Category Archives: Perception

How to Tap the Power of Perception

One of the most common emails I receive from people that have benefited from reading my articles is how it helps to be able to see things differently in life. People can really begin to realize the abundance of life when you simply look around at the things that you normally see in a new light. Viewing things from a different perspective is not only liberating from whatever prison that you’ve built for yourself, but it can liberate others as well. And as I’m sure you know, liberating others is one of the greatest joys of being fully human.

One technique that has helped me enormously in this regard is the power of perspective. This is really nothing more that imagining you are in somebody else’s shoes. I’m sure you’ve heard that before you judge someone, walk a mile in their shoes. The reason this simple saying has spanned many generations and cultures is because it is one of the most fundamentally sound principles that can really open up human communication.

Now the tricky part. How exactly do you do that? You can’t very well go and physically borrow the other person’s shoes. One way to do this is to imagine that you are actually watching yourself when you are talking to other people. Next time you are having a conversation with somebody, while you are talking, really imagine that you are watching yourself out of the other persons eyes. If you can find a partner to practice doing this with, fantastic. Otherwise, I would advise at the very least doing this with a friend whom you are comfortable with. When you do this at first, it can seem a little strange imagining that you are watching yourself from the eyes of the person you are talking to. After you practice this a few times, you’ll be surprised at what you see, and you won’t be able to help changing how you communicate with others, if only a little bit.

Once you master this, you can begin to imagine seeing other things from even more expanded perspectives. And the greatest thing about this is once you start to practice on a regular basis, you’ll be thinking of new ways to apply this idea almost automatically. And that can help in more ways than you can imagine.

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Step Back – – – Contemplate

I was flipping through the channels recently, and I came across one of those medical dramas. You know the kind, where they shift between the tension between the doctors and nurses, orderlies, and patients. It’s interesting how no matter what jobs people find themselves in, they will always come up with the same kinds of conflicts. But the thing the struck me was that it reminded me of once when I was sitting in the waiting room of the emergency room at the hospital. A friend of mine was suffering from extreme side cramps with what would later be determined to be a burst appendix. Because it was so crowded had been waiting for almost an hour by the time they wheeled her in for emergency surgery.  Probably the most disturbing thing was a man who had been waiting there with his kid, who was having some kinds of troubles. And he got into a pretty heated argument with the receptionist, as he had been waiting longer than any of us. Because he was speaking in broken English, and it was apparent the receptionist only spoke English they were having a difficult time communicating. And it didn’t help matters that he was distraught because of his sick daughter, she was distraught because of the many people waiting for more medical care than was available, and there really was nothing she could do. It’s horrible when you find yourself with a communication problem like that.

It reminds me when I was on the beach once, waiting for a friend. I was kind of learning against a wall they had separating the boardwalk from the actual sand. I was standing in the sand area, leaning against the wall, facing the ocean. It was really beautiful. The sun was off to the left, and was going to be setting soon. I was hoping my friend would arrive so we could enjoy the sunset together. But then again, it was one of those times where you are just relaxed and content to sit and let whatever happens happen.  Which is probably why I became so curious about the guy who started talking to me. It seems he was some kind of a performer, and would walk up and down the beach until he found a large crowd, and put on his show, and accept whatever donations they felt were appropriate. He started talking in sentences that didn’t really make much sense, but there was something intriguing about him, so I just listened, wondering where exactly he was going with all of this.

He sorted of reminded me from my friend from Australia, that I see every once in a while. This guy is a philosophy major, who is always going off on weird tangents, but he usually makes a lot of sense when you look below the surface. It’s like you have to take a step back to and figure out how to look at the broader concept of what he is talking about to make sense of it all. Sometimes you really need to pay attention to what is being said so you can really understand it. And many times he doesn’t make any sense then and there, it’s only when you begin to think about this that you can later find ways to apply it to your own life. He also likes to surf, which is probably why I started daydreaming about him while this guy was talking about whatever it was he was talking about.

Which ended up being that he was a fire eater, among other things. He had a bag with him, and while we were talking, or rather while he was talking and I was listening, enough people showed up. He kind of just broke off right in the middle of his story and then put on his fire eating show. And also he walked on fire, and rolled around on broken glass, and all kinds of cool stuff. All in all I think he collected a couple hundred dollars from the crowd. Not a bad take.

