Category Archives: Perception

The Expression of Desire at the Third Stage

I was taking the train downtown this evening to pick up a pair of shoes I’d ordered. I found a pair last week that I’d really liked, but they didn’t have my particular size, so they had to call another store to get the right size. Tonight was the first chance I’d had since then to go back and pick them up. On the way there, I saw an acquaintance that I talk to sometimes.

He was telling me about this book that he was reading, it sounded like a personal development book of some sort, because the guy in the book was talking about different ways to look at life. He likes to read those kind of books. Come to think of it, I wish I would have written down the title, although if I see it again I’ll probably remember it. You know how that goes. You notice something, and you tell yourself that you really like this, and you want to see it again, but for some reason you don’t take the time to write it so that you can later remember it.

I can’t remember how many times I’ve really wanted to look at this or that on the internet, based on what I hear or read, but by the time I get home, I can’t remember what it was. Perhaps I should carry around one of those small note pads to write myself messages. I kind of like getting messages from myself.

Anyways, the guy was saying that humans go through three stages in life. Well, not exactly. He was saying that there are three stages that are possible for us to go through, but most of us only go through two, maybe two and a half. Some of us can glimpse the third stage. And one of the great things about being able