Category Archives: Flexibility

Are Kids REALLY Getting Worse?

The other day I was talking to a neighbor of mine. She was saying how lately some of the kids in the neighborhood have been acting less polite than usual. And I think when she said lately, she meant the last several years. And because of her age, I was almost ready to discount her statement as just another disgruntled old person’s expected “kids today,” rant.

There is a famous quote that goes something like this: “kids today don’t listen anymore, and they don’t respect their elders, blah blah blah,” which sounds like a common enough complaint. When you realize that was spoken by some Greek guy over two thousand years ago, it becomes apparent that old people grumbling about kids is common to every generation.

But one thing that is different, at least in this particular situation is there are some statistics to back this up. According to several sources, there are less and less people getting and staying married. And there are less and less people attending religious services on a regular basis. Before you click off this page thinking that I’m some right wing family values religious nutcase, please understand I haven’t stepped foot in a church since my fathers funeral, and I think it’s absolutely fantastic that social pressures that keep people in otherwise unhappy marriages are crumbling, giving people freedom that they wouldn’t have enjoyed in other generations.

That being said, I think this is an interesting phenomenon from a scientific, societal standpoint. There are less and less marriages, and many more divorces, which many argue lead naturally to a less stable upbringing for kids. Of course there is the argument that kids are better of with separated or divorced parents than with parents together but at each others throat all the time.

Also, less and less families are attending any kind of church services as a whole. When you combine these two together, you have less positive role models for kids to look up to, which leaves them only with each other to learn how to behave and act in modern society.

Please keep in mind that I am not arguing for people to stay married if they hate each other, or get married if they aren’t ready. Nor am I advocating any church participation of any sort. I jus think it’s interesting to watch the dynamic unfold, and how it will affect society in years to come.

I am a firm believer in personal responsibility, and if you are of the persuasion that it is up to society to teach you morals and proper behavior, and then you are at the mercy of the ebbs and flow of societal trends, be they good or bad.

If, however, you are inclined to choose your own moral path, based upon your own choices and decisions for where you want your own life to lead, then there has never been a better time that right now.

Crumbling influences of society can be good, and it can be bad. Like any other system, those that depend upon it stand to lose when the system has problems. Those that understand the system for what it is, and use it to their advantage usually come out ahead, regardless of their social economic background and upbringing.

Crumbling social pressures to get and stay married may make finding and keeping a partner more difficult, but much more rewarding once they are found.

Similarly, releasing oneself from the restrictions of the two thousand year old religious moral authority may seem frightening at first, but when you realize you can make your own rules, (so long as you are prepared to live with the consequences,) you can gain so much more power.

What many come to realize is that when they choose their own path in life, they find that their own personal code of morals and ethics closely mimic the beneficial ones from religion. Don’t kill, steal, or covet, or lie. And as a bonus, some of the stuff is supposedly bad, isn’t so bad after all.

Like sex and money are perfectly fine so long as you make sure everybody is happy, and nobody gets hurt. Of course, if you’re going to make more people, then you need to be sure they grow up with the best resources, mental and otherwise, to achieve their dreams in life as well. Maybe that’s what my neighbor was getting at.

How To Find Your Niche – The Baker’s Success Story

There used to be this guy that worked in a bakery. It was a small shop in a small neighborhood. He had owned the bakery for several years, and had slowly developed a large following in the town, inasmuch as baker can develop a following.  He was he go to guy for all of the birthday parties, wedding celebrations and all other gatherings of friends and family that required any kind of bread product. He was the man.

It wasn’t always that way. When he first moved into town, he didn’t have a nickel to his name. He moved into town back during the transitional time in the local economy, when the city was just starting out. The city had been a small bedroom community for many manufacturing plants in the next town over. Many people that worked in the plants made their home in this small town.

The baker, who back then wasn’t yet a baker, moved to town in hopes of finding a good job in one of the factories. He had just finished six years in the service, and was hoping to apply his skills to one of the many technical based manufacturing plants in the area.

Unfortunately, things didn’t work out quite as well as he’d hoped. Just when he moved into town, the economy suffered a series of serious setbacks. Jobs moving overseas, a significant drop in demand for the manufactured products. Many people lost their jobs, and a lot of secondary businesses that depended on those people simply went out of business. It’s hard to stay in business when nobody can afford to buy your product.

