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How to Think Like a Successful Person - Using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to Change Your Thought Patterns

Now you've gotten all that through your head, you'll hopefully have started coming up with your plan of action. This is what will make the path to your success (as in the way that you define success) easiest. By following that plan you should minimize the time and effort you invest, the amount of risk involved and your chances of failure.

You also know at this point that you now need to believe in that plan and yourself and make your own luck if you're going to succeed. This is what makes the difference between those entrepreneurial types and those 'over achievers' versus everyone else.

That's the second piece of the puzzle but it might also be the stumbling block for many people. How do you go about breaking out of your current thought patterns and adopting the thinking of those people who are highly successful?

Unfortunately if you're just as pessimistic as everyone else and if your ambitions have typically been modest and 'realistic' (what a despicable word) then you will have been 'practicing' and thus reinforcing negative thought patterns your whole life. It's thus going to take some real effort to break out of those and to start thinking in a more positive and success-oriented manner.

This is where CBT comes in.

CBT stands for 'Cognitive Behavioral Therapy'. This is a psychotherapeutic technique used by therapists and psychologists to treat all kinds of mental health problems - and phobias, anxieties and stress in particular.

What's interesting about CBT is that it's also a technique you can use on your own. One of the reasons it has become so popular with the NHS in the UK, is that it doesn't require anyone to be physically present. Other forms of therapy like psychotherapy require lengthy sessions lasting hours multiple times a week. CBT on the other hand can be conducted via e-mail and actually has much more evidence in support of its effectiveness as well.

The general idea behind CBT then is to give patients the tools they need to reprogram their thoughts and to change the way they think. Therapists use this to teach people how to get rid of phobias or OCD - but we can use it as well to try and model our brains after those of the most successful people. And also just to make sure that we are sticking to our goals and objectives.

How it Works

To do CBT you first have to identify the contents of your thoughts. From there, you then have to assess them as being constructive or maladaptive and then replace them/eliminate them where necessary. You can then also use various different exercises and strategies in order to cement these positive effects.

Two important stages in this process are mindfulness and cognitive restructuring.

Mindfulness

In mindfulness, you will essentially be listening to your own thoughts and assessing them. This is a form of meditation but unlike transcendental meditation where you are trying to quieten your thoughts and block them out, here you are simply becoming an observer of your own brain and identifying the thoughts you have as they pass by.

Mindfulness can be practiced as an intentional form of meditation where you are actively listening to your thoughts. At the same time though, it can also be used in a more casual manner or a more passive manner. For instance, it might mean simply thinking back to the last time you were in a certain position and asking yourself now what was on your mind at that time. Likewise, it might mean simply being partly aware of your own thoughts in any given situation. Just make sure that you are monitoring your thoughts one way or another.

If you had a phobia of heights, you would then use mindfulness in order to identify the thoughts that caused this fear which might include things like Tm going to fall' or 'I want to jump'. These of course only cause you to get worse when really you should be thinking positive affirmations like Tm in complete control' or 'the railings will stop me from falling'. In the case of fulfilling your goals and thinking like a more successful person, you'll need to identify the negative self-talk and replace that with statements about why you can't fail.

Cognitive Restructuring

Cognitive restructuring is the term used for the second part of the process whereby you change the thoughts you've identified as problematic. There are furthermore two ways you might go about this called thought challenging and hypothesis testing.

Thought Challenging

Thought challenging essentially means that you are asking yourself just how realistic your current concerns are. So for instance, if you find yourself thinking Tm going to end up on the streets' you might challenge that thought simply by assessing how realistic it really is.

Are you really likely to end up on the street? Or is it the case that you would probably be offered support by your partner, your Mum or your sister? How long would it realistically take you to completely run out of funds? In that time, wouldn't you be able to get another job -possibly better than the one you had before? At the very least, wouldn't you be able to get a part time job in a supermarket? Move somewhere cheaper to live? Rent a room in a shared house?

9/10 of our fears really aren't that realistic and aren't founded on much. Challenge their logic and you might find that you have nothing to worry about.

Hypothesis Testing

Hypothesis testing is the process of actually testing those illogical thoughts. So say you're afraid of approaching women or men in bars, you might use thought challenging and tell yourself that it's actually very rare that anyone should make a scene and even if they did it probably wouldn't be the end of the world - does it matter what strangers in a bar think?

