Category Archives: Life Skills

How To Be Assertive And Get What You Want

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, and he was telling me about this problem he had with a neighbor of his. His neighbor is an old widower, and kind of a lonely guy. I guess his loneliness has caused him to be less polite than you’d normally expect, as he is always imposing himself on my friend.

He’ll come over several times a week, many times without any reason, and just to have somebody to talk to. On the one hand, my friend can appreciate his situation, his kids and grandkids all live in a different state, and the old guy apparently doesn’t like to leave the apartment complex. So it’s easy to have sympathy for somebody like that, but lets be honest. Sympathy can only go so far. Pretty soon your good manners wear thin, and you start to think of reasons to get rid of the guy.

It’s gotten to the point where my friend feels anxious when he goes to do laundry in the shared laundry room. I guess he’s been caught a couple of times loading and unloading clothes, and dragged into some lengthy conversation about times past.

Then his girlfriend suggested he read a book called “When I Say No I Feel Guilty” by Smith. I checked the book out, because my friend really said it helped him. It is a book filled with helpful advice, and strategies to become more assertive. It was written during the seventies, so it’s filled with some references that don’t really work anymore, but the underlying concepts are just as powerful.

Not only can you effectively say “no” to people and reclaim your time, but you can avoid manipulation, and stay out of arguments with no end in sight you’d otherwise get dragged into. The great thing is that the concepts are really easy to understand and apply.

Here is one of my favorites.

One is called the broken record. This is for when you are talking to a salesperson, or a clerk at a store, and they are being less than helpful. Basically it works so well because it effectively defeats any argument somebody throws at you for not being able to do what you are requesting. It’s pretty simple, and works like this.

You figure out what you want, let’s say you want to return or exchange a book you bought at a private bookstore. (Most large chains have a pretty good return policy, so you likely won’t need these skills there.)

So you figure how to word your request, for example:

“I’d like to return this book.”

So far so good, right? Likely, you’ll get some reason why you can’t, especially if it is a family owned store. Even if they have a big sign stating “NO REFUNDS,” this will still work. Small stores (even huge international chains) can pretty much do what they want, despite the seemingly rigidness of their policies. Its’ not like the refund police is going to pop in out of thin air and arrest everybody.

So you say:

“I’d like to return this book.”

And they say:

“We can’t because of blah blah blah…”

The great part is that it doesn’t matter at all what they say for the “blah blah blah” part. You just say:

“I understand that, and I’d like to return this book.”

And just keep repeating this until they cave in, which they usually do pretty quickly when they realize what they are up again. Can you see why this is called the broken record technique? It’s important to stay as calm as possible, and not get angry. It helps to even try not to listen to their excuse at all. Just imagine they are on of those teachers on those old Charlie Brown cartoons.

There are many other techniques in this book, which can do wonders for all your relationships. It’s considered one of the classics of assertiveness, and has helped millions of people since it’s publication. I strongly suggest you pick it up; you can probably buy a used on Amazon for a couple bucks. It’ s great to have a couple copies around to refer to whenever you wish you would have handled a situation a little bit better, so you can study up and improve for the next time.

Are You Committed To Powerful Persuasion And Influence?

To those of you who have emailed me privately asking for more tips on how to easily persuade others, this article is for you. If this is your first time here, you will find a great and easy to apply tip to use in your persuasive endeavors, be they job interviews, first dates, sales calls or any other instance where you’d like to covertly influence somebody.

The human mind comes pre programmed with various “hot buttons” that were extremely beneficial to humans in the days before agriculture. Decisions had to be made quickly and effectively. Whoever happened to feel a need to sit around and analyze every situation before acting usually didn’t live long enough to pass on that characteristic, so we are left with a predisposition for quick thinking.

If you were a caveman, and took three hours to decide weather or not to throw your spear at a wooly mammoth, you would never eat. If it took you several minutes to contemplate which direction to run if a tiger started chasing you, you wouldn’t last very long.

If you are ever conflicted in a decision, it’s only because today’s society presents us with a multitude of element that push those few “hot buttons” that we have built into our thinking process.

