Intelligent Thinking: Rewire Your Mind for Happiness & Success in 6 Steps

If you want to be happier and more successful achieving your goals, rewiring your mind with Intelligent Thinking is one of the simplest, easiest, most powerful, and most intelligent things you can do.

In fact, the reason I call it Intelligent Thinking is that it is a way of thinking that fires on all cylinders: it benefits you enormously, it feels good, it’s valid or true, it’s an easy way to think, it helps you achieve your goals, and it compels you to act in ways that improve your life.

This makes it an extremely intelligent way to think, every way you look at it. So keep on reading to learn the life changing steps to rewire your mind to think in this way.

Wait, is Intelligent Thinking just Positive Thinking?

No. This is one thing I’d like to clarify before we start.

Another reason I call this Intelligent Thinking is to deliberately help differentiate it from other ways of thinking, such as positive thinking. In fact, the best way to get started learning about Intelligent Thinking is to learn how it solves the 6 problems of positive thinking.

This will teach you what makes it different, easier, more powerful, and more effective than positive thinking, as well as how it overlaps with positive thinking with what I call Intelligent Positive Thinking.

You can also read more about the differences between Intelligent Thinking and positive thinking here, if you want.

Bottom line, even if you dislike positive thinking for some reason, you’ll still love Intelligent Thinking.

And if you love positive thinking, yes, you’ll absolutely love Intelligent Thinking. It’s a way of thinking that’s for everyone, ok?

Intelligent Thinking = seeing thoughts as tools

One of the simplest, most powerful ways to understand Intelligent Thinking is to start looking at thoughts as potential tools that can help you feel better and achieve things faster and easier.

With this view, thoughts are never inherently intelligent or unintelligent on their own, but they can be Intelligent Thoughts depending on what you’re going for and what you want to achieve.

So a better way of understanding Intelligent Thinking is that it is always “Intelligent Thinking for X”, with “X” being whatever you’re going for.

An example with a hammer to drive in the point

To help you better understand this concept, you would never look at a hammer and declare “That’s an Unintelligent Tool”. That just wouldn’t make much sense, would it?

On the other hand, it would make sense to say, “A hammer is an Unintelligent Tool for unscrewing a lightbulb” or “A hammer is an Intelligent Tool for driving in a nail”.

You can apply the exact same concept to thoughts so that you focus on developing thoughts that help you achieve your goals faster and easier.

A thought example for Intelligent Thinking

Consider the thought “Smoking is relaxing”. The common approach is to just debate whether this statement is true or not.

On the other hand, the Intelligent Thinking approach is to establish what you want to achieve and then determine whether this thought is an Intelligent Thought for that or not.

So, let’s say you want to stop smoking. In that case, the thought “Smoking is relaxing” is an Unintelligent Thought for quitting smoking, because it naturally tempts you and compels you to smoke more. (It would be an Intelligent Thought if you wanted to smoke more!)

On the other hand, the thought “Smoking stresses me out” might be a highly Intelligent Thought for quitting smoking, provided you can comfortably and honestly accept this as true or valid, and provided it makes it easier and more comfortable for you not to smoke.

But what if a thought isn’t true or valid to me?

If a thought isn’t true or valid to you, it is not an Intelligent Thought for you to think, even if it might be an Intelligent Thought for someone else to think. So part of the skill of Intelligent Thinking is matching yourself up with thoughts that are Intelligent Thoughts for you to think, regardless of whether they are Intelligent Thoughts for anyone else to think.

For example, “Smoking stresses me out” might be a highly Intelligent Thought for quitting smoking for one person, but if you don’t comfortably and honestly see it that way, then it is not an Intelligent Thought for you.

But guess what? There is always an Intelligent Thought that can help you achieve your goals faster and easier, and part of developing the skill of Intelligent Thinking is learning how to identify those thoughts. (You’re about to learn a step by step system for doing this in a moment.)

For this particular example, you might pivot to “Even if smoking relaxes me, it’s still not worth it to me to smoke”. This might be a highly Intelligent Thought for quitting smoking for you to think, if you can comfortably accept this way of thinking as true or valid and it makes you less tempted to smoke.

A simple shortcut for Intelligent Thinking

Right now, I’m going to teach you a step by step system for using the power of Intelligent Thinking to instantly feel better, happier, and be more successful achieving your goals.

In fact, I’ll even do better than that: I’ll teach you a step by step system that helps rewire your mind for Intelligent Thinking so that you are naturally wired for greater happiness and success moving forward.

But if you’re looking for a quick shortcut, you can use the Always Greater Happiness & Success Tool.

This tool guides you through the steps below, and helps you rewire your mind to comfortably, naturally, and automatically think an Intelligent Thought in 2 minutes or less that instantly boosts your happiness and success moving forward.