After my friend was wheeled into the emergency room, someone finally was able to summon the courage to intervene as a translator for the poor guy with the sick daughter. Turned out she just had diarrhea, and was dehydrated. That’s why she wouldn’t stop crying. Another person in the waiting room offered a solution that calmed his daughter down enough so the poor man was able to enjoy some peace until he finally saw a doctor. While we were waiting for my friend to come out of surgery (from which she fully recovered) he left and gave a gracious thanks to all that helped him.

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Always Assume The Best

I had to visit a friend in the hospital this past weekend. Nothing serious, but where I live people get put into the hospital for the strangest things. He was suffering from what the doctors said might be an ulcer, or just might be gastritis, but to be on the safe side, they want to keep him overnight for observation. I guess different countries  have different rules about how to act based on what is going on inside somebody. Even when they are fairly sure it’s nothing serious, the usually put you into the hospital at least overnight, just to be sure. I don’t particularly like hospitals, so whenever I have to go visit them, I have to make sure to up a big defense so I don’t’ let the sadness creep inside. I was in the elevator on the way down, happy to be leaving, when I saw somebody staring at me. He wasn’t a patient, or a doctor. I didn’t think I recognized him, but he kept staring at me.

Like this one time I was at the library in town. I had only moved here a few days ago at the time. I really like to read so I decided to go and check out the local library to see if they had any books I’d read before. And I was sitting there,and this guy kept looking at me from across the room. And had a really angry expression on his face, like I’d done something to offend him or something. I was starting to get kind of nervous, but seeing how I was in a public place, I didn’t really think he would do anything. But he just kept staring. Maybe he thought I looked like somebody that stole his milk money when he was a kid or something. Maybe he didn’t like the shirt I was wearing.

I usually don’t think such mean things about people. One of my relatives once told me that giving the other person the benefit of the doubt has two sides of the same coin. One side is to always assume that others are acting on some kind of good intentions, no matter how deep. And they are always trying their best, based on their experiences, to act on those intentions in the best way they know how. And the other side of that is that you must always assume that they have are also assuming that you are somehow acting on your best intentions. That way you’ve not only got a precedent to live up to, but when you live up to that precedent, even if it’s imaginary, you can show them a good example. So it will always work out in the end.

And it turns out the guy wasn’t even looking at me. He was looking at he guy sitting behind me. They had come together, the guy sitting behind me wanting to study, and his friend staring at him wanting to play baseball. Since they played baseball last Saturday, today was study day.

And the guy in the elevator had just heard some bad news about his cousin, so he wouldn’t’ have stared at anybody the way he was staring at me. I hope his cousin recovers.

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Feel Your Feelings Free Your Power

There is a guy who lives in my apartment building that I saw a few times when I first moved in.  I’d only seen him a couple of times as he was either entering or exiting his apartment, so I never really got a glimpse of his face. I’d only seen the back of him. And being as how I only recently moved in, I was a little wary of making sure to meet the neighbors under the right circumstances. And sneaking up behind somebody as they were coming home from a long days work isn’t the best way to meet somebody. And from I saw about this guy, I wanted to be careful. They way he was dressed, and the way his hair was cut, and the long single earring he had dangling from his left ear made me slightly cautious. I wanted to be sure and make a good first impression.

First impressions are extremely important. I remember once in a communications class I took in college. They said that a first impression of somebody is made within the first ten seconds of meeting them. One of the reasons they are incredibly important is because not only does it take a huge amount of willpower to overcome a first impression, but most of the time we aren’t even aware of the basic impressions we hold about other people. For the most part, they operate outside of our conscious awareness. We just kind of get a ‘feeling’ when we see a person. We’re not even aware that our incredibly fast brains routinely make hundreds of calculations in a few seconds to summarize all the data around us to give us that ‘feeling.’