So this ex military man was in a bit of a tough spot. He had saved enough money to get him by for a couple months, but he had really been depending on the source of income from one of the factories. That was his first lesson.

Never depend on a source of income that isn’t yours yet.

So he did a quick inventory of his skills. In the service he had been assigned to the maintenance department on large carriers. He was pretty good at fixing things, small things, big things. Anything mechanical, he could fix it.

That is what led him to his first job fixing the bread machine. He had always loved sourdough bread, and one day he happened into a bread shop to buy a loaf, or half a loaf. The owner was very sad, because his large mixing machine wasn’t working properly. He explained to the ex military man that the part was on order, but wasn’t expected for at least a week. He was beside himself, because without the mixing machine, he would lose what little business he had left. That’s when the ex military man recognized the second lesson.

Always have a back up plan.

Of course, the bread shop owner didn’t have a back up plan, and was exposed to significant risk. The ex-military man, his heart set on eating some sourdough bread, decided to offer his services. He wasn’t doing anything, and maybe the shop owner would give him some free bread. He suggested the trade, and the shop owner quickly agreed.

It didn’t take long for the shop owner to realize what a resource the military man was. The shop owner was getting old, and he knew an opportunity when he saw one. He had worked in this same shop for almost twenty years, and all the equipment was very old. If he could convince this ex military man to be his repairman, he could stay in business a few years longer. So they struck a bargain.

The ex military man would help out around the shop, and repair and keep all the equipment running smoothly. The bread shop owner would pay him a modest salary, and give him all the bread he could eat. Both the ex-military man the bread shop owner noticed the third lesson at the same time.

Always be open to new opportunities.

It didn’t take long for the military man to realize he had a love for bread. He began experimenting with different recipes, different cooking methods, and more and more people began coming to the shop to eat the delicious bread made by this ex sailor.

It didn’t take long for the townspeople to forget about his military past and see him only as the baker’s apprentice. The baker himself began to plan his retirement, certain that his apprentice would take over.

And when he did retire, and the bakers apprentice became the baker, it was a smooth a transition as you could imagine.  There was a big celebration, a farewell party of sorts (although the retired baker still lived in the town and was president of the Lions Club), and the apprentice became the baker.

And maybe he realized it, maybe he didn’t, but here’s the fourth lesson:

Sometimes you find your niche in life, but more often than not, your niche will find you.

Easily Remove Fear and Anxiety With the Swish Pattern

If you ever run across situations that give you anything less than an immediate resourceful and beneficial emotional response, then this post is for you. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, hang in there; it will make sense in a second.

Let’s say somebody mentions to you that you have to give a presentation at work next week. You weren’t expecting it, so what happens? If you’re like most people, you’d likely get nervous, anxious, even fearful. It’s no secret that speaking in public is the biggest fear for most people.

But what if you were able to have a different response? What if your automatic response was much more supportive and resourceful? What if instead of getting fearful and anxious, you felt confident of yet another opportunity to share with others your incredible awesomeness?

Well, there’s a simple way to reprogram your brain to respond however you like to situations like that. It takes only a few minutes to learn, and about a minute to practice it, whenever and wherever you like, the only exception being while driving, but you can do it at stoplights.

You may have even heard of it. It’s the famous swish pattern from NLP, and it’s been around for many years. Probably because it is so easy to learn and teach, it’s likely the most popular of all NLP procedures.

Here’s how you do it.

First, think of something that gives you a feeling of anxiety. For now, pick something that’s not that big a deal. Once you learn the procedure, you can move on to bigger things.

Got it? Ok, now what triggers that anxiety or emotion? Is it a picture you make in your mind, a sound, and somebody’s tone of voice? Take a few moments to get clear.
Got it? Ok, good. Put that picture or sound or whatever it is in your left hand. Move your left hand so it is completely outside of your peripheral vision.

As you slowly move your left hand closer to your face, with your palm open, allow the feeling of anxiety to grow as your hand get closer. Do this a couple times to “set” your anxiety response to your left hand motion.

Ok, clear your head. Think of something neutral, like banana chicken ice cream.

Now, think of something that gives you a really good feeling. Confident, playful, self-assured. Whatever it is, from anywhere in your past. A great golf shot, or when you told that joke that went over really well that one time, or that time when you made that special person feel really good.

Do the thing with that good feeling, and your right hand. Slowly move it closer to your face, palm open, and allow that good feeling to swell, as it gets closer.

