Monthly Archives: December 2009

One World, One Culture, One People?

We’re the Same, You And Me

Recently I’ve been reading this fascinating book by Steven Pinker, called “The Language Instinct.” If you are at all interested in language, psychology, or how the human brain is structured, you can’t go wrong with this book. In it he treats language as an instinct, rather than a learned ability. One of his supporting arguments is the existence of what seems to be a universal grammar that is common throughout all languages. There is an underlying structure that all languages follow, regardless of how isolated the culture is, how advanced or how archaic. This suggests that we have some kind of structure pre-wired into our brains for learning language.

There have been many scientists and psychologists who maintained that the human mind was a relatively blank slate, and it could be filled in depending on the environment and the surrounding adults. This argument holds that children need to be explicitly taught things like grammar and word order, and how to correctly identify dogs and trees. What Pinker argues very successfully in “The Language Instinct,” is that there is a structure that already exists, a structure that already has the blueprint for nouns, verbs adjectives and so out.

While there are about a billion different tangents I could go off on, there is one thing in particular that I’d like to talk about in today’s post. Chomsky is a linguist who made fantastic advanced in linguistic theory. He was the one that first suggested that if an alien came to Earth, and analyzed all the world’s languages, they would determine that we all speak the same language, just many different dialects. The structure of all of the world’s languages can easily described as on similarly structured language.

Other scientists have studied various cultures, with the intent to find, or uncover a “universal culture” like the “universal grammar” described by Chomsky and others. The results are striking. If you’ve ever traveled to another country, especially one where English wasn’t the primary language, perhaps you’ve experienced some kind of “culture shock.” Or even if you’ve watched documentaries on TV of some guys running around in loincloths in the jungle, still living like they did hundreds of generations ago. You might come to the conclusion that those cultures can’t be more different than modern western culture.

In Pinker’s book, he lists two full pages of elements of the “universal culture” on Earth (determined by anthropologist Donald E. Brown), and here are some highlights (purely chosen at random):

Language

Value placed on articulateness, gossip, lying, manipulation, humor, humorous insults, poetry with respective words of similar nature (e.g. rhymes).

Non Verbal Communication

Meaningless sounds used to convey meaning (e.g. cries, squeals, etc), generalized facial expressions communicating basic emotions (fear, happiness etc), guessing intent from actions, flirtation with the eyes, use of smiles as a friendly greeting.

Sex

Huge interest in sex, various methods of expressing sexual attraction, sexual jealousy.

Family

Families centered around the mother and the children, and one or more men.

Fears

Fear of loud noises, fear of snakes, fear of strangers.

Status

Social status based on age, and economic achievement. A fair amount of economic inequality, division of labor by sex and age. Domination of men in the public sphere.

Government

Coalitions, reasoning, generally non dictatorial leaders, (usually temporary, e.g. new leaders every so often), a common agreement of right and wrong, laws, retaliation, punishment, the existence of conflict (which is usually avoided at all costs). Property, inheritance of property.

Etiquette/Beliefs

Hospitality, special feast days, sexual modesty (e.g. sex in private), discrete elimination of bodily wastes, supernatural beliefs, magic to sustain and increase life, and to attract the opposite sex, rituals, rites of passage, dream interpretation.

I’m reminded of a story (passed around on the Internet, sourced to some book on sociology) of a strange culture that practiced a particularly odd custom. It was described in great detail and sounded very strange and out there. Until the end, when you read the punch line. It was a description of the procedure westerners use when we go to the bathroom to take a dump. But the way it was described sounded like supremely spiritual and superstitions custom that only some goofball tribesmen do in National Geographic.

The takeaway, at least for me, is that no matter who you compare yourself to, some guy chasing his dinner with a poison blow dart gun in some South American jungle, or some uptight trader on Wall Street wearing a five thousand dollar suit, you can’t help but to realize that we humans are much, much more similar that we are different.

As Joseph Campbell concluded after his life’s work studying the world’s various mythological stories, we all come from the same factory. We all have the same hopes, fears, dreams and obstacles to overcome in our daily life. In every chest, beats the same heart. At the end of the day, we all just want some peace and safety, and hopefully a few people to share it with. Something to think about when you bump into that weird guy on the street that you swear is from another planet.

The Unicycle Queen

Who Is The Real Harpo?

So the other day I was hanging out downtown. Maybe a week or so ago, I can’t recall the exact date. I had originally gone downtown to see the latest movie that has finally made it’s way to my neighborhood, only to find out that the time listed on their web page was incorrect, so I had an hour to kill. I hadn’t planned on hanging out any longer than it took to see the movie and head on home, so I didn’t bring a book or anything to read. I don’t really like just sitting in a coffee shop unless I have something to read, so I figured I’d just wander around for a while.

I came across this stretch of road where the street performers usually hang out. It’s on this covered area where cars and bikes aren’t allowed. It’s only for pedestrians to wander around. The performers are the normal kind, mostly amateur musicians belting out some tunes they’ve either written or borrowed from somebody. There’s usually this guy with this white parrot that he’ll put on your shoulder and take your picture for a few dollars, or a few hundred yen as the case may be. Once in a while they’ll be somebody doing magic or juggling or something.

