2. Always Focus on Positives, Never on Negatives

Even when confronted with serious obstacles, think about the solution, not the problem. Focusing on the problem will sap you of energy and drive. Focusing on the solution will imbue you with motivation and creativity. If a huge deadline is looming, and you’re starting to panic, stop thinking about the deadline, and think about how you are going to work efficiently. Take a minute and picture yourself churning through your work quickly and easily, to the point where you’re actually enjoying doing it. Feel the sense of satisfaction that you will get when you’re done with plenty of time to spare.  Create this experience in your mind, and you’re already on your way to creating it in reality.

3. Put the Placebo Effect to Work in Your Daily Life.

The placebo effect is an incredible phenomenon from medical science. In essence, when doctors give patients fake medicine – sugar or salt pills – these patients respond as though they were given real medicine. This sounds impossible, but it has been documented literally hundreds of thousands of times. Simple sugar pills (it doesn’t have to be sugar, it can be any “harmless” substance- not that eating sugar is harmless, but you get the picture…) have been shown to be able to reduce fevers, control pain, treat depression, and wake people up in the morning like caffeine.

When doctors want to know if any given drug "really" does something, they can’t just give it to people and see what happens. This is because they know from experience that any pill will make people feel better as long as they believe in it. Instead, researchers have to run an experiment which compares the “real” drug to a placebo. And frequently, the placebo is just as effective as the “real” drug. Just about every medical experiment involves a placebo, and the placebo effect shows up almost every time.

The placebo effect is the single best confirmed phenomenon in all of research science. It is a striking testimonial to the power of the mind over the body. And we don’t need to take fake pills to make the placebo effect work to improve our bodies and our lives. The key to the placebo effect is the power of belief. Taking a bogus drug that you believe will cure a headache or help you pay attention can actually help you do these things, purely as a result of your belief in the drug’s efficacy. When you take the drug, your mind focuses on the idea that your condition is going to improve. And even that little bit of focus – that little bit of belief – is enough to physically change your body. Imagine how much more powerful consciously focused will and visualization can be. The moral of the placebo effect is that what we believe to be true about our bodies becomes true (at least in part). The stronger your belief, the more powerful the effect. Rich visualization is the most effective way to get yourself believing that you can have the body and the life that you want.