how I brainwashed myself into believing I could.

Of all the reasons you can pick from to change your life, there's one that always gets the job done, every single time, and it doesn't matter who you are or what your background looks like. This reason is a guaranteed way to shift your reality starting today, but it does come with a catch, because it requires the power of repetition. Once you've triggered this feeling a couple of times, you're already well on your way to a different identity.

The feeling I'm talking about is disgust, and when you've experienced it repeatedly, it can motivate you to move mountains, simply by being disgusted with the same cycles happening again and again in your life. Years ago, I got sick and tired of failing, sick and tired of rejection, and sick and tired of being sick and tired. I got sick of being the old me, and one day I made a decision to change my thinking before my circumstances got the memo, and that decision years ago is the reason I'm sitting here writing this to you today.

There's something deeper about this process, though. For the majority of my adult life, I was waiting for someone to believe in me and my dreams, and ironically, when anyone finally did, I couldn't appreciate it. I kept repeating that cycle until I saw the pattern for what it really was, which is that self-belief is the name of the game and it's the only game. So instead of waiting around for the right person or the right opportunity to come and rescue me from me, I decided to do it myself, and I decided to rewrite my own belief system from the inside out.

What I teach through my programs is the same formula I used on myself, because I'm not only the founder, I'm also a client. Let me provide you with the knowledge to break any cycle of negativity in your life and brainwash yourself for success. Read along.

Where the Disgust Started

Identity work and everything that comes from it is much more than the spiritual label it's tagged with, because it's a science. Before I get into the how, I want to share what pushed me over the edge of disgust in the first place, which was getting fed up with what modern psychology had to say about who I was and who I could be. I got sick of this notion that if I wasn't born under the best circumstances, in the best neighborhood and the best schools, I would be chained to a mediocre life and I should be content with it. I grew sick of feeling like a victim, and even more sick of being led to believe that it was some kind of honor to be one.

Here's what I came to realize about this cycle, which is that it takes a victim to make a victim. A lot of people are moving through life passing along the same treatment they were on the receiving end of once upon a time, usually without even knowing they're doing it. They got hurt, they didn't know how to deal with it, and now they're dishing out that same experience to the next person, and I got tired of being the next link in that chain.

The second piece of the puzzle goes back to when I was a kid involved in martial arts and sports, because I learned early on that the only way to master something is through repetition. You get better by doing the thing over and over until your body and your mind are in sync with each other, so when I started working on my belief system, I already had the blueprint to make it work on a subconscious level. Disgust was the spark that lit that flash fire in my gut, and repetition was the gasoline I poured on it every day to keep it going.

The truth is, we're all brainwashed, every single one of us, in one form or another. We're brainwashed by algorithms, by advertising, and by advice that cosplays as an honest opinion, and the only difference between any of us is who's brainwashed for success and who's brainwashed for mediocrity. That's what got my attention about the neuroscience of identity and spirituality, because I realized that if the world was going to brainwash me anyway, I might as well take the wheel and do it myself, on purpose this time. The alternative was letting relatives, advertisers, and algorithms decide what I believed about myself, and I wasn't going to keep paying that price.

I also want you to sidestep the negative connotation around the word brainwashing as you read this, because when you strip it down, brainwashing your own mind is a simple and repeatable formula. It's repetition plus emotion, and that's the sweet combo for a new belief to form, and that's also how every habit you have gets formed. So instead of letting the algorithms install fear, doubt, and envy into my mind, I started installing discipline, trust, and resilience, using the same formula with customized inputs. I brainwashed myself in stages, and the results showed up in my life accordingly, so pay close attention here, because this is how you change your reality one stage at a time.

Stage 1: Identity First, Results Second

The first stage I mastered involved an inversion of an idea most people get backwards, which is that you don't try to be disciplined, you decide that you already are and then act accordingly. Deciding is something you settle in your mind right now, and then your actions catch up, because the decision always comes first.

I came across a comment from a reader who inspired me to teach my personal formula in a different way this time. This particular reader was arguing with me, trying his best to convince me that he couldn't label himself until he had the results to show for it, and I get why that feels like the clever thing to say. The problem is that mentality is exactly how you stay stuck in the loop of always becoming and never being. I used to live and die by that same belief, and the lower mind loves that kind of thinking, because it means it gets to steer the ship for a little while longer.

The shift for me came when I changed the language I was using about myself. I stopped saying "I'm a YouTuber" and I started saying "I run a successful business, and I love what I do every day." I stopped waiting on the relationship to appear before I labeled myself a wonderful husband. That sounds small, especially when you're in the infancy stage, but big results always have small beginnings. The first kind of language keeps you auditioning for a new identity, always waiting to be picked to receive a blessing or two, while the second kind tells your subconscious that this is simply what it is, and your role is to hold the line until the universe catches up.

Once your identity begins to cement, your behavior follows automatically, because you don't have to force discipline when discipline is just who you are. Now your results will always chase your identity, the way it was meant to work.

Stage 2: Get Addicted to Progress

Once I handled that stage, I decided that the name of the game from there was progress, and that distinction saved me from a lot of frustration. Perfection is a moving target that you'll rarely hit, while progress is something you can measure every single day.

I want to mention something about all of the manifestation content online while we're here, because manifestation is introduced in an incomplete way to a lot of fresh minds, as if the moment you become aware of the natural laws of the universe, you're somehow entitled to the outcomes while skipping the requirement of discipline and consistency. People get sold on the idea that awareness alone is the finish line, as if taking a science class automatically makes you an award-winning scientist, or taking a couple of law classes makes you the best lawyer in the country. The truth is that awareness is just the starting line, and the journey is still on the docket, but who said you can't enjoy the process?

So what I did was engineer my own dopamine loops, and I aimed them at achievement instead of distractions. We're running dopamine loops all day long, and in this day and age, that chemistry gets easily hijacked and steered toward the wrong things, whether it's 24-hour rage-baiting news cycles, overly processed foods, binge watching, or doom scrolling, because there's no shortage of detours out here. It's all operating under the same chemistry, so I decided I was going to use that equation in my favor.

Every task I complete, I check it off, and I track my workouts, my habits, and my projects in a way I can see with my own eyes. There's something about watching the evidence stack up in front of you, in your own handwriting, that hits different than keeping it all in your head where you can easily forget it the next week. I celebrated momentum instead of milestones, because milestones are too far apart to keep you going day to day. Your brain loves those chemical rewards, and it's going to chase after them whether you give it permission to or not, so I made progress my drug of choice.

Stage 3: Control the Input, Control the Output

There's an old saying in the world of computing going back to the 1950s that goes "garbage in, garbage out." It started as a computing mantra made up by George Fuechsel, a programmer for IBM, but it applies to your brain and nervous system in the exact same way. If inaccurate or poorly structured data is entered into a computer, the output of its process will inevitably be incorrect, and yes, that means your brain is the most sophisticated computer you'll ever interface with.

Whatever you feed into your system is what comes back out the other side in the form of your lifestyle. If you're feeding your mind low-quality short-form content all day, is it really that shocking when your thoughts, your actions, your relationships, and your bank account match the quality of the input? You become what you consume, as above, so below.

So I stopped feeding my mind garbage, and I cut out the drama, the gossip, and the 24-7 news cycle telling me the end of the world was coming just before every commercial break. I cut out the rage-bait gender war content that was served to me on a silver platter, and I cut out the cancel culture rhetoric designed to keep me angry and reacting to things that didn't actually happen to me or anyone I knew. That stuff is engineered to hijack your attention, and once it locks in, it starts shaping your belief system.

In place of all that, I got draconian about what I allowed into my mind. I started reading the books written by the people I wanted to emulate, and I studied the habits of successful and influential people who are still household names long after their passing. I read the words of people who've built something, rather than influencers selling a lifestyle. Maybe the best one of all, I started going back through my own journals and studied my old thoughts the same way a developer reads through code to figure out why the output is broken. You'd be surprised what you learn about yourself when you actually pay attention to the patterns in your own handwriting. The principle here is simple, which is that you guard your input and your output will start to look like something you can brag about, because you don't have to force the output when the input is already doing the work for you.

Stage 4: Visualize Pain, Not Just Pleasure

This one goes against much of what you'll hear in the personal development space, but it's been one of the most effective diagnostic tools I've used on myself. Everyone out there is visualizing success, picturing the car, the house, the international vacations, the relationships, the version of themselves that finally made it, and there's a lot of value in that. The trouble is that very few people are willing to visualize the other side of success, which is regret.