Ok, now clear your head with another mental bowl of strawberry pizza.

Now the good part. Bring both hands so they are outside your peripheral vision. Slowly bring your left hand in, and just as it creeps across the threshold of sight, and you begin to feeling the attempted awakenings of those old unhelpful emotions, immediately drop your left hand and bring your right towards your face, and allow the full brunt of those new, powerful, helpful emotions to overwhelm you, like that gust of hot wind as you walk out of the freezing cold casino into the hot desert of Vegas, or that wave that came out of nowhere and crashed over you, destroying your plans to wade in slowly.

Do this several times. After about ten times or so, you should begin to automatically feel those new feelings and emotions whenever you think of that old trigger. You’ve effectively kept the same trigger, but changed the emotions that it triggered.

If you only this once, it can be helpful, but unfortunately it usually wears off after a couple days. The trick is to keep doing this every few days for a few weeks, until the old emotional response is completely gone. The stronger the old emotional response, the longer it will take.

The good part is it only takes more than a minute at first, when you set your left and right hands, and choose which emotions you want to replace with what. Once you got that down, you literally do this ten times at every stop light on your way to and from work.

And once you prove to yourself that this really works, you will be amazed how much more resourceful you can program your mind to be. The opportunities for self improvement and self-development are limitless.

Have fun.

Embrace Your Future

This morning I was out walking on my morning walk. It was an exceptionally nice morning; the weather was cool and clear. The sun is starting to rise a little bit later each day, so the time when I walk is near perfect conditions. Still early in the morning, so it’s very quiet.

I saw a guy (at least I think it was a guy) off in the distance. Part of my walk takes me through a large area where there are many rice fields next to each other. Each are privately owned by the surrounding neighbors, and I think they’ve been in the respective families for quite some time.

As I saw this guy way off in the distance, I couldn’t help but to wonder about him and what he was doing. I think it is really interesting when things like happen.
You’ll be moving along, on whatever path you are traveling on, and something in the distance will pop up. And because it is fairly evident that your paths will eventually cross, you naturally become curious about this, whatever it might be.

Sometimes this isn’t too pleasant. When you see something up ahead, that you will eventually come across, it can cause fear or anxiety. A police car at a traffic stop, a person that doesn’t look very safe, or maybe a hungry tiger waiting to eat you.

You can also look into the future and see things coming up that won’t likely be very pleasant. And the closer you get to them, the more anxious you can become.

I was at a seminar several years ago, and the fellow giving the lecture was explaining that fear and anxiety are largely imaginary. Of course if there really was a tiger waiting for you, that would be different. But more often than not, according to this guy, whatever is causing you anxiety is usually not nearly as bad in real life as it is in your mind.

The trick is to look at approaching events and situations the same way you’d look at some old guy in a rice field you were eventually going to pass by. Based on all my experiences in passing old guys in the street, there is a high probability of safety. Consequently, when you approach something with a high probability of safety, it’s easy to be relaxed and just let things come as they may.

And paradoxically enough, those things that do go bad, and really do create uncomfortable situations, more often than not it is your anxiety that you brought to the situation that did the damage, rather than the situation itself.

The trick is to approach everything with the same, laid back and relaxed attitude of approaching an old man in a rice field. That way you’ll be much more open and likely to see resources that you can leverage to you’re advantage.

Of course, this is much easier said than done. One trick is to simply stop thinking about what might happen in the future and only pay attention to now. A good way to do this is to simply follow your breathing, and pay as close attention as you can to the physical sensations in your body.

Of course, with more practice, this gets easier and easier, and pretty soon you’ll be as cool as cucumber in a bowl of hot sauce in every situation.

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?

Change Your Bait to Catch More Success and Wealth

I went out to eat the other day in an Ethiopian restaurant that is near my neighborhood. It is one of those things where you pass by on a regular basis, but you don’t seem to take the time to come inside and find out what might be interesting. When you stop and consider how many opportunities that are around you like this one, you can’t help but wonder how you can possibly fit them all into your life. Which is one of the reasons I finally decided to go in and check the place out.

The waitress was pretty friendly, and I guess the restaurant serves mostly Ethiopian expats, or second generation Ethiopians. Not like your average sushi restaurant on the corner of pretty much every mini mall, where you will see the normal lunch crowd that you see in any other restaurant. The wait staff seemed to recognize me as a first timer, and were appropriately friendly and welcoming to me. She asked me if I had ever eaten Ethiopian food before, and since I hadn’t I went by her recommendations.