These “hot buttons” have been demonstrated beautifully by Robert Cialdini in his book “Influence – Science and Practice.” It is likely the most referred to book on influence and persuasion.

The topic of today is something called commitment and consistency. Basically, you tend to do things the same way you’ve done them before, or you tend to choose things the same way you’ve chosen them before.

Brand loyalty, staying in relationships or jobs that seem contrary to our best interests, and taking the same route to and from work area all based on this principle. Humans like what is comfortable. And when we do something, and it works, we usually do it over and over again.

Sometimes this can have a negative effect. If you try something, and get a little bit of a benefit, but not quite the benefit you were after, it can be hard to try something new, as we want to hang on, sometimes subconsciously, to that small benefit that we got, whatever it was. It may even be something that we are completely unaware of.

There are a couple of interesting experiments presented in Cialdini’s book. One is that they went through a neighborhood, and asked people to put up a huge sign in their front yard. Most, of course, said not.

Then they went through another similar neighborhood, and asked neighbors to put up a very small sign in their yard. A few said yes. They came back later, and the people that had allowed a small sign in their yard (no big deal) overwhelmingly said yes to a large sign. Because they had already committed to putting a sign up, agreeing to put up a much larger sign was simply behaving in a way that they had behaved in the past.

So how can you use this to influence others? There are two. One is similar to the sign experiment. You simply get the person to do something that seems no big deal, on a small scale. Then later, you ask them to do something much bigger, but seems to be similar to the smaller thing they did.

Salespeople do this all the time. They get small commitments to follow them from prospective customers. (Follow me, sit here, etc) and then slowly build up the level of compliance, until signing a contract is simply the next step in the process.

Seducers use a similar strategy. They meet a girl, buy her a drink, convince her to go to a different area of the bar or club, where they can “talk.” Then they go to another bar in the same neighborhood. Then they go to a small café somewhere closer to the guy’s apartment. Before you know it, they are in bed together. A string of small commitments, slowly growing in size and importance until going home with some guy she just met only three hours ago seems like no big deal.

Another, trickier way to do this is to find things in the persons past that they have already done, and convince them that their previous behavior is very similar to the behavior you want them to perform. This has to be done very carefully, and not blatantly. It takes practice, but once you get this down, you can be powerfully persuasive.

One way to do this (As described beautifully by Cialdini, Goldstein, and Martin in “Yes,” the follow up to “Influence”) is to assigning a positive label to your “target” because of their previous behavior. Then simply imply that if they choose not to comply with your request, they will lose that label.

Again, this can be tricky, and takes some practice to do conversationally, but it can be extremely powerful. Once you convince somebody that they will lose something they like (the positive label you gave them) they will do almost anything to keep it.

One extremely important caveat. Although these techniques are very powerful, if you use them without the other person’s interests in mind, they will backfire horribly. You will be despised more than the most unethical car salesman there is. But when you do this with the utmost sincerity in helping the other person achieve their underlying needs, you can’t go wrong.

How To Exploit Juice Underneath Your Desires – For Sex, Love, And Money

Have you ever chosen a goal, only to find out that you really didn’t want it, or once you got it you thought maybe it wasn’t all that you thought it might be?

Or maybe you’re lucky enough to have had a goal, tried really hard to achieve it, and then failed. And after you’ve failed, you realized that you really weren’t after that goal after all, but something deeper, and by doing things that were moving you closer to the goal you thought you wanted, you were actually developing your skills that would make it much easier for you to achieve a much larger, more satisfying goal.

Huh?

Example.

I know a guy that really wanted to be a standup comic. He had watched comics as a kid, and really enjoyed him, and really wanted to be onstage telling jokes, and getting people to laugh. So he read books, went to trainings and seminars. He studied the structure of humor so he could write his own material. When it finally came time to get up on stage and burst onto the comic scene, he failed miserably.

He was literally booed off stage again and again. His jokes were horrible, his delivery was terrible, and his timing was awful. For a while he was completely demoralized. The he started learning about personal development and motivation. As it turns out, studying the structure of comedy is closely related to the structure of human understanding and how we humans view the world. Which is very closely tied to our own motivational strategies and our beliefs about what we are capable of.

