We’re Making Conversations about taking control Count!
Want to learn how to take control of your life? Well, you’ve come to the right place!
Episode 97 with Blaine Oelkers.
Watch the trailer for this episode that’s all about learning how to take control of your life
Here’s how you can take control of your life
(Table of contents)
- Listen now via your favourite app
- Who is Blaine Oelkers?
- What is a chief results officer?
- RAS and how it can help you take control of your life
- What observations has Blaine made of business owners and entrepreneurs who have struggled with results?
- Change doesn’t happen quickly enough but if you stick at it it’s worth it!
- Blaine’s conversation that counts
- Wendy’s takeaway
- Blaine’s Links and goodies and that TedX Talk!
- Transcript
Listen now via your favourite app
Making Conversations Count is available in all podcast apps including:
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
Who is Blaine Oelkers, what’s this TEDx talk he did and what’s it got to do with learning how to take control of your life?
Do you ever feel like a passenger in your own existence, and wish you could take control of your life?
Five years ago, Blaine Oelkers hosted a TEDx talk where he suggested the power of using your phone’s unlock screen to bring about real change in your life.
And to exercise that control.
In it, he talks about WYTAYBA
(If you want to watch the footage, it’s linked below in this post.)
‘What you think about you bring about’.
Or more simply put, understanding the reticular activating system.
Yep, and it sounds way less fun than WYTAYBA, doesn’t it?
We get it now.
What IS the reticular activating system and how can it help you take control of your life?
Ok, so what are we talking about here?
Do you ever find yourself stuck in a rut?
Feeling like you’re not making progress on your goals, or that you’re just not good enough? Blaine Oelkers is here to tell us that we have the power to take control of our lives!
And this is not wishy washy woo woo stuff.
It’s a proven science.
Neuroscience.
Didn’t watch the video? No worries. Here’s what Blaine said during his TEDx Talk about the RAS and how it can help you take control of your life!
Here’s a quote from Blaine’s TEDx Talk that explains it way better than I can in this article.
“Maybe you’ve test driven a new car or you bought a new car, or in my case, your son bought a new Accura car and all of a sudden you see them everywhere, right?
Or someone tells you about a red car and all of a sudden you see them, everywhere… Accura, Accura, Accura.
So my son sent us a picture of his car, and now I’m seeing them all over the place.
Is that new, you know, were they never there?
Or were they always there and I’m tuning into it?
It turns out that they were always there, but I was tuned into it.
And science has found and discovered something called the reticular activating system.
And it’s about the size of your pinky in the back of the brain. It decides what’s gonna come into your mind.”
As Blaine Oelkers suggests, learning to take control of your life can be made much easier by learning to use the reticular activating system – the RAS – which is responsible for deciding what comes into our minds.
So what does this RAS mean for us? How can you use it to take control of your life?
It means we can choose what we focus on and what we want to bring into our lives.
When you’re feeling stuck or like you’re not making progress, it’s because you’re focusing on the wrong things.
When you change focus, and put your attention on what you want instead of what you don’t want, magical things happen.
And the easiest way to do this is by taking a regular mind shower.
Ahh yes, now mind showers.
That’s another topic entirely.
Taking mind showers
Blaine mentions something quite interesting during his chat with Wendy in this episode, taking mind showers.
“The thing that has helped me the most and my clients is really that concept of the mind shower.
After all, most people take a physical shower every day, but how often do you take a Mind Shower where you kind of wash out your mind and take out the head trash?
Now there are apps.
I use an app called Headspace.
It’s kind of a meditation breathing app, and I do that every single day.
And I’ve done that now because the app tracks like 1500 days in a row.
I’ve done this Mind Shower, just a little thing like that.
Now I like a ten minute Mind Shower, but if I don’t have time, I’ll do a three minute Mind Shower.
But doing that, I do that first thing in the morning, every morning.
And that’s made a big difference because I feel like at the beginning of the day, I’m getting ready to take control of my life, and my mind, showering it out, cleaning it out a little bit, but then also getting that lens ready for the day to make the most from the day.
What is a chief results officer?
Blaine puts his money where his mouth is.
He decided he wanted to create a life for himself in which he could have more time for his family, and did a lot of self development.
That self-development in turn led to him becoming awesome at what he does.
He created a company called Selfluence… wait, I’ll let him explain it all to you….
“And so for the last 27 years, I’ve been working from home, running businesses that really have no daily operations.
So I’ve been able to do a lot of self-development and that’s what led me on the course to become the Chief Results Officer.
I started helping people.
I created a company called Selfluence, which is really kind of the art and science of influencing yourself.
But more than that, it’s the power that you already have to influence yourself.
You don’t need any special software, you don’t have to buy anything else.
You have it all kind of within you.
And I started helping a lot of mastermind groups and they said, hey, you’re helping us get results every week.
We’re going to call you the Chief Results Officer. I’m like, “Oh, I like that.”
So I like the title.
I took the title and then I went to the US Patent Office and I registered the title.”
