Thinking About Our Thoughts 101

Wrestlers, Pesticides, and How We Think

DDT - The Wrestling Move

Have you ever heard of the three letter acronym DDT? If you were born in the 80’s, the first image that springs to mind is the thick beard, bright tights, and flashy personality of the wrestler Macho Man Randy Savage. In my opinion, this guy was most famous for roaring, “Snap into a Slim Jim!” on TV commercials. (If you’re like me, you’re probably hopping over to Youtube right now to enjoy a trip down memory lane. You have my full permission.)

Macho Man’s signature move was the DDT - he’d grab an opponent, put them in a reverse headlock, and drop slam their face into the ground. Hard. If you ever were unfortunate enough to have this move practiced on you by a friend, you know it hurt. Surprisingly, though, no one is certain what the three letters actually stand for - rumors include both the Downward Dome Thrust and the Death Drop Technique. What is certain is that these DDT letters were based on something from decades earlier - a notorious pesticide that actually won a Nobel Prize.

DDT - The “Miracle” Pesticide

If you were born in the 40’s or 50’s, you probably associate DDT with the white spray pesticide. The full-name is a mouthful: Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane. Popularized in WWII, American troops used it to stop the spread of insect-borne diseases, like malaria and typhoid, and with incredible effect. You see, up until then, no pesticide had been invented that wasn’t also harmful to humans. So, this new DDT was like a miracle substance… it killed insects, but seemed to leave people unharmed. What could go wrong?

After the war, Americans embraced DDT in every facet of life. Advertisers came up with the slogan… “DDT is good for me-e-e!” Housewives sprayed it in their homes to kill houseflies, farmers sprayed it on their crops to kill insects, and local governments would even hire trucks to drive through their streets to blanket the town with it. And since the public didn’t realize it was harmful yet, children were actually encouraged to run behind these trucks to get enveloped in the giant white fog. (You can google “DDT Trucks” if you want a crazy visual.)

But then things started to go wrong, and people started to get sick. It wasn’t obvious at first, but over time there were connections to birth defects, brain damage, and other kinds of illnesses. Thankfully, the US government took action and banned the substance completely in 1972. Today, if you go looking for this notorious DDT pesticide, you’ll only find it in the halls of internet history instead of in your local grocery aisle, and thank goodness for that.

DDT - The Distorted, Destructive Thought

Finally, there’s a third kind of DDT - Distorted, Destructive Thoughts. Similar to the wrestling move, they derive their name from the notorious pesticide. And similar to the pesticide, they do damage that most of the public isn’t even aware of.

What are they? They’re the Scenario 1 thoughts I described in the last article - the one’s that automatically invade our minds when facing adversity.
Why do they happen? They’re the result of cognitive biases that all humans can fall prey to - even smart, logical humans like you and me. And in times of stress, these cognitive biases almost always skew negative.
What’s their effect? These DDT’s cripple our productivity, block our problem-solving, fuel our anxiety, empower our fears, sap our energy, steal our joy, invite analysis paralysis, and ruin our endurance.
Am I exaggerating? Absolutely not. Because I’ve experienced each and every one of these effects first-hand.

You may be skeptical of this because, when adversity hits, your negative thinking has become such a part of you that it has become automatic. For this reason, the experts refer to DDT’s as “automatic thoughts.” They run through your mind unconsciously without the slightest effort on your part to put them there. They are as obvious and natural to you as bad posture is to someone who walks around hunched over all day.

That’s why most REI entrepreneurs aren’t even on the look out for them. We unknowingly let them envelope us, just like those kids who unknowingly followed the DDT trucks. And as a result, these thoughts act as an invisible poison in our minds and impede our ability to overcome obstacles.

DDT’s In My Own Life

My Brain Doesn’t Always Tell the Truth

Have you ever paid attention to the thoughts automatically running through your head? When I first made a conscious effort to do this, I was taken aback. I noticed there were certain negative statements running on repeat whenever I faced a trying situation or a difficult season - which, in our line of work, can be a lot. Heck, some of you may feel like your whole REI career has been a “difficult season.”

Here’s a sampling of them from my past journals. Note: these are unfiltered and haven’t been tidied up, so don’t judge me too harshly.

“I’m not gonna find another house to flip. All the good deals are gone!”
“I should be farther along by now. I’m a failure.”
“I’m making too many mistakes. I don’t have what it takes.”
“My contractors are selfish and taking advantage of me.”
“There’s way too much to do. I’ll never get it all done.”

Talk about toxic. And notice how none of these thoughts are 100% false. DDT’s all start with a grain of truth, but then twist and exaggerate it out of proportion. That’s why they’re so convincing, and why the first D in “DDT” stands for distorted.

And the crazy thing? Until I intentionally set out to examine my thoughts, I wasn’t even aware these statements were swirling through my mind in the first place. No wonder I was having trouble responding effectively in tough situations.