Probably more interesting than the food was the waitress. She went through plenty of struggles to get where she is now. Most people who were in her shoes might have given up much earlier. But she kept pressing on, until she got an opportunity and seized it with all her skills and abilities.

When I was a kid I used to build these models. Sometimes cars, but mostly planes, specifically WWII planes. It didn’t matter from what country, any plane would do. One thing about the models is how they all came with detailed schematics. You could lose yourself in the minute details of each particular part your were working on, or you could look at the larger schematic, allowing you to take a broader look at things. Sometimes when you get a bigger picture of how things fit together, it’s much easier to fit the individual parts together.

I had an uncle once that I used to visit when I was a kid. He would take me fishing for catfish on this small lake. One of the reasons catfish are different from other fish is that when they bit into your bait, they don’t’ make a big deal. If you don’t check your line every so often, you could have a fish on there and not even know it. So they key is to always check what’s going on, and see if you have something, even though it doesn’t seem like it. Another thing he told me was how important it was to change your strategy if you weren’t getting what you wanted. Some people would show up to a lake, throw in a line, and then complain if the fish weren’t’ biting. Others would change their bait, change their position on the lake, and even change their fishing poles. Those guys would always go home with a basket full of catfish.

And probably the best model I ever made was of a Japanese Zero, the ones they used in the pacific war. The thing that made it so easy was that not only did they have an exploded view of the entire plane, but also they had an exploded view of each individual section. That gave you the capability of taking a step back and getting a bigger perspective on many different levels. That model came out looking really good.

So next time I go back to that Ethiopian restaurant, I’ll have a better idea of what to order for all those reasons mentioned above. And I know now exactly how friendly and welcoming those people will be.

Brand Loyalty or Habitual Indecision?

I was waiting in line at the supermarket the other day. I was buying a jug of orange juice, the fresh squeezed kind. The guy in front of me was buying six or seven cans of concentrate. We noticed each other, and naturally got into a discussion about the differences between frozen orange juices and fresh squeezed. Because it was a Sunday afternoon when most people do their shopping, we had time to discuss the various differences.

The plusses to using concentrate is that it’s cheaper, you can buy several at once and store them in your freezer, so you don’t have to go to the store as often. Interestingly, the benefits of fresh squeezed, although seemingly numerous are almost impossible to pin down. The drawbacks are obvious. You have to go to the store more often, it’s more expensive, it doesn’t stay fresh as long (you can keep cans of concentrate in the freezer for up to a year) and it really doesn’t have any more vitamins that the frozen stuff.

I suppose when asked, most people who prefer fresh squeezed would say it tastes more “natural,” its healthier, its got some special magic from the sun inside each bottle. None of these are things that you can actually measure. So what exactly are you paying for? Of course the most obvious answer is that it tastes better. That is probably the best reason of all if you are buying food, that it tastes better, but is that how the marketing strategies of these orange juice companies make it out to be? Based only on flavor?

“Buy fresh squeezed, it tastes better.”

I never really thought about it. I remember when I was a kid, Pepsi had their famous “Take the Pepsi Challenge” campaign where they set up stands in front of supermarkets across the country, in an effort to “prove” using scientific studies that Pepsi does indeed “taste better” than coke. They had frequent updates in their commercials of how people overwhelmingly chose Pepsi over coke in a blind taste test. But for some reason, Coke remained, and still remains the soft drink leader. (The whole “New Coke” fiasco notwithstanding.)

I’m sure know somebody, or may be one of these soft drink zealots yourself, who will refuse to drink soda in a restaurant if they don’t have “your” brand. I have a friend who is adamantly against Pepsi. If we go out to lunch, and he orders a Coke, and is told they only have Pepsi, he’ll act as if he’s been personally insulted. It’s kind funny to watch. Personally, I can’t really tell the difference one-way or the other.

Brand loyalty is a strange phenomenon, one that I’ve never understood, although I am an avid driver of Toyota’s, and proud wearer of New Balance. Every car I’ve ever bought is a Toyota, and every pair of athletic shoes, of any sort, has been New Balance.

So as we talked in line about the differences between fresh squeezed orange juice and juice from concentrate, a funny thing happened. The checker in the line opened up her register. And even though both of us could have gotten much closer in line had we moved over one row, we decided to stay where we were. Like once you make a decision on something, you stay with that decision despite all the logic that dictates otherwise. I guess people really are creatures of habit.