Not that feelings aren’t important. They are incredibly important. If you don’t notice your feeings, you can scarcely make a rational decision. If that sounds like a contradiction, consider some experiments done recently on a poor fellow who had the emotional centers of his brain temporarily disabled due to a unique surgical procedure. He was completely unable to make a decision. You’d think with those pesky feelings out of the way, we would all think like Spock-like bulletproof logic, but it just isn’t so. Without feelings, we can’t feel desire, or notice what you want, and use these feelings to make a decision. Just because we aren’t aware of the thousands of incredibly fast circuits in our brain doesn’t mean they aren’t there, or aren’t important. The big secret is to accept all your feelings. Because when you accept and appreciate your feelings, you give yourself permission to access all the wonderful portions of your brain. You get to use your entire intelligence. Imagine what you could do if you could use your whole brain. What could you create?

Of course, the best part of the communications class was the incredible self confidence I was able to develop. It’s amazing what a public speaking class at a community college will do for you. Public speaking is one of the things that I recommend that anyone and everyone learn how to do. It will dramatically change your life for the better.

I did finally meet my neighbor, with his girlfriend, at the local grocery store. He really is a nice guy, who has an innocent smile that never quits. I’m glad I was able to hold back before I made any snap decisions about him.

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Dropping Frogs Can Lead to Changing Beliefs

I was reading an article in the paper the other day about a small town in the midwest that experienced a very strange phenomenon. One fine during the summer, or perhaps the spring, it started raining frogs. It happened in the fifties, and it was a small town, so there is absolutely no evidence that this actually took place. Some say it was a hoax. Others think it was due to an extremely unlikely confluence of meteorological events pulled the frogs out of a lake them through some strange quirk of air pressure and deposited them on the unsuspecting town inhabitants. Others claim that it was mass hypnosis. Mass hypnosis is a strange thing when you think about it, because there have been many documented accounts of mass hypnosis. Some of them easy to understand, some unexplainable like the falling frogs.

I was reminded of this story when I recently saw a movie where a guy fell in love with a prosthetic doll. At first people thought he was completely nuts, but then slowly, as they realized he had deeper problems, decided that the best course of action would be to help the poor guy. At first he was the but of jokes behind his back. I’m sure you can imagine the jokes that would circulate should you show up at a party with a fake person and in all seriousness claim her as your girlfriend. One of the most fascinating things about the movie was how the townspeople slowly started to get sucked into his reality. Because he believed so completely that this rubber doll was a real person that he had real conversations, (and even a couple of arguments with,) the townspeople slowly started becoming involved in his obvious break from reality.

This is an example of when you have a really strong, congruent frame of reality. If you walk through life holding a strong set of beliefs in your head, others will believe them as well if the beliefs held tightly enough. It matters not if they are true or not. The key is when you choose a belief, to make sure to choose helpful ones, and act one hundred percent that they are actually true. When you do that, people will only follow your lead. Imagine some people in the world that have really strong beliefs, and act on them. Suppose you could have a strong belief that you are incredibly attractive to the opposite sex? Suppose that you held a belief that money is easy to come by? Suppose you were to hold a belief that you were able to learn new things easily and quickly? How easy would your life be then? What other beliefs can you come up with that once you believe them, others will as well? How easily can you imagine your life when you switch out old beliefs, and switch in new ones that support you and what you want to create better things in life?

So as the movie went on, the main character decided, most likely subconsciously, that he learned what he needed from his relationship with girlfriend, and imagined a deadly disease for her. So she could die, and clear the way for him to start to build relationships with real people. I think there are several important lessons in this movie, not the least of which is how powerful your mind is to create the life that you want, by almost any means necessary. Even enlisting the help of the entire town in some incredible group self induced hypnosis. That is pretty powerful stuff.

And as far as group hypnosis, sometimes called ‘mass hysteria,’ there are different kinds. Their are the organic kinds, like the raining frogs, and certain episodes of dancing hysteria, and laughing hysteria. Then there is created mass hysteria, although the creation of mass hysteria is not always the intent, as what happened in the famous Orson Wells “War of The Worlds” incident, where everybody thought we were under attack by Martians. Personally, I’d prefer some falling frogs. Unless of course they were Martians disguised as falling frogs.

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Tap The Power of Realistic Expectations for Incredibly Happy Relationships

Today in my neighborhood, the weather is unseasonably warm. Which is nice, because it’s still winter (or at least it was when I wrote this, now.) It’s nice to have a warm day every now and then when you don’t expect it. It breaks up the monotony of the coldness that I’m used to when I wake up in the morning. And since I try to wake up early every day, I enjoy having the sun just a little bit warmer than I expect it to be.

