that's the shape that your external reality will take as well.

Just like multitasking is actually the brain switching back and forth really quickly between tasks, your mind isn't actually capable of holding two thoughts in consciousness at the same time. What's happening is that your mind reverts back to your dominant thought, whatever you decide that is.

By doing so, everything else gets blocked out automatically. Select your dominant thought - the one most empowering thing you can think that's going to get you to where you want to go - and your mind will automatically shut out every other competing thought.

Naturally, you won't be able to do this indefinitely. I can focus on my work for hours on end, but eventually, I'm going to have to focus on what's for dinner. Other thoughts, concerns, stressors, etc. are going to intrude upon your consciousness, and you don't have complete control over that process. But you can always choose to return to that dominant thought.

What you need to do is run an ad campaign inside your own mind. Advertising works - that's why it's a multibillion-dollar industry. It's effective. Advertising makes people do things, including you. So it's not a question of effectiveness, it's a question of what kinds of advertisements are running inside your own head.

READ ALL THE KEY IDEAS HERE

Book Notes:

READ ALL THE BOOK NOTES HERE

Action Steps:

So you've finished reading. What do you do now?

Reading for pleasure is great, and I wholeheartedly support it.

However, I am intensely practical when I'm reading for a particular purpose. I want a result. I want to take what I've learned and apply it to my one and only life to make it better!

Because that's really what the Great Books all say. They all say: "You must change your life!" 

So here, below, are some suggestions for how you can apply the wisdom found in this breakdown to improve your actual life.

Please commit to taking massive action on this immediately! 

Acting on what you've learned here today will also help you solidify it in your long-term memory. So there's a double benefit! Let's begin...

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#1: Practice Shifting Into Neutral

Neutral thinking represents an entirely new way of seeing, but it can be learned, and opportunities to practice will present themselves constantly.

Most people probably don't suffer from too much positive thinking. Although that's definitely not ideal, delusional optimism perhaps isn't as bad as the constant stream of negativity running through many people's thoughts daily.

If that's you, neutral thinking can help you tremendously. It involves not projecting your difficulties into the future indefinitely, not believing that you are somehow faulty, and not believing that you're powerless. The challenges you face are temporary, they're not happening because you're a bad person, and you do actually have the power to fight back.

So bring it back to the present moment. What are the objective facts of your situation? What's your very next move?

It might take more than a few minutes to come up with an answer, but there is an answer. You're not powerless. You're not a bad person. And your problems aren't permanent. You possess real power in the present moment, and there's a choice you can make - a choice that winners would make - that will represent your first step toward a meaningful solution. When you're ready...take that step.

#2: Reverse Engineer Success

If you have a vision, a goal, something that you're aiming to achieve, it's likely that there's someone else out there who's achieved something similar, and can offer you advice (even from a distance) about how to get there. You can repeat the steps they've taken, you can repeat the actions that are most likely to help you get there too. You just need to work backwards from the end.

Say you're goal is to lose 50lbs in the next year. Plenty of people have done that. So you know right away that it's possible. What they've done, you can do too, provided that you repeat the same behaviors. Is it guaranteed? Of course not. But it's likely, and sometimes that's enough.

Working backwards in this case would mean breaking down your goal into monthly chunks and committing to a set of behaviors that would help you reach it. The 50lbs you want to lose breaks down to about a pound per week, which already is sounding a lot more possible. That's your benchmark.

Now you just outline a set of behaviors that make it as unlikely as possible that you wouldn't achieve your goal. If you drank a gallon water every day and cut out soda completely, that would be a major step forward. If you committed to walking a few miles 4x per week, that would most assuredly help too. None of these things are complicated, and if you actually dedicated yourself to implementing them, that 50lbs doesn't really stand much of a chance.

Work backwards from the end and plan it all out in advance. Give yourself a path forward, but no options and no choices besides doing what needs to be done.

#3: Utilize Positive and Negative Visualization

The key when harnessing the power of visualization is specificity, and involving all of your senses in the activity. You want to see that new car or that new body or that new whatever in the theatre of your mind, and it has to be as clear as if it were right in front of you, close enough to touch.

Not only do you have to see it, but you have to feel it; sense it, smell it, hear it. Touch the steering wheel, smell the exhaust, hear the engine. Feel it. All of this is powerful stuff. But it goes even beyond this.

What also helps is visualizing the specific actions and habits you'll need to take in the process of realizing your vision. See yourself walking around the block, feel yourself meditating in the morning, hear yourself on the phone making those sales calls. Enlist all your senses and bring them together to form the clearest picture possible of a winner - you - engaging in the habits and behaviors that are going to make you a winner.

Finally, you need to be able to visualize and anticipate all the problems, challenges, and setbacks you'll face along the way as well. Not everything will go as planned. Life will throw you curveballs, obstacles will appear in places that looked empty moments before. You have to prepare for all of that. Because when you're prepared for a fight, the problems lose their power.

READ ALL THE ACTION STEPS HERE

"The path to success is to take massive, determined action."

-Tony Robbins

This Book on Amazon:

It Takes What It Takes, by Trevor Moawad

If You Liked This Book:

Wooden on Leadership, by John Wooden and Steve Jamison

Winning, by Tim Grover

Discipline is Destiny, by Ryan Holiday

Do Hard Things, by Steve Magness

Be Your Future Self Now, by Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Learn, Improve, Master, by Nick Velasquez

Discipline Equals Freedom, by Jocko Willink

Doing the Impossible, by Patrick Bet-David

The Gap and the Gain, by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

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OK, that’s it for now…

More excellent book recommendations coming your way soon!

Again, the rest of the above breakdown is absolutely free (for now!), and you can find it right here.

What you see in this email is less than half of what you get at the Stairway to Wisdom. I left out most of the Book Notes, all the Questions to Stimulate Your Thinking, several of the Key Ideas, etc.

So there’s a lot more for you left to read if you enjoyed what you read in this email!

With that said, I hope you enjoyed this edition of The Reading Life, and enjoy the rest of your week!

Until next time…happy reading!

All the best,

Matt Karamazov

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