The Power of the Pre-Frame

The other day I went into a bookshop that I had passed by several times. I had never really stopped to look inside. It was a small bookshop, and I suspect it is family owned. Not like a large chain like the other ones. I passed by it enough that it was just in the right spot in the back of mind if I ever needed a bookshop in a pinch whenever I decided to be in that area, if you catch my drift. There have been a few new bestsellers I’ve been meaning to read, and I hadn’t go around to buying them yet. So the other day I was in that neighborhood, and I decided I’d pop in there for the first time and pick up a book I’d been thinking about getting for a while.

Much to my surprise, it was a second hand shop. Perhaps if I’d taken the time before to look in the window and check things out, I would have realized this. But there I was, standing in the middle of stacks and stacks of old, used, out of print, and other interesting books, all for under a dollar.

I used to have a friend who loved to travel, but even more than traveling, he loved to plan to travel. He would pick a destination, either a country or a city, and just completely absorb himself in planning his trip, and finding out everything one could possible find out about a destination. He would research all the hotels, all the restaurants, all the museums and sights. He would buy several travel books and participate in several online forums to discuss anything and everything he could possible think of before going on his trip.

And he invariably had a great time. He would always spend at least a week afterwards posting all of his experiences online and share his opinions about the restaurants, right down the detail of the entrée’s for each particular night.

An old roommate of mine took a sales seminar, and he said that of the several speakers, one gave a lesson on how to overcome objections. Like when people want to buy a car, and they are not sure about the color or something like that, or they are worried they won’t like the car after a week or something. He said that the best way to overcome an objection is to address it before it comes up. Of course this takes a bit of experience in knowing what objections are likely to come up, but once you can answer the objection skillfully in a conversation before you actually close, or ask for the sale, the customer almost never brings it up. It’s like when you prepare for a difficulty ahead of time in your mind, the difficulty never presents itself.

So when I realized I was in a used bookshop, I decided to look around anyways. I found a couple of older books by the author whose bestseller I was looking for that I hadn’t read yet. I decided to read these. And when I was paying for them, the guy at register asked me if I had read his latest. When I said I hadn’t he offered to sell me his copy, as he had just finished it. He was planning on selling it to the shop he worked for, and I bought it instead. One dollar.

Expectations

This morning I was out on my normal walk. The weather was a little hotter, and a little drier than normal, and there had been a bit of a wind last night, so the visibility was extraordinary. You could see details on the mountains that you normally could only guess at. And they looked a lot differently than I usually imagine. Not that I spend a lot of time contemplating what the mountains appear through the normal haze that surrounds my small town in the mornings, but nonetheless it was interesting to see the detail and outlines that you don’t normally see.

Once I was supposed to meet a regional supervisor at this company where I used to work. Nobody that I’d spoken to had met her before, although they all had an idea of the kind of person that she was. Most had heard stories from other people who knew somebody that talked to somebody that had met her, and had the real inside scoop, if you know what I mean. One of the more interesting things about getting the inside scoop is you are never really sure if the scoop is actual information, or somebody’s secret interpretation of someone else’s imagination.

Like sometimes when you read a movie review in the newspaper, and it somehow colors your perception of the movie that you want to see. Maybe you only kind of wanted to see this movie, and the reviewer said it was the best thing to come out since “The Sound of Music,” and of course because you love musicals, you really got excited. Then when you saw the movie you were a little bit let down because the singing and the cinematography wasn’t exactly up to your standards. Or maybe you have the pleasurable experience of having a so-so expectation of a movie, and then a review you happen to accidentally glance over describes the movie as only slightly more entertaining that having a root canal by a monkey without any anesthesia for you, or the monkey. Then when you see the actual movie, it is not so bad. Of course, in light of the horrible review you read, perhaps because the reviewer wrote it after having said root canal, you are completely blown away as the movie in question beats all your expectations.

Sometimes when a company will release its earnings report, at first it seems like they are doing pretty good. Like they may say they earned fourteen dollars per share, which is pretty fantastic in today’s market. But when you realize that they were expected to earn fourteen dollars and three cents per share, and only earned fourteen, you can understand why their stock dropped seventy five percent in the first twelve minutes of trading.

