In my last Trippy Report report called Brainwaves, I showcased the fascinating connection between the electrical activity inside your cranium and (extra)ordinary states of consciousness.

So you might be itching to know... how do you change your state of being?

And why would you want to do that anyway?

Bestselling author, peak performance researcher, and leadership expert Jamie Wheal notes that modern day enlightenment is not necessarily about reaching and maintaining a single desirable state, such as infinite blissful union with the Godhead.

Rather, enlightenment for modern man is the ability to generate a state of being that matches the demands of the task at hand—on command.

That means mastering the ability to up-regulate, stabilize, or down-regulate your nervous system.

For example, the ability to amplify your energy before a physically demanding endurance workout, so that your body can shift into action mode.

Or, the ability to smooth your mind during a meditation, so that you can access your intuitive clarity and subconscious wisdom.

Or the ability to calm your emotional storm after a work project gone awry, so that you can effectively lead yourself to a solution.

Now, in order to shift your state at will, let’s turn to a godfather of modern personal development, Tony Robbins, who delivers a practical framework called The Triad.

The Triad includes three levers that you can pull to change your experience: Focus, Language, and Physiology.

Let’s dive in.

Shift Your Focus

The first lever, focus, is quite simple.

As Tony says, “Where attention goes, energy flows.”

If you want to shift your state of being in a given direction, shift your attention in that direction.

For example, what are you focusing on? And what state of being is that generating within you?

Are you focused on the good or the bad?

Are you focused on the past, present, or future?

Are you focused on the big picture or the minutia?

Are you focused on your inner world or the outer world?

Are you focused on what you want or what you don't want?

Are you focused on what you can control or what you can’t control?

Even more, the French philosopher, mystic, and political activist Simone Weil quips, “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.”

In other words, you pray for what you focus on.

That’s something to think about…isn’t it?

Through honest self-reflection, you will start to recognize the inseparable pattern between focus and experience.

Then, you will naturally cultivate the wisdom to shift your state.

Admittedly, however, shifting your focus is far easier said than done.

Even more troublesome is maintaining that focus.

Your focus is guaranteed to wander.

So, what else can you do to re-orient your mind?

Choose Your Language

The second lever of The Triad is language.

Simply said, if you change the story you tell yourself about the world, you will change your experience of your world.

See, your brain is a pattern recognition machine.

If you feed it a stimuli, it automatically reaches into the past and projects a related story into future.

In the beautiful words of Jason Silva—an Emmy-nominated TV personality, storyteller, and filmmaker—the brain’s associational thinking generates “manic geometries”.

And, indeed, you will become manic if you don’t tame these automatic patterns, which often are illogical and disempowering.

To that end, here are two skills to master: priming and re-framing.

Priming is shifting your language in the present moment to influence the future. Every word you say carries the potential to cue a specific experience. 

Metaphorically, it’s akin to planting seeds in your mind that blossom in the future.

Simple examples of priming include mantras or affirmations. If you consistently declare to yourself that you are resilient, then you are more likely to act that way when you stumble upon an inevitable challenge.

Priming does NOT guarantee success, though. But it can surely tilt the odds in your favor.

Reframing, on the other hand, is shifting your language in the present to influence the past. 

It is the act of uprooting and re-writing your history. Metaphorically, it’s akin to planting seeds in your mind that blossom in the past.

And, as a curious mind will discover, when you change the past, you change the future too.

The most simple example is changing the narrative around your pain, struggle, and resentment. Those experiences likely gifted you with a wellspring of wisdom that you would not have accumulated otherwise.

But if you don’t see the gift, you remain stuck in the past.

Thus, most often, the side-effect of re-framing is the liberation of static energy.

That is to say, with the power of your storytelling mind, you leap from victim to creator.

But, as Jamie cautions his students, it’s not enough to simply upgrade your storytelling.

So, what if there was a metamorphic lever that you could physically pull?

Change Your Physiology

The third lever in The Triad is your physiology.

When you change your body, you change your mind.

Although body and mind are are often seen as disparate parts, decades of studies from the internationally recognized pharmacologist and psychoneuroimmunology researcher Dr. Candace Pert revealed otherwise, “I can no longer make a strong distinction between the brain and the body."

Candace calls this interconnected unit the “body-mind.”

Point being: your body is your mind, and vice versa.

Here are some basic ways for you to experience this right now:

• Try to soften your tense gaze and watch what happens to your stress levels.

• Put on a smile for 30 seconds and pay careful attention to your emotional state.

• Close your eyes and focus on nothing, and feel how your brainwaves change pace.

• Go for a walk, and note if problems fall away (or perhaps if creative thoughts arise).

• Slow down your erratic breathing pattern and gauge if it’s easier to sidestep negative thought spirals.

• Change the shape of your body, such as in a yoga pose or a stretch, and observe how your energy circulates.

As you run more experiments with your body-mind, you will experience first-hand how every physical movement is connected to mental and emotional movement.

Now, let's wrap this thang up.

Practice The Triad

When your mind gets hijacked, you now know what to do.

Pull on these three levers of The Triad:

• Focus: Redirect and strengthen your attention

• Language: Re-write the past and author the future

• Physiology: Shape-shift your body-mind

On their own, each are a powerful tool. Combined, however, they are a transformative trifecta.

The more you align all three levers in a given direction, the more effectively you can improve your life experience.

Fundamentally, these are the skills you need to master to match your state of being with the task at hand.

This, as Jamie said from the top, is modern day enlightenment.

So, the question is: what is life demanding from you—right now?

And which levers will you pull to meet that challenge?

Strength & Love, Connor

P.S. Thank you for pointing your eyeballs at my newsletter and receiving the photons that I had to offer today. You are pretty cool for doing that.

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