That particular afternoon is a rather interesting show. It was this man/woman team that did all these really cool unicycle tricks. They had all means of props and costumes and personalities they would switch in and out of all the time. They even borrowed members out of the audience to involve them in their tricks. One trick involved several guys laying on the ground, and then this girl ride at them and somehow jumps them with her unicycle. She spent all kinds of time building up to the actual trick, which in and of itself was very entertaining. I was impressed with her skills. Although she spoke very little, she communicated quite a great deal. I was reminded of the episode of “I Love Lucy” where Lucy dresses as Harpo Marx, and then the real Harpo shows up. They are both on either side of a partition, and they do a bit where they each come out from either side of the partition and are strangely mirroring each other exactly. They do this several times, and the joke, of course, is who is the real Harpo and who is the imposter.

The jig is up when the real Harpo drops his hat, and it magically returns to his hand. Lucy of course, doesn’t have that trick hat, and hers falls to the ground.

As I was remembering this episode of a performer pretending to be another person pretending to be another person, while watching a performer putting on different personas at will, I was amazed at people’s vast capacity for self-deception. Now before you accuse me of being a cynic, I don’t mean self-deception in any negative sense. Self-deception is a hugely useful trait that has undoubtedly been passed down to us through successive generations of people that have slowly increased their effectiveness in surviving in a harsh environment.

A recent medical study showed that children have the capacity to use their imagination to make pain physically go away. There are thousands of documented cases of hypnosis being used in place of anesthesia in surgery, dental procedures, and other cases of pain control.

That gifted performs such as Harpo, Lucy, and that lady doing the unicycle trick can tap into that capacity is truly a gift to humanity. I’m reminded of a course I took once in hypnosis. The instructor started out by asking who the best hypnotist we’d eve encountered was. Most people couldn’t really think of any. When we all thought of hypnotists, we all assumed he was talking about a stage hypnotists, or a therapist or something like that. He surprised us when he said George Lucas was an example of a great hypnotist.

When you think of hypnosis of being way to capture and focus your imagination on a particular topic, that makes perfect sense. If you go to see a hypnotist to quit smoking or lose weight, he’ll sit you down in a comfortable chair. You’ll lean back and he’ll start talking to you in a soothing voice. And as you listen to this voice, and start to feel yourself sinking into that chair you are sitting in, you will start to forget about things that you used to worry about. You will start to let those thoughts that normally bother you slowly drop off the edge of consciousness as you let those other thoughts take up the main stage of your mind. Once you are in this relaxed, focused state, the hypnotist will start giving you suggestions, suggestions you will hopefully take as authoritative and truthful, and affirming. Such as you only breath fresh clean air, you only eat healthy food, you respect your body, and you get plenty of rest every night and so on.

Compare that to seeing Star Wars. You are sitting in your comfy chair, relaxed, leaning back. The everyday distracting thoughts are drifting away as you are focused a created reality that you will lend your thinking to for the next couple of hours. The lights dim, the crowd hushes. Then you see the words on the screen:

A Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy Far, Far Away….

And magically, all conscious connection to normal reality is gone, and your imagination is handed over to Lucas as he takes you on a Campbellian tale of epic proportion.

Of course, this human capacity is a double-edged sword. Just as we can give our mind over to a false reality for entertainment, or to temporarily dull pain, we can also fixate our minds on things that don’t help us one bit. Fears that aren’t true, limitations that don’t exist, and anxieties about events that likely will never happen seem to take up a lot of space in our brain. The trick is to not be too quick to let go of our critical factor when such images seem take hold of our minds.

Nobody likes the skeptic who continuously points out all the violations of the laws of physics or the plot holes of an otherwise decent movie. But that skeptical attitude is exactly what we need to kick out the false fears and seemingly but untrue reality that has taken up residence in our minds.

If you are having a good time, let it be. But if you aren’t, and you suspect a negative false reality has snuck in past your conscious gatekeepers, try asking yourself these questions:

Is It True?
How do I know?
How would I know if this wasn’t true?
Who would I be if this were false?
What could I do if this was false?
Can I find any evidence that this is false?
Is this true for everybody, or just me?
If this is not true for them, how can I make it not true for me?

And see what happens.

Have fun.

How To Love Mistakes And Failures

Are You Afraid Of Trying?

There was this prominent business leader giving an interview on a famous talk show. He had built several large companies, and had enjoyed massive amounts of success with them. It wasn’t always this way. We often make a mistake of perception when we see successful people. We assume that they were always successful, or they have some kind of secret edge that the rest of us don’t’ have. Maybe they were lucky enough to attend a prestigious university, or just enjoyed a string of lucky breaks.

But here’s some news that a lot of us don’t like to hear. A poll was done with successful, independent business owners. And when I say successful, I mean they were making enough money to live a good life, without any financial worries or difficulties. Wondering if they have enough money to buy something is not usually a concern for these people. The poll was to determine exactly how long it took for them to be successful. One question that was asked to help determine this was how many businesses they’d started before they started making serious money. The average answer was over ten.

All these successful people had, in some form or another, started at least ten businesses that ultimately failed before they finally found their niche.

Ten.

The reason I say most of us don’t like to hear this is because most of us are completely terrified, some even to the point of inaction, of the very thought of failure. Trying and failing, for some of us, is our worst nightmare. We imagine some horrible memory from our childhood, often vague and distant, but painful nonetheless. We imagine ourselves a little bit into the future, trying something new, and then suddenly imagining all the horrible things that will happen if we aren’t successful. Then the fear and anxiety kicks in, and we come up with a million reasons, or rather excuses, why we don’t want to try. Most of these excuses are self-delusional. See if you recognize some of the more popular ones:

I don’t have time.
I don’t have enough money.
People from my background (whatever you think that is) can’t do that.
I’m man.
I’m a woman.
I’m (insert your ethnicity here).
As soon as I (insert your lame excuse here) I’ll do that.
I’m going to get started next week.
As soon as I get a raise at work.
As soon as I get a boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife/partner.
As soon as I pay off my credit cards.