It’s like when I go to the movies. I am pretty easy to impress and entertain. Sometimes I read the reviews of movies I want to see, sometimes I don’t. An interesting thing that I’ve found was that when I read a particularly unflattering review of a movie, it allows me to enjoy this more, because I go in with less expectations. Like when you really expect to enjoy something, you sometimes can have an unconsciously higher standard that is harder for something to live up to.

I guess that is why on the stock market they always wait and see if earnings beat the markets expectations. Even ones that don’t make a lot of money, if they make more than the analysts have expected, then the stock will go up on that particular day. I remember a company I used to work for had a stock that performed tremendously well. The company had earnings in excess of one dollar per share, which is a lot. One particular day, when the earnings came out, they were only 99 cents a share instead of a dollar a share. Any company that earns 99 cents a share is a very financially stable company, so imagine the surprise when the stock went down almost 4 percent that day because it “didn’t meet the analysts expectations.”

It reminds me of a book I read on self improvement. If I remember correctly, it was a relationships book. And they key to having a happy relationship was having accurate expectations on what to get out of the relationship. Because when you are with somebody, and you find this person interesting, you have to make sure that you like this person because of real reasons, and not imaginary ones. Because when you start to expect reality to behave based on your imagination, and not an accurate assessment of what is out there, you can run into trouble. The book went on to say that one of the best ways to have a really good, solid relationship with somebody was to establish solid expectations based on communication, and your own observations of each other’s behavior in certain circumstances.

My friend, who is married with three kids told me about this. As soon as he learned to plan ahead for his family taking almost an hour sometimes to get ready to leave the house, he was able to make plans, carry out these plans, without having the added stress of expecting his family to meet unrealistic expectations. He said that in the beginning, when it was only him and his wife, he could kind of push for her to be ready earlier, but the more people they added to the family, the more impossible this got. So he naturally realized that the best way to reduce stress, when other people are involved, is to stand back, and watch their behavior, and plan your activities based on reality rather than fantasy.

Which I have gotten down to a science. I used to rush to the movies, buy my large popcorn and coke, then rush to the theater to sit down. It took me about three months of willpower to not eat all my popcorn before the trailers finished showing. Now I usually get to my seat just as the real movie is starting. I’ve learned to ignore the stated start times in the newspaper, and use my experience as a guide. I find that is much easier, because I’d rather enjoy my popcorn while watching the movie I came to see, rather than the movies I’ll most likely come to see in the future.

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Grow and Improve with New Ideas About Yourself

I was sitting in a meeting the other day, and there was one guy that was droning on and on about something. I don’t remember exactly what it was, perhaps a commentary on the life of fruit flies or something else as equally boring.  I started drifting, like you do when you are in middle of something that you can’t exactly escape from, but it just wouldn’t be right to lay your head down and take a nap.

I was reminded of a place I used to work a long time ago, where we were having some product development problems. It was one particular product that the company had been working on for quite some time, and it just wasn’t quite working out. It as a kind of medical device that wasn’t supposed to be a great application that doctors could use during surgery. It was designed, at least in theory, to help the doctors perform the surgery quicker with more efficiency, and to make it easier for the patient to recover after the surgery. Because the patient would recover quicker, it would result in a reduced stay in the hospital, which would mean less money spent by the patients insurance company. All in all a win win win situation. A win for the doctor, a win for the patient, and a win for my company that was developing this product.

The problem was the product itself. it was a great idea, on paper. The problem was finding the right materials to put together in the right proportions to make it work in real life just as well as it worked on paper. No matter what we tried, nothing seemed to work. Hence the meeting. We were talking about another thing to try and see if we could make this work.

Like sometimes when you are in a relationship with somebody, and when you start to see this person, you start to have all these good feelings. Like everything is going to work out ok, and all the problems in your life have disappeared. It’s amazing when that happens. Every time you think of this person, you can’t help but to feel those fantastic feelings. But then sometimes, something happens. Those feelings start to fade, and maybe you realize that you were not really in love with the person, but in love with the idea of being in love. And you are faced with the difficulty of breaking it off with that person, and feeling the respect enough for yourself to say that it’s time to move on, and find somebody that is truly compatible.

