ProMind: Enhance Yourself With Performance Thinking

By Herlander Elias

The promind mindset points the arrow in the direction of self-improvement and enhancement. The direction that we are supposed to follow is that of our achievements. Knowing what we have to do and start doing everything at our disposal to solve that, is a form of future-proof planning . Planning is even more relevant than the plan or who we are. Focus on ourselves provides us with strategic and performance-based thinking, we get our minds clear, positive, and inclined to do what suits us best.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tablo Publishing
• Release date: Aug 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781649698926

Herlander Elias

Elias is a professional of Communication Sciences. Early as a graduate student he is concerned with research issues. He graduates in Communication Sciences at the University Lusófona of Humanities And Technologies, in Lisbon, and in a fast pace he finishes the first book on "Cyberpunk". Since 1999 the author endeavours in working as a Journalist on Internet-focused and multimedia-driven, IT news and entertainment magazines.

Book preview

Introduction

Hello. I hope you are doing fine. This is a book about self-improvement with both your professional and personal enhancement kept in mind. To fight the war against bad thoughts and negative emotions we have only one response left: positive reverse. This means that whatever your irrational mind tells you to do: please do not do it. Think twice or more times. Use positive thinking. Apply all your energy to your personal development and growth. Help people. Guide them, be their google in the dark ages of our times. Please understand this: in an epoch when productivity is vital as never before seen, it is true that we need a performance-based mindset. However, it is a different kind of approach. It is not about increasing goals, getting bonuses, buying things, and becoming dependent on the things you own. We refer to the performance thinking that implies strategies for your personal growth. The thing is that this, in turn, may also exponentially increase your productivity as well, in turn, despite not being just professionally and productivity-based.

When we speak about promind we want you to comprehend that you need to become not only a master of your profession but above all master of your own life, your signature in your environment. The answer from a promind is always positive and it is also future bound, meaning we have to be pushed towards the future. Unless we figure out what kind of future we aspire for ourselves, we will never solve the riddles of the present. Everybody is focused on the present. Douglas Rushkoff calls it presentism. Let us do otherwise, by focusing on the future we will create an image to head into . So we will create the backstages, one by one, step by step, until we reach the present. Good. Now, this is exactly where we are, now! Precisely, now. And so, we become not focused on the present, but rather on the future. This has one big key-implication: it makes one to wish, aspire, have bearings, and aim at a positive outcome. Whatever has to happen, will happen. Nothing we can do about it, but we can change how we respond. By being future bound we make a statement for future legacies. We are saying that we use our present time in a constructive manner, considering positive outcomes.

One important aspect is that sometimes we think that we, or things around us, have no purpose. Well, the good news is that everything and everybody has, or will have a purpose. There is also the feeling that there is no grand meaning. The fact is that there is a grand meaning. But it does not mean we have the awareness to grasp it, or that it is our fault for not understanding it, or that maybe we have no access to it. The grand meaning will present itself to us, in due time. Do not rush for it. It summons us. We are just connectors. We do not own anything or anybody. Like Rifkin says, this is the era of access. We just log in . Sometimes we even feel like this is all but a coincidence. Reality check: there are no coincidences. Part of the unraveling of the grand meaning is that only prominds that are future bound will decipher the codes. Reality is encrypted, we need to think beyond the curtains. As a species we rely too much on external memories; photographs, Instagram, Kodak, Polaroids, Google Photos, Smartphones, and so on, and we tend to forget that all these image streams are nothing more than time machines. We look into concept images and fantasy images to have a glimpse of the future, but the problem is that most of the time we are hostages of our past . This is exactly the posture of a psychology therapist: to make us rewind to the origin of traumas and keep us there, making us stand away from further emancipation. Yes, we are nostalgic. Yes, we cannot comprehend the future or the present without the notion of what is concealed in the past. No question about it. But, should we be held hostages of images of the past, our traumas, history, and old mythologies and concepts and we will find ourselves playing in the mud. And that is not where the promind mindset wishes to be. In this sense, if we all have our own time machines, basically all we have around us are time machines, which renders us into time travelers. We have the ability to move back and forth in time. Memories are a form of traveling in time to the past like concept designs are a form of traveling from the present to the future. Thus, we can say that time machines that take us back are memories, and those that carry us forward are dreams.

Another point we have to highlight is that we are not special. That is a millennial’s disease spreading fast. Nobody is special. As for what we do, that can be special. Yes, that can. We need to arrive on time with our appointment with history. Somewhen in time, somewhere on Earth, or elsewhere, there is a moment for us to shine. We just need to be ready. We need the promind mindset to help us prepare for the future present. We need to turn broken hearts into art, we need to turn trash into symphonies, chaos into order, negative thinking into positive thinking. Even if for a time we get to be in social stealth mode, hiding, remaining off the grid, that is only as good as long as it readies us for further steps. We need to surface . And the reason why it is simple. Time is a thief, it does not forgive us, it steals everything from us. So we need to be fast, we need performance thinking, we need the promind mindset to see if the future catches us. And we can start by realizing how in a world of illiterates and picture streaming addicts, more than ever, we need the magic of concepts. Welcome to our way of thinking.

