One of the most common barriers to success for most people is that they don’t know how to work with their own mind.

Your own mind will be the best business partner you’ll ever have – you just know how to collaborate with it! But for that to happen, you have to understand the very specific way that it works.

In this TedTalk, Marisa Peer, lays out the 4 Basic Rules for “success across the board at every level.” If you do these 4 simple things, you can start working WITH your mind instead of against it.

When I watched this video – I immediately knew that I wanted to share it with you! I see great value in understanding and putting into practice her simple techniques – you can accomplish twice as much when you bring your mind on as your business partner!

So what is Marisa talking about?

Many people are getting hip to the fact that you need to train your mind to achieve what you want. Marisa has 4 basic things that you need to know to fully collaborate with your brain. What I love about this, is how simple and straight-forward it is.

#1 – Your mind does EXACTLY what it thinks you want it to do. If you’re not getting the results you want, there’s a problem in the message that it’s getting from you.

The point here is that your mind is always listening to your self-talk so if gets the message that you actually want to AVOID something on your To-Do list – then don’t be surprised when it jumps in to help you avoid doing it. For instance, you say, “Ugh, I can’t stand filling out all that paperwork. It makes me feel like I’m dying – wasting my life away.” Suddenly you start seeing all of these tasks that are much more alluring to you (or more pressing) so that you procrastinate.

Have you ever said, “I just wish I had a week where I could do nothing and lounge around in bed all day.” Only to find that you catch the flu and immediately get your wish?

But before you can jump in and blame your mind, your mind would reply, “Hey, didn’t you ask for that? I’m giving you what you wanted.“

So what can you do? Specifically choose to think in terms of “I WANT to… I have CHOSEN to… I have chosen to FEEL GREAT ABOUT…”

THAT’s what you actually want to communicate to your mind. Use very specific, precise and detailed words to express how you WANT to approach a task or situation. In a business meeting and feel intimidated speaking in front of people?

Don’t say, “Oh, I hate that. I always get so nervous and stumble over my words.“

Instead say, “I love having the opportunity to speak in front of others because each time I do, I get more comfortable with it and better at it.“

#2 – Your mind is hard-wired to move toward pleasure and away from pain.

The primary survival trait of our mind is that will always move us away from things that cause us pain and toward things that cause us pleasure.

You’ve probably seen excellent evidence of this if you’ve ever gotten sick from eating something. After that experience, it’s very hard to eat that food in the future. Your mind will link it to that experience and you’ll have a “distaste’ for it.

Similarly, ANY bad experience can hold you back.

But you can use this to your advantage if you link the pain to NOT doing something (or NOT following-through) and the pleasure to doing it.

For instance, if you focus on the muscle soreness and effort involved in working out, no one would ever do it. Or, if you did, every time it would be a battle with your will power.

But if instead you focus on the way your healthy body feels from working out, or being able to wear the size you want and how glorious that feels… that links the working out experience to feelings of pleasure. Then it’s not an uphill battle every time.

#3 – The way that your mind understands how you feel about something comes down to two things – the pictures you make in your head and the words you say to yourself.

The whole inner dialog that you have with your brain is conducted by your thoughts – and those thoughts can be in pictures or words.

There’s a great example of this if you close your eyes and think of a juicy piece of fruit in your hand. Really think about it and then pretend to bite into it. All of that saliva that rushes into your mouth is your brain trying to help you digest the fruit you have communicated with it that you’re about to eat.

So, if you want to change the dialog that you’re having with your mind – change the words you choose and the mental images you choose to focus on.

And don’t think of this as “positive thinking.”

Think of it as re-wiring your brain for success by communicating with it more effectively.

#4 – Your mind loves what is familiar. It will always try to fall back on what’s familiar.

So if your normal mindset is self-doubt and worry. Then 15 minutes of meditation in the morning is not going to override that. What’s most familiar is the OTHER 23 hours and 45 minutes of the day.

In order to change this, you need to make what is familiar, unfamiliar… and what is unfamiliar, familiar.