They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. That’s what can happen you don’t realize that it might be time to move on and try something new. It’s like some people have this huge fear of being able to make a decision. Some people just can’t choose to do this, whatever it is. Because when you really understand something, and choose to do this, you can begin to realize that there is a whole world out there waiting to be discovered.

Which is why I think we stayed with that particular medical device longer than we should have. Nobody wanted to admit that it really was a great idea, but only on paper. When the manager of the research department finally made the decision to scrap the project. Most of us were relieved that he’d made that decision. Because once we freed up our energies to create new ideas, and make new things, we were able to sell many more products and great ways to keep people healthy.

And personally, I’m always amazed when I come across couples that are no longer couples, but remain great friends. Because they were smart enough to realize that one of the best ways to respect yourself, is to really get to know the person you are with, not for who you wish they were, but for who they are. That is where true respect and appreciation can come from. And they can free up your energies to find people and ideas you can really grow and improve with.

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Use Roman Superiority to Focus on Your Talent

I was watching this TV show last night on the history channel. It had something to do with ancient Rome, although I’m not sure of the exact topic, as I was just flipping around. You how you do that, right? When you know there is a lot of stuff on TV, but you don’t really want to watch anything specific, so you just kind of aimlessly click through the channels? Sometimes you might find something interesting, other times you just keep on surfing without any real idea of what kind of show you even want to watch.

That’s what I was doing. In retrospect, I wish I’d have known about the show on Rome earlier. It was about the Roman Military,and their military strategy, but it wasn’t only about Rome. It was kind of a overview of history of countries or empires that had world dominance from a military standpoint. And the angle of the show was how whoever had the most technology, had the edge. It didn’t matter exactly how high or low the technology was, so long as you are better than your competitor.

Like for example the Egyptians were pretty much top dog, until the Romans came alone with their slightly superior fighting style. And that’s one of the interesting things about Rome’s military advantage. They didn’t really have a lot of sophisticated weaponry that other countries didn’t have. The one thing they did was develop incredible discipline. Their soldiers were extremely well trained, and together they fought like a well oiled machine.

It reminded me of a book I read a few years ago. It was a novel of historical fiction, of which type I hadn’t ever really read up until that point. That novel was a kind of a power struggle/drama/ love story based in ancient Phoenicia.  It was really interesting once I was able to naturally get into it. Reading books have always been a great pleasure of mine. One of the great things about books is that you can take them anywhere you want to escape from the boredom of everyday life just for a little bit and lose yourself in something.

I didn’t use to like books, because I thought they were kind of boring. It isn’t until you really take the time to get into this that you can really appreciate what’s here. And when you read with that kind of mindset, a whole world opens up for you. It’s like you see something that was there all along, just waiting for you to realize this. You can really find new ways to enjoy this, you know?

The book itself was pretty interesting, and I was able to dive into it so deep that I had to keep checking wikipedia to make sure that this was factually correct, because it was so incredibly interesting. It was about a couple of brothers, one younger and one older. And the older was going to inherit the fathers kingdom when he died, but the younger one was better suited to rule the throne. And they both happened to fall in love with the same woman. So it was kind of a love story, power struggle for the throne kind of story. At least the power struggle part was fairly accurate. I don’t know about the love story part. I guess authors need to embellish a little bit to make history come alive enough to make this interesting, you know?

So anyways, it turns out that particular show was a series in military strategy or something. Each week they would highlight a different empire or country, and focus on their particular talent which made them stand out. Which I’ll definitely make the decision to come back to and watch it again and again, because naturally, I find this incredibly fascinating.

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Crystalize Your Focus

I was listening to an interesting radio show the other day. It was one where people could call in. I don’t think it was live, as I was listening over the internet. It’s a pretty major market in the U.S., so they have a fairly large internet presence.

The topic was “free or all Friday” or something like that. I think normally it is a politically themed talk show, with the kind of slant you’d expect from a politically themed radio talk show. But because it was “free for all Friday” they had abandoned their normal programming, and let callers talk about whatever they wanted to. They had some interesting debates between two and even three callers at a time.