What observations has Blaine made of business owners and entrepreneurs who have struggled with results?
I hope you’re ready for this because this is a serious growth hack coming right now.
This is the beginning of you taking the steps to take control of your life.
It’s going to sound a bit too simplistic, but Blaine says it works.
It’s all about working ‘a day ahead’.
Here’s what we’re talking about.
“I serve primarily business owners and the number one problem is overwhelm.
(They’ve got) too many things to do and they’re typically a day behind or more than a day behind things.
What I like to do is, first of all, show them that there is something to go after and I call it a day ahead.
I like to take entrepreneurs from being a day behind to just being behind to being caught up, to being ahead to being a day ahead.
There is this thing, I call it the day ahead lifestyle which I live most days now, not every day, but most days I’m a day ahead.
So when I wake up there may be some appointments like this podcast, but all the to-dos are done. Like I have no to-do’s for the day and I’m working on tomorrow’s to-dos.
And so this concept of moving into that just, first of all, know that it’s possible to be a day ahead.”
(Want to read the transcript right now? You can do so here.
Strapped for data? You can hear a lower-bandwidth version of the episode here.)
Relevant quote from episode – click here for full transcript
Change doesn’t happen quickly enough but stick at it because it’s worth it!
Ok I’m not even going to need to editorialise anything here because Wendy and Blaine cover this off perfectly in their conversation.
Check this out!
“Wendy
And you’re right, really. That energy, the dark water into the clear, that’s like recharging a battery, isn’t it? When you need to go and find some positive to sort of just, you know… and I would say that people give up too soon. You can be adding clear water in and adding positivity into that dark water. And it could just be that you’re just frustrated that the change is not happening quick enough. Please just stick at it because it’s worth it.
Blaine
Yeah, it is worth it. And realize that there’s some people that will pour the dark ink back in the water, right? So you have to start to guard the inputs of your life.
Guard the inputs of your brain and your body.
Sometimes people don’t even mean to do it.
It’s unconscious to them, but they’re negative towards you or low energy.. so yeah keep pouring the positive and keep pouring it in big doses.”
So that’s all there is to know about how to take control of your life. What about Blaine’s conversation that counts? Related.
Each episode of “Making Conversations Count” we ask the guest to share with us a conversation that acted as a turning point in their personal lives or their career.
Now this won’t be a shock given what he does, but Blaine’s conversation is pretty epic when it comes to his actually demonstrating how to take control of your life.
I mean he literally did it!
Here it is.
You’ll need to listen to the episode to get the full thing.
Wendy
It seems only right, really, at this juncture, to ask you about a conversation that created a turning point for you.
I’ve a feeling it may link to what you were talking about with your career change and things like that, but you might surprise me because of course I never know what’s coming next.
Blaine
That’s exciting.
Wendy
So what was that one conversation that changed your life either for business or personally?
Blaine
It started as a conversation and changed my life. That was actually Jim Rohn.
So Jim Rohn, a friend of mine, introduced me to Jim Rohn and then I was able to actually host him at an event I was running.
I got lucky because he had a house in the Phoenix area and this event was in Phoenix and he happened to be there.
So it was very easy for him to come to this event.
And he came to that event and I got to hear him and share the stage with him. But the things that he said that evening had a big impact on me…
(Read the full transcript here).
Episode time stamps
Blaine and his TEDx Talk (1m02s)
Chief Results Officer? (3m47s)
Observations of business owners and entrepreneurs who struggle with results (12m19s)
Change doesn’t happen quickly enough but stick at it because it’s worth it! (23m25s)
Blaines’s conversation that counts (30m13s)
Wendy’s takeaway
Wendy’s takeaway
“Blaine Oelkers is here to teach us how easy it is to take more control of our own lives just by getting rid of our head trash!
He brings a lot of incredible food for thought and reminds us of our powerful conversation with Brad Sugars, thanks to his high praise of Jim Rohn.
So, take control of your life by breaking familiar patterns and getting rid of your negative thoughts and behaviours with a regular mind shower!
If you’re enjoying this episode, you’ll definitely get a lot of value out of some of the other ones I’m going to link you to below!
Also, please do check out Blaine’s links, and the goodies he’s given us, and make sure you’re carrying on that conversation about learning to take control of your life!”
More about Blaine
As we’ve already mentioned, Blaine is a TEDx Speaker, He’s also a leading authority in personal implementation and consistency.
He is America’s only Chief Results Officer®. Ooh!
He’s a habit master with documented streaks of 1488 days in a row and counting!
He’s claiming to be a top LinkedIn Connector with over 25,000 1st level connections.
Blaine graduated from Purdue University and Stanford University’s Social Entrepreneurship Program.
Find out more about Selfluence, his personal development and training company.
He is excited to share with you ways you can take control of your life by taking control of yourself.
Blaine’s Links and goodies and that TedX Talk!
Previous episodes to check out
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, you definitely want to check out the following episodes below!