I don’t know if you’ve ever met somebody before without any notice whatsoever, but it is kind of an unnerving experience. It’s like you are sitting there minding your own business, and then this person walks into your office and says “Hi I’m your new boss,” or something like that. After you spend a few seconds searching through your brain on how you are supposed to respond to this person, and you come up completely blank, sometimes the best thing to do is just simply pretend they are an old friend. Because more than likely, the other person is going through the same transderivational search in their own brain, so when you act like you are best friends, instead of imposing your reality on them, you are actually doing them a favor by filling in the blanks. And since they are your new boss, it can’t help to have been best friends with them before you’ve even met them. It can be tricky of course, but the benefits are fabulous.

So when I finally met my boss, she turned out to be pretty nice. It seems that everybody I talked to had her confused with somebody else. Maybe a character from mythology or from TV, I’m not sure. And I don’t know how long the mountains will stay as clear as they are, but I kind of like looking at them through the fog of vagueness, as it seems more romantic that way to imagine some mystical mountain creatures living there, even though nobody has ever seen them before.

Mine Your Way To Success

Once there were two miners. They came to California during the gold rush back during the eighteen hundreds. They were both from the same small town in Kansas, although they had never met before they met up in California. At the time, the small town in Kansas was experiencing a lot of economic difficulties. The railroad, which was supposed to be building a main stop in town, which would be great for business, decided against it. There was a small mountain range just outside of town, and when the surveyors for the railroad company had come to take a look, they discovered a large iron deposit in the Earth.

This, of course, caused the townspeople, at first, to become even happier, as they imagined that the discovery of this resource would bring a lot of additional money and business to the town. But the problem was that the deposit of minerals were on different parcels of land, and they were difficult to get to. The legal ramifications were relatively complex, so in order to build the railroad, the railroad company simply opted for another town with fewer problems, and left the townspeople and the various iron miners to sort out there differences.

Just when all this was going on, people started hearing stories of the gold that you could find in California. There were all kinds of stories of people striking it rich every day, and all you had to do was to show up and find gold and all your problems would be solved. There were other stories of people finding diamonds, and oil running in streams in some mountains, and all the businesses that needed to support the gold finding industry.

So these two guys, without knowing each other, each decided to sell everything they had that was worth anything, and head out to California. They hitched rides on trains, wagons, walked for several miles, and after several months of traveling, they finally made it to the hills of San Francisco.

They both began in earnest looking for treasure, but they each had a different strategy. The first guy had been studying all about gold, and talking to people along the way. He had a clear idea of exactly what he wanted to find. Because he knew exactly what he wanted to find, he could easily choose the right equipment. And he listened very carefully to stories of people that had found exactly what they were looking for. He made sure to study their methods, study where exactly in the hills they went, what kind of landscape surrounded their findings, the exact kind of river and every detail he could get his hands on. He kept a notebook of all this detailed information.

Naturally, when he got to the hills of San Francisco, he began in earnest. He panned for gold in the exact same method of those who had already became rich. He stayed in one spot only long enough to determine, based on the amount of gold dust that he found, whether it was likely he would find a large amount. He kept this up, until after a short while, he had found enough gold to easily retire wealthy and happy. From his perspective, he thought it had been fairly easy. He looked around at all the people running around not sure what they were doing and wondered why they hadn’t become rich already. Then he bumped into the fellow from his small town.

After they recognized each other, they exchanged greetings. When he asked him how he had been doing, the other guy was upset.

“This whole place is a scam. I’ve looked for everything, diamonds, silver, rubies, and all those stories I heard are all made up. I think they are made up by the people that want to sell you the material to find this nonsense with.”

“What did you say you were looking for?” The first guy asked.

“Well, first I was looking for diamonds, because I heard about some guy who came here three years ago and found one big one. Then I heard another story about a family that had discovered rubies in the root of a sycamore tree, so I started digging up sycamore trees. Then I heard that the real money is in finding oil, but I haven’t found any of that yet.”

“Hmm,” said the first guy, stroking his chin. He wondered if he should tell him that in order to find what you are looking for, you first have to know what you are looking for. Then after you know what you are looking for, the best way to find it was to do what other people had done that had already found it. And the next thing to do is to simply decide to keep looking, until you found it. Because other people had found it, you could be sure that if you did the same thing they did, of course changing it to suit your own personality, you would find the same thing.

But he decided against it, as he suspected the old timer would figure this out on his own.