So he started studying and learning more and more. And he found out there was a huge demand for this kind of seminar. He started giving seminars that quickly sold out every time.

The skills he had picked up along the way, studying about human nature through comedy, and practicing public speaking skills against a ferociously unappreciated audience gave him incredible understanding of other peoples pain and fear, and incredible effective public speaking and motivation skills.

Had he not tried and failed as a comedian, he would never have succeeded as self-development coach. His seminars still sell out whenever he gives them, and he is making quite a bit of money today.

But the point of this essay is not to encourage you to chase after a goal and then fail. If you started out with that mindset, you’d likely not chase it with near as much gusto as is you were expecting to win.

The point of this is to encourage you to really examine the goal you are chasing. Really really examine it. What is it about that goal that is so appealing to you? What will you have, feel, and experience when you achieve that goal? Is there and even better, quicker, and easier way to feel, experience and have those same things by choosing a different goal?

In the example above, the underlying criteria of becoming a comic might have been to make people feel good, and happy, and feel good about oneself for delivering those emotions to others. There are many ways to do that. Being a comic is certainly one way, but is it the only way? Is it the easiest way?

There is one very powerful motivating factor in psychology called commitment and consistency. This has been proven to be a very powerful social influence technique. People that publicly claim they are Republicans will never vote democrat, but people that never commit publicly to either party are much more likely to vote for a candidate not based on his party, but on his or her qualifications.

In the jury system, studies have shown that juries where they publicly voice their opinion (guilty or innocent) before deliberation have a much harder time coming to a consensus. Those that indicate their initial opinion anonymously (writing G o I on a slip of paper) have a much easier time agreeing on a consensus. The people that publicly claim either guilty or innocent have a much harder time changing their minds.

This same dynamic is in place when setting goals.  Sometimes a goal that should have been abandoned a long time ago is still pursued, only because the person made a decision to get it, no matter what.

Of course, this is not to be confused with simply giving up on chasing a goal due to some adversity or difficulties in achieving it. This is about a goal that has lost its relevance.

When you can really dig down deep inside your mind to discover the real reason behind your goal, and go after that, the goal itself can become a temporary placeholder in your mind for your deeper, and more important criteria. Once you identify what that is, you will realize that there are many more ways to get there.

This can take some time and person introspection, but it is well worth the effort.  When you realize that the underlying structure of your experience is something worthy of your attention, you can be assured you will be successful.

Embedded Commands for Powerful Persuasion

One powerful tool that you can use in your toolkit of persuasion and influence is the embedded command. An embedded command is likely the most popular, easiest to learn, hardest to detect (and therefore one of the most powerful) ways to influence others.

They do take some time to learn, but once you have them down, you’ll notice that you are using them in your everyday speech. When you combine an unconscious skill of embedded commands with a strong win/win intention or outcome, you can be a powerfully unstoppable and charismatic force.

It’s no secret that most people would rather rally around a strong, charismatic leader than step up the plate themselves. Humans are designed to follow one leader in every group of people. Many studies of psychology and sociology have been done that illustrate this simple point. If you’ve every been in a business meeting, you know that most people would happily submit to a powerful, authoritative leader than take responsibility for themselves.

When you develop the use of embedded commands, you will be tapping into peoples deep evolutionarily based need to follow directions, and become incredibly influential. And the great thing is that they are very simple to use and apply.

First, take a short sentence, which is in the imperative form. A short command. Some examples.

Eat sushi.
Drink CC Lemon.
Watch Television
Add water.
Buy my product.
The structure is the first word is a verb in its basic present tense form. Then you have two or three words after it, that go along with the verb.

Next, you need to say them with the right tonality. Pretend you have your own personal robot. They will do everything you ask, and their feelings won’t get hurt. Say each of the above sentences with a slight downward tonality.

Ok? Ok. Next, take the above small snippets of speech, and put them into a larger sentence. This is where it gets tricky. You’ll need to say the command part a little bit different from the rest of the sentence. But make sure not to linger too long when you say the command, otherwise the people you are talking to will know that something is up. Pause just a little bit before the command, and a little bit afterwards, and then continue on with your sentence as if nothing happened.

