How To Think Like A King

***Note: This was a guest post I made on Nathan Hangen’s site, Building Digital Empires, which is currently under renovation. It generated a lot of feedback

Let’s get right to it. Chances are you’re interested in these things: Getting your work out there, contributing value, social media, success. That`s fantastic, but are you wasting your time? Like really, really, wasting it? I believe that everyone is king of their own world, and if you`re not thinking like a king, chances are you are.

Thinking Like a King Brings Success

We’re going to address this whole ‘thinking’ thing, but first some background:

I imagine that you’re not only open, but eager for guidance on actions you can take to do more in the above areas.

This is the main problem though – chances are you’re focused on action. We have a world running around like chickens with their heads cut-off, constantly, mindlessly, seeking more actions to take. "How can I sell more? How will I pay rent? What actions can I take right now OMG I’m so impatient, I’m gonna die TOMORROW if I don’t ACT NOW!"

And this is great in it’s own way, because without action, nothing gets done. This is a simple, straight-forward, and easy to understand principle. A whole bunch of people sitting in a room meditating, don’t generally do much. So acting is clearly important, and so is thinking, and if I were a betting man, I’d bet you’ve got the mix wrong. Way too much action, way to little foundational success thinking, and probably in the wrong order.

Don’t feel bad, you’re not the first, you won’t be the last, and I’ve done it thousands of times myself.

It’s worth noting though, that this habitual focus of so many people on action, has consequences. People forget about thought, and they forget that thought and action go hand-in-hand, they are inseparable. Even our reflex-actions come from subconscious thoughts that have been programmed into our subconscious through evolution and repetition and momentary necessity. There’s one more thing people these days tend to forget, and that is that thought is more powerful than action.

Thoughts Are More Powerful Than Action

Thought-management is one of the most powerful things you can do, and thought-management and empire-building go hand-in-hand.

That’s right. Thought is way more powerful than action. Many bloggers, businesses and experts discuss the power of using your highest leverage resources, or getting the highest leverage you can out of any particular action. This is a fantastic principle, but the same people are often neglecting to leverage their thoughts by replacing intentional thinking with an unconscious habit of chasing after the ‘best action’.

How many thoughts do you have in a day? Is it even possible to count? I’ve heard estimates of 50,000 to 100,000, but it doesn’t really matter — the point is that there are a lot, and there are far more thoughts than actions a person can achieve each day.

It looks like this:

We can clarify the situation further…

 

Despite the above clear views (which remind me of the 80/20 rule applied to thoughts & actions a bit,) everyone’s still so focused on action. You know what I’m talking about… there’s a million how-to’s on the web about "how-to start a blog," or "how-to travel cheaply," how-to take THIS action, or how-to take THAT action… They’re all over the place. I have them on this site!

Ah, but there’s a good reason for this:

Supply-and-Demand.

Supply-and-demand is the basis of getting your value out to an audience. Supply a "niche-with-a-need" with what they’re demanding (a perceived-solution), and you’re golden.

But let’s look deeper, what exactly is a niche and what is supply-and-demand?

Niche Is Just A Buzzword

Niche is just fancy marketing buzzword for AUDIENCE. Forget the buzzword, niche. A niche is a group of people with a common ‘problem’. A niche is your audience. A niche is your fans.

A group starts from one person, connecting with another person, and then it grows from there. Niche’s all start with one person.

When a person begins desiring something passionately, they become a audience of one. Their one desire is a ‘thought’. When they connect with someone else, and the two people share the same desire, they are now a audience of two. Then three, four, and it expands and amplifies, often virally.

So How Does An Audience Demand Supply?

So when a group of fans all want the same thing, this is picked up on by others in society, and those others may have solutions. The see a noticeable group in need and they see that they have valuable solutions. They are then inspired and motivated to create a solution to satiate the desire of the audience.

This is a beautiful and powerful aspect of our current economy, and understanding it is key to being creative in ways that truly help others. If you don’t understand niches and audiences and how providing for them works, you`ll remain obscure, like by a handful of close friends.

So a audience (niche) has a common desire and demands a solution, and as word spreads, a solution-provider steps up to supply the demand. Simple eh? Rap-fans wanted stories reflecting the realities of the ghetto. Then it evolved and the demand was more for `coming up`and getting out of the ghetto. So rappers delivered this solution. Rap has evolved, and now a larger percentage of the rap-fans want stories of love, and so the rap audience has new needs, and whoever can provide solutions will excel with them.

Desire and Audience Success

People tend to gloss over an audiences desire and how it came to be. It’s like "Ok, this group has a problem, yay! Let’s make money!" — Sometimes it can really help and enlighten to know the history of your audience; so let’s look at desires a little deeper.

A desire is not really noticeable/apparent to most of society when it is just 1 person, with 1 fleeting thought. For desire to be noticed it usually needs amplification and a group speaking up.