A Lie Believed as truth affects me exactly as if it were true

Granted, I never said these statements to myself out loud (c’mon, I’m not totally crazy), but somehow they were having the same impact as if I did. Why? Because I believed them. And even though any regular person could look at these statements and immediately recognize they’re false, they affected me as if they were true. Why? Because I didn’t think to challenge my own thoughts. Since they were my own thoughts, I just took them at face value - I believed them to be truth.

Here’s the thing, when you’re convinced a lie is truth, it affects your life exactly as if it were true. That’s why a false thought can be so effective in steering us in a negative direction. And that’s why the second D in DDT stands for destructive.

Example 1 - Struggling to Find a Deal
Take this example from my own life. During a season I was struggling to find my next deal, a DDT began to automatically run through my mind, saying, “There aren’t any more houses out there. All the good deals are gone.” I didn’t think to question this thought - but believed it hook, line, and sinker. And since I believed it to be true, it impacted me as exactly as if it were true.

Let me ask you, how would you act if all the good deals were gone, if there were only crumbs left over? Chances are you’d become less motivated to keep hunting. I mean, why spend hours searching everyday when they’ve already been snatched up? What’s the point? That’s exactly what happened to me - I slacked off, I avoided work, I procrastinated. And what did I do with that extra time? Enjoy it? Nope - I would idly check news sites while consumed with worry.

So, this one false DDT whispering “All the good deals are gone,” had a destructive impact on both my emotions and actions. And, as you can imagine, this turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, because my actions, or lack thereof, actually delayed me in finding my next house to flip).

Example 2 - The Bad Appraisal
Or, as another example, there was the time I had a flip under contract to sell with an expected $51k profit, but then the appraisal came in low and chopped off $11k of it in the blink of an eye. I had a DDT running for weeks, saying, “I got robbed! I should have made more money on this!” What was the effect? You guessed it, weeks of anger and frustration. (So if you want a free lesson on on how to earn a $40k payday and still be miserable, there it is.)

Here’s an interesting side note: it’s been four years since I sold that house and, without looking it up, I was able to recall the exact amount of the appraisal loss off the top of my head ($11k). But when it came to amount of profit, was I able to remember it? Nope, I had to look it up. Only the negative number had stuck with me, the positive one had evaporated from my mind. You’ll see why later, but this is actually the result of another DDT at play.

Why Would a Rational Person Think So Irrationally?

It All Starts With the Brain

Why did this happen to me? I may not be the smartest guy, but I at least considered myself logical - math and science were my strongest subjects in school, and I was even the guy my friends came to for life advice. So why was it that, in my own life, when times got hard, my thoughts got distorted and my perspective got murky?

According to neuroscientists, the answer lies with how our brains process information. To start, as powerful as our brains may be, they’re not perfect. In fact, when you think about it, they only have 3 pounds of processing power to understand an entire world. Our five senses, on the other hand, are capable of absorbing much more information than the brain can compute, so it must simplify the information that streams in to make it usable for us.

Simply put, the brain will take shortcuts, make over-simplifications, and prioritize some information over others - and it does this all automatically without us realizing it. Think about these simplifications as your brain giving you the Google Maps readout of the world compared to the Google Earth one.

THE brain can accidentally work against us

These shortcuts are often useful and work in our favor. But sometimes they can work against us and cause unconscious thought errors. Ever heard of a cognitive bias? That’s the technical term for it, and nearly two hundred kinds have been identified.

Some well-known one’s are confirmation bias, hindsight bias, anchoring, and the bandwagon effect - just to name a few. Even the most logical people become their victim, it’s just the way the human brain works. And when they strike, they cause a normally rational person to interpret information irrationally. So, if you ever bought a blue car and then you suddenly started seeing blue cars everywhere - you weren’t crazy, it was a cognitive bias at play. (If you want a fascinating read on the subject, check out the book Thinking Fast and Slow.)

Since we’re talking about cognitive biases, know that you don’t have to learn about all 200 of them. We’re only interested in eight. Why? Because they are the thought traps proven to impact our resilience. Every DDT that’s ever existed comes from one of them. Don’t worry, we’ll go in depth later on these when we’re specifically talking about how to recognize DDT’s.

Conclusion

Let’s recap what we’ve covered:

Thoughts are always running through our head - positive, negative, and neutral.
We’re often unaware of these thoughts.
Our thoughts don’t always tell the truth.
During difficult times, they often distort in the negative direction.
When they distort, they have a destructive effect - exaggerated negative feelings and self-defeating actions
But, if we can change our thoughts, we can change our actions and change our results.

As David Goggins, the retired Navy Seal and ultra-athlete, says, “The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself. You wake up with them, you walk around with them, you go to bed with them and eventually you learn to act on them. Whether they be good or bad.”

These internal conversations are too important to leave to chance. It’s time to stop believing that DDT’s are harmless. It’s time to stop being like the kids that just let the DDT trucks spray harmful pesticide all over them. Now is the time to get deliberate in how we think - so we can overcome adversity and achieve our ultimate goal of long-term wealth.

This brings up an important question… “If we’ve thought a certain way our entire life, is it possible to change the way we think?”