Cut the Noise

7 Useful belief: The final step to cutting the noise

Useful belief leads to useful actions.

Two years ago I wrote my second book, Useful Belief: Because it’s better than positive thinking. It was a great success. The premise of the book is that positive thinking doesn’t work, but useful beliefs and actions do. This is the first part of the process of cutting the noise.

If you have been in a rut for the past 10 days, 10 weeks or 10 months, and someone admonishes you to ‘be positive’, you would probably want to punch them! Trying to be positive won’t get you out of the rut. The real question is, what are the most useful actions for getting you from ground zero to two, from two to five, from five to eight and so on? Useful actions are pragmatic, practical; they are about executing a plan for success.

The idea of useful belief also ties in with what we see and perceive about the world. The book discusses the Reticular Activating System, which may be the most important part of the human brain when it comes to success. It is this system that filters the millions of pieces of information we receive every day.

I call this the Red Toyota Theory. Why? When you last took a drive, how many times did you see a red Toyota on the road? Answer? Probably zero. That’s because you were not looking for red Toyotas. Now, if you decided to buy a red Toyota, where would you see them? Everywhere! The Reticular Activating System is the filter in the brain that determines what you pay attention to.