Category Archives: Appreciation

It’s Never Too Late – Never Give Up

Numbers

There’s this guy that I know that I meet up with from time to time for various reasons. We usually meet in the same place, usually for hour or so or less. This guy is exceedingly busy, and doesn’t have a lot of free time. I hadn’t him around recently, but I ran into him last week. He had just finished his PhD doctoral thesis on some kind of advanced mathematics. Something to do with eigenvalues and laplacians and boundary levels. He was trying to explain how laplacian waveforms behave differently with and without boundaries. Of course, I have zero idea what that means, but I acted like I did. It has been a long time since I’ve studied calculus, and while many of the equations in his thesis looked to be written with symbols I was at least familiar with at one point in my life, I had forgotten the meanings.

The interesting thing was that he had spent the entire night before meticulously checking his final thesis for errors. In case you’ve read any of my other blog points, you may have come to the conclusion that checking for errors isn’t one of my particular strong points. And that’s a few hundred-word blog post. This guy had a several hundred page thesis densely packed with graduate level math equations. And he had spent the whole night hunting to make sure every last “t” and had been dotted and every indefinite integral had been properly tabulated.

The funny thing was this guy was just barely able to hold a normal conversation. His mind was obviously shot from a combination of no sleep, and stretching his brain to capacity. We were trying to have a normal conversation about current events and other boring topics, but his mind was bouncing all over the place.

At what point he was trying to explain something to me, and couldn’t quite think of the word. (English is his second language). After a moment of thought, he had completely lost track of what we were talking about. It was quite comical. Normally he is a very logical and intelligent sounding person, but during this particular conversation, he reminded me of that lyric from the White Stripe strong “Hardest Button to Button”:

“I got a brain that feels like pancake batter…”

I remember back when I was in junior high school. We were in weight training class; the gym teacher was explaining how the body builds muscle. You do some weight lifting, and the muscle fiber is actually broken down, on a physical level. The body, being the miracle machine that it is, goes right to work to rebuild it, but because it has been stressed due to overwork, it just rebuild it according to the same specifications as before. It upgrades its specs based on the fact that the muscles were broken down because they couldn’t handle the physical load. The body then responds by rebuilding a slightly stronger muscle that will be able to handle a better load the next time around.

It breaks down, becomes sore the next day, but comes back stronger. You repeat this process enough times, and you can get some pretty strong, or pretty fast, or pretty well coordinated muscles. Anybody that starts off with set of muscles and bones built to factory specs can, within certain limits, rebuild it any way you want, given the right training and diet. Combine that with increasing your control over your muscles through various mind/body practice and exercises, and you can become a very elegant world-class athlete in a wide variety sports, if you decide early enough and stick to it long enough.

Several years ago there was this fast food company, Jack in the Box. They had this horrible scandal, where some tainted meat got into their supply, and a few people actually died. Killing people with your fast food is probably the quickest way to going out of business. But within a couple of years, they came back stronger than ever. They reorganized their quality control, developed much tougher inspection standards, and started a whole new public relations campaign. Before the incident(s), they didn’t have such a stellar reputation. I remember as a kid sharing rumors that they used kangaroo meat in their hamburgers. But after they reorganized, and launched a public re imaging campaign, they were back on top again. Those commercials with Jack and his big head became pretty commonplace, and they wiped out any negative image that they had before.

Scientists are starting to think that the brain builds up connections and neural pathways much like a muscle builds stronger and more efficient muscle fiber. If you have a bunch of different neurons scattered all through your brain, and you are starting to fire them off in a sequence they’ve never been fired off in before (e.g. thinking a bunch of new thoughts regarding laplacian eigenvalue boundary problems) you brain will naturally reorganize, and create several million, If not billion new connections. This new huge collection of neural pathways and networks are more efficient, and you are much smarter, and are able to think new ideas without that feeling of confusion or anxiety that came with them when you first thought them.

When we exercise, and lift weighs, we tend to instinctively realize there is a “good soreness” that comes the day after a good workout. And when we’re pushing our bodies to capacity, either doing one more pushup or pull-up, or putting an extra bit of juice into that final spring around the curve, we realize that our bodies will recover, and likely come back stronger. So next time we’ll easily do a couple more pushups, or pull-ups, or run faster out of the gait.

When you realize the initial stress and anxiety that sometimes comes with learning new things and experiences can be thought of the same way, there’s no reason why you can’t exercise your brain, becoming smarter and smarter, just like some people exercise their bodies, and become stronger and stronger.

My friend with his new PhD is a great example of this. He’s in his late forties, and teaches Junior High School science. He decided to get his PhD in math a few years ago, and now he’s got it. All it took was as a decision, and some follow-up effort.

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Success with NLP

Success with NLP

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.

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.

How To Create A Huge Following Of Admirers

Be Excellent, Be Gone

The other day I was having this conversation with a neighbor of mine. This guy is pretty old, and was talking about well his kids were doing. He had three sons, and they all went to university, got decent jobs, and are now married with kids of their own. The guy seemed to be bragging about his kids, but I could detect a little bit of sadness. The guy’s wife died several years ago, and he lives alone. Hence his frequent chats with me and all the other neighbors. The guy is lonely. But he somehow knows when to cut a conversation short; he seems to have a sixth sense of doing this just before he starts to wear out his welcome.

But not a bad kind of lonely, like some old people. I had this neighbor once that was always eager to talk with you, but she gave off this really strong vibe of desperation. As soon as this lady started talking to, you had to figure out a way to make an escape. If it were up to her, she would talk to you for hours on end. Sometime she would knock on my door with a really weak excuse, when it was obvious that she was looking for somebody to talk to.

Reminds me of a story that people tell sometimes about Milton Erickson, who was a world famous hypnotherapist back in the fifties and sixties. There was a woman, in her sixties, who was old and lonely like the two people mentioned above. She went to Dr. Erickson for help, and he gave her some advice. It was a variation of the old “if you want to make a friend, be a friend,” advice.

Since was particularly fond of a type of flower, African Violets, and grew quite a bit of them, he had a pretty interesting idea. Her assignment was to read the Sunday newspapers, both the obituaries, and the announcements. If somebody that lived in her neighborhood passed away, she was to bring them a bouquet of African Violets as a condolence. She wasn’t supposed to hang around very long, or try to make friends. Just show up, give her condolence, offer the flowers, and leave.

Likewise, if she saw a good piece of news in the announcements, such as a wedding, or a graduation, or a new baby, she was to put together a bouquet, and bring it over as a gift of congratulations. Again, the assignment wasn’t the same. Show up, give her congratulations and the flowers, and split.

She was to do this every week, at least once. Keep in mind this was back in the fifties, when it wasn’t uncommon for neighbors to do this kind of thing. If you tried this today, somebody might call the cops or something, depending on the neighborhood.

At first she was incredibly nervous and worried that she would be rejected. She was afraid that people wouldn’t want her, or her gift. So the first couple of times it was very hard. But once she got over her nervousness, and realized that most people are generally very friendly, and will happily accept well wishes from strangers, so long as they don’t have any ulterior motives.

Pretty soon she was doing three, four, even five trips every weekend. As the weeks and months went by, she found her self very busy with her little operation that was actually getting quite big. It didn’t take her very long for her loneliness to disappear as she learned one of life’s most valuable lessons.

The best way to help yourself is to help others first.

Of course had Dr. Erickson told her this as some vague platitude, she would have agreed, and not changed much. But he broke it down for her into a simple task, so that she would discover this lesson for herself.

And years later, when she died, thousands of people crowed at her memorial service, and she got quite a write up in several newspapers:

African Violet Queen Mourned By Thousands

Not bad for a lonely old lady. Just goes to show what a simple effort to step outside of your comfort zone just a little bit can do. To see what you can offer to others.

It’s important to remember that she never hung around after she gave her bouquet of flowers, expecting immediate thanks or gratification. Erickson was explicit on this. Let the reciprocity slowly build throw the strange effects of karma.

For some reason, it reminds me of a movie called “The Tao Of Steve.” A movie that is particularly popular among those that would like to me master seducers of women. It was about this guy that was poor, overweight, and not all that attractive. But he was wildly successful with women. His motto was simple.

Be excellent, be gone.

Meaning never hang around waiting for people to say “thanks,” or tell you what a nice person you are. Do good things for others simply for the feeling you get for doing them. Then get the hell out of Dodge. If you are patient, your rewards will come. With much more magnitude and much more significance that you could ever imagine.

The Dangers Of The Wrong Mindset – And How To Overcome Them

Scarcity or Abundance – Which One Are You?

There has been much written, spoken about, and talked about regarding the difference between a scarcity mindset and an abundance mindset. These two seemingly ubiquitous concepts can change your perception of reality itself. But do we really understand what they mean?

I can understand the mechanics and philosophy and process of baking a batch of chocolate chip cookies. I can even study material, research methods and techniques, and even publish books on how to make chocolate chip cookies, but until I smell and eat them, I really have no idea what I’m talking about.

The funny thing is that the language I use, the illustrations I use in my descriptions of making and eating cookies will be the same whether I have experienced the or not.

It’s easy to think you understand he concepts of scarcity and abundance, but until you experience them firsthand, they are two completely different worlds. One objective, looked at from the outside with only an academic understanding, and the other subjective, from the inside, from an experiential feeling of what it’s really like.

One quick test to see if you really have an abundance mindset or a scarcity mindset with regards to money. How do you feel about salespeople? Car salesmen, door-to-door salesmen, time share salesmen? Do you love them or hate them?

If you truly have an abundance mindset towards money, that is if you really feel deep in your bones that money is plentiful, and you will always have an avalanche of money, then you will never feel threatened or put off by salespeople. You will welcome them. You will enjoy talking with them and seeing what they have to offer.

What good is money if you never spend it? If you truly believe that there is an unlimited amount of money in the universe, then you will never feel a lack. And when the salesman comes knocking you will never fear that he or she will con you out of something. You will never feel as if you are getting a raw deal on anything.

Take air for example. Most everybody naturally has a deep, unconscious belief that there is plenty of air in the world. Enough for everybody. We don’t even thinking about worrying about getting enough air to breath when we wake up in the morning. We don’t get into fights with our loved ones over how we are going to be spending our precious air.

If somebody we don’t know walks into the coffee shop we are passing the time in, we don’t suddenly get worried that they will take our precious oxygen. (Of course if they are smoking that is something different altogether).

Likewise with money. Very few people have a true sense of abundance when it comes to money. Sure we all like to proclaim to each other that we have an abundance mindset. We believe in the Law of Attraction. We put down others when they exhibit what we judgingly call “scarcity thinking.”

But when the salesman comes knocking, or we walk into a car dealership, if we are the least bit nervous, or put off, or fearful of our pocketbook, then we are living, breathing and feeling scarcity.

Most people think that once they get plenty of money, then they will stop their scarcity thinking. That is backwards. That is like saying you want to go on a diet, but you are going to lose weight first, then you’ll start to diet and exercise.

That is the great paradox of human nature and how we perceive reality. We spend our childhoods learn the have-do-be mindset. We have something, then we are motivated by our possessions and then it shapes our personality. We are born completely blank, and we have to be given thoughts, ideas, and behaviors, as we grow older. We absorb who we are, how we behave, what we get from the adults around us.

But when we become adults, we must make a shift from the have-do-be mindset to the be-do-have mindset. When we are children we are because of what we have. As adults, we must learn that what we have is a result of what and who we are.

As we grow up, our personalities and behaviors reflect our environment. But as we grow older, we must learn that our environment becomes a reflection of who we are.

The simples test to who you really are on the inside, beneath all the posturing and affirmations and efforts and appearances is to simply look around you. What does your house or apartment look like? Your friends? Your relationships? Your bank account? They won’t change, unless you do.

Change yourself first and your environment will follow. It may take some time, but it will change. Don’t give up.

It’s easy to blame the world. But that is the reaction and thinking style of a child. Children blame the world. Adults take responsibility and change themselves, knowing the environment will change accordingly.

No, it’s not easy. And yes, it can take a lifetime. But what else are we here for except to shape our own reality?

You Are Surrounded By Beauty

What Treasure Do You Hold?

The other day I was sitting in a bookstore talking to one of he girls that works behind the counter in the coffee shop section. It seems that many bookstores these days have a full-blown coffee shop inside. Which makes sense, because what goes better than hanging out in a bookstore and reading books?

One of the cool things I like about bookstores is how many completely ideas different people have about certain things. Even if we confine ourselves to the measurable physical universe, there is still an endless supply of things known and unknown to talk about. Even things we can see, touch taste and feel we have really no idea of the underlying structure and substance.

Many quantum physicists have dramatically questioned the nature of reality after discovering the incredibly illogical subatomic world. Many have gone on to write philosophical books on the subject.

Even you wander into the religion section, you are in for a wealth of different ideas, beliefs and opinions regarding who we are, how we got here, and where we are going.

There are some really interesting books that lie on the border between religion, philosophy, and metaphysics. I never cease to be amazed at the sheer variety of thought that is available in bookstores. And those are just people that sat down and wrote a book and convinced somebody to publish it and sell it in a bookstore.

Imagine all the incredibly diverse thoughts in people’s heads that are just walking around and waiting to get out. Many times we make the mistake and assume that because someone may not be so eloquent with words that their thoughts are therefore inferior, but that is never the case.

One of the most prevalent theories of human existence is that every single human shares the same DNA. Not that we all have the same parents, but the structure of all human DNA is the same. It’s not like some people have more chromosomes than others.

So it stands to reason that everybody’s brain has the capacity for thinking up new and wonderful ideas. Speaking skills may not be their Forte. Even the great Moses called up his brother Aaron to do his public speaking for him. Can you imagine if you tried that at work?

“Uh, yea boss, I’ll give the presentation at next years shareholder meeting. But I pretty much suck at public speaking; in fact, they kicked me out of toastmasters. So I’m gonna have my brother come in and give the speech for me, ok?”

So as I as talking to this girl that worked behind the coffee counter, she started telling me her story. She is originally from Laos, and her family escaped to Thailand during the seventies. She said she remembers being shot at as they crossed the river from Laos into Thailand. Then in Thailand they had to live in this “reeducation camps” for a while before they figured out a way to get to the United States.

She was very young when all this happened, so she doesn’t remember much other than what her older brothers and her parents told her. She was six when it happened. Imagine getting shot at trying to escape the country of your birth at six years. I don’t know if I even learned to tie my shoes when I was six.

I couldn’t help but be amazed at the incredible amount of stories and ideas and experiences that everybody is carrying around with them. And most of them will be more than happy to share with you. All you need to do is ask.

Skills, Pleasure and Money

Once there was this guy who was a professional auto mechanic. Not just a professional auto mechanic, but he was considered the best in his area. He had built up a huge clientele base through several years of dedicated service. One thing that made him stand out was his brutal honesty.

He usually had a flat fee to inspect a car, and then would lay everything out as clearly and specifically as he could. He wouldn’t make any suggestions, he would merely let his experience and the prices speak for themselves.

For example, if somebody had a problem with their engine starting on cold mornings, he would charge fifty bucks to take a look, and then give a full report. He would say exactly what it would take to get the car fixed to the point of starting ok on a regular basis, at a bare minimum cost, and explain exactly what the chances of and how long this “fix” would last.

He would then give another report about how much it would cost to virtually guarantee that this problem would be completely fixed, and how long that would last (usually two or three years, which was the life expectancy of the parts he would replace).

He would then give another report of other problems he found with the car, and what the chances is that they would be a problem, and how likely they would to be happening. Of course he would explain exactly how much this would cost to make sure the problem didn’t happen.

He would, naturally, fix specific problems, to satisfy specific requests. For example, if someone came in saying only that they wanted their timing belt replaced, he would do exactly that.

Because he was so honest and upfront with his costs, he never had any want for business. It wasn’t uncommon to find that you needed to wait a week to have your car even looked at because he had so many customers lined up.

There were several other auto repair businesses in the neighborhood that didn’t do so well. One of the reasons was they because they were always worried about their business, they would sometimes make repairs that weren’t really necessary, or they would rush through and not do a thorough job, making it necessary for some people to come back to get their car repaired. It was no wonder than these other shops didn’t get a whole lot of repeat business from loyal customers.

A lot of people wondered why this guy didn’t branch out, and open up shops that operated on the same principle, as he certainly could. Perhaps it was because he really, honestly enjoyed working on cars so much that he didn’t want to spend time in an office trying to manage multiple businesses and people. He seemed to be extremely happy, and was always quick to remember a customer’s first name when he saw them at the grocery store.

If there is any moral to this story, it’s that if you can combine honesty, a needed skill, and sincere pleasure in performing that skill, you can make a lot of money, and make a lot of people feel satisfied because of your work.

The Mystery of Your Inherent Personal Power

If anyone had realized earlier in life how much that you can understand about things now, you would inevitably have changed the course of your life, so that by now you can really understand the power of this idea. Is asking questions like this not the easiest way to overcome obstacles?

Should you not understand the power of asking the right questions, realize that the Socratic method, a several thousand-year-old logical process, does exactly that. And the new ideas that you can come up with in regards to this can only show you the range of new possibilities available to you.

And when you come to the conclusion that this is a powerful method of introspection, you can easily leave all doubt behind as you embrace this new way of thinking.

And what is as powerful as continuously enhancing your thinking process so that you overcome all kinds of new opportunities? Because again and again you can realize the power that comes with being able to do this.

And when you start to do this on a regular basis, you will even have more ideas that can do things you never thought possible. It can become virtually automatic.

It’s amazing how much this can literally transform what you think is possible. When you really allow these ideas to sink it, you can be sure that you will be head and shoulders above the rest of the people out there.

Before doing this, it might be a good idea to identify the things in life that you’d like to keep, because invariably it becomes something that will change many things, and you want to make sure you don’t forget and inadvertently get rid of some of the little things that give you so much pleasure.

Luckily, more and more people are starting to discover just how incredibly powerful this is, because the more you understand the nature of this, the easier it will become for you to understand how you can do this.

And what is most surprising about this method is how incredibly easy it is to do on a regular basis. The more you realize this, the easier it gets. Its is likely your unique personal history and specific applications of those memories that you have that will make this the most beneficial for you.

And how does knowing how much you have at your fingertips make you feel comfortable realizing that anything you do can really powerful enhance your life?

Because when you fully embrace this new mind technology, you might be surprised to learn that it was something you knew all along, but I’m sure that many of you already know this. Many find that the first thing they discover is how easy this becomes with practice, because most of it you already know anyways.

And people that have fully embraced know the truth: Once you accept these ideas, there is no going back to mediocrity.

There Is Treasure

I was talking to a friend the other day, not really a friend, more like an acquaintance. Not one of those people that you look forward to being around, more like somebody that you are around because of mutually shared circumstances. They aren’t so bad that you dread meeting them, but there really isn’t that spark that is normally required to start a lasting friendship.

Anyways, he started complaining about a business problem he was having. And he started making the same complaints that he usually makes, bad market, bad economy, and the usual stuff that you hear nowadays. Since he was basically going over the same arguments again and again, it was fairly easy for me to get distracted and let my mind wander.

It’s interesting when that happens. I’ve often wondered if you could map out somebody’s brain, represent it graphically as some big three-dimension lattice, and have whatever the person was thinking about displayed as part of the grid that was sort of lit up. And then whatever stray neurons the lit up portion drifted to would be the next random thought the person was thinking. Only it’s not random at all. One set of neurons is connected to all other neurons by only three or four degrees of separation and those three or four degrees of separation can get fired off rather quickly, and rather subconsciously.

So you’ll be thinking about the current health care issue, and all of a sudden you’ll be remembering a tuna sandwich you ate in third grade.

So I suddenly recalled this lecture an old professor was giving in university. It was a political science class, and this guy was lecturing about the evils of the Soviet Union (yea, it was that long ago). He said people are classified into two different groups, those that see the world as an oppressive enemy, where there is no escape but to complain and wring your hands over the state of things, and those that see the world with a curiosity of interest. To see how it can be exploited to maximize their own benefit. I think he was trying to illustrate the difference between capitalism and communism, but I’m not certain. I only got a C in that class, so whatever I do remember, I’m pretty sure it was incorrect to begin with.

That’s when I realized that my friend, who was always complaining, seemed to always take a victim stance to the world. The world is a big evil thing that shouldn’t be doing whatever it is doing. And there should be some big authoritative entity to make sure “it” behaved according to what people think it “should” do.

Which reminded of a book I read on frame control. This guy said that all suffering comes from when you have as set of “shoulds” that the world doesn’t agree with. If you walk through life expecting people to behave according to what you think they “should” do, and they don’t, you will blame them for not behaving according to your expectations.

On the other hand, there are those that are always redefining their map of reality based on what they see on a daily basis, so they can take advantage of things and extract as much money and pleasure and sex from the world as they possibly can, without crossing or hurting anybody. Kind of like treasure hunters that are always looking for ways to exploit the system to their benefit, whatever the system may be.

I’ve read that during the gold rush to California back in the 1800’s, there was a huge amount of gold taken from the ground, in the billions of dollars in today’s money. And that gold was found by people that dug, and consistently re engineered their searching process until they became rich. The interesting thing is, is that most geological experts agree that only about twenty percent from the actual gold in the ground was ever discovered. The rest is still waiting.

There is treasure.

Are you looking for it, or waiting for somebody to give it to you?

Qualify Your Leads to Make Maximum Profit

I remember when I was a kid; I belonged to an explorer scout troop. It was similar to boy scouts, but all we did was go camping, and other outdoor activities. There were no merit badges or helping old ladies across the street.

Every summer we would go on these weeklong backpacking trips through the Sierra Mountain range in California. If you’ve never been to or seen the Sierra’s, they are a fantastic, almost untapped natural resource. Because it is incredibly hard and strenuous to get in, once you get in past the first few sets of mountains, you can see incredibly beautiful scenery that is completely void of any signs of humanity. Of course it is heavily protected by the Parks and Rangers, but the main reason it is devoid of humans is because it is so hard to get there.

One of my favorite parts was the fishing. The entire Sierra’s are dotted with small lakes, most of which have an abundance of rainbow trout. This kind of fishing is different form ocean fishing, either on a pier of off a boat. If you are fishing on a pier, especially a crowded pier, you don’t have a lot of options other than to bait your hook, throw a line in the water, and wait. A boat is similar, although you can pull up anchor and go someplace else, but that takes a while, and you have to have an experienced captain that knows all the good spots.

Lake fishing in the Sierras is completely different. Because the lakes are relatively small, you can walk around the entire lake in 30 minutes or so. Which means if you cast a lure out a few times along the way, you can get an idea in as little as an hour if the fish are biting in that particular lake or not. And if that particular lake is not biting, you can go to the next one over, and so on. And as a bonus, while you are fishing, you are surrounded by the most beautiful nature you’ve ever seen. Even if you don’t catch any fish, you will still enjoy yourself. I’ve always had fairly good luck; even on that day I lost several lures before catching the biggest fish I’d ever seen.

Before joining the explorer scouts, I was a member of the regular Boy Scout troop. And as a Boy Scout troop, we had to do several different kinds of fundraisers. Mostly selling stuff, sometimes magazine subscriptions, or services. Sometimes we would have a carwash, or get together with other organizations and sponsor walk-a-thons and other things. This would require going door to door to solicit donations, or sales, or get people to put their name down on a list.

The interesting thing about this is that we could always tell, within a few houses, which street was going to be good, and which street was going to be bad. After a while, we would choose a different street if the first five doors turned out to be a bust. Before we learned that trick, it was not so much fun to go up and down the street and get rejected time after time. Some people even seemed to get angry with us for trying to sell them something, or get them to participate in a community service fundraiser. This one lady was particularly troublesome.

One thing one of our Boy Scout leaders told us was the value of qualifying. He said that you always need to qualify your market before you invest yourself too much. He had a high level sales position, I’m not sure where, but he was always putting things in terms of sales and sales strategy. He said every market is a potential gold mind or a potential heartbreaker, so it pays to learn how to qualify your market before you invest too much time or energy. Some markets you can come back to later, and they will somehow have transformed from a stinker to a real winner, so it’s important never to write them off completely. Always throw out a line, so to speak, and see how they respond. As soon as they turn cold, pick up your stuff and move on.

After we applied his rules into our five houses only strategy, we were able to sell a lot more subscriptions. And that one lady, before would have been a real ego-deflating heart breaker, but because of our attitude, she was really just pretty funny. She started screaming at us as soon as she answered the door, and started saying that the government was after her and that we were spies for them and that we had better not leave any listening devices in her mailbox. We were thirteen years old at the time. As I recall, she was number four on that block, but we needed to stick to our rule, so we went on to the next house.

So after I had lost two lures, I decided to try my last one. I had a three lure per lake policy, as the weeds at the bottom of the shallow lakes liked to eat your lures. My friend would always tease me because sometimes Iost more lures than the fish I caught. One the last lure for that particular lake, I caught these huge brown trout. When you catch a fish like that surrounded by all the people free mountains and flower filled meadows, it really makes you feel good. And you like to feel good, don’t you?