This way, even if the person you are speaking with suspects something is up, by continuing on as if nothing happened, they’ll quickly forget their suspicions. Even if they notice something is up, they likely won’t know exactly what it is (other than maybe, you are talking funny, but this rarely happens.)

For example, let say you want to convince your girlfriend to eat sushi. You could try looking at her like Rasputin, and say EAT SUSHI! But she’ll likely think you are a nutcase. Or you could say something like this:

The other day, I was listening to this doctor on a radio talk show. He was discussing a study about people who eat sushi, and how they are healthier. He says that when you eat sushi, you get lots of good monounsaturated fats, and people that eat sushi on a regular basis tend to live longer. Hey, I’m getting kind of hungry by the way; do you want to get something to eat?

I remember when I was a kid; I went to some amusement park. In the amusement park they had this animal show, where they had a dog and a cat do a bunch of tricks. They had a sort of joke trick, where they would pull a kid out of the audience, and the trainer would tell him to whisper an article of clothing in the dog’s ear, and then he would go and get it.

Every time they kid would whisper women’s underwear, and the dog would come back with a bra, and you could hear a woman scream from backstage. They called me up on stage, and sure enough, I chose to whisper in the dog’s ear a woman’s bra. I thought it was my own choice to choose a woman’s bra, but my brother later explained what was up.

He would describe all the things I could choose, but he always used embedded commands (although at the time I had no idea what they were) when he mentioned to “choose a woman’s bra,” so inevitable, all the kids that went up on stage would choose that. And that was the only thing the dog was trained to go and get from back stage. It was a pretty good way to set up an easy trick.

These are great to use over the phone if you are in sales, or are talking to your girlfriend or boyfriend. They are particularly powerful if you start with a command that is easy to accept, and slowly lead to a more powerful command that you’d like your listener to perform.

For example

Become interested.
Get curious.
Get excited about this.
Want this.
Make a decision
Get this.
Buy this.
Do this.
Choose now.
Be happy.
Share with your friends.

Whatever it is you are talking about, if you start slow, and work your way up to a big finish, this can be very powerful. At first you’ll have to think these through before you deliver them, but after a while (with practice) you’ll be able to choose a destination and then automatically give people easy steps to get there by following your commands.

Of course, like any other powerful persuasion techniques, these should be used with caution. The quickest way to make a bad name for yourself is to convince somebody to commit money or emotions to something that isn’t in their best interests. The reasons powerful leaders are so powerful, and that people trust them is because they truly have the people’s interest at heart. You don’t have to look back through history to find reviled, hated and despised dictator that took advantage of their leadership.

When you use these ethically, they can be a lot of fun, and make a lot of people (including yourself) very happy.

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.

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.

How To Win At The Racetrack Every Single Time

And now for something completely different.

I know of a method, that I recalled for some reason this morning while I was out on my daily walk, which is a near guaranteed method to make money at the racetrack. I say near guaranteed because if you don’t actually make money, you won’t actually lose that much.

But the best part, for me at least, is that with this method you will be in almost every single race. Meaning that you will have a shot at winning right down to the wire in seven or eight out of ten races. Which makes going to the races really exciting. If you are kind of person that likes to study the Daily Racing From, and base your predictions on the past history of each horse and jockey combination, or whatever other handicapping system you use, then this method is definitely not for you.

However, if only occasionally go to the track, or are going to Vegas or anywhere else that has a sports book, and would like to dabble a little bit, and have a lot of fun doing so, then this system is for you.

It works like this. First you must understand the basics of betting the races. The simplest bests are to win, to place, or to show. Win is first place (duh) place is second and show is third. You’ll win more money, and less frequently if you bet to win than to place or show, but betting to place or show you’ll win more often, but win less each time.

Most people only bet to win, which is fine. You pick a horse, say number three, and you say “number three to win in the seventh,” which means you are betting on horse number three to come in first place in the seventh race.