The bottom line is all these are just excuses to cover the real reason we are afraid of trying. A mistaken belief that we formed before we even learned to speak. Since the first time we cried, and our moms didn’t come and immediately pick us up, we had to come up a reason to fill the cause/effect mechanism in our brains. This belief was created, and ratified thousands of times during the most formative years of our childhood.

I’m not good enough.

The good news is that this is only true if you believe it. If you don’t believe it, and throw it out like the garbage that it is and insert a more empowering belief in its place, that will be just as true.

Then you’ll learn one of the most elusive, deceptive and at the same time most powerful secrets of human development and potential.

Mistakes and failures are the best things you can do to be successful, in anything you try. Instead of seeing “mistakes,” or “failures,” as proof of your erroneously believed inadequacy, you’ll see them for what they truly are.

Feedback from the environment in which you are operating. If you have a clear and solid goal of where you want to go, these mistakes and failures will be the things that keep you on track, and guide you toward you target like a heat seeking missile.

This famous businessperson in the interview was asked as simple question:

“How can I double my success rate?”

The answer was quick, straightforward and simple:

“Double your failure rate.”

The most successful people, in any field, understand this. Every action they take offers feedback. They look at every feedback as a golden opportunity to analyze their actions, compare them to the results that the actions created, and then to go back and modify their actions to get better results the next time around.

When you make this process a habit, success is inevitable. No matter what you are after, with this mindset, you will achieve it. It may take time, and you may not get there in the way that you thought, but you’ll get there.

And for bonus points, you can learn to enjoy the path. For those that have learned to enjoy the journey, as well as the destination, are the happiest people in the world.

How To Tap The Feeling Exercise For Incredible Power And Charisma

How To Find Your Untapped Resources

If you are ever in situation where you feel out of control or at a loss on how respond to any particular situation, here’s a quick mental exercise that can give you a boost. When done in isolation, it can give you some perspective, and briefly shake off any anxiety caused by external situations. When done as habitually several times a day (don’t worry, it’s quick, easy and nobody will know that you are doing it) it can slowly give you incredible power, self-confidence, and charisma.

It’s called the “Feeling Exercise,” and was described by Arnold Patent in his book “You Can Have It All.” I hesitated to buy the book at first because it sounded like another of the seemingly millions of new agey, law of attraction type books that have a bunch of vague ideas that don’t really offer any specific advice. But this book, while it is based on some pretty “out there” metaphysical ideas, is worth it just for this one exercise.

It may be a bit difficult to really feel the power of this at first, so I recommend practicing it often. Once you get that “aha” feeling, you’ll never want to be without it. It will give you a great feeling of power and ownership over your feelings and emotions; despite whatever situation you happen to be in. Experts agree that the largest cause of stress is that feeling you are in some crappy situation that you can’t do much about. This will change all that.

The first step is to simply feel your feelings. Start with whatever physical sensations you are feeling. A need to go to the bathroom, or a soreness in your left food, or a weird tingling on your scalp, anything is fine. Just pick one to work with.

The next step is to feel the feeling without any judgments or labels, or desire for it to go away. To make it easy, use as a neutral feeling as you can. Try not to attempt this while having an orgasm or experiencing a compound fracture. Those might be a bit distracting until you master this. So pick something like a vague grumbling in your stomach, or a feeling of warmth on your leg or something.

So feel the feeling without labels, or judgments (good or bad) or any desire for the feeling to go away. Feel the feeling exactly as it is. To help you do this, try and describe the feeling itself, without labels. What color is it? What is the texture? What is the physical size of it? What are the edges, the outside areas of the feeling like? Do they end abruptly, or slowly transition into something else?

Next is to feel the energy and the power in the feeling. Feel this as the power of life, the power and energy that existed before there was any matter ever created in the universe. Pure, untapped power. Feel this energy and power as YOUR energy and power. Nobody else. Your energy. Your power.

Next, feel appreciation for your energy and your power. Feel gratitude for it.

After that, feel appreciation for yourself, feeling the feeling, and feeling the power and energy in the feeling, and feeling appreciation for the power and the energy of the feeling. Feel as much appreciation for yourself as you possibly can, feeling the feeling.

That’s it. This may seem strange at first, but pretty soon, you’ll be able to do this within a few seconds. And you’ll also be able to do this when you have those “bad” feelings that most people want to get rid of.

You’ll soon discover that the power and energy is the same in all your feelings. And when you start to learn to feel appreciation for the power in all your feelings, that powerlessness you used to feel in certain uncomfortable situations will be a thing of the past. Because no matter what your mind/body system’s automatic response is, you’ll be able to dig underneath it to find the gold that is always inside you waiting to be discovered.

So here’s a recap:

Feel the feeling.
Feel the feeling free from judgments or labels.
Feel the energy of the feeling.
Feel appreciation for the energy of the feeling.
Feel appreciation for yourself, feeling the power and energy of the feeling.

One final note, when feeling appreciation you may need to consciously choose to feel appreciation. It may not come naturally, so you may have to really work at it. But just like any other thing you practice, it will get easier and easier to the point that it’s automatic.