6 Simple, Easy, Feel-Good Steps for Intelligent Thinking

  • Identify a goal you would like to make easier (something you want to do or achieve, could be big or small)
  • Identify one simple thought that might help make it easier to do this
  • Create an exciting epiphany about how your life might be better if you naturally thought this way
  • Determine whether this thought is valid or true to you
  • If the thought is valid or true, consciously and excitedly choose to accept this way of thinking moving forward
  • Celebrate this thinking change to further wire in this way of thinking and have more fun at the same time

Follow these steps to rewire your brain for happiness and success

Part of the beauty of this Intelligent Thinking system is that it not only helps you identify an Intelligent Thought worth thinking, but it also helps you rewire your mind to naturally and automatically think in this new, intelligent way moving forward.

And this is very powerful, because rewiring your mind for Intelligent Thinking = rewiring your mind for happiness and success.

But how do these steps help rewire my mind?

If you’ll notice, these steps are largely feel-good steps. In fact, this Intelligent Thinking System is a deliberately feel-good system, so that:

  • You enjoy going through these steps (making it easier to do)
  • Feeling good and better helps relax you and open up your mind to new, different ways of thinking
  • Feeling positive emotion helps rewire your mind to think differently (which is why celebrating is so important)

How does feeling positive emotion rewire your mind?

I have already written about the importance of celebration, and how it is the single biggest, most powerful skill you can learn for changing your thoughts, feelings, actions, habits, and life, in general. (Many thanks, as always, to behavior scientist Dr. BJ Fogg for this insight.)

In a nutshell, though, the basic insight from celebration is that you can use positive emotion to wire in new ways of thinking and new behaviors quickly and easily.

For this reason, the Intelligent Thinking system you just learned contains at least 3 deliberate instances of positive feeling:

  • You create an exciting epiphany about a new way of thinking (the more exciting, the better)
  • You excitedly choose to think this way moving forward (the more excited the better)
  • You celebrate your new thinking change (the more successful and excited you feel, the better)

This is how you kill 3 birds with one stone

Even though the steps in this Intelligent Thinking System are super simple and only take 2 minutes or less to complete, I want you to appreciate how powerful they are:

  • These steps help you feel good / better (this is already extremely valuable and worth it in and of itself)
  • Feeling good helps you wire in a new Intelligent Thought that in turn wires in more feel-good, happier emotions (it’s a clever little self-reinforcing circle)
  • Feeling good about a new Intelligent Thought also helps you wire in a new way of thinking that make you more successful achieving your goals

But what if I have trouble feeling good?

This is ok! For almost 10 years (from 2011 to 2020) I taught people the logical steps for changing their thinking, without incorporating deliberate emotional steps. And people still had very good, life-changing results with these systems.

What often happened: people tended to feel better and happier as a natural by product of changing their thoughts with my systems, but I hadn’t yet deliberately also utilized feeling good as a tool, in and of itself, for wiring in new thinking. If that makes any sense to you.

As I share elsewhere, even though I’ve always naturally celebrated my thinking changes on my own, it was something I never taught others to do, because I didn’t understand the significance of how celebrating helped me wire in new thoughts. It was only in early 2020 when I realized the connection, after reading an article by Dr. BJ Fogg, that I started updating all my tools and training to include more feel good elements.

So, again, to put your mind at ease, you don’t have to feel good to get great results with these steps. That said, if you want to get extraordinary results…

Develop the skill of celebration to feel better and get the best results

If you want to feel better and happier and get extraordinary results with these steps, learn how to develop the skill of celebration to feel better and happier and more successful, on demand.

Once you learn what celebration is and why it’s so important, I encourage you to use the Always Greater Celebration Tool to make it even easier for you to celebrate moving forward.

My final, ultimate recommendation, is that you then make celebration a natural, everyday part of your life, so that you naturally feel better and happier every day, no matter what’s going on in your life.

Any other tips on Intelligent Thinking?

Yes. I have more to say on the 6 steps for Intelligent Thinking you just learned and how to get the most out of them.

But, for now, to keep things simpler, I recommend that you try the Always Greater Happiness & Success Tool (or follow these 6 steps on a sheet of paper). By doing this, you’ll gain some immediate practice and success with Intelligent Thinking that instantly helps you feel better and makes it easier for you to achieve your goals.

About the author

Hi, I'm Dave Fonvielle, the founder of Always Greater. On this website I teach you step by step how to be happier and more successful achieving your goals, whether it's completing a small personal to do task, like doing the dishes, or a large business goal, like launching a new product. Get my free 3 Tiny Habits for Being Happier & More Successful training for all of this right here.