So one guy started talking about how you are capable of really improving your life with this new technique he was talking about. I’m not sure if he was selling something or not, because the other guy kept interrupting him. Anyways, the guy kept saying that because you are paying attention to this, you can really start to become aware of the fantastic opportunities that are around you, every day.

Now this started sounding a little new-agey to me, so while I was listening I started surfing around, and looking on other websites. And I happened across a web site that specialized in crystals, among other things. I guess that’s what happens when you click on the ads on a page about new age thinking.

I had a friend once who was really interested in crystals. She was always telling me that proper crystal meditation, or meditating when using crystals properly can really help you increase your focus on what you want to do in life. She even went so far as to say that the meaning of life itself was only realized when you fully pursue happiness. The reason that people have difficulties, is they tend to only focus on short term happiness, rather than long term happiness. Sometimes it’s hard to keep your focus on what will provide lasting results. Other people tend to focus on things that will produce happiness, but only in the short term.

Like some people like to eat fast food a lot. When they think about eating, then tend to think of what will taste good right here, right now. One thing my friend recommends that you do, when making a decision is to always pause. She calls it the one hour rule (at least when she applies it to eating.) She says imagine what you would feel like in what hour, if you ate what you wanted to eat, and then bring that feeling back into the now, and inject it into your decision making process.

She said that when you take the time to do that, you can’t help but to have a more informed choice, and that can easily turn into a better choice.
Of course, it takes time to get into the habit of doing this, but I’m sure that because you’ve done things before that you are proud of, starting a new habit is old hat to you, not like some people.

I actually ended up buying a crystal from that website, a rose quartz double terminated one. I don’t know if it will have any metaphysical effects, but it sure looks cool.

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Slow Habits Create Powerful Success

I was flipping through youtube the recently. Sometimes I like to watch funny videos, other times I like to find great scenes from movies, other times I like to find inspirational speeches. I came across this one clip about some self help guru talking about the importance of setting habits, and creating actions that you do every day that can drastically improve your life over time. He was saying that most people’s biggest complaint is that they’d like to start a new habit, but they can’t find the time or the energy to add something else to their otherwise busy day.

Like a friend of mine that used to date a personal trainer. She was saying that when people want to start an exercise program, they think they need to exercise three hours a day in order to see any results. And it’s true to an extent, meaning that if you go to the gym, and seek out the most cut and physically perfect people there, they’re either extremely genetically gifted, or they spend a great deal of time there.

But she was saying that most of them, if they were honest, would admit that when they first started out, it wasn’t like that. It was just a simple decision to do something small every day that will push them towards their goal. And they would most likely admit, as she tells her clients, that when you start small, it’s the best way to create long substantial results.

Which reminds me of a speech I was listening to one night at toastmasters. This guy was talking about reading the newspaper. English was his second language, and he wanted to read the newspaper every day to increase his vocabulary and his comprehension. So he had wanted to make it a habit to read every day. He said that was very important to him. And since he was up giving a speech, and his English was near flawless, it was pretty clear to everyone that he’d succeeded in his goal. When asked about how he tackled such a big goal, he said that when you want to choose to do something, and make this a habit, the easiest way is to attach it somehow to something that you are already doing.

For example he would have a newspaper there on his table every morning. So every morning he would tell himself, every time you sit down, you will remember to read this. And every time you wake up, you will remember to read this. And every time before you fall asleep, you will ask yourself if you read this or not.

And people asked him how long it took, and he said it only took a few days of reminding himself to make this a habit. I’ve read other place that say it takes about twenty one days to make something habit, and other people have told me they were able to achieve success in shorter lengths of time.

And that is exactly what my friend  recommends when she takes on new clients. Start slow. Build up slowly. Like the guy at the toastmaster club, just read one article every day, and you will improve. And my friend retains a lot of customers that way. Other trainers try to get people to jump into time and work intensive workouts right away. I guess he is afraid he will lose clients if they don’t feel they are getting instant results really quickly. Other clients tend to stay longer when they start slow and slowly build and build.

So I think that youtube is a great resource, for many reasons besides just entertainment. And even some of the entertainment is pretty inspiring, to say the least. It’s something that I try to do on a regular basis. I guess you could say that it is a habit of mine.

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