From the course: Overcoming Rejection

Unusual strategy: Revisionist history

From the course: Overcoming Rejection

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Unusual strategy: Revisionist history

- The writer Charles Sailor once shared an amazing strategy that he has used to literally cheat death, to write a book that sold over 6 million copies, to be a successful actor, writer, and bon vivant for over 50 years. Here's what he does. Before he falls asleep at night, he goes over his whole day. He runs it in his mind, like a movie. And then if there's anything that didn't go well or didn't go the way he wanted, he simply rewrites the scene with a better outcome and then he plays the revised version of that in his head a few times, thus calming himself and reducing the emotional pain memory of any rejection. Here's why this works. It has to do with how memory works. The problem with memory is that we only remember what we remember. And what I mean by that is if I were to ask you to describe what you had for lunch today or what you did at lunch today, you would tell me, and then if I asked you to tell the story again, you would tell me based on the story you told me the first time. So anything that happened that you didn't remember the first time starts to not become part of the story. So when we have a sad or unfortunate story and we tell that story to ourselves over and over and over and over again, it feels like it becomes more true and we forget any of the other information that might change our understanding of the story. So by tricking the brain into believing that maybe there was an alternate outcome, you can reduce your emotional attachment to the story of disappointment. Isn't that clever? Surprisingly, the human brain has a hard time discerning the difference between what's real and what's just a story. That's why we jump at scary movies or cry at sad ones. So you can reprogram yourself ever so slightly and wake up every morning feeling like a success.

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