Part 1: Enhancement

1. Humans Ask Questions

What distinguishes us from some animals is our ability to ask questions. So we ask the questions. Some questions do not have answers. Some will find their answers. It is just a question of time, like everything in life. The promind mindset is focused on enhancement, and this means that we will not rest until our goals are accomplished. We may be casual, relaxed, chilled out, but we will be determined and find the responses. It is written in our DNA. Having said this, we have to admit that we live in a very weird society. First, we have billionaires, second, we have middle-class in extinction, and third, we have a rising toll of poor people. Not necessarily poor in money, but poor in mind. What we need is the promind mindset. We need to think not as who we are, but rather as who we want to be. If we think miserably, we will be miserable. But, if we think like a soldier, an aesthete, a detective, a creative, an artist, a thinker, a designer, a programmer, an engineer, or as a philosopher, we will be future bound. Since most professions in the future will be outsmarted by Artificial Intelligence (AI), our focus must rely on thinking, on creating, on becoming more, being better humans. In this day and age, nobody asks questions. People just scroll screens. We are all being entertained, and badly so far. This time of ours is but of a weaponized mcdonaldization. We have not only accepted but we have rendered into a convention the format of work of McDonalds, not just the McMenu food format.

There was a time, like in 1939’s New York World Fair when it was introduced to people the Trylon and the Parasphere. People at the time were mesmerized. These were icons of the future to come. Globalization, Internet, Connectivity, Social Media, Tourism, World-Culture. We can see them now as symbols of progress and internationalism. It all became true and present. We are past that. So what are the odds now? For ourselves, I mean. Things have changed. World War III has begun but it is step by step becoming a full-fledged attack on humanism. It is becoming too much normal to not ask questions. Nobody wants to think. The problem comes from politics. You see, ideologies are trying to control technology that was designed to withstand a nuclear war. This technology just so happens also enhances us. 

Digital media and the online world do not make the world fair. There is nothing fair in life nor in nature, but technologies of information and communication have made it so far in order to escape from control. As of now, we do not see much difference between social media, search engines, smartphones, cloud, and ideologies. Information is biased. Hardware is biased. So where does this leave us? If ideologies attempt to steer the course of our destiny as a society, maybe we should no more look at technology just as neutral drivers. They are weapons. The promind mindset uses available technology, media, and information to evolve and aspire. Maybe it is time for ourselves to start converting data into wisdom, to intelligence. Machines exist for answers, not for questions. Humans ask questions. So, following this trend, we need to underline that we are not fond of the end of humanism, and also not fond of the end of technology. Things have a purpose, remember? So all we need is to think, not people fishing for us, but people teaching us how to fish, instead. 

For sure, the abstract digital universe has become a part of our identity. We are what we do, what we read, watch, play, everything we do has our signature. Our need for answers, which is typical in the promind mindset is actually what may save us. The abnormal is not to ask questions. Although, over-questioning all things, or over-thinking, is not healthy too. Smart thinking is part of our enhancement. It is a need like food and shelter amidst the swirl in which we live in. Disruption is the new normal, like war, viruses, computer ransomware, crypto-currencies, tornadoes, tsunamis, and stock market crashes. Nothing is normal now . So maybe, just maybe, it never was. Author Peter Sloterdijk claims that modernity is about unchaining the titanic forces. And so we did, we split the atom, put people on the moon, we created the Internet, and things kept going, and from all of this maelstrom, there is something we are not caring about: how is the quality of our thinking? How healthy are we thinking? How can the promind mindset save us from the swirl? Since everything starts to look like a fractal fashion, an endless pattern, we need to change how we think, how we teach, and learn. According to the promind mindset, if we teach students today as we did yesterday we would be robbing their tomorrow. Youngsters above all, but the general population too, need to understand that what we are experiencing is a life-long learning event .

The problem with today’s people is not whether or not they are Generation X, Y, Z, or Alpha. The problem is they need to feel real as if they are not. They lost contact with reality, and since this happened, they reify their extruded egos online. Existing out of the online world is not an option for them. They think that living connected to media is a starting point. But it is not. It is an enhancement. That is it. The issue is that we need to have access to something more than just images. We too are not an image, images are designed, some to be expressions, some to need devotees. In a hyperconnected world, we are still unraveling the consequences.

We are not exactly sure if it is a good thing to be a part of the wolfpack or to be a lone wolf. Maybe we just need a double approach. Perhaps both trends can be useful in different contexts. It is funny when we think about the wolf metaphor because even though the lion is the king of the jungle a wolf is not captured to work caged in a circus. That is a fact. A soldier is a wolf, a team of soldiers is a wolfpack. We need both views, but definitely the wolf, rather than a lion. So, the question is not about a power figure, but about a determined figure. A wolf is designed to persist. A lion can be lazy if the lionesses hunt for him. This is not the nature analog for the couch potato we wish to head for. What we need are things to make sense. People that make sense