What I did, just a handful of times, was picture the slow and painful existence of staying exactly who I was. I imagined what my life would look like in five years if nothing changed, or if I indulged in my old habits just a little bit longer. I pictured myself coming up with elaborate excuses, explaining to myself, or to someone who loved me, why I never actually went all in on my dreams and bet on myself or my passions. I visualized the man who never traveled outside the country, never took a risk, and therefore never found out what he was capable of. That vision burns a hole into your memory, because the brain is wired to move away from pain faster than it moves toward pleasure.

So when complacency started calling my name, and trust me, it still does, I ran that simulation in my head once or twice to get me back on track. Pleasure visualization is like the gas pedal in your dream car, and pain visualization is the guardrail that keeps you from drifting off the highway of success.

Stage 5: Finding the Success in Silence

This is one of the simplest steps to explain, and it's also the one most people resist the hardest when I teach my frameworks. Start with ten minutes a day in silence, and then work your way up to an hour or more in total throughout your day, with no music, no texts or DMs, and no shows playing in the background, just you and the silence.

The reason this matters is because silence is where your best epiphanies and inspiration get downloaded, and it's where the path forward starts to become clearer. You can't hear your own thoughts when there's music, reels, and group chat notifications blasting in the background, because the signal is in there, but the noise is drowning it out. When you create a window of silence on purpose, you give your higher mind the room to actually talk to you.

That's the mantra I still live by, which is that prayer is for talking and meditation is for listening. Silence isn't really the absence of sound, it's how you bring awareness to the front row, and it's the only way to finally pay attention to the thoughts running in the background of your mind, steering your life in different directions. In a world that's constantly baiting you for attention, the ability to sit in silence and hear yourself think is a superpower, and most people will never develop this skill, which is precisely why it's worth developing.

Stage 6: Rehearse Your Future Reality Until It Feels Normal

Back then, I visualized my future self until it stopped feeling like fantasy and started feeling like I was remembering who I really am. That's the bar I aimed for, and the bar I'm always aiming for, because I wanted more than a daydream or a vision board exercise. I wanted an actual sense of familiarity with who I'm becoming, to the point where it feels like I'm remembering it instead of imagining it.

The way I make that happen is by rehearsing it in my regular day, at least once or twice before I go to sleep. When I walked, I moved as the man who already achieved what I'm working toward, and my posture, my pace, and the way I carried myself in public all reflected that higher version of me. When I wrote, I wrote in his voice, and when I had a decision in front of me, I asked myself one simple question, which is what would the successful version of me do right now, and then I did that thing, even when it felt a little awkward.

The reason this is so effective is because your subconscious has trouble telling the difference between something you've lived and something you've mentally rehearsed enough times. Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn visualized the slopes of every run she made before she strapped on her skis, and Michael Jordan imagined specific game scenarios before he stepped onto the court every night. Actors and athletes know this and take full advantage of it to make their fortunes. When you adopt this method, by the time the moment shows up in real life, your body and your mind have already simulated it a hundred times in private, so when the opportunity actually comes, you step into it like you've been waiting for it your whole life, because in a way, you have.

Stage 7: Stop Taking Opinions for Advice

Finally, the last stage, which is to keep yourself from getting sucked into someone's reckless opinion, no matter how convincing it might sound in the moment. There's a real difference between advice and opinion, and a lot of people will hand you the former while calling it the latter. Advice is grounded in experience and success, while opinion is just someone's ideology posing as wisdom, so learn to tell the two apart and your whole life will change for the better.

You could spend your entire life trying to meet other people's standards for who you should be, and I tried that for years. The problem is that road has no finish line, because there's always going to be another person with another standard that they themselves haven't met, and staying on that road is going to leave you full of resentment.

Now is the time to start prioritizing your own intuition. Get to know yourself first, then hang out with your own kind, the people who actually have what you want or what you're working toward. Being around people who share similar visions and goals is far more helpful than trying to change someone who holds an opposing belief system, because you're not going to convert them into believers until you achieve your goals anyway, and trying to is going to drain everything you've got. Save your energy for your inevitable victory lap, and thank me later.

final thoughts

The race to your best timeline starts the moment you finish reading this. Start with one of these seven stages and run it for the next thirty days, because repetition is the only thing that turns knowledge from a motivational read into a new identity. Get disgusted enough to do something about your dreams, then rinse and repeat until you've won, and that's how you brainwash yourself into a brand new timeline.

Thank you for reading.

—Shaun