I came by the following inspiring idea via Justin Murphy’s Other Life newsletter.
The idea itself comes from Bertrand Russell. Russell was what you might call an all-around very smart man. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature — he did write some 70 books and 2,000 articles — but he was really a philosopher and mathematician.
I’m telling you this because the idea in the following quote is not provable, but is the result of introspection. The fact that Russell was very smart might give it some extra weight when you read it. Anyway, here’s Russell’s idea:
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My own belief is that a conscious thought can be planted into the unconscious if a sufficient amount of vigour and intensity is put into it. Most of the unconscious consists of what were once highly emotional conscious thoughts, which have now become buried.
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Like I said, I found this inspiring.
In this view, your unconscious is no longer some dark ocean, which has its own impulses that toss you about like a little raft on the surface.
Your unconscious is not even some bizarre supercomputer that you can tap into via visualization, NLP, or psychocybernetics.
Instead, your unconscious is just what went on in your head previously — experiences and thoughts deposited, compressed, perhaps fused together via pressure and time.
The reason to be inspired is that what you think about today will be with you in the future. This gives you both power and responsibility, like Peter Parker, regarding what you’re doing and thinking right now.
Incidentally, a great way to think about worthwhile stuff and to do so with intensity is to write.
When you’re writing, you will come up with distinctions and observations you wouldn’t come up with if you try to hold on to a few thoughts in your head.
And if you’re already writing, you might as well publish it, and send it out into the world. If you figured out or discovered something good, others will benefit from it too. And that comes back to you in time. Besides, writing to others will make you try harder.
All of these are are reasons why personal daily emails, like what you’re reading right now, are a great format.
And if you do decide to write daily emails, with a view to power and responsibility, then you might as well do it in the most valuable way using my most Valuable Email trick.
I’m tiptoeing the line here of giving away too much of what this training is about.
So let me just say Most Valuable Email is about putting vigor and intensity into thinking about marketing or copywriting or influence.
It’s about writing a fun and often shareable email about it.
And it’s about having new skills and attitudes planted deep into your unconscious, from where they can emerge, months or years down the line, exactly when you need them.
For more on Most Valuable Email, or to get started right now: