Category Archives: Conversation Skills

Gadzooks!

How To Own The Future

Potential energy is a cool idea.

Since our lives are utterly dependent on energy, it’s an important thing to understand.

Until very, very recently, we got our body-energy directly from animals.

Same as all the other animals on Earth.

A huge cycle.

Small animals are eaten by larger animals, which are eaten by even larger animals.

When we humans need other kinds of energy (for warmth or cooking) we had to find wood or other burnable material.

The wood came from trees that took their energy from the earth.

Ultimately, all energy on earth comes from the sun.

A gigantic ball of thermonuclear fusion.

Leaves take sunlight and convert it into energy.

Even when we use fossil fuel, we are essentially taking the “energy” from previously living beings.

It’s the same structure as killing and eating a giraffe.

We eat the giraffe meat, we are taking energy from a previously living thing.

When we eat an ear of corn, we are taking energy from a previously living thing.

When we put gas in our cars (or use things that are shipped all around the world using massive ships and planes) we are using fossil-fuel energy from previously living things.

When you think about it, there’s the sun, and all the living stuff on Earth.

And all the living stuff on Earth is in competition with each other.

Eating each other, running away from each other, always trying to figure out clever ways to get energy to survive.

But humans invented something a couple thousand years ago.

To use a VERY over-used term, it WAS a “game changer.”

See, even fossil fuel has to say in same chemical structure to be any use.

Yes, it’s potential energy, but it’s energy to be used DIRECTLY.

We humans invented a much more metaphysical form of potential energy.

Money.

This is potential “energy” that can be used to buy “stuff.”

What stuff?

Any stuff.

Stuff that exists, and stuff that doesn’t yet exist.

Think about that.

It’s both plainly normal and incredibly amazing.

Suppose you save a little bit of money (whatever form of money is being used).

And you hang on to it.

That money allows you to imagine a much better future.

And you don’t even have to participate.

If you have ENOUGH money saved, you can relax and let other people do all the work.

All the trial and error research and inventing.

And once they’re finished, you step right up and trade some of your money for whatever it is they’ve invented.

This is exactly why the amount of things EXPLODED after the invention of money.

People were driven to invent stuff so they could get money.

And people were driven to get money so they could buy these new inventions, whatever they might be.

A HUGE positive reinforcing loop that has been humming along every since.

And it’s easier ever to get in the game and get some.

Learn How:

Wealth Tuning

Road To Riches

First Rule Of Emperors

I used to know this old guy.

Attorney from Japan.

He’d done a bit of traveling (including a few excavations) and had an interesting view on things.

He told me the story about Tokugawa, the first Shogun who ruled all of Japan.

If you watch any of the old Samurai movies, they take place BEFORE that happened.

This was the “wild west” period of Japanese history.

When there were rogue bands of samurai’s everywhere.

If you are going to be a leader of any country, you need to have a lot of skills.

Tokugawa had a particularly interesting problem.

He took power right around the beginning of the 1600’s.

AFTER a lot of European explorers had visited Japan.

The first thing Tokugawa did was kick them all out.

The real problem was that most Japanese had either experienced or heard stories about these Europeans.

And at that time, the Europeans had FAR SUPERIOR technology.

So Tokugawa’s task was to rule AND figure out a way to get them to “forget” about the Europeans.

He needed his people to feel superior to the “outsiders,” as all rulers do.

Nobody is going to last long as a leader with the idea that “we suck, and we better hope our superior enemies decide to invade us.”

People like their leaders to tell the people how AWESOME they are.

Which was difficult for Tokugawa, since they’d all seen the HUGE gunships and technology the Europeans had.

And all the stories of different cultures on the other side of the world.

This is where Tokugawa was an absolute GENIUS at social engineering.

He came up with the idea that “technology” is evil.

Impure.

It’s better to be poor, and sit and watch the rocks grow.

Or spend an hour preparing pouring a cup of tea.

(Interestingly enough, it was this super attention to detail that made the Japanese super rich super quick when the Industrial Revolution showed up).

But as my lawyer friend explained, another aspect of Tokugawa’s genius was to put the merchant class at the VERY BOTTOM of society.

Who was on top?

The Samurai of course.

But the Samurai had to take a vow of poverty.

The idea of pursuing money was not becoming of a Samurai.

This sounds curiously similar to the early Roman Empire, especially when they took on Christianity.

The idea that it is “holy” or “divine” or “pure” to be poor.

It’s also a VERY EFFECTIVE way to ensure nobody raises an army against you.

Armies take money. Lots of money.

This is EXACTLY how Julius Caesar took over Rome.

He had money, and an army.

So if you ever become a ruler or an emperor or a shogun, the first rule is to convince everybody that “money is evil.”

So you can keep it all for yourself.

Or you can FORGET about becoming a ruler and just make a bunch of money.

Let everybody else find holiness through poverty.

Learn More:

Wealth Tuning

One For The Road

Be The Man With No Name

We all love super hero movies.

Even if they aren’t in costumes or call themselves “heroes” we love the idea of good guys and bad guys.

A decade or so ago, Clint Eastwood was receiving some kind of lifetime achievement award.

So they had a lot of celebrities giving speeches and making jokes.

I remember Jim Carrey’s speech.

He said when he was a kid, he loved the “spaghetti westerns.”

Mostly about a bad ass cowboy with no name.

The reason, Carrey explained, that we love the common “hero with no name” archetype is because it makes it easier for us to imagine that WE are the hero.

Some hero’s need to go through intense character arcs, others not so much.

But the idea of “good” and “evil” is very ancient.

Lots of philosophies and religions try to describe it, explain it, but so far, none have done so with much success.

That evil exists is about all they can agree on.

And like plenty of the characters in those movies, there are many ways to deal with evil.

The reason we LOVE seeing the hero destroy the bad guy is that we would love to, but most of us just run in the other direction.

When normal people DO step in and stop bad things from happening, EVERYBODY is quick to call them a hero.

Everybody loves the guy or girl who can stick up for those who can’t defend themselves.

Does this mean you need to practice in your dojo for an hour a day and carry a Glock 19 everywhere?

That’s certainly an option, but it’s not the only option.

And it would only work in certain situations.

Where you need to defend yourself physically.

Unfortunately, plenty of “evil” attacks don’t come in physical from.

They come very subtly.

Hidden between the surface structure words.

When they are directed at you, it hurts, but you don’t know why.

It’s like they are punching in the face with an invisible hand.

You can, however, practice in the dojo of your mind.

And develop extremely wicked linguistic self defense skills.

You can avoid the punches.

You can block the punches.

Or you can punch back.

With as much mental devastation as you like.

Learn More:

Weaponized Hypnosis

Don't Be Left Behind

Release The Hounds

Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.

Everybody wants stuff.

And everybody has to do stuff to get stuff.

This is true on a pure energy level.

You’ve got to move your body to get food.

We have deep and ancient instincts to make sure we eat more calories than we burn.

Our body fat is a helpful energy storage system.

Like our own private energy savings account.

To help this, we all have these programs in the back of our mind that are always running.

So we (or rather our subconscious) is always on the lookout for shortcuts.

Ways to get more stuff with less effort.

You might say this deep programming is responsible for all the inventions we have.

Normally this is a very good thing.

But sometimes it works against us.

Because that same program (get more stuff with less effort) isn’t just for physical stuff, it’s for everything.

Every time we are negotiating a sales price, for example, both sides want to maximize what they get and minimize what they give.

This also happens in relationships.

All relationships.

Friends, lovers, family members

We all have that deep programming that says “get more with less effort.”

This is the heart of all emotional abuse.

Somebody wants something from you.

So they first try to get it for free.

If that doesn’t work, they’ll get it as cheaply as they can.

This is when they slightly test your boundaries.

Kind of like a couple of cat burglars sneaking around the outside of your house.

They’re checking if you have a dog or an alarm system.

Once they get up close, (and realize you have no dog or alarm system) the next step is to look around for an open window.

This is what people do when they carefully test your boundaries.

Some people are respectful and polite, and don’t do this.

They are the types who spend a lot of conscious effort so they don’t offend others.

But some people aren’t like that.

Their only guideline is “don’t get caught.”

And most of the time they don’t.

They slightly test everybody.

Those that push back, they leave alone.

But those that don’t, they remember.

And ever so slightly, keep carefully and subtly pushing against their boundaries.

Some do it just for the thrill.

Others want your money, your sex, or your compliance.

Luckily, guard dogs and alarms systems are easy to install.

Metaphorically, this means understanding the linguistic structure of their covert attacks.

Then you can be like Mr. Burns on The Simpsons.

Super rich guy with a huge house on a huge piece of property.

He would watch people walk onto his property via close circuit TV.

Once they got in close enough, he would give the order.

“Release the hounds.”

You can do the same.

Learn How:

Weaponized Hypnosis

Beware

Don’t Be A One Trick Pony

Some skills are transferable, while others aren’t.

Michael Jordan showed this when he tried to play baseball.

Arguably one of the greatest basketball players of all time, he absolutely sucked at baseball.

Barely could hold his own in AA minor leagues.

No doubt he was a gifted athlete.

But his gifts were only good in one very specialized area.

Exercise in general is a good metaphor for life skills.

Bodybuilders, for example, work out to create a FORM.

Where athletes, on the other hand, work out to create FUNCTION.

In many areas, form follows function, and function follows form.

If you’re happy, you’ll smile.

If you are sad and FORCE yourself to walk around with a goofy grin on your face, you will put yourself in a good mood.

The smile (form) creates the function (happiness).

And the happiness (function) creates the form (smile).

But athletes that work out for function reasons (like baseball and football players) don’t always have good FORM (not form of play, but form of appearance).

Some lineman for example, are not exactly svelte.

On the other hand, a world class bodybuilder that has 0.2% body fat and looks like a Greek sculpture, probably couldn’t play any sport to save his life.

One famous athlete that had both form AND function was Bruce Lee.

A world class fighter, but also a very impressive form.

In some cases, form and function are very tightly related.

Generally speaking, anything like martial arts where you train your body to be used in a WIDE VARIETY of ways is going to increase the connection between form and function.

Linemen, on the other hand, only need short bursts of explosive strength.

Skilled martial artists need speed, strength, agility, stamina and flexibility.

It’s very hard to create all that function without creating impressive form.

Language is the same way.

When you develop your language to be used defensively, you’re guaranteed to get tons of secondary benefits.

Benefits that can help you make money and build relationships.

After all, skills are skills.

And the more areas in which you can practice using them, the more flexible your skills will be.

Most martial artist never intend on getting into a street fight.

But they aren’t afraid of them either.

You can use your words the same way.

To win hearts and clients, or to destroy minds.

Giving you a MASSIVE range of confidence.

Learn More:

Weaponized Hypnosis

She's Right Behind You

Trapped On Demon Planet?

What the thinker thinks the prover proves.

This is a fairly ubiquitous “law of attraction” saying.

Meaning that if you believe something, you’ll see it.

One on hand, it makes perfect sense.

If you believe people are friendly, you’ll act as if you live in a world of friendly people.

You’ll walk with confident body language and facial expressions.

Thinking you live in a world of friendly people, you’ll be happier more often, and more likely to smile at strangers.

And BECAUSE of your positive body language (which is because of your thinking) people smile at you.

In a “cause-effect” chain of events, it goes like this:

Positive Belief -> Positive Body Language – > Positive Behavior -> Positive Response

Your belief CAUSED what you believe to happen.

You believed it was true FIRST, and then it became true SECOND.

Similarly, if you believed you lived in a world filled with demons, that is what you would find.

Your beliefs would cause a certain behavior, which would radiate a certain “energy” which would elicit a certain response.

Where it gets kind of squirrely is when you cross the threshold from beliefs causing things that are easy to identify (smiling people) to beliefs causing things that are pretty vague.

If you believe in a friendly world, this will create smiling people.

And smiling people is pretty easy to interpret as “friendly world.”

But if you believe you’re living on “demon planet,” you won’t actually see demons.

You’ll people looking at you with guarded looks and closed off body language.

Guarded looks and closed off body language could mean a lot of things.

But few people would make the connection that “closed off body language and guarded looks” is equal to “demon planet.”

This is when your brain can shift from “beliefs that cause events” to “after the fact reframing.”

“After The Fact Reframing” is when something unexpected happens, and then you LATER redefine it to make sure your beliefs are still intact.

Problem is that few people walk around wondering, “Hmm, which state of mind am I in… Beliefs that create responses or after the fact reframing?”

It’s as if no matter WHAT you believe, we’ve got plenty of built in biases to make sure we find PROOF, regardless of how silly those beliefs seem.

How can we be sure?

Always take data.

Be able to measure to make sure.

If you are on a diet, for example, it’s kind of hard to see numbers on your bathroom scale getting higher each week, yet still believe you are LOSING weight.

If they ARE getting higher, you hopefully have other measurements to VERIFY that those higher numbers (your gross weight) is healthy.

Smaller waist, more pushups every morning, etc.

Whatever you think is true, imagine that you have to take real DATA, and then present that DATA to a disinterested third party.

So long as you keep your beliefs tethered to DATA based reality, you’ll know if you’re making REAL PROGRESS instead of PRETEND PROGRESS.

Learn More:

Seven Disciplines

Merging Brains

Whose Thoughts Do You Think?

Our brains are like sponges when we are born.

The reason is that humans need a lot of time outside the womb before we are fully developed.

So when we are born, we are only “half baked.”

Most people know this, at least intuitively.

Few people remember much from early childhood.

And the idea that whatever we are taught in early childhood is believed pretty strongly throughout our lives.

Few people change religions or political parties as they age.

However, when it comes time to learn as adults, we believe that it’s harder as an adult than as a kid.

We have this idea that kids can soak up stuff pretty quickly, but adults have a harder time.

This is a very dangerous thought, for a couple of reasons.

The common recognition of the danger of this thought is that if you think it’s hard to learn as an adult, you won’t make the effort.

And that you have this massive learning capacity that you aren’t utilizing.

This is absolutely true, but there is another facet of this erroneous belief that is FAR MORE dangerous.

We assume that as children, we “soak up” ideas easily and effortlessly.

And as adults, we lose that ability.

But what if we really don’t?

What if we STILL soak up ideas and beliefs just as easily and unconsciously?

This is a scary thought.

Because we are bombarded all day by ideas and messages.

Many of which are VERY DANGEROUS.

For example, a lot of the ads that blast our brains come at night when we’re watching TV.

When we are LEAST RESISTANT.

Who pays for seventy percent of TV ads?

Drug companies.

Do you want THEM putting ideas in your head?

Consider that your brain is just as open as it is today, as it was when you were a kid.

Think of all the ideas and messages and random things people are saying all around you.

When you are alone, and you’re having a random stream of thoughts, WHOSE thoughts are those?

Even if they are yours, it’s hard to get around the idea that they are HEAVILY influenced by messages.

Many of which (TV ads and political slogans) that were carefully crafted to GET PAST your conscious resistance.

How do you avoid thinking thoughts others have put in your mind?

The only way to get rid of ONE thought is to REPLACE it with another.

And the best way to hold that new thought is make sure it is pointing somewhere specific.

Something YOU would like in YOUR life based on YOUR decisions.

Focus on THAT target, and make sure to keep moving toward it.

Take data, and ensure you are getting closer.

This will give you objective evidence that those thoughts are yours.

AND it will give you an easy way to RESIST those other ideas.

Just as the simple question.

Do they help you get closer to your goal, or not?

So long as your goal is yours, your life and your thoughts will be yours as well.

Get Started:

Seven Disciplines

Hit Your Targets

Daily Empire Building

Dreaming big feels good.

Even if you don’t really have a concrete idea of what you want.

This is why we love movies so much.

They’re sort of like our own lives, but they are an absolute best case scenario.

Even far fetched sci-fi movies have human elements that we can relate to.

We watch the characters handling things, and wish we could do the same.

Or we see them messing up, and we wish we could tell them what to do instead.

Wondering “What if?” is perhaps our best skill.

This is what creates inventions, medicine, better, faster and cheaper transportation.

At the same time, wondering, “what if” can be constraining.

That’s the flip side of dreaming big.

We tend to dream SO big, we don’t know how to get started.

We watch movies and read books and that kind of “satisfies” our urges.

Sure, it’s nice to dream about building a huge empire, but how the heck do you get started?

Every empire that was built was built by somebody.

And there was a time in that person’s life where they had no clue what to do.

When we see the result, we see the results of their successes.

We don’t see any of their failures.

Even a small local business that feeds a family.

From the outside, it looks like they must be some kind of geniuses.

But every success is built on failure.

It’s the only way humans learn.