Have fun with this.

How To Genetically Alter Your Personality

DNA – Is It In You?

I had this pretty cool revelation, or idea, this morning while I was out walking that I’d like to share with you. It’s one of those ideas that make perfect sense until you try to explain it to somebody else, and then it sounds like utter nonsense. Hopefully this won’t happen here.

It’s based on some basic ideas from biology as well as some concepts from metaphysics. It is also based on the underlying assumption that all of the interactions between matter and energy in the universe obey specific laws all of the time. There is zero room for randomness. Of course, often times we humans with our limited range of perceptual abilities and logical reasoning are ill equipped to deal with most of these laws, so many times they can appear like some kind of voodoo black magic or white magic or law of attraction or however you like to describe your favorite metaphysical laws.

It’s also based on the idea that smaller systems, which follow certain rules can collectively make up larger systems which may or may not appear to follow the same rules. For example, the laws of Newtonian physics are vastly different than Quantum physics. Of course, they are different sets of systems on two totally different scales. So the laws are the same, they are just scale dependent. Like a speed limit in a small town is vastly different than on the interstate, they are still laws enforced by the same entity.

Ok, where was I. Oh yea.

DNA. This is the building block of all life. The core of life on earth. Billions of years ago, there was no life on earth, and then something happened. Either by an intervention by a deity, or aliens, or a random strike of lightening, DNA was created. And it started to reproduce. Again and again. Every strand of DNA that exists today, in every living entity, is a combination of strands that came before it. Humans get half from mom, and half from dad. Some other organisms, like some simple plants reproduce themselves exactly. Nevertheless, all DNA is copied and pasted from one or more of its predecessors. All the way back to the original one.

How exactly does DNA work? It is this long strand of chemical, shaped like a twisted ladder. They call it a double helix. Then somehow, it untwists, so it looks like a normal ladder. The rungs of the ladder separate, and expose their raw ends to the inside of the cell soup. And within that cell soup are certain amino acids that come up and link together with the raw ends of the ladder. The amino acids link individually to the raw ends of the ladder, and then join to each other. Then they collectively uncouple or detach from the ladder. The ladder then re attaches to itself, and coils back up. The new protein, formed from the single amino acids that came down and joined together is now floating off to do whatever job it was made to do. DNA is incredibly long, and it has four different types of “rungs.” So whatever small stretch of the DNA decides to uncoil, will make a different protein. DNA is like blueprint for your body. Your brain.

DNA uncoils, and exposes its raw “blueprint” for the protein to be made. Then the protein is filled in by whatever is available in the surround cell fluid, or soup, or whatever you call it on that microscopic level.

Ok, now here’s the part that seemed to be much more insightful on my morning walk while the sun was just peeking over the mountains. Suppose your personality behaves like your DNA. Whatever part you decide to open, or expose, will be filled by whatever is around you. If you expose fear and anxiety, you will create fear and anxiety. If you smile and wave at people, you will receive smiles and waves in return. If you are growing in the womb, and your DNA is continually unraveling a blueprint to create brown eyes, that is it is “attracting” specific amino acids to link up into proteins to build brown eyes, you will have brown eyes.
If you continually expose part of your personality that builds happiness, you’ll be surrounded by happiness. So how do you do this?

The things that link together to build the proteins for brown eyes are the amino acids that link together in a specific order. There is nothing mysterious or esoteric or metaphysical about it. You put the right amino acids in the right order, and you’ll get the same effect again and again and again.

What about happiness? If happiness is the end result, what are the building blocks? What are the smaller “bits” like amino acids that when linked together, will create the exact same happiness, again and again and again?

Behaviors and communication. A specific strand of DNA exposed in the microscopic soup will attract the right amino acids to make the right protein.

A specific collection of behaviors and communication, when exposed to the world around you, in the right order, will produce the same happiness again and again and again. When your DNA wants to grow some hair, it unravels that part of itself, attracts the right amino acids, and they hook up together to make some hair in your hair follicles.

When you expose the right behaviors and communication in the right order, you will attract the right responses from people that when linked together, will build the same result every time.

Now, of course, people aren’t robots who will respond automatically the same way every time, but you’d be surprised how repeatable most of our behavior is. If you scream “fire” in a crowded movie theater, nobody is going to come up and shake your hand. If you offer a genuine smile and say “hi” to a stranger, they aren’t likely to punch you in the face.

Most people will respond pretty much the same way to the behavior and communication you project. So if you want a different result than you’ve been getting, change up or experiment with your behavior and your communication a bit, and see how the results you create will differ.

Probably the biggest take away from all of this is that you are largely responsible for the world you live in. By changing your behavior, you can drastically improve the results you’ve been getting, whatever they are, or whatever they want them to be.

And just as DNA is so fricking long it has taken scientists years and tons of money just to list it’s sequence, your personality is much more complex and abundant. If one part doesn’t work, you can easily try on something else.

How To Change Your History For An Easier Future

Are You Using Outdated Programs?

I was taking this self-development seminar once, and the guy was saying that thinking about your future is like driving a car. At least when it comes to comparing how much time you should focus on the future, versus how much time you should focus on the path. His analogy was the size of your windshield compared to the size of your rear view mirror.

It’s important to glance behind you from time to time, but it’s much more important to keep a keen eye on where you are going. You should dwell on past mistakes, or worry too much about things from your past that you can’t change. Accept it and move on. Even if others have treated you like crap, it never does any good to hold a grudge. I believe it was Mandela who said holding a grudge is like drinking poison and hoping the other guy dies.

OK, that makes sense. It also reminds me of another metaphor by Wayne Dyer when he said that the wake doesn’t drive the boat. The wake being the waves of water left behind a boat as it goes across the water. The wake is purely an after the fact effect, and has no bearing whatsoever on the future direction of the boat. OK, sounds simple enough. The past is the past, and should stay in the past.

But is it really that simple? Humans have some really powerful, and really deep hard wiring in our brains to learn and improve. That is one of the reasons we have become the dominant animals on the planet over that last couple million years. We have instincts, just like many other creatures (some say many many more instincts) but we also have the capability to learn. And many times, that learning is automatic, unconscious and completely outside of our awareness.

Just ask a little kid who performed the unfortunate, but necessary experiment of sticking his finger on a hot stove. He or she will learn in about half a second that stove with fire equals danger, and should avoided at all costs. In that particular example, the wake indeed does drive the boat. The wake I this case being the memory of pain the child will remember whenever he goes near as stove. His memory of the event, or the wake, will definitely mold his choices and thinking in the future.

If humans didn’t have the capability to learn from our mistakes, and the mistakes of others, we’d have been extinct hundreds of thousands of years. When Zog and Bog were out hiking around, and Bog got eaten by a tiger, Zog didn’t was any time remembering every single thing about the event, and committing it to memory for future reference. The location, time of day, appearance and sound of a tiger were all burned into his brain. Because of the magic of language, he was able communicate all of these things to his buddies back at the cave, so they wouldn’t make the same mistake as poor Bog.

So it seems that our history and experience really can have a powerful and profound effect on our behaviors, thoughts and actions as we move toward the future. It’s not quite as simple as the two metaphors described above.

But there is some good news. While it’s true that our brains will automatically remember things that caused us pain in the past, and remind us of those memories as we move close to experiencing those things again (usually in the form of vague anxiety), there is a solution.

Whenever we label something as dangerous, our brains remember the label we give to the “thing” as much as the thing itself. When the kid touched the stove, and Zog saw Bog get eaten by a tiger, the events themselves caused an automatic reaction. But in today’s modern world, our interpretation of events is what causes the emotional pain in many cases.

Things like public speaking, asking a pretty girl or guy out on a date, or asking your boss for a raise bring up feelings of anxiety and fear not because they are inherently dangerous situations (unless of course you actually have an experience of giving a speech at toastmasters, and were beaten within an inch of your life due to your lackluster performance) but because we labeled them as such.

Many times this label is as automatic as Zog’s was while watching his friend being eaten. But there is a cool trick.

There is so much in your personal history; you can re program your brain to “access” different memories whenever you go into a potentially worrisome situation. If you let your brain choose, it will go for the most safety, so it will find the scariest memories. Your brain operates on a “better safe than sorry” strategy, so it picks out the most scary and painful memories in order to keep you the safest.

But when you realize that you have billions and billions of memories to choose from to use as a reference when you go into any particular situation, you can train your brain to use more positive and enhancing memories rather than scary ones. This takes some time and some conscious work, but the rewards are enormous.

Imagine having to give a speech. Scenario one is relying on your brains automatic factory installed programs, which find the most horrifying experiences of your life regarding public speaking. You’ll likely get sweaty palms, heart palpitations, and feel as if you are about to vomit.

Scenario two is instead of automatically recalling all those horrifying memories, you consciously choose to remember all the times you’ve expressed yourself in public and gotten good results. Like I said, this can take some practice, but after a few times you’ll feel excited and happy, as if you are about to do something really fun and exciting, rather than dreading it.

And you can do all this purely through your imagination. Just imagine yourself giving as speech, and then quickly and consciously recall as many positive experiences and memories as possible. Keep switching back and forth in your mind, imagining a future speech, and then going back into your past and thinking of all those good memories.

And here is a bonus tip. If you can’t find any positive memories in your history, you can make them up. Your brain won’t know the difference. Find some memories that are kind of close, and then change them around so you can remember them differently. This will have be jus as powerful.

The choice is yours. You can either leave your mental programming the way it came from the factory, designed to be used by cavemen and cavewomen to survive from saber tooth tigers, or you can upgrade to the modern version, and consciously go in reprogram your thoughts and memories to serve you in exactly the way you want.

The Dangers Of Your Comfort Zone

How To Expand Your Limits

I had this fish once a few years ago. Actually, I had several fishes. I don’t know what go into me, but I got the idea that I wanted to have a tropical fish tank in my apartment. And as luck would have it, there was a tropical fish store in the mini mall just behind where my apartment was located. I suppose there is a connection there; as the tropical fish store was right next door to the cleaners I took my shirts to. (Marketers take note.)

So I went in one Saturday afternoon, not sure what I wanted, and started looking around. I priced difference size tanks, equipment, shapes that would best fit in my apartment, etc. Finally I settled on size and a price, and now was time to pick the fish.

“I need some fish,” I asked the guy. He explained to me how the shop was set up. On the left, were fighting fish. Fish that can’t live with other fish or else they’ll kick the crap out of each other. On the right were passive fish, or fish that just stare at you bug eyed from inside the tank. Since I had in mind a tank with a bunch of different fish swimming around, I decided on the passive fish.

I remember once I took this public speaking class. The guy who taught it started it off with some story, which of course was a metaphor for personal growth. The story was told to him by his original teacher at this public speaking course. It was a famous course, and most of the instructors are former members who realized incredible personal growth through the course and wanted to continue their growth by teach others.

I’m not sure if they actually designed the course that way, or if it just naturally grew that way, but it seems to be a pretty good way to build your business. The people that teach others are people that were successful in it to start, so they really know the ins and outs. And the instructors are always being created, as more and more people join the course.

That way, they really only need to worry about getting new people to sign up for the course, rather than always be on the lookout or new instructors. It is kind of self-feeding business. Just put people into the funnel and they will either spread the word to other potential members, or become instructors themselves.

This particular public speaking class has been around for many years, at least fifty or so, and has slowly grown through this method. Unless you know somebody who’s gone through the course, you likely haven’t heard of it. Of course, if you are looking for one of the best public speaking courses around, you’ll likely find this one, if you do any kind of searching.

Anyway, this guy went into a fish store, and noticed that there were several different sharks. Some sharks were pretty big, while other sharks were kind of small. At first the guy thought maybe they were different breeds or species or whatever the word is that they use to classify sharks, but then he noticed that they were all very similar in appearance. They only differed by size.

So he then assumed that maybe some were younger, and some were older. But when he asked the shopkeeper, he was surprised.

These sharks only grow as big as their cage. It has something to do with their swimming patterns. They don’t have air buoys like other fish, so they can’t just sit and float. They need to keep moving. If they are confined to a relatively small area, they won’t grow very big. They have evolved this as a way to not out strip their resources. If they are in bigger tank, or a bigger area, then they grow bigger.

Of course, the sharks really have no idea that they are in a container; they just swim around and are automatically constrained by their boundaries. Those with larger boundaries expand to meet them, and those with smaller boundaries stay small.

He asked what would happen if you took a small fish and put it into a larger area. The shopkeeper told him that they would naturally adjust, and grow bigger. He said that’s the interesting thing about sharks, is that they are like people in this regard. They are always growing to match their boundaries. If they want to grow bigger, all they need to do is increase the limits of their boundaries, and they will naturally expand to meet them.

But like most people, sharks sit around and wait for somebody else to put them into a bigger container. They expect some outside force or entity to change the shape of their cage. Some people have figured out the secret. That our cages are really only a figment of our imagination. All we really need to do is imagine that our cages are bigger, and we will expand accordingly. Most people never figure this out, and are always waiting for somebody else to guide them by the hand to bigger and better cages.

Once you know the secret, you can just re-imagine our limits until they are big enough to contain all the goals and things you want to achieve in life.

That’s when this guy realized he was at the first day of a public speaking seminar, and the instructor was giving them a kind of pep talk. Over the next twelve weeks, they would be expanding their comfort zones considerably through the practice of public speaking. And they would learn the best secret of all.

All of your boundaries are set by your fears of what you think is on the other side. When you face those fears, and realize they are only figments of your imagination, you boundaries or comfort zone will expand immeasurably. Which is exactly what they learned at this public speaking seminar.

The funny thing is that I think the shopkeeper made a mistake. Because even though I picked all passive fish, from the passive fish side of the store, it didn’t take long for one fish to eat all the rest. I started out with about six fish. Every other day or so there would be one more fish missing.

And all I had left was one fighting fish that had been mistaken for a passive fish, which was now proudly the only fish in his tank.

How Many Levels Is Your Communication?

The Depth Of Perception

I was riding my bike downtown yesterday when I bumped into a friend. Not quite a friend, but an acquaintance. Some people have hundreds of people that they could consider friends, but I have a clear distinction in my mind between a friend and an acquaintance. Certainly acquaintanceships can grow into friendships, that’s how all friendships start, when you think about it. You meet somebody, you either share enough in common, sometimes a location or common goal, like at school or at work.

Then you make the all-important break from your commonalities. If you see somebody at work every day for several months, and you get on with them pretty well this can happen. Maybe they’ll be some after work party, or maybe you’ll get together for a game of basketball after work, and slowly move your relationship away from areas of commonality.

When you can have obvious differences, especially religious, moral or political views, and maintain a solid friendship that transcends all that, then you know you’ve got a winner

I was listening to this guy giving a lecture once on the power of a contrarian opinion. He said that most people surround themselves with people that share their same viewpoints. Most people easily fall into this trap. He was saying this is very dangerous, because if you only expose yourself to one viewpoint, you effectively shut yourself off from the flexibility of thinking if you were to expose yourself to other viewpoints. This works two ways. The first is that you may hear another point of view that actually makes more sense that yours. Another is that you will have to actually defend your point of view rather than just say “Yea!” to each other when you’re hanging out with like-minded friends.

Going through the process of defending and arguing for your point of view other than simply saying “Well, that’s just how I feel. We’ll have to agree to disagree.” Can be a profound learning experience. Saying that you’ll just agree to disagree only makes you and whoever you are disagreeing with dig into your own respective positions a little deeper.

Of course, this can be extremely difficult to do, as many times we have strong emotional connections and investments in our viewpoints. It can be hard to discuss them objectively without feeling we are in a personal battle to see who has the stronger emotional fortitude. Many times, if you break down the arguments from a linguistic and logical standpoint, they don’t differ very much from second grade schoolyard arguments:

“Nuh uhh!”
“Yea Huh!”
“Well, you’re stupid!”
“And your fat!”

And so on. If you remove the emotions from many discussions, debates and arguments, and look at them objectively, you’ll find that almost all arguments will fall into the above structure. Sure they will be much more eloquently stated, and much more long-winded, but the logic boils down the same. To really understand this, it can help to read them on paper, rather than listening to verbal exchanges.

Those that have a depth of understand and a really wide view of the world have the ability to make friends with people of varying viewpoints. Not only that but those that can accept their friends’ opposing viewpoints objectively, and respectfully, without thinking they are somehow morally or intellectually deficient in need to “fixing” are the true winners.

But the guy I ran into had yet cross that level of familiarity. He was an acquaintance that I’d met at a few seminars. We are both in the same line of work, so we attend the same kind of seminars.

So after I stopped and talked to him, we realized that we really don’t have that much in common. After exchanging pleasantries, how ya been, etc, and talked about the latest “news” in our particular industry, we really weren’t left with much to talk about. It was an interesting part of our conversation, that only lasted a few seconds. It was subtle, but I think we both understood what was going on.

I’d stopped my bike and got off, but not completely. I was still straddling it so I could easily start peddling again. He stopped in the street, and only half turned to face me. Both of us had only about half a commitment to the conversation. After the normal “how ya doin,” we moved onto the “what are you doing, where are you going.” Neither of us wanted to give up much, we each gave the perfunctory “oh nothing much, just hanging out.” Then the moment of truth came. There we were, on a Sunday afternoon. We knew each other on a first name basis, and if we kept our discussion to our respective jobs, we could probably fill a couple hours of conversation. Both had acknowledged we didn’t have any particular plans for that day. But neither of us had committed fully to the conversation, from a body language perspective.

So after our exchange, we stood there. Waiting for the other, or perhaps giving the other a chance to suggest doing something together. Grab a bite to eat, get a beer, whatever. But neither of us was interested enough to being the first to initiate it. But we both felt kind of obliged to allow the other person to chance. Neither of us did, and we said our “see ya around’s” and left.

The same kind of interaction that happens every day, hundreds of millions of times. The way humans kind of “sniff” each other out to determine each other’s intentions.

Now normally I wouldn’t pay much attention to such a non-event, but I’ve been reading a lot of Steven Pinker’s books lately, which focus on linguistics and how they effect psychology. There is a lot going on to our daily communications that are below the surface, and many times have much more influence on our relationships that the actual words that we use. It’s pretty amazing when you think about it.

I guess the moral of the story, or the take away, is realize that we humans communicate on many, many different levels, and we are always reading others and projecting things about ourselves to all of those around us, all the time.

So we got that going for us. Which is nice, I think.

How The Rabbit Discovered The Secret Of Life

The Magic Of Multiplication

Once upon a time there was this rabbit. He was like any other normal rabbit, except when it came to chasing down carrots, he was a little bit afraid. When he was a young rabbit, just at the stage when rabbits learn how to dig for their own food, he set out to find his first carrot. He’d watched his parents dig up carrots, and thought it seemed pretty easy, so he figured it was time he could dig up his own, and not have to follow his parents around.

Now when it comes to rabbit and carrots, there is a huge window in the time that they get food from their parents, and when they learn to dig it up on their own. What makes it particularly confusing is that just around the time that rabbits start learning to dig up their own carrots, they start to learn how to make more rabbits, if you know what I mean. That can thoroughly confuse the issue with most rabbits.

It’s kind of tough growing up as a baby rabbit whose parents haven’t yet learned how to dig up their own carrots. Then you have a situation where grandma and grandpa rabbit are digging up the carrots for everybody. It sort of gives some time to the parents, sometimes. It’s not uncommon for several generations of rabbits to be alive at once, as everybody knows how good rabbits are at multiplication.

It’s not uncommon at all for a rabbit to live his whole life and never learn to dig up his own carrots. Of course, this story is about one young rabbit, and how he learned to this.

The first time he set out, he was really excited. He’d seen his dad do it plenty of times. His dad was known as the local expert in finding carrots. It’s not as easy as one would think. Most of the carrot lives underground, with only the green part sticking up. It’s easy to miss a good patch of carrots, and it’s easy to pull up a bunch of weeds that don’t turn out to be anything.

What happened to this young rabbit was particularly frightening. He set out by himself, because in case he pulled up a clump of weeds, he didn’t want to be laughed at by those older than him.

So he found a clump of green stuff, that he thought was likely a carrot. He looked around to make sure nobody was watching, and then he pulled with all his might. What he found horrified him. It was a carrot, but it had already been partially eaten. There was a squirrel that had gotten in and eaten it from the ground up. And he squirrel was still eating it, and caught completely by surprise by the rabbit. He reacted accordingly, and snarled and hissed at the rabbit. Now, had the rabbit spoken squirrel, or the squirrel spoken rabbit, they likely could have come to an agreement about splitting the carrot. But as it was, the rabbit fled in terror.

That was over a year ago. And since then, all the rabbit’s friends had learned to dig up their own carrots. Every time the rabbit ventured out to find his own carrot, he remembered the snarling and screaming squirrel. He would find a plump carrot just begging to be dug up, but would lose all his nerve. He would scamper home, empty handed and depressed.

One day he was on is way home, and he ran into his grandfather. (Or maybe it was his great grandfather, he couldn’t tell).

“What’s up?” Said gramps.
Young rabbit tried to ignore him.
“Still worried about that squirrel?” gramps asked. Young rabbit was shocked. He didn’t realize that anybody knew. Gramps chuckled.
“Old Chester once got scared off by a rock, thought it was a monster. Couldn’t dig carrots for years after that.”
Young rabbit felt a little bit better, but he didn’t know who Chester was.
“And Marvin was scared by a squirrel as well. But he learned a secret.”
“What secret?” young rabbit asked.
“Squirrels are all bark and no bite. They only scream at you so you’ll be startled enough so they can run away. They never, ever will fight over a piece of food. They’re actually pretty smart when you think about it.”
“What do you mean?” young rabbit asked.
“Just look around,” gramps said, waving his paw at the vast countryside where the rabbits lived.
“There’s enough food here to last everybody hundreds of generations. Why in the world would you fight over a small scrap like one carrot?” gramps said, laughing.

Young rabbit thought about it.

“Like take that small green shrub, pull it out and take a look at it.”
Without thinking, young rabbit turned around, grabbed the green leaves sticking out of the dirt and gave it a yank. A nice, plump carrot came out.

“Now take a look at that one, is it any different from that one over there?” Gramps said, motioning to another clump. Young rabbit turned, grabbed and yanked. He held the two carrots together. They were identical.

“Just look around, I’ll be in an hour you could find hundred just like that. Do you really think a squirrel would want to fight a rabbit over something that is so abundant?”

The young rabbit thought.

“No, I guess not.”
“So how many carrots can you eat in a day?”
“I don’t know, maybe one?”
“Well now, you’ve got two. Why don’t you find a nice pretty girl rabbit and give it to her. I think you know what comes next.” Gramps winked and hopped off.

Young rabbit thought. So many carrots to pull. So many girls to give them to. He suddenly realized why all the rabbits around him seemed so happy. He smiled and hopped off.

Money Love

Open The Floodgates

I remember I went on this backpacking trip once. We had planned it out fairly thoroughly, reading several guidebooks, and buying maps with different levels detail. One thing that we couldn’t really plan on was the size of the rivers. The mountains we were planning on hiking in were in the Sierra Nevada range in California. Those mountains have several thousand small lakes, which are fed by the annual rainfall, creating several thousand streams and rivers of various sizes.

Because these streams and rivers are so numerous, you inevitably have to cross one or two large ones if you are going on hike that is longer than a day or two. Since these mountains are kept as pure as possible, from a human interaction point of view, doing anything other than keep debris from blocking established trails is strictly prohibited. This means that no bridges exist, or do strategic placements of stones. It’s not uncommon to spend several hours wandering up and down a riverbank looking for an appropriate place to cross.

Often time there is not real danger, but when hiking with a pair of wet boots is never a pleasant experience. It makes it much easier to get blisters, which can ruin an entire trip. Crossing a river without getting wet is ideal.

Generally speaking, when looking for a place to cross, you either look for a point where the river is particularly narrow, where crossing will only take a couple strategically places steps. Other times the best you can do is find a place that is relatively shallow, and simply walk across. If you are lucky, and the bottom is relatively smooth, you can take off your shoes and wade across, with the water hopefully not getting higher than your waist. Keep in mind this water is freshly melted snow, so it is really cold.

The ideal is a slow moving river that is shallow enough and narrow enough to not get your boots wet. The worst I’ve ever experienced was when we had to strip down to our underwear, carry our packs over our heads, and cross that way. The best place we could find to cross was about four meters across, and about a meter deep. Luckily the bottom was sandy, and the water was flowing slow enough that it didn’t pose any danger. But it was really, really cold.

I was listening to an interview on the radio the other and they were talking about this book called “Flow,” where the author described the experience when you are completely and fully engaged in something to the exclusion of all else. It is a fascinating feeling, usually experienced by athletes and artists. If you’ve ever experienced it, then you know what it’s like. Everything seems to disappear, and any conscious interference that exists normally is virtually shut off. You become a machine, fully focused on the event at hand. It’s almost as if you are watching yourself flawlessly performing some task.

One of the most esoteric conversations you can have with yourself is regarding the metaphysical flow of money. You can look at it as a purely right-brained physical based entity, obeying the laws of physics and of cause and effect. You do certain things, and you get a certain amount of money. You want certain things and you give up a certain amount of money. Other schools of thought, usually thought a little bit on the new agey side, teach the money should be thought of as a flow of energy, and that all you need to do is open yourself up, in both directions. That is, in order to have money flowing in just as readily as it flows out, you should set up your consciousness to appreciate the exchange in both directions. You should be just as happy to receive product or services in exchange for your money, as you should in receiving money for your products or services.

I’ve even read some suggestions saying you should write a big “Thank You” on your checks to the IRS every year.

The interesting thing about money is that if flows whether we want it to or not. For the whole of human history, until only a few thousand years ago, there wasn’t any money. Now there is hundreds of millions traded every day on the Forex Exchange. This is just different country swapping out their currencies at the end of every single day.

Whatever your own personal beliefs about money are, money is there, money is flowing, and it would probably do you some good to figure out a way to get in on the action. It’s not like there is a finite size of the pie, and once the pieces are gone, they’re gone. The money supply increases every year, and the ways and paths that it flows increase as well.

And the cool thing about money flow is that you don’t have to worry about getting swept away by the current, or worrying about keeping your boots dry. You can just dive right in. Kick the boulders out of the way and let if flow. They’ll be plenty more where that came from.