Let’s look at this through a fictional person named John, who really wants to Tweet like a Rockstar because he feels like he’d be a lot happier in life if he could just get some followers.

Let’s say ‘John’ thinks "Oh, I could really use a guide on how to Twitter Like A Rockstar", that’s great, but society won’t take notice, and it was just a fleeting thought, so John likely won’t bring it up in conversation with other human beings, and no one will care to solve this problem (or satiate this desire.)

If John becomes miserable and unsuccessful with twitter, he may think repeatedly "Man I wish I knew twitter, man I wish I knew twitter, man I wish I knew twitter…" over and over, sometimes frustrated, sometimes hopeful. When this happens, his desire is strengthened. He will almost certainly mention his Twitter issues in conversation, actively search it on Google and forums, and send out other subtle signals to society for help. John does these things because of his powerful, incessant, habitual desire (thoughts).

He may not even realize he is doing these things, but they are real choices, real actions, that have real effects on society.

He now begins to connect with others who are sharing a similar desire, and a hungry crowd starts to form.

As this audience grows, society takes notice. Now the resources of humanity and economy can come into play. Now people realize there is a community of people willing to pay them to solve this Twitter-dilemma, and they realize they can make a living for themselves by helping this group.

What started as a single fleeting thought had by John, grew into the desire of an entire niche, and hit a tipping point where other members of society were inspired and passionate about solving the problem.

A single thought is the foundation and seed for society’s greatest accomplishments, and combined with our economy, we can see it’s poetic effect.

Okay, still with me? We’ve got the basics:

1. Thoughts are more prevalent than action.
2. Thoughts are higher-leverage than action.
3. Thoughts are the foundation for action, and ultimately inseparable from action.
4. Thoughts are our primary tool for evolution and advancement in ANY area of life.

People, especially in cities, are focused on the rush-rush, fast-paced, Get Things Done-promoted idea of taking action after action for success.

After all we’ve looked at here, doesnèt it seem at least ‘vaguely productive’ to give some attention to the foundation for all this action… our thoughts.

Thoughts are the key to true success. This is a universal principle. Use it!

There are millions of successful people in life, and they all take very different paths and very creative actions to achieve their success. There’s not a huge amount of similarity in each successful person’s particular chosen actions, they’re all very different success stories. Trying to compare each of their actions is dizzying.

Tim Ferriss will tell you that you can succeed taking direct action for only 4 hours a week, Nathan Hangen implies in his blogging-crisis podcast that success in blogging requires a lot of hard-work to succeed. Donald Trump has said "Everything in life is luck", and Richard Wiseman claims to have determined scientifically that anyone can be lucky. Creative types such as visionary artist Alex Grey will tell you to allow inspiration to come and to put little focus on deadlines. Blogger-God Seth Godin will tell you deadlines are vital – so vital they should be renamed life-lines, and all this is just tip of the iceberg. With all these contrasting actions, it makes it nearly impossible to sort out the ‘correct action(s).’

Everything is contradictory! How do we sort it all out?

Easy. We examine the foundation of these people’s thoughts, and when we do, we can see that successful people have some very similar thought patterns.

1. Successful people believed they could succeed long before any physical signs of their success actually showed up. That’s right, successful people generally appear delusional for a period of time before the success arrives.
2. Successful people believe they can trust god/life/themselves, and give their all through fear and risk to pursue their passion.
3. Successful people go the extra mile, whether that means saying "no" to that client who is pushing you too far – even though you need the money, saying "yes" to that client out of love and care when your mind is screaming that you should take care of some other little thing, or even if it’s guest-posting for a blog you feel good about when you have many other irons in the fire.
4. Successful people accept success of all kinds. They accept the success of people who’ve taken a spiritual path, they accept success of those who may’ve committed crimes to achieve their success, they accept their friends success and their enemies success. They may not encourage the specific actions involved, but they accept success in all it’s forms, without judgment.
5. Successful people have thoughts and ideas about thriving joyously, whether they can see it or not, they truly believe that they can thrive in life and that the universe is good.
6. Successful people realize and acknowledge the value that they provide to the world. They have no problem marketing their message because they see every contact with another human being as them providing value and giving others a gift. Whether its with fans, clients, customers, or whoever they are connecting with, they think about and appreciate the value they offer the world.

There are many other thoughts that successful people think, but this is a great start, and if you haven’t been thinking anything even remotely like this, and you are currently not experiencing the success you know you could be, try them out.

And hey, if you really want to know some actions you can take that will help you manage your thoughts, check out all the free resources at SpiritSentient.com, and subscribe to my newsletter for a free 377 page book on Thought-Management! We love ideas and thought-management, and they’re provided to help you.

It’s high-leverage.

It’s high-value.

It’s high… fun.

Note: Thought-management is a massive topic, and I could talk on the details of it for ages, but hopefully this primer will serve its purpose.

Thank you all for reading, you’re all already Kings in my eyes, and this is just a reminder to keep rockin’ World-Shapers!