#3791: You're Getting Exactly What You're Reinforcing

0:00Here's how the game session works. You show up with one real problem. Maybe it's your offer, your sales process, your strategy, your systems, a decision you've been sitting on, or something you know needs to change, but you can't quite see what the move is. There are only three people in the session, and everybody gets coached directly by me. You also get to watch me work through the other two people's situations, so you're learning from three real business problems instead of just your own. 60 minutes, three seats, $97. Bring the problem, we will work it. Work on your game.com slash game. That's work on your game.com slash game. Top performers don't wait until they have a problem to improve. They built better thinking before they needed. That's exactly why my daily game email exists. Every day you get one concise lesson on mindset, leadership, execution, and professional growth, all for free, no fluff.

1:01Sign up at workonmygame.com. That's workonmygame.com. My assistant comes from interrupting any destructive cycle in your life and reinforcing productive habits and productive cycles until they become automatic. They all lay up top. Work on your game. Work on your game. Work on your game. This is Dre Baldwin and work on your game. This is a system that turns discipline into dominance. Today's topic is you are getting exactly what you are reinforcing. Many times people think that their results get created by some isolated event. This thing happened. Therefore, I got this outcome. The cause and effect mentality. And sometimes what you identify as the cause has led to the effect. But often the cause is simply the final straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.

2:02It's not an isolated event. One thing led to one thing. In reality, all of us are individual lives and the lives of the organizations, communities, businesses that we are a part of are running on a series of constant feedback loops. Things are happening and then the feedback comes around. The feedback isn't often not immediate. It's not an instant response. You don't do something that immediately gets the response from the universe. The world doesn't, most of the world does not operate off of that instant response formula. That's just a, it's often the way you response something that you did in January. You start to see the results of in July. Something you did two years ago, you're seeing the results of it now. Every action does create a result, but it's not often an immediate result. And people often miss a sign results to behaviors. They say, I got this result because of this behavior. They usually connect the result to a behavior that was shortly before the result that they

3:05got. Most people don't look long enough back into the past or further enough into the future of time perspective. When taking certain acts as a back into the past and looking at certain outcomes to find out what one thing or what series of things led to this circumstance that I'm dealing with right now. Every action does create a result and every result influences your next action. And if you're misdiagnosing these things and knowing over time that these cycles create your reality, if you're misdiagnosing, then you may think your reality exists because of one thing when actually it's just because of some else. So we got to make sure we're diagnosing things properly here because the last thing we want to do is get this wrong. If you get it wrong, then you may think I need to do more of this because I read to that when actually this did not need to that. So you do more of this is not going to get you that you want to think that it does and then be frustrated when it doesn't. And what's wrong with you? Well, nothing's wrong with you. Well, other than the fact that you misdiagnosed what was actually happening, you didn't connect the right calls to the right effect. Let's talk about it. Point number one. Today's topic once again is you're getting exactly what you're reinforcing.

4:08Number one, success and failure feed themselves. What does that mean? Small wins build confidence. We need to better decisions and more wins. Better decisions meaning more decisions around, generally speaking, theoretically, we need to more decisions around what were the decisions that were to success that I just got. Usually you'll make more of those decisions, ie better decisions, winning decisions and then at least the more opportunities to win. A bunch of small wins compounded on top of each other eventually compounds into bigger wins or it becomes a big win or look that in the big picture. Small losses on the other hand can create hesitation, doubt, anxiety, negative stress. That leads to poorer decisions, ie doing more things that put you in position to lose again or not doing things that eventually puts you in position to lose again and eventually you lose more and more losses pile up. What is this? Anybody noticing what this is?

5:09This is the law of inertia. I'm just emotional remains emotion. I'm just not emotional remains not emotion until unless I can find by now, so I force both of these are different versions of momentum. Winning, winning, winning, winning is momentum. Losing, losing, losing, losing is not stagnation. That's momentum. It's just negative momentum. Understanding momentum is impartial to what's direction that takes you in. Momentum will take you in a negative direction the same way it'll take you in a positive direction. Momentum is not for you nor against you. It just is. So whatever you do to get the momentum working, the momentum will do exactly what you asked it to do. Make me win more, make me lose more. Good news is you get conscious choice over what actions you take and what actions you don't take so that you're in better position to make decisions about what's direction you're going to let momentum take you because momentum is going to take you somewhere just a matter of where you get to decide the direction. That loop matters more than the individual events. So the loops of thing happens, do more than these to that thing, thing happens again and

6:10again and again and again. That loop is what you want to get control over. It's not the individual event because you can be, let's say for example, a sports team who wins a lot of games and then randomly one day you go all against the team who's having a great day. Your team's not having such a great day. You lose a game. But the team comes right back and wins the next game. The loop of the overall process because the team, despite losing that game that you didn't expect to lose, the team didn't stop following the process that has led to the wins. So that loss was an aberration. You keep following the same process. You keep training the same way, getting ready, preparing the same way and executing the same way. Well, next three games you win three more, even though you had that one loss of an aberration. You don't allow that one loss to break your momentum. You just keep doing the same things that led to the momentum and the momentum picks right back up. Sometimes randomness will insert itself into your process. It happens. Randomness can cause a team that usually wins the losing game.

