Brain Hacks

Everyday Mind Magic for Creating the Life You Want

Keith Barry

• Publisher: Gill Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780717191925
• eBook ISBN: 9780717191918
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Self Improvement

Keith Barry is the world's leading TV Hypnotist, Mentalist And Brain Hacker. He has mastered the unique ability to hack into people's minds and rewire their subconscious.

In this groundbreaking book, Keith reveals how, over the course of his astonishing career, he has developed a variety of techniques that will help you to cultivate a 'magical mindset' and develop mental toughness subconsciously. These are the very techniques he uses every day to achieve the life of his dreams.

If you feel you are stuck in a rut or need help in life – whether that's with your career, your finances, your personal life or anything else – this book will help you to move forward. When you master these methods, you too will discover that anything is possible when you put your mind to it!

POSITIVITY

the practice of living a magical life through a positive mindset

‘In order to carry a positive action, we must develop here a positive vision.’ – Dalai Lama

11.

HAPPY HEADSPACE

THE ROAD TO A POSITIVE MINDSET

I WAS ON A RADIO show recently where the presenter introduced me with the words, ‘Our next guest is somebody who is so positive it makes me sick.’ Perhaps because I have such a positive mindset, I laughed and took the introduction as a compliment.

Having a positive mindset is the one thing that I guarantee will change your life. Like most things in life, though, there is no quick fix to attaining positivity, so I want you to stop here and think for a while. Stop reading for as long as is necessary for you to put serious thought into whether you really want to change your life or not. This will not be easy, so give it careful consideration. Take it seriously. Spend some time thinking about it. Do not begin reading again until you have made up your mind.

Welcome back.

If after some deep and meaningful thought you have decided to commit 100 per cent – and it will take 100 per cent commitment – to changing your life for the better, then read on and I will explain the most successful methods of doing just that. If you have decided that you don’t want to change your life and would rather live a life of negativity, then skip this section. It’s not for you.

Over the years of doing live shows, seminars and functions all around the world, I’ve come into contact with so many people asking me for help that I decided to carry out some basic research of my own to see why people felt they needed to change their lives in the first place and what was wrong with the lives they already had.

When I simply discussed these people’s everyday lives with them, I soon noticed that the same stories were being churned out again and again, no matter what country I was in or what type of person I spoke to, whether they were young or old, married or single, working or unemployed.

People who seemed to be forever stuck in a rut, never getting anywhere except deeper into the hole they were already in, kept spewing out the same answers when asked why they weren’t living as they really wanted to and why they didn’t have a positive outlook on life.

‘Things are bad out there.’ ‘The banks have destroyed the economy.’ ‘I’m too old.’ ‘The builders have the country ruined.’ ‘I’m too young.’ ‘The vaccine rollout is very slow.’ ‘We’re in a recession.’ ‘It’s because of Brexit.’ ‘It’s because of Covid.’ ‘The weather is too bad.’ ‘It’s the government’s fault for letting things get so bad.’

I soon began to realise that every day, in every country, the story was the same. Over the past few years, people have been brainwashed into a negative mindset that the banks, the construction industry, the economy, or even the Chinese government are somehow to blame for them being stuck in a rut in their own lives. People love to play the blame game as it removes the responsibility for their own negative thought patterns.

You only have to read a newspaper, watch TV or listen to the radio in any town in the world and there will be a story about a factory closing down, a home getting repossessed, banks not lending money, Covid case numbers, vaccination rollouts ... all pretty depressing stuff. Hell, I’ve heard it so often they nearly had me brainwashed too!

Regardless of what is happening around you, no matter what the banks are doing, no matter what the government is doing, no matter what the weather is doing, you must stand up and take responsibility for how you think and act. You have the ability to decide whether to think positively or think negatively. That is a choice.

STOP PLAYING THE BLAME GAME

Whether you are reading this book on the train to work in the morning, propped up in bed at night or sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, you have got to stop playing the blame game.

If you don’t stop now, then you’re not going to solve whatever issues you have right now. Negative thinking will not serve you well and will not help you to problem-solve. You need a positive mindset in order to think your way out of any negative situation you may find yourself in. I’ll repeat that. You need a positive mindset in order to think your way out of any negative situation you may find yourself in.

That’s right. If you continuously blame other people for the negative situations you find yourself in, instead of thinking positively and trying to change things, you are going to stay in those exact same positions ... for the rest of your life! Think about that for a minute. It’s a pretty sobering thought. You may be thinking negatively right now about stopping your negativity. ‘But I don’t know how to stop!’ ... ‘I can’t stop!’ Don’t worry. You can change that. All I ask is that you read on with a positive outlook and think about every single word and sentence in this chapter.

PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR TECHNOLOGY INTAKE

Your brain is like a sponge. It can absorb everything it sees, hears, smells and feels. Everything we do gets locked into our subconscious mind. Of course, we don’t knowingly remember every single thing we do or see, but, like files on a computer, it’s all in there. If somebody invented a technology to hack into your brain and pull everything out, you would be able to find the exact moment you read this sentence for years to come.

If your brain absorbs everything you put into it, both the positive and negative, then aren’t you better off putting in more positive information than negative in the first place? The first thing you need to do is take stock of your tech intake every day. Are you consistently looking at bad news on your TV, smartphone, tablet or computer? You might not think you are doing that but if your phone is always with you, then you are open to a flood of negativity through emails, tweets, messages and social media comments all of the time. If you have a smartphone, have a look at your screen time right now and see how much time you spent looking at your phone this week. If you work on a computer then you can probably at least double that time each day. If you’re under twenty-five this is likely to be pretty high. In fact, studies have shown that the younger a child is when they are given a phone the more likely they are to develop technology addiction problems. Thirty-three percent of 13-year-olds never turn their phones off. Ever! Go to any concert, sports event, party or celebration and you will see people recording it on their phones instead of actually enjoying the moment. When it’s all over, the only memories they will have will be those video clips they almost never re-watch instead of how it felt to actually be there.

Your phone has been designed to grab your attention as much as possible. Think about how often you jump up to see who just texted you or check what that latest update on your social media feed was. How often do you check to see how many likes your latest post or photograph got? Add in online shopping, gambling and gaming apps and you are like a fish on the end of a digital hook. Heck, they even use the name ‘clickbait’ for those short headlines that make you want to read more. You know the ones. ‘This woman couldn’t believe her son’s girlfriend did this ...’ ‘You won’t believe how a photographer caught these celebrities ...’

You might think, ‘Well, I only look at positive things like funny dances on TikTok or funny clips on YouTube.’ But even light-hearted entertainment can get you addicted, and addiction to anything is always harmful. Dopamine gets produced when you are rewarded with something online. The feel-good chemical can be released by somebody liking your post, a good comment under your photo, or watching a drunk cat trying to climb the stairs. In fact, smartphone manufacturers hire neuroscientists, psychologists and social scientists to make sure this happens.

The problem with this is that people get used to checking their phones regularly to check for those likes and clips and as they do, they gradually get addicted to that dopamine hit. If you don’t get that buzz all of the time or get a negative comment or not as many likes as you thought you should, that can lead to anxiety and depression and a consistently negative mindset.

Watch how a child gets cranky and their whole mood changes if you switch off their games console or take their phone off them. Adults are the same. They might not have the same physical outburst as a child, but internally those feelings will begin to build and if the pattern isn’t broken this can lead to serious problems. How many times have you seen couples commenting on each other’s social media pages when you know they’re sitting on the same couch? Wouldn’t they be better spending that time together without the distraction of technology?

I was at a hurling match one time with a client who was dealing with anxiety problems. He turned to me in the middle of the game and said, ‘Look at this, look at this!’ and showed me a video he had received in a WhatsApp group he was in. The video was disgusting so I asked him, ‘Why are you showing me that?’ I told him that his brain could also never unsee that negative image and advised him to promptly leave the WhatsApp group it came from.

Negativity is the enemy of positivity, but people don’t recognise just how much negativity they are subconsciously searching for on a daily basis. Once you see it, it’s locked away in your subconscious forever. If you continually watch bad news, or terrible video clips of car crashes, fights, violence, people being ridiculed, bullied or worse, then that is what is filling up your brain and affecting your outlook on life.

STOP NOW and think of the flow of negativity into your brain each day. Ask yourself: where does most of your daily negativity come from? Is it from the television or the radio, from social media or a group chat?

Grab your journal and write down where your negative mental input is coming from. Ask yourself how you can stop or at least reduce this negativity flow as much as possible. If you find negativity coming from the radio show you listen to on the drive home from work, then listen to music or a positive podcast instead. You have to pay attention to what you are paying attention to!

LET GO OF NEGAT...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Confidence
• Risk
• Creativity
• Success
• Resilience
• Positivity
• Influence
• Deception
• A Magical Mind
• Endnotes
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright
• About the Author
• About Gill Books