You can spend all day choosing horses based on their names, the color of their outfit, (or whatever you call it that horses wear) and how they at you. Many do this and have plenty of fun. Unfortunately, you usually lose, and what’s even worse, watching the race isn’t much fun because your horse usually is way behind before the race is halfway over.

This method I’m about to show you is a highly systemized way to pick horses, so that you’ll be in the race all the way to the finish.

First, you need to understand what an exacta is. An exacta is when you choose two horses, and choose one to win, and the other to place, or you pick one horse to come in first, and the other horse to come in second. This is much more difficult, and it pays out much more money that just a win.

If you choose to horses at random every race, you will almost never choose correctly beaus there are simply so many different combinations you could choose from.

What you could do is bet what’s called an “exacta box” which means you choose two or three horses, and then bet every combination possible of them coming in first and second. For example, if you chose an exacta box on three horses, numbers, 2, 4, and 6, you would betting all of the following combinations (1st,2nd):

2,4
4,2
2,6,
6,2
4,6
6,4

Or six different combinations for three horses. For two horses, there would of course only be two combinations, and for four horses, there would be twelve combinations.

Even though it’s one bet, (exacta box) you have to pay for each combination. So an exacta box for horses, 2,4,6 would cost you six times whatever amount you wanted to bet. So a two-dollar exacta box on 2,4,6 would cost you twelve dollars.

So how do you pick your three horses? Easy. Get a sports page, or buy a racing form. There should be a page where they have three “experts” whose job it is to study all the relevant statistics and make an educated guess on which horse will win each particular race. Usually they have three “experts” give their opinion for each race.

All you do is choose those three horses, one from each “expert” for you exacta box for each race.

That way, in almost every single race you will have a solid chance of winning your bet, making for an exciting day at the races.

Keep in mind, that these “experts” usually pick the favorites. Meaning that everybody else is betting on them to win, so if they do win, you won’t win much. (Kind of like in “Bruce Almighty” when everybody won the lotto, they each got three dollars or something).

So what might happen is you’ll bet a two dollar exacta box on three horses, pay twelve dollars, and you might only win ten. Sometimes you’ll win a bit more, sometimes you’ll get lucky and one of the “experts” will pick semi-long shot.

The most I ever made betting this system in one day, while betting only two-dollar exactas, was around three hundred dollars. I hit eight exactas that day.

Most of the time, you’ll break even, or make enough to pay for your hot dogs and beers that you drink while your at the track. It’s a great way to make good bets without putting too much thought into them, freeing you to enjoy those hot dogs and beer and your friends, while astounding them with your secret knowledge of how to beat the track.

Remember, racing form, (or sports page) three experts, three horses per race, and one exacta box on those three horses.

If you want to get tricky, you can increase your bet if you win a bunch in a row, going from two dollars to three dollars to four dollars, etc (remember each race cost six times your bet for a three horse exacta box). Just be sure to lower your bet down to two or even one dollar if you go a couple races without winning anything.

Have fun, and let us know how it worked out for you.

How Group Roles and Group Diversity Affect Group Longevitity

I was having lunch with a friend recently, a friend that I hadn’t seen in quite a while. It is one of those friendships that you can pick up where you left off, sometimes after a few years even. Other friendships are different.

With those, you need to constantly give them attention or they will die on their own. Of course both kinds are valuable, and both have their own set of benefits. Some are contextual, some are dependent on the time or the situation, and others are dependent on a shared workplace.

I remember once I was waiting in line at a big bookstore to get a copy of a new book signed by a famous author, who was also a TV personality. If you wanted to get your book signed, you had to show up to the bookstore twice. Once in the morning to line up to get a number, and then later that afternoon to line up according to the number you got. They gave out the numbers in order, so you essentially lined up in the same order from the morning.

Which made for an interesting situation. I suddenly made friends with the people standing in line around me. We were there for the same purpose, and because we all left at the same time, and we knew we were all coming back to the same place as the same time, it kind of gave it an “instant friendship” feeling to it. Shared purpose, shared interests, an inherent plan to meet back later at the same place.