Sure, we can learn academic stuff in books.

But learning HOW to do something HAS to come from trial and error.

The secret is to start as small as you possibly can.

Once you start, the process is on.

And the more it goes on, the better you’ll get.

Pretty soon, “empire building” is just part of your daily routine.

Get Started:

Seven Disciplines

Break Out Of Average Prison

The Collapse Of The Averages

If you study stock charts, there are a kajillion indicators.

Meaning there are a bunch of ways that try and predict what the stock will do next.

The two simplest are moving averages.

One a fifty day, one a two hundred day.

The fifty day is “short term” while the two hundred is “long term.”

If the fifty day crossed the two hundred day on the way down, that’s a bad sign.

It means the stock is not only going down, but it’s picking up momentum as it’s going down.

On the other hand, if the fifty day crosses the two hundred day on the way up, that’s considered a good sign.

Not only is it going up, but it’s picking up momentum as it’s going up.

If you look at any stock chart over the past couple years, and look at the two different moving averages (50 day and 200 day) it looks like a decent signal.

Buy when they cross on the way up, and sell as they cross on the way down.

This is just one of MANY such indicators.

Pick two, a short term and a long term, and when they cross it’s time to buy or sell, depending on HOW they cross.

Implied in all of these indicators is the idea of reversion to the mean.

They are ALL based on past performance.

And these calculations based on past performance will hopefully predict future performance.

But they are all based on the idea that when a price of a stock moves too far way from where it’s been, it’s going to move back.

Reversion to the mean.

It’s been said that humans are scared, lazy people.

And everything we do is designed to make life easier (cause we’re lazy) and safer (cause we’re scared).

But sometimes we can go too far.

We can make life TOO easy and TOO safe.

And we lose our natural abilities.

To think, be creative, and take action when we need to.

Only a couple hundred years ago (which is a nanosecond compared to how long we’ve been around) getting food was a chore.

You had to do a lot of work to get something to eat.

Now you can push a couple buttons on your device, all while watching TV, and have something delivered.

They only “work” you’ve got to do is get up and answer the door.

While this is pretty cool, it’s also pretty dangerous.

Being too safe for too long, and having things too easy for too long can take away our edge.

Which can make it very hard to think creatively, so you can live a life far above average.

Luckily, shifting your mind back to your naturally creative self isn’t difficult.

The sooner you start, the better off you’ll be.

Get Started:

Seven Disciplines

Magical Forest

How To Speak Magic Spells

History has a lot of cool examples illustrating the power of language.

One of the more famous is the love triangle between Marc Anthony, Cleopatra, and Caesar.

Cleopatra was allied with Anthony, against Caesar, back before Caesar took over Rome.

Caesar had them on the run, and chased them into Egypt.

It looked bad for the two, as Caesar was looking better and better.

While Marc Anthony’s soldiers weren’t a match for Caesar, Cleopatra didn’t accept defeat.

“I got this,” she told her people.

She had them sneak her into where Caesar was staying.

She slipped in, and in one of the most talked about conversations in the history of civilization, she convinced Caesar not kill her, and not destroy Egypt.

And she ended up having his kid.

At the time, she was only 21.

And it’s easy to discount this as a hot young princess talking her way into the brain of a 51 year old general.

But there’s much more to it to that.

For that reason, many believe Cleopatra had magical powers.

So much that plays, books and movies have been written about her, and about that fateful conversation that changed history.

But consider this idea.

A magic “spell” is a bunch of words said in the correct order, that have a profound impact on the receiver.

The same word, “spell” is used to describe how the right letters put in the right order, will have the same effect.

Powerful words like love, fortune, freedom, slavery, hate, can evoke powerful emotions.

But you jumble the letters around and they are meaningless.

Most people when they speak, don’t give ANY thought to the order of words.

But when you put your words in the right order, your “spell” will have as profound an effect.

Imagine that most people say, “vole and nuftore”

While thinking, “Love and fortune.”

People look at them and say, “Dude, what?”

But you say, “Love and fortune,” and they look at you and smile.

Take this to a sentence or paragraph level.

Most people jumble up words, so when they speak, it sounds like jumbled up nonsense.

But when you “spell” your words in the right order, you will have a magical effect on your listeners.

Able to move generals and change the course of history.

Learn How:

Seven Laws