The Secret to Living Life in Receiving Mode

The receiving mode mindset is the state of mind where you’re ready to receive what is available to you. When you are a receiver, you are not just a passive observer. You go through an emotional experience. Instead of passively observing, your mind is consciously engaging with the world. When you enter receiving mode, you tune in to all your senses and the information coming in, rather than tuning out noise or trying to impose meaning on it.

Receiving mode is something we can consciously enter into and also something that can happen to us involuntarily. Receiving mode is a necessary skill for anyone who wants to be a successful manifester.

Receiving mode is the way we often go about our days. We are constantly consuming information from email, social media, the news and reacting to it without any consideration for what comes next. The problem isn't that we are not taking in enough information, instead, it's about being receptive to the right information. We need to learn the art of being selective about where our attention goes before we get lost in useless information. The concept of strategic ignorance solves this problem.

This is the idea that you don't want to be informed about everything. A lot of people have FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) these days and they want to be informed about everything. They want to know what's on the news. They want to know what's on people's social media feed. The truth is that you want to be ignorant of almost everything because almost everything is a distraction.?

"You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything."

Greg McKeown

Almost everything is a distraction. You don't need to be informed about most things.?In fact, if you have clear goals and if you have clear values and if you actually have a life you want to become informed on less and less, then you need to obviously be informed on things that really matter. But there's so many things you're aware of that you probably shouldn't be an expert at.??

A lot of people are experts at things like sports, and celebrities. What are you an expert at that's ultimately not driving your future self? What are you an expert at that's ultimately a waste of time? You might be an expert at what your high school friends are doing because you spend so much time on social media. What are the things you should be ignorant of that you just don't even need to enter your brain?

There's a great quote from Zig Ziglar. He said “your input determines your outlook and your outlook determines your performance.” Whatever you're letting into your brain is shaping you. Garbage in equals garbage out. Whatever you let in literally shapes your brain. It shapes your desires. It shapes your interests.?

There's a lot of things you want to be ignorant of. You definitely want to be ignorant of notifications. The key aspect of flow and focus is creating an environment where flow is organic, where flow just happens. You want to shape your environment.

"If you do not create and control your environment, your environment will create and control you.”

Marshall Goldsmith.

One of those things is obviously removing things that hit your conscious attention that you shouldn't be aware of at least right now. Having rules and standards for how you use technology is the starting point. Keeping your smartphone on airplane mode for longer periods of time especially during focus times.?

If you want to focus for two minutes at a time, your phone should be away from your body. It should be on airplane mode so that you're not seeing? notifications. You want to create just a little bit of friction so that you can’t reach for your phone as James Clear teaches in Atomic Habits.?Simply putting your phone on airplane mode and leaving it in another room creates enough of a barrier that you won't go get it to avoid momentary boredom.

You should have rules for when your phone is not on airplane mode and when you're going to use it. You need to have standards for how, what and when you use your phone. You definitely should not use your phone for notifications and things like that during the first minutes of your day.

Your brain is at an optimal state for creativity, for decision making and for learning first thing in the morning. If you're looking at your phone and plugging into notifications, then you're wiring your brain for scatteredness.?Most notifications have nothing to do with your agenda for the day.

However, if you wake and you meditate, you pray, you journal about what you're trying to accomplish and then you take needed action on the number one thing you're trying to accomplish that day, you’ll get into a flow state. Then if you get into a state of actually being used to being focused, being used to being in flow and you actually knock something out significant during the first few minutes of your day, then you've already created a more balanced and more focused approach to your day and be less frenetic.

Most people wake up and they're letting so many ping pong balls enter their brain. They're also opening themselves up to other people's agendas. When you first wake up and if you open your email or if you open your social media, it’s? like walking into a casino. You don't know what you're actually looking at. You're going into an environment where you're expecting to be ping-ponged around.?

You don't know what's going to be in the news feed. You don't know what's going to capture your attention. You don't know where you're going to get stuck on a video for five to ten minutes. You're literally putting yourself into an environment where you don't know what the outcome is going to be and you're just being the ping-pong ball. That's not how you create focus.

If? that is your habit, then that's how you're going to be for the rest of your day. But if you wake up and move slowly, keep your brain moving slow by meditating and reflecting in your journal and be purposeful about one key outcome, you’ll own your day.

Most people overestimate what they can do in a day but underestimate what they can do in a year.

Most people are trying to accomplish so much in one day they have so many items on their to-do list and they're trying to knock out all sorts of stuff. When you do that you're moving different directions in a single day. If you had a key outcome you were trying to accomplish and you focused on the most important thing and if you knocked that out, then you would make more progress over a year.?

You can make huge progress over a year or over five years, over a decade if you're taking the right actions, if you're taking the most focused core actions moving forward. The problem is that most people are trying to do too much at once and they're moving in no direction at all. Getting to the end of your day and realizing that you still have so many to-do’s unfinished puts you in a failure frame of mind. You may criticize yourself for missing so many items on your list. That’s not a game you can win!?

“We are kept from our goal not by obstacles but by a clear path to lesser goals.”

Robert Brault

That's how most people live their life. They're not moving towards their goal because they have too many unclear paths to lesser goals. They're trying to do too many competing things at once and because they're scattered - they're not experiencing flow. They're not experiencing focus.?

They're looking at their phone, their email and they're trying to do dozens of things at once. Instead you want to have less things. That's why strategic ignorance is so powerful. But in order to actually apply strategic ignorance, you need to have values, beliefs and goals that actually matter to you. Without knowing what doesn't matter to you, then you can't define things as unimportant.

But if you define what's important, what you value and how you want to spend your time (what's worth investing in) -? if you've defined your future, then you can create an environment that shields you from almost everything else. You can create an environment and create rules where you're not letting so many things push you off course.

Receiving mode can be one of the most challenging mindset shifts to make, but it is also one of the most rewarding. Receiving mode means you are fully present and open to the world. It means you are open to good things happening to you and ready to receive. If you want to get into receiving mode as part of your daily practice there are several steps to achieving this which I will cover in a future post.

—

An action step you can take today…

Want to Say Yes to a better life? Get the Focused Productivity Planner

About Dan

I received life’s second chance when I survived a severe car accident that took three lives. I struggled through brain injuries, business failures, heartbreaks, marathon races and daily fights with fear and doubt.

I am the #1 Best-selling Author of Living the Life of Your Dreams - How To Stop Working Insane Hours And Start Living An Awesome Life. I help businesses grow 7 and 8-figure revenues because I've done it myself.

If you have any questions about growing and scaling your business…

Connect with me?here?on & I’ll be happy to answer your questions.?

Find out more about scaling your business with systems on our?Discovery page.

Appreciate you for reading! ??