It was really strange the way it unfolded. We all said our goodbyes in the morning, and each went off to our jobs. Later that afternoon, we all greeted each other as if were old buddies. There were about six of us. And as we slowly wound our way around the bookstore, we talked about various things that you usually talk about on a first date. Family background, interests, hobbies etc.

And when we got to the front something else interesting happened. They were letting people in by groups, based on their own counting system. Their counting system didn’t consider that people had formed their own “cliques” while waiting in line.

When our turn came, only half of us were called to go in, and the other half had to wait for the next “group.” One of the girls in our “group” gave the bookstore guy a sad look and said “But we’re together,” and motioned to our newly formed group.

He acquiesced, and let us in. We proceeded to shift through the line together, inside the bookstore, closer and closer to the superstar whose autograph we wanted. As our excitement grew, a couple people suggested getting drinks afterwards, or other plans involving restaurants and activities.

But then something totally unexpected happened that really surprised me. As soon as we all got our autographs, the purpose for our group completely and utterly vanished. All the idle chitchat we’d shared lost its importance, as we no longer had a common purpose.

We suddenly found ourselves looking at each other, likely all thinking the same thing. “Wait, who are you people again?” Or something along those lines. We all mumbled a quick and robotic, “uh, see you,” and quickly went our different ways.

I’m pretty sure that I forgot all those people’s names within an hour after leaving, as I’m sure they did mine. And I seriously doubt that if I ever ran into them again, we’d recognize each other.

Now, I’m sure you have friends, good friends, which you met in places while standing in line, or waiting for something. That happens all the time. But when that does happen, it is because you had something in common, and “clicked” personality wise because of reasons other than what you were waiting for.

The “group” I found myself in, we had absolutely nothing in common, at all, except that we were all waiting for an autograph from a famous TV personality/author. As soon as that reason vanished, so did our group.

But it sure was fun while it lasted, and it did pass the time quite quickly while we were waiting, serving a valuable purpose.

I think the only time people get into trouble is when we expect more from a relationship or a friendship that it can provide for us.

How to Easily Improve Your Memory and Always Remember Names

Have you ever been talking to somebody, and halfway through the conversation, you suddenly realize that you’ve completely forgotten their name? Maybe you looked around and hoped you would see somebody that knew them, so you could later ask what their name was. Or maybe you lost track of the conversation completely as you racked your brain trying to remember their name.

Of course, the worse thing that could happen is that a friend joins the conversation, and you are suddenly on the spot of making the socially required introductions. You can either admit you’ve forgotten their name, and look foolish, or you can ignore the introductions and hope they introduce themselves, and look rude. Either way, forgetting somebody’s name is an almost certain way to put you into a bind.

Luckily, because you are reading this you are about to discover how to remember names so that you will never find yourself in an uncomfortable position again. And one cool thing about this trick is that it can be applied to any situating where you need to remember important facts or details, and it wouldn’t be appropriate to write them down.

Before I explain the simple trick, one important, and often misunderstood concept about memory needs to be addressed. Remembering things, names, places, dates, etc, is not a passive process. You have to make a conscious choice, combined with conscious mental action if you want to remember anything, at least at first. Just like riding a bicycle, once you get the hang of it, you can do it without thinking.

Memory is no different. If you are having problems now, you can take simple steps that consciously remember things, just like you had to remember to hold the handle bars and pedal and steer so you wouldn’t crash into things or fall over. But just as you soon were able to ride a bike without thinking, you will soon be able to remember things without thinking.

The idea behind this is called pegging. A peg it simply something you hang something. Physically a peg is something on wall that many people use to hang their keys on, so they won’t forget where they are. You can do the same with names.

The idea is to make a decision that you want to remember their name before you get it from them. It may seem cumbersome at first, but once you get the hang of it will be second nature.

The trick is to give somebody a name before you meet them. And not just any name, something specific about the way they look, or walk or talk. The key here is to be as humorous, demeaning, politically incorrect as possible. This is ok, because you won’t be sharing this name with anybody. Then when you hear their name, you will need to connect their actual name in some way with the politically incorrect name you gave them before.

