Pareto Path

Dead or alive, who would you want as your personal adviser for life? 

A couple of weeks ago we explored the first part of Mind Palace 101: what it is, how it works and how you build one. Today we explore building your Board of Sages and creating your personal life advisors that you can access anytime, day or night. 

Imagine that you could access a part of the world in which any person you want to speak with, one on one, that knows you more deeply than you know yourself, you can speak with. They won’t interrupt you, they won’t make you feel like shit, they won’t despise you. They will want the best for you, they will give you as much time as you need. They will be available 24/7. They will never let you down and you can always 100% rely on them. 

Wouldn’t that be nice? 

Who would you pick, who comes to mind straight away? 

Perhaps you’re into the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln or Jesus Christ? 

Maybe you want something practical solved with the help of Jay Shetty, Steven Bartlett or Joe Rogan?

Perhaps you’re seeking the humour and candidness of Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool), Adam Sandler or Tom Hanks?

Maybe you need some romantic advice? Who better than Casanova? 

Well, you can have all of that, and it doesn’t take much work. 

What we’re really talking about is something simple but very powerful: your unconscious mind fused with your conscious direction and clarity. 

The process is as follows:

1. Decide on the people/models you would like to have as your counsellors in your life. You can split these up into career, relationships, health etc. 
2. Consume most of their most important content, whether books or podcasts.
3. Build a sacred place in your mind just for those people, where I recommend having either just a room for one person, or a “board of sages” type of approach. 

An example of mines Richard Feynman. For all his flaws, the way he saw life and approached problems was truly unique. He always did his best to think things through at a first principles level, which simply meant to strip away all your assumptions and pre-existing concepts when interacting with something.

Feynman was also profoundly wise because he knew that knowing the name of something wasn’t the same as understanding something. His simple example is of knowing the name of a bird, like a Raven, just tells you the name of the bird, but nothing about the actual bird itself: you don’t know anything about what it eats, where it flies, how it nests and raises its kids. You just know the abstraction “Raven” so you can point to it. Name does not equal understanding. 

And so, I have a little room in my mind palace. It’s a room I know well. And in this room sits Richard Feynman, or at least my unconscious projection of him. I’ve read enough Feynman and watched enough Feynman so that my unconscious can create a good projection that can actually mimic him to a high degree, and there I sit with him and we talk things out. Things like how best to start a company, what pitfalls to avoid, and how to resolve certain conflicts. And I “sit” there and present my argument to Feynman. He carefully listens, with a cheeky gleam in his eye, and then he tells me the things I need to hear. And each time I practice this skill I come away a little wiser and little better. 

Another example is to have a board of sages instead. Here I will have an arrangement of people including Naval Ravikant, Tim Ferriss, Richard Feynman, Charlie Munger, Shane Parrish etc. These are world class thinkers. And I will walk into this room with all of them in it and present my problem to them. Then, systematically (at least in my mind palace), one by one they give me advice on the matter and help me to see it from a different perspective. Sometimes I even encourage my board of sages to have disagreements and push themselves to defend their arguments, and this allows me to see multiple perspectives. Again, very useful for conflict resolution or thinking your way out of a problem when you’ve hit the end of the road and can’t seem to think of a way out. 

So who will you put in their own room? 

Who will you put on your board of sages? 

And now that you have this capacity, ask yourself: “What’s the biggest problem I’m facing right now, and how would I present this problem to my board of sages?”.

Then just run it and see what happens. 

Next time we will talk about the way you can use your Mind Palace to help solve creative challenges, boost productivity and overcome past problems. 

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I hope this has been of value, you can let me know in the comments. And remember AFQ: Always Follow Quality. 

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