Problem is though, you're probably not going to really believe that until you actually test it yourself. That means you need to try approaching people to test your fear that you're going to get shot down. What you'll find is that it doesn't happen, that you're fine and that you learn over time that there's nothing to be afraid of.

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Chapter 4: What Type of Content Thrives on Reddit and Gets Shares?

With all that in mind, you might be wondering which types of posts do well on Reddit. What kind of content will get 100, 200, 1,000 upvotes and make it to the front page?

We've seen how you can improve your chances of success by finding the right sub, by doing your research and by building your reputation gradually over time. But ultimately what is really going to determine your success is how good the content you're posting is. How do you go about posting something that will get tons of likes and tons of shares?

Content That Thrives

The basic point to understand here is that content that thrives on Reddit is generally the same content that thrives on the web. And the way to create this type of content is something that's changing constantly as the web grows and develops but right now, the single most important factor is that this content is smart.

The internet you see, is getting smarter. It's been around a while now and as such we have become far more savvy as users. We've seen that generic, derivative content (Top 10 Ways to Get Abz!!!) a million times and we can smell 'promotional content' a mile off. Meanwhile, Google's algorithms have gotten smarter meaning that Google is better at spotting ads. To succeed online you need to be smarter and you need to write content that is intelligent, engaging and that has an 'X-Factor'.

This is particularly true for Reddit. For all we have said that Reddit can be mean-spirit, it is also a place that attracts a lot of very smart and a lot of very well-read users. You only have to read through the comments section of any Reddit post in order to quickly see that Redditors are generally very witty and very funny. They are self-referential, cynical, sarcastic, mean and hilarious. Dumb content here just isn't going to work.

So if you run a web design company and you're about to create a post with the headline:

'Scratch Old! Get Great WordPress Web Design and Get New Visitors'

Then you can stop right there. This is not going to succeed.

Earlier we discussed a posting about bodybuilders with beards. This is a much better idea. Why? Because it is completely unique. Because it has a very specific target audience. Because it is funny. And because it has a highly visual nature that will invite clicks.

Similarly successful would be any post that looks at a topic in an entirely new way. Want to post something to r/parkour (free running)? Then forget 'how to backflip' because it's been seen a thousand times before. Instead, how about 'The Psychology of Parkour - Why We Jump off Roofs' or how about 'Can Ambidexterity be Useful for Parkour'. These again are topics that offer a new angle, that sound interesting, that can stimulate discussion and that offer some real value. For someone who loves parkour, they've probably heard just about everything there is to hear about backflip technique and jumping. Ambidexterity is something completely new and interesting.

The single most important test you should give any new content you're thinking of creating and sharing to Reddit is this: would you read it? Would it catch your eye? Would you stop what you were doing and actually be excited to sit down to it with a cup of tea? If not, then you need to rethink your strategy.

The Psychology of Sharing and Upvoting

Another important point is that you should try to get inside the heads of people who share and upvote and why they do.

This is a very important question and it's probably not as straightforward as you think.

People upvote because they've read your content and enjoyed it right? And they share for the same reason?

Well actually, in many cases, the answer is 'not really' on both these fronts.

For starters, recognize that the vast majority of people will not upvote or share your posts even if they're amazing. If you have a post that has 80+ upvotes then you can consider that a big hit for Reddit. How many actual visits can you expect to get from that? About 4-6,000 (this is from experience). That's means only a very small fraction are upvoting. If you use Reddit, how often do you upvote?

When you upvote, you stand to gain nothing from doing so and no one will even know you've done it. That means you're only likely to do it if you really care about either the subreddit (i.e. you are a moderator or a regular visitor) or if you really care about the post (it really pulls on your heartstrings or angers you).

The best way to get upvotes then is to make posts that have some kind of emotional resonance with the views of that sub. That means you need to post things that people can really get behind or that people will think can greatly benefit the other visitors of the sub. So if there's a subject that you feel passionate about or that you're constantly ranting about, this may just be excellent fodder for Reddit. Annoyed at how people are always eating your sandwiches at work? Then post about it! Although you better make it different as this is a pretty done-to-death subject.

Now onto sharing. Why do people share? Again, very few people who read your content will share it and actually a lot of people will share it who haven't read it. This might seem odd but again experience shows this to be true. It's not uncommon to post an article to Facebook, to see it has 20 likes, but likewise to find the page has only had 3 hits. Those people liked the content without even reading it!

So why do they like it? Well they will have liked it based on the title and on any images alone. The same goes for sharing to Reddit a lot of the time and upvoting.