This requires a bit of mental flexibility, as you will need to take their name and create a mental picture of something associated with that name.

For example. Let’s say you are at a party, and you see somebody you might meet. You look at him, and he has a big nose. So right away you think of him as “Mr. Big Nose.” (Remember, you aren’t going to share this with anybody). Then when you hear his name, you create a picture based on his name, and attach it to “Mr. Big Nose” in your mind.

Let’s say his name is Mike. You can think of a microphone, and imagine a cluster of microphones dangling from his nose. Or lets say his name is Dave. You can think of a wave (rhymes with Dave) and imagine a giant thirty-foot tsunami exploding from is nostrils. Or if his name is George, you can imagine either the monkey, curious George, playing his hose, or George of the Jungle, swinging on vine from his nose, or George Washington, and imagine a cluster of rolled up one dollar bills stuck in his nose.

This may seem like a lot of work, but you’ll be surprised how quickly you can master this. You can practice this a couple ways. One way is to look online for baby names, and practice thinking of pictures to associate with common names you might hear. And when you are out in public, like at Starbucks or wherever, you can practice giving people politically incorrect names like “Mr. Big Nose,” or “Mr. Blue Shirt,” or “Miss Big Hair,” or “Miss on sale shoes,” or whatever. You will only need to practice this a couple of times before you get really good at it.

If you need motivation, just imagine what it will be like when people think of you as the person that always remembers people’s names. And when you realize that remembering somebody’s name is the absolute best way to make an impression, you’ll also really increase your popularity.

Comforting Thoughs Lead to Increasing Ideas

This morning I was doing my usual exercises. I do some setups, a bridge, some Hindu squats, and I have a large elastic band that I use for some upper body work. It saves a lot of time this way; as I don’t have to go to the gym, and it saves quit a lot of money, because the only cost was for the elastic band contraption (which I bought from lifelineusa.com by the way), which was about fifty dollars. While I was doing my exercises I noticed something strange about my apartment. Because it’s recently become hot, I started sleeping in another room, because I only have an air conditioner in one room, so I sleep in that. And I usually do my exercises right when I wake up, so I do them in the same room where I sleep.

It’s interesting the things you notice when you change your schedule just a little bit. The human mind is a fantastic thinking machine that has developed an extraordinary amount of flexibility over the years. And when I say over the years, I mean over the last million years or so of evolution. On the one hand, the brain is incredibly flexible and adaptive, but on the other hand it can get into a rut rather quickly.

I was reading an interesting article the other day that was talking about how many of superstitions actually stem from the fact that people are afraid to change their habits. Which turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy, because once superstition grows to a certain level of acceptance in any society, it becomes a familiarity in and of itself. Likely rooted in the natural and beneficial human desire for safety, humans tend to stick to what works, without having much of a proclivity to stray from the beaten path. Once you something over and over again, and you like the results, there is tendency to stop look for small ways to improve yourself, and start to develop a strong attachment for the same way of doing things. The funny thing is, according to this article, is that many of the methods and techniques we pick up along the way are completely random, and don’t really have anything to do with the outcome.

Just because we tried one random thing, and happened to coincidently get the same outcome, we somehow convince ourselves everything that we did contributes to the outcome.

This is how people grow attached to lucky shirts, going through the same pre-swing ritual in baseball and golf. I’m not sure if I agree with this guys theory but it seems to make a bit of since.

Sometimes when you change your schedule or routine, really cool things can happen. You can notice new ideas, and look at things in a different way.

Once I was driving to a friend’s house, and there was construction going on that I didn’t know about. I had to take a different route to get there, one that I’d never taken before. I found a bagel shop (for those of you that know, I love bagels). I had to stop, and was surprised to find out they have some of the most delicious bagels I’ve ever eaten. They had a salted bagel that had really huge chunks of sea salt all over it, like fourteen-carat chunks of salt. This something that you don’t’ come across everyday, so needless to say I was happy that I had to take a detour.

And what I noticed in my new bedroom this morning while I was doing setups as how much softer the floor is. And to think I’d been wasting all my time sitting in chair on this soft tatami mat floor.