Role Model Theory
A very common and useful strategy for improving your skills in any competitive game or sport is to play against somebody better.
This is why having a good mentor is good, but it has to be carefully calibrated.
If they are too much better than you, or they aren’t too concerned with your progress, this can backfire.
Tight Calibration Required
But a well calibrated system with the right amount of positive and negative feedback, as well as internally driven desire to improve can significantly accelerate your improvement.
Napoleon Hill took the idea of a mastermind group to a whole new level of creativity.
The idea of a mastermind group has been around for a long time, and it is a proven method of problem solving.
Diversity Of Background Critical
Any problem can be solved with maximum efficiency if the group solving the problem has a sufficiently diverse background of experience, as well as a vested interested in solving the problem.
Hill recognized that having such a group isn’t always available, so he experimented with hallucinating his own mastermind group.
He conjured up several historical figures, purely from imaginations, and started meeting with them once per week.
Information can be passed from generation to generation in one of two ways.
Two Sides Of Information
Genetically, and intellectually.
Genetic information takes a long time to change.
But intellectual information can be kept in the collective consciousness of any given society.
So long as the society transmits the information from brain to brain effectively, the collective intelligence of any given society will slowly increase over time.
Inside and Outside of Brains
And if this information is recorded somehow, this same information can skip several generations, and be re-awakened, even by extra terrestrial life forms, so long as they can interpret this information.
However, if the information is only recorded neurologically, once this information is forgotten, it’s gone forever.
There’s an interesting theory from psychology that long ago, the two hemispheres of our brains operated relatively independently from one another.
Two Minds In One
That inside of our minds, there were really two minds communicating.
This is where we got the idea of God from, of some supreme being that gives us information and advice when we need it.
The idea of self awareness is something that is difficult to discuss.
To be aware of your own thoughts as you are thinking them.
Or to be aware of your own words as you are speaking them.
Self Aware Is Only Aware
There’s a theory that our self awareness is only awareness, and that free will is merely an illusion.
That we watch our mind make decisions and respond to external stimuli.
That our ego makes up stories that makes us believe we are choosing, when we are really watching.
The split from being lower animals, driven only by simple instincts to being self aware, rational thinking beings was long and slow.
Hey, Who’s Inside There?
Perhaps there was a long time when we couldn’t really fathom the difference between our instincts and our thinking process.
Perhaps when we first developed language, our self awareness wasn’t as advanced as it is now.
So when we remembered other people talking to us, we weren’t quite aware of what was happening.
Who Said That?
We might remember a friend telling us to be careful, but not quite sure where this voice was coming from.
You wouldn’t know if this voice that is speaking is a memory, or a hallucination.
If this is a memory, where does this memory come from?
If this is a hallucination, and your self aware mind is not choosing, rather only watching, who is doing the hallucination.
Learning and Teaching
Who is doing watching, who is doing the remembering, and who is doing the hallucinating?
Studies have shown that our conscious minds are always a half second or so behind all decisions.
Which suggests that everything that happens to us is really a memory.
We aren’t experiencing life as it happens.
Watching False Memories
You are only watching a post hallucinated memory of what happened a split second ago.
Forgetting is easy.
It’s a very common experience to think you remember something, only to see evidence to the contrary.
When a society doesn’t record any information, and it is only held together by the collective intelligence, these ideas can be lost forever.
Stone Buildings In Jungles
This is why there are remnants of large empires in various jungles, but nobody knows who they were, what they did, or why they left.
He stopped this practice because these hallucinations became too real.
At first, he had to use a lot of his own brain power to create these imaginary people he would meet with.
But pretty soon, these imaginary people took on a life of their own.
They would interrupt each other, they would interrupt him, and they would hang around long past the previously agreed upon time to finish this.
Leave Me Alone
Hill was afraid they would start to follow him around in public, so he stopped doing this.
Learning from mentors is exactly how we used to learn for tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of years.
Young people would learn from older, more skilled people.
As they became more experienced, and older, they would become the local or tribal experts.
Then they would be the ones teaching the younger generation.
This process worked perfectly since the dawn of time.
Imaginary Information Flow
The flow of information, from brain to brain, from older brains to younger brains.
Once this intergenerational transmission of information stops, so does society.
Which means these two sides one in the same.
If you want to find a mentor, you must fully expect to one day be a mentor.
Or you can try what Hill tried.
Hallucinate Your Own Ideas
Create some hallucinations as mentors.
And learn from them.
And mentor some hallucinations.
And teach them everything you’ve learned.
Which means you’ll end up being an intermediary mode of transmission between two hallucinations.
Somebody Say Something?
Like the two halves of your brain talking to each other, while you sit back and watch.
Learn Hypnosis
Mind Persuasion has plenty of books and courses to teach you how to speak hypnotically and persuasively.
Mind Persuasion Books
Mind Persuasion Courses