Master This... and AI Won’t Replace You. It Will Amplify You.

Listen to an expanded conversation between Bart and Sunny around this newsletter:

The Most Important Tool You’ll Ever Own

Computer programming is a fascinating skill. You sit down, and through a coding language and the computer’s operating system, you create a whole new reality. What once wasn’t there, is now there. Virtual cash registers, banks, storefronts, shopping malls, virtual worlds... entire digital universes. None of it exists until someone writes and executes the code.

Our brains work the same way. Our thoughts are the code. Our emotions are the operating system. Our beliefs are the architecture.

Every single day, whether we realize it or not, we’re programming our reality and our future - line by line, thought by thought.

Processor or Projector?

What you think, you begin to see. What you believe, you begin to experience. What you focus on, you begin to attract.

With that in mind, can we all agree that our brains are the absolutely most powerful tool we have at our fingertips?

One of the clearest demonstrations of this (because we can see the direct line of cause and effect) is the placebo and nocebo effects. In clinical trials, over 30% of patients experience real healing simply because they believe they’re receiving real medicine - even when it’s just a sugar pill. Their brains trigger biological processes (endorphins, immune responses, even dopamine release) that mirror the effects of the actual drug.

On the flip side is the nocebo effect. In one study, participants were given a harmless substance and told it would cause specific side effects like headaches, dizziness, and nausea. Astonishingly, nearly 70% of them reported those very symptoms, despite ingesting nothing harmful at all. There was a study done where one patient participated in a clinical trial for antidepressants. Believing he had overdosed on the experimental medication, he had severe symptoms of hypotension and was hospitalized for it. However, he found out later that he had ingested placebo pills, and as soon as he was told that his symptoms rapidly subsided!

Sam Londe, a former shoe salesman from Nashville, Tennessee, was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. His physician, Dr. Clifton Meador, informed him that the disease was terminal and Londe was delivered the heartbreaking news that he just had a few weeks to live. Londe passed away in that timeframe. However, during the autopsy, it was discovered that his esophagus was cancer free. While there were minor cancerous spots on his liver and one on his lung, they were not sufficient to have caused his death. Dr. Meador later reflected that he died with cancer, but not from cancer… suggesting that the belief in the terminal diagnosis was what caused Londe’s death.

So what’s happening here?

And if that’s true - if belief alone can harm or heal the body - then how much weight should we be giving to our inner world?

Definitely more than we give to our inbox, our social media, our sales strategy, or even our endless to-do lists.

This is why, as we play full out in our lives, we say:

Cut Open a Brain: Are You Inside?

If someone were to die and you were to open their brain… what would you find? Would you find the person? Oddly enough… you wouldn’t! You wouldn’t find memories, dreams, regrets, or ambitions. You wouldn’t see the image of their first kiss or the fear they felt during a childhood accident. There is no folder in the brain that stores “who they are.”

So where is it?

It’s not stored in the brain. It’s stored through the brain—like a conduit.

Just like your computer doesn’t store all your data on the desktop anymore, your identity, your perceptions, and your sense of self don’t live entirely in your biology. They’re streamed from somewhere else.

It sounds like a metaphor for the Cloud, right? But it’s not! Our technology mimics our biology. Think about it:

• Your nervous system is a wiring system (kinda like an electrical system).

• Your heart regulates heat just like thermostats.

• You cool your home with air conditioning just like your body does with sweat.

• You upload memories and moments (photos and videos) to the Cloud just like your brain uploads experience to something much greater, more expansive.

When you sleep, when you meditate, when you pray, when you dream, that’s when “downloads” come through. You don’t get genius out of thin air - you connect to something. That “something” is the same intelligence our modern AI is trying to replicate, and yet it will never be able to match the depth of it.

Because you are not just the brain and body. You are a human with access to something higher.

How to Update Your Brain’s Software and Why It’s Critical

That brings us to part two: while you connect to the cloud, you must also strengthen the computer. Here’s what we are seeing right now…

As AI becomes more and more integrated into our everyday lives, the temptation is to outsource our critical thinking. Why wrestle with a hard question when Chat GPT can answer it in two seconds or less? Why problem-solve when a tool can give you a dozen strategies?

But here’s the danger: when you stop using your brain to wrestle complex ideas, solve problems, engage in deep work or learning, think critically, creatively, or reflectively, your brain begins to prune the unused pathways. Just like unused muscles atrophy, unused mental pathways begin to fade and rigidity begins to set it. Neuroplasticity slows, your cognitive agility stiffens, and your mental confidence begins to erode. In other words, neuroplasticity is use-dependent! Neuroplasticity is what allows us to rewire, adapt, and grow… in technological terms, our “software” stops updating if it declines.

At Inner Circle a former inner-city school school principal told us about his students. His students came from neighborhoods filled with violence, poverty, and a lack of resources. But every year, his robotics team would go to nationals…and win!

How?

The night before their first competition, the teachers would intentionally sabotage their student’s robots. They would break them! Not to sabotage the kids, but to train their minds. This would force them to figure out how to fix their robots while their backs were up against the wall. They knew as the progressed into the competition at some point or another their robots would break and they would have to know how to fix them. Because they did this, their kids became conditioned to think for themselves. To trust their ideas, and to use their brains under pressure. And that’s what made them unbeatable!

Here’s What We Recommend

So, what do we do with all this? We recommend a two-step process:

Strengthen the Mind

• Spend at least 15 minutes a day in silence. Journal, meditate, or just breathe and observe.

• Watch your thoughts like data. Which ones are serving you? Which ones are quietly sabotaging you?

• Replace one negative belief with a new one each week.

Train the Brain

• Tackle one problem this week without AI. Just you, your whiteboard, and your logic.

• Do one hard thing daily: a riddle, a puzzle, a strategy game, a challenging conversation.

• Listen to a book on Audible at 2x the speed.

• Learn something manually. Write it out. Draw it. Teach it back to yourself.

Bottom line is: AI will accelerate those who know who they are. It will amplify the creators, the thinkers, and those who are self-aware. But it will also replace the passive, the reactive, and the mentally disengaged.

So the real question is…

Are you using AI to escape your brain, or to expand it?

Your greatest advantage isn’t your tools.
It’s your consciousness.

Take care of it. Train it. Trust it.

Let’s go.
—Bart & Sunny
We Play Full Out

Life Updates:

• As you know, we were at an event in Provo last weekend and on Sunday we drove over to Boise for an Inner Circle event! We stayed with some dear friends of ours (Fred and Jacklin) and had such a great time connecting with them. We also got to network with some amazing people, and walked away with a few fun, new strategies.

• While in Boise, Bart played pickleball with a few guys and the next night we played together with some Inner Circle friends. Shout out to Matt Frew for always being so gracious with his court, and for playing with us!

• Xander had Wind Ensemble and Varsity Jazz Band auditions on Thursday. He walked away with a 10/10, 9/10, and a 9/10. So… he crushed it! So proud of him and all of his hard work, effort… and obsession! Haha.

Was this forwarded to you? Sign Up Here