Psychological mind tricks are powerful tools often used in sales and marketing to influence behaviour. But what if we use similar techniques to influence ourselves and turn our long-held intentions into reality?
The same psychological principles that drive consumer decisions can be turned inward to help us take action, break bad habits, and accomplish things that once felt impossible.
We can apply these strategies to overcome common challenges, such as reducing sugar and junk food intake, maintaining a calorie deficit for weight loss, exercising regularly, overcoming procrastination, strengthening relationships, and so much more.
Let’s take time pressure as an example. It’s often used in sales to create a sense of urgency and prompt quick decisions. It can be just as effective in everyday life, helping us stop procrastinating and prioritize what truly matters.
Mind tricks are very powerful. This article presents six proven psychological mind tricks to help you finally follow through on what you’ve always wanted to accomplish.
Mind Trick to Combat Performance Anxiety
This mind trick helped me ace job interviews and land my dream job.
I discovered this trick in The Tools book by prominent psychologists Phil Stutz and Barry Michels. 1 Later, I learned that this trick is widely used in psychology to manage many forms of anxiety.
Performance anxiety occurs when we worry about being watched, judged, or expected to perform, such as in public speaking, taking a test, performing on stage, or even during job interviews. It’s that feeling of “What if I mess up?” when you’re in the spotlight.
The mind trick is working with the Shadow. The Shadow is the part of ourselves we’re most ashamed of. It holds our insecurities, flaws, and the traits we try to hide. It’s the version of us that feels unworthy or unlovable.
The first step is to identify and mentally describe your Shadow. It might appear as an awkward, anxious version of yourself or a distorted creature. The second step is to bond with the Shadow by accepting, embracing, and loving it.
When it’s time to perform, you concentrate on your Shadow instead of focusing on the audience or external judgment. You speak with it, but not against it. You and your Shadow appear as one, mentally commanding the audience to listen.
“Feel the authority that comes when you and your Shadow speak with one voice,” write Stutz and Michels.
What I found most liberating about this technique was that all the debilitating physical symptoms of performance anxiety felt like they were being experienced by the Shadow, not me, as if they were happening outside my body. They no longer interfered with my performance.
Mind Trick to Stop Craving Sugar and Junk Food
This mind trick helped me quickly lose my “freshman 25” and keep the extra pounds off ever since.
My first years of college hit me with a hard truth: not all food is created equal, and homemade meals make a huge difference in how we look and feel. I had zero interest in cooking and even less time for it back then. Instead, I grabbed whatever was quick and easy. The result? The pounds started piling on fast and without mercy.
Have you seen that viral Instagram video where a guy tries to eat a banana but gets seduced by an Oreo instead? That was me, except I skipped healthy food options and surrendered to junk food.
At about 25 pounds extra, I decided to turn things around. My strategy to get back in shape began with eliminating the worst offenders: sugar, refined carbs, and highly processed and starchy foods.
After a few tries, my real breakthrough came with a mind trick. Whenever I spotted one of my “off-limits” foods, I pictured it as scented plastic. Every bite would be packed with microplastics. These images easily erased unwanted food from a food category in my brain.
There was no more such thing as “just one bite”. This is a radical shift from the classic trap of thinking: “One little piece won’t make a shred of a difference.” That one bite usually leads to another, and before you know it, the whole cake is gone.
By avoiding the foods on my “plastic list” altogether, I retrained my taste buds in just a few months. Now, when I see junk food, I crave it as much as I crave actual plastic.
Tony Robbins teaches a similar trick in one of his seminars. Tony said that we all have food that we liked once, but at some point, it made us sick. He suggested associating unwanted food with that food to rewire your brain’s cravings through emotional memory.
The bottom line: if you want to stop craving certain foods, don’t treat them as a scarce indulgence by merely limiting them. Instead, rightfully reframe them as a genuine health threat and mentally label them as off-limits, once and for all.
Mind Trick to Stop Late-Night Eating
This mind trick helped me stop eating late and enjoy the benefits of intermittent fasting, drastically improving my sleep, energy level, and heart rate variability.
Late-night eating can take a serious toll on our health. 2 It’s linked to increased all-cause mortality, impaired brain function, and unwanted weight gain. 3,4 On the other hand, intermittent fasting offers a range of benefits, including improved metabolism and reduced biological age. One of the most effective approaches is to have your last meal at least three hours before bedtime and then fast for a minimum of twelve hours.
