Category Archives: Flexibility

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speak To Their Deeper Structure

There’s an interesting movie that came out a few years ago.

About a bunch of aliens that decided to come to Earth.

Only when they got here, communication was an issue.

(You might wonder why they didn’t think of that before they made the trip).

This is generally something that’s never really focused on in movies.

Even movies about history.

They have a couple of different cultures meet, and they can communicate perfectly.

Most of the time, they just have everybody speak English and hope nobody notices.

Of course, in movies, books and other stories this is acceptable.

But in real life, communication is essential.

If you’ve ever been anywhere where you don’t speak the language, it can be pretty terrifying.

Especially if you’re alone and lost.

If somebody comes up and starts speaking English, it’s a HUGE relief.

However, most people just assume since everybody’s speaking English (or whatever your native tongue is), that’s that.

But that’s just the beginning.

Sure, if you’re with your buddies and you have a long history, you don’t need to say much.

But when you’re meeting somebody new, a potential client or love interest, you need to do a lot more than just speak English.

Everybody has their own unique way of experiencing the world.

If you don’t take the time to learn about THEIR model of the world, you’re leaving a lot up to chance.

Luckily, underneath all of our individual model’s of the world, lies a structure that is consistent from person to person.

Which means once you understand this deeper structure, and more importantly how to make sure your message resonates with this deeper structure, nearly everything you say will be accepted.

And if you’re REALLY advanced, and take the time to learn THEIR model of the world, then you can become even more effective.

More effective than 99% of communicators out there who spit out jumbled up collections of words and hope for the best.

Most people have conversations with strangers and then scarcely remember them.

But when you speak to their deeper structure, they will NEVER forget you.

Learn How:

Seven Laws

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

How To Leverage Their Ego

In business you’ve got to make some tough choices.

A common metaphor is that you get something done inexpensively, quickly and high quality.

The rub is that you can ONLY pick two.

Meaning if it’s fast and cheap it’s not going to be high quality.

If it’s high quality and cheap it’s going to take a long time.

From inside our heads, we often have to make the same choices.

One thing we humans LOVE to do is be “right.”

That’s even a common expression.

“I know, right?”

But when it comes to persuasion, the need to be right can get in our way.

In fact, the less we need to be right, the more we can get done.

Plenty of famous people have been attributed with this quote:

“Humans can accomplish anything so long as it doesn’t matter who gets the credit.”

We KNOW this, but at the same time it’s our Achilles heel.

It’s REALLY DIFFICULT to see somebody else take credit for your idea.

People spend kajillion dollars on lawsuits for this very reason.

But if you CAN turn off your need to “be right,” just for a minute, you can get other people to do pretty much anything.

As an extreme example, if somebody REALLY WANTS to give you a sack of money, is it REALLY that important that they think it was THEIR idea?

If can manage to shut of our own “need to be right” just for a couple seconds, we can leverage the OTHER PERSON’s “need to be right” in our favor.

How?

Most everything we do is influenced by one of the seven laws.

Authority, social proof, scarcity, etc.

At the same time, while we are obediently following those seven laws, (following the crowd, doing or thinking whatever the authority on TV or Facebook tells us), we actually believe it’s OUR idea.

Nobody will explain their behaviors and beliefs as being put in their minds by social proof and authority.

Nobody will say, “I really don’t have any idea why I’m doing what I’m doing, but that guy has on a lab coat, and everybody is doing it, and that’s good enough for me!”

BECAUSE we have this “need to be right” we NEED to believe it’s OUR idea.

Which means if you can shut off your “need to be right” for just a little bit, you can leverage those seven laws like CRAZY.

Because when you combine them with conversational hypnosis, you don’t need anything but your words and the ideas they create.

And then just stand back and watch them “be right,” only they are “being right” in exactly the way you wanted them to.

Learn How:

Seven Laws

How She Got Money From Her Parents

When I was a kid I loved reading Mad Magazine.

Once they got into trouble because they had a very realistic looking $3 bill.

And supposedly, some kids were using them in change machines.

There was one bit I remember reading as a kid.

It’s pretty popular, I’ve heard it in a lot of places.

It was a letter written from a student at college to her parents.

She went on for a few paragraphs about how her life had completely changed.

She’d dropped out of college.

Gotten a bunch of tattoos and piercings.

(This was back in the day when that was still pretty “out there.”)

She was living with her new boyfriend who had just gotten out of prison.

She was also pregnant.

And she was pretty sure it was his.

But then the letter ended with the following:

“Just kidding. School is fine, my GPA is still 4.0, but I need a couple hundred dollars. Could you send it?”

The idea being that the parents would be so relieved that their little angle wasn’t tatted up and pregnant by an ex-con, that they’d gladly send her the cash.

Whereas, if she started out saying, “Dear dad, can I have some money?” she wouldn’t have gotten the same result.

This clearly shows that when we frame our suggestion or recommendation, we can have a much better chance of getting it accepted.

Instead of just blurting out what we want, if we think a bit, and put it in the proper context, it will be much more likely to be accepted.

What context?

Think in terms of cost and benefits.

Everything we do has costs and benefits.

Everything we think about doing has costs and benefits.

So when we present our ideas to others, they are going to IMMEDIATELY and usually unconsciously think of our ideas terms of costs and benefits.

The idea is to make your suggestion have a much better cost-benefit ratio (many benefits per cost) compared to the alternative.

Just choose something similar to your suggestion, but make sure it is MUCH costlier (in terms of time, money, or inconvenience) and only has a little bit more benefits.

Compared to THAT, your choice will be the most logical.

Luckily, there are plenty of ways to do this.

And the more you practice, the better you’ll get.

And this law, (Comparison and Contrast) is only ONE of the seven.

Learn Them ALL:

Seven Laws

Mind Persuasion Archives

Reframing Common Ideas

Category Archives: Flexibility

How To Own The Future

First Rule Of Emperors

Trapped On Demon Planet?

Whose Thoughts Do You Think?

Daily Empire Building

The Collapse Of The Averages

Speak To Their Deeper Structure

How To Speak Magic Spells

How To Leverage Their Ego

How She Got Money From Her Parents