7:11Randomness can cause someone who is usually on time to be late once in a blue moon. Randomness can cause someone who is usually healthy to get sick. But that doesn't mean you stop the entirety of what you were doing that led to the positive results, that positive loop. You don't stop doing the things that led to the positive loop just because one time something that you didn't want to happen happens. You don't do that. If you have done that, then I suggest you go back to what you were doing before. The winning team doesn't decide that we're a loser, it's just because you lost one game. You won 10 in a row, you lost game number other. So now you're 10 and one. You want all of a sudden say, we're losers and drop all the habits that led to you winning 10 games. You don't go rewrite the entire playbook and rewrite the entire script because you lost one game. Let's get right back and move on to the next game. Then you win the next three games and now you're 13 and more. So the one game becomes more of an aberration that it becomes a reflection of who you are. And the mistake that people make is that when they have that one aberration outside of the loop, they'll look at that and assume that that is where I'm at.

8:11That's who I am, depending on how emotionally triggering that one thing is or if they don't have the loop yet, the positive loop of winning, they may just take whatever outcome they get and assume that this just must be where I'm at. This is a reflection of mental toughness or lack thereof. Your ability to stay on the horse, to stay on the script despite the fact that you have yet to get the result from doing all the quote unquote right things. Small losses again can create the hesitation. Small wins create better decisions. The loop matters more in the individual event. IE long run. What you're doing consistently matters more than what you do one time. Point number two. It's your getting exactly what you're reinforcing. Number two, your habits create self reinforcing cycles. We just touched on this at the end of point number one. Good habits, IE habits that are meeting you in direction in which you want to go. That's what a good habit is. Good habits today make future good habits easy. You have good habits now is easier to pick up good habits in the future. You have shitty habits now.

9:11It's hard to pick up good habits in the future. It's not impossible. It's just harder. A person who's already in good shape is easier for them to get in better shape than there's a person who's not in shape at all to get in good shape in the first place. Why? Because you have to break the inertia of not being in good shape. If you have been in good shape, you allow yourself to fall a little bit on a shape is easier to get back if you've been there before because you know the process, you know what it feels like than a person who's never done it before. For example, I used to play basketball. I haven't picked up a basketball in a decade. But if I were to pick up a basketball tomorrow and start playing, I could get my skills sharp again faster than a person who has never played basketball who were to pick up a basketball for the first time tomorrow. Who would get good first? It would be me. Why? Because I have muscle memory of what it looks and feels like to be good, whereas that person knows nothing about that. So I have more experience. And I know what it feels like. My mind knows what it looks and feels like even if my body is right now, would not be capable of knowing it because I allow the skills to slip.

10:12But the skills didn't just completely erase. They're just dormant. The same thing if I were to not record any of this show, it's go a month and not record at all when I start recording again. The first couple episodes may feel a little bit different to the hadn't done it in a while, but by two or three episodes in, I'll be right back in my flow because I've done it so many times with muscle memory, it's like riding a bicycle. That's the self-reinforcing cycle. Habits make future good habits, easy bad habits, make future bad habits, easy. Habits create self-reinforcing cycles and habits are the behaviors that you are taking unconsciously that have been repetitioned into the subconscious mind. That's what habit is by definition. Every repeated behavior strengthens the loop that you're already living in. Every time you do something again, it drives the grooves deeper in the brain and in the subconscious mind that this is the thing that I do. Every time you wake up early, you reinforce into the brain that you wake up early.

11:15Every time you put your phone down and focus, you reinforce that to the brain. Every time you pick up some chocolate, when you tell yourself you're not going to, you reinforce to the brain that telling yourself you're not going to doesn't matter because you're doing anyway. Every repeated behavior. Notice I didn't say positive, good, forward-moving behavior. I said every repeated behavior doesn't matter what it is. You can repeat something that is very destructive for you and you'll keep doing it because the subconscious mind learns this is what you want to do. My hometown of Philadelphia, there's a neighborhood there called Kensington. Kensington right now, as of today, as I'm recording this, is known as the opioid capital of the United States of America. If you drove through Kensington and I've been there, you drive through there right now these days. And this is the last time I drove through Kensington was about 2021-22, I think. You drive through Kensington right now and it looks like a movie and not a good movie. Actually, it's not a movie. It's like a documentary. Maybe a movie.