I used a simple mind trick to stop snacking after dinner. Just as social media platforms hide the “delete account” button and complicate the account deletion process so that most people give up, I made late-night snacking inconvenient by removing easy access to food.
First, I started limiting all eating at home to just the kitchen or dining areas. No eating in the car, on the couch, in bed, in front of the TV, or at my desk.
This is very similar to a well-known insomnia strategy: only use your bed for sleep and sex. 5 The goal is to retrain your brain to associate the bed exclusively with rest rather than stress or alertness. Likewise, by restricting eating to specific areas in the house, your brain learns not to expect food in other parts of your home.
Second is what I call the “kitchen closing” ceremony. After dinner, we do the dishes, wipe down the counters, tidy up, and leave the kitchen clean and clear of food. We then turn off the kitchen lights. The kitchen is officially closed until breakfast. Whenever I feel tempted to grab a snack afterward, I give myself a firm answer: “No, the kitchen is closed now. No food can be found there.”
Mind Trick to Start Exercising Regularly
This mind trick helped me start exercising regularly.
The hardest part of getting fit is getting started. Some studies suggest that establishing a consistent exercise habit takes at least six weeks, while others indicate that it can take up to six months. 6,7 Once the habit is established, something remarkable happens. The body begins to crave movement.
A well-known phenomenon known as runner’s high describes the euphoric state triggered by the release of endorphins and other feel-good chemicals during sustained aerobic exercise. It’s often experienced as a potent mix of exhilaration and mental clarity. People who engage in regular strength training or other forms of exercise report similar effects of feel-good hormones.
The real challenge is pushing through the initial resistance and reaching that turning point where exercise shifts from something you have to do into something you want to do.
I named the mind trick that helped me stick to regular exercise “me time.”
Every Sunday, I plan my workouts for the week. While the schedule depends on the weather, I typically aim for two to three outdoor cardio sessions and four gym workouts. During this planning time, I remind myself how hard it is to carve out space for exercise and how valuable those hours are. Simply taking time to plan shifted my mindset. I no longer view exercise as something I “have to do.” Instead, I view my time to exercise as a small window focused solely on me.
Outdoor cardio is easier to stick with. You step outside and keep moving. In contrast, gym workouts can feel like a constant mental battle, especially in the beginning. That’s when it helps to pause and remind yourself: “This is my time, hard-earned, limited, and valuable. This time is dedicated to building a better version of myself.”
Mind Trick to Beat Procrastination
This mind trick helped me overcome the urge to procrastinate on important tasks.
Marketers prompt us to act by creating a sense of urgency through limited-time deals, countdowns, and expiration dates. And it works. When time feels scarce, we’re more likely to take action.
However, here’s the twist. The time scarcity strategy used by marketers can be just as powerful when applied to ourselves.
In their book The 12 Week Year, Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington explain that the “plenty of time” mindset is a major driver of procrastination. They argue that traditional annual goals often lead to stalled progress and a lack of urgency. Instead, they advocate replacing year-long planning with focused 12-week sprints to sharpen priorities and build a powerful sense of urgency.
A great example of how time pressure can boost productivity is the hackathon. Hackathons are time-bound events where teams collaborate to develop creative solutions, often in the form of apps, software, or prototypes. The fast-paced environment sharpens focus and accelerates problem-solving by pushing participants to prioritize what truly matters.
My mind trick is to focus, as Oprah puts it, on “the next right step” only and to give myself short timeframes to take that step. 8
Breaking the journey into small, manageable steps makes it achievable. Focusing on the entire distance can be overwhelming.
My late grandmother covered miles on foot with her small children amidst the chaos of war. As my mom recalled, Grandma always encouraged them to make it just to the next tree, then pause and set their sights on the nearby landmark. The journey would be impossible without that trick.
I’ve also learned that squeezing tasks into small time pockets throughout my busy day is far more effective than waiting for a big block of free time, which rarely comes anyway.
I discovered this when my young children left for a month to visit their relatives, suddenly giving me more uninterrupted time than ever. Without the usual structure and urgency, I struggled to focus and lost my rhythm. My productivity plummeted. I accomplished far less than I did when my days were packed and every minute counted.
Mind Tricks to Think Before We Speak
This mind trick helped me resist the urge to speak or act in the heat of the moment.
We’ve all heard cautionary tales about leaked emails that went viral for the wrong reason or people like the infamous “Karen,” whose rude or inappropriate behaviour has made them public examples. No one wants to end up in that spotlight.
Problematic behaviour may not break the internet. It can break trust, relationships, and even families.
Take the experience of Eamon Dolan, a respected literary editor and publisher. The final breaking point with his mother came during a phone call when she snapped, “I suppose I have to watch every word I say to you!” Dolan replied, “You have to watch every word you say to everyone. That’s what good people do.” 9 He hung up the phone; those were the last words he spoke to her.
Here is the trick. When you talk to people, imagine that you are on camera, which can be true. When you write, imagine that your words are featured on the front page of a major publication. Also, imagine someone you admire dealing with this exact trigger. How would they react?
Responding with kindness and thoughtfulness can be difficult when we feel triggered, especially since most reaction patterns are subconsciously learned in childhood. Learning to pause and choose words carefully can be one of the most crucial skills, especially when meaningful relationships are at stake.
Another powerful mind trick, called “Active Love,” from the book The Tools by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels, can help us choose kindness in our words and actions. 10 As you speak to someone, imagine love flowing from your chest to theirs, softening the space between you and creating a sense of calm and connection.
Mind Tricks Cheat Sheet
- Combat Performance Anxiety. Mentally describe the hidden aspects of your personality that you dislike or repress, also known as your Shadow. Give your Shadow a clear visual image. Let your Shadow accompany you, but no longer be a hidden part of you. Partner with your Shadow instead of suppressing it. When it’s time to perform or present, focus on your Shadow, and speak with it in one voice of authority.
- Stop Craving Sugar and Junk Food. Create a personal list of foods that are most harmful to your health. Consult with your doctor and conduct some research. Your list will likely include ultra-processed items, sugary snacks, and artificial additives. Then, whenever you’re tempted by something on that list, imagine the food as if it were made of scented plastic. Picture what consuming plastic would do to your body.
- Stop Late-Night Eating. Set clear boundaries around when and where you eat. Limit eating to the kitchen or dining area only. Introduce a “kitchen closing” ceremony. After your last meal, clean up, put all food away, and turn off the lights. This signals to your brain that eating is done for the day. When late-night cravings hit, gently remind yourself: “The kitchen is closed now. There is nothing to find there.”
- Start Exercising Regularly. Use the weekend to plan your workouts for the week ahead. Reflect on how challenging it can be to carve out “me time” for exercise and why that makes it so valuable. On low motivation days, wear your workout clothes and remind yourself: “This is my time. I worked hard for this hour. It’s all about me, and I will make it count.” Repeat this mantra whenever you need a boost.
- Overcome Procrastination. Use time pressure and a sense of urgency to drive actions. Shift your focus from long-term goals to short-term timeframes by zeroing in on “the next right step.” Break large initiatives into smaller, manageable sprints and set target dates, even if they’re self-imposed. Instead of waiting for large blocks of time to be available in your busy calendar, fit tasks into small pockets throughout your day.
- Think Before You Speak. When you talk to people, imagine that you are on camera, which can be true. When you write, imagine that your words are featured on the front page of a major publication. Imagine someone you admire. How do they act when they feel triggered? As you speak to someone, imagine love flowing from your chest to theirs, softening the space between you and creating a sense of calm and connection.
FOOTNOTES
- The Inner Authority tool, created by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels, is designed to calm performance anxiety in social situations, confrontations, and public speaking.
- Harvard Medical School scientists at Brigham and Women’s Hospital discovered that eating later in the day can lead to increased hunger and a higher likelihood of obesity.
- According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, eating at night is associated with an increased risk of death from all causes, cancer, and diabetes.
- A team at the University of California, Los Angeles found that late-night eating can impair learning and memory.
- Writing for Turmerry, Chinmay Shankar emphasizes that using your bed solely for sleeping helps your brain associate it with rest, leading to better sleep.
- The longer you go without exercise, the more you settle into inactivity. Research cited in Psychology Today suggests it takes at least six weeks to form a new exercise habit.
- A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that building a gym habit can take up to six months.
- While delivering the commencement address at Agnes Scott College in Georgia, Oprah Winfrey told graduates, “You move forward by taking the next right step.”
- Eamon Dolan, Vice President and Executive Editor at Simon & Schuster, shared with The Telegraph a personal story of verbal abuse by his mother that ultimately led to their estrangement.
- The Active Love tool, developed by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels, helps transform anger and lingering grudges into clarity, compassion, and emotional freedom.