12:16The movie would be the walking dead if it was a movie. But maybe it would be a documentary of just people strung out on opioids, all in the same neighborhood, sleeping on the street, standing on the street. It doesn't even, like you wouldn't even do it. Is this America? And is writing Kensington's in the sections of the Philadelphia. I'm bringing that up and say this. Drug addiction is a repeated behavior that has a strength and loop for all three reasons to program the subconscious mind. When I tell you the program and the subconscious mind, I miss the three things. Repetition, immersion, emotionalization. A drug addict has all three. Repetition is getting high on the drug. Immersion is when you're on the drug, at least so I've heard. It becomes an immersive experience. That's why drug fiends don't, whatever they got to do to chase and get that next high because they feel so immersive in the moment of being high on the drug that there's no other feeling that can replace it. And then the emotionalization, they're emotionally attached to that feeling.

13:18So they got all three. Then what's as wise hard to get somebody off drugs. And that's why they have rehab centers. Every repeated behavior strength is a loop. Your presence calibration is not offered publicly. It is not explained. It is not scaled. It exists for people whose position already carries cost. Everyone else should move on. The reference point is in the episode notes. Point number three. Today's topic once again is beginning exactly what you're reinforcing. Number three, break the loop to change your life. Last thing changed is not the result of one dramatic action. And though some people will tell their stories or frame their stories or have their stories told as if one dramatic action contains everything or sometimes they're asked to isolate any one dramatic action that made the change. Why? Because that's, it's sexier, it's easier to package and present to an audience to talk about one dramatic action, it contains everything when the reality is. I don't care who's telling the story. Nobody has their life changed by just one dramatic action.

14:21It may feel like it may be the culmination of change. That one dramatic action, like winning a championship, getting a phone call for a job, breaking up with an abusive spouse, having a child, surviving death for whatever the situation. Maybe that one moment that seems like the climax of the situation, but understanding as the climax, meaning there was a whole bunch of ascending action before you got to the climax. Without that ascending action, the climax doesn't happen. But again, it's packaged this way because it's easier to digest when you talk about this one dramatic action that occurred and it contains everything. Change is, again, much easier to sell as well. Asting change comes from interrupting any destructive cycle in your life and reinforcing productive habits and productive cycles until they become automatic, i.e. repetition programming the self-conscious mind. Destructive cycles being replaced by productive cycles and then those productive cycles becoming automatic. Meaning you got to think about them at first until you self-conscious mind says I got this and takes it over.

15:22When you change the loop, the results eventually follow. Key term, eventually. You got to change the loop and you got to stay there even though the results have yet to show up. This is the way I've described mental substance, remaining dispunted confident despite the fact that the results do expect to have yet to occur. That's mental substance, staying in the game even though the results aren't there yet. This is where many people falter. They understand doing the right things. They will even go as far as doing the right things, but then they will prevent and say okay, where's the results? I'm not going to keep doing the right things because obviously this doesn't work. False formula. You got to do the right thing for long enough until the results show up. Key word until the results show up. Not if the results show up. Recapping today's class which is you are getting exactly what you are reinforcing through your feedback loops. Number one, today's results become tomorrow's inputs. Notice how I said that. Today's results become tomorrow's inputs. Why? Because you will reinforce any positive result that you get.

16:22That's an incentive. Number two, every repeated action strengthens a pattern. Positive or negative momentum does not care what direction in which it takes you. It just knows that it's going to take you in whatever direction you seem to be wanting to go. Number three, transform your outcomes by changing the cycle that produces them. You can take a negative cycle that you are noticing. Break the cycle. Replace it with something else consciously at first. Stick to it consciously long enough. The subconscious mind understands the mission it will take over that task and that becomes the new cycle. Final thought. Your life is less a collection of isolated decisions than it is a series of feedback loops. Things that you do over and over again. The future belongs to the person who learns to design the loops. Choose your loops rather than being a control bother. That is a choice that you have at your hands right now. Work on your game. Dre all day. You already know what to do. The question is, why aren't you doing it consistently? ERI, the execution reliability index, quantifies the gap between knowledge and execution.

17:26No guessing, no excuses. Get your score at workonyourgame.com slash ERI. That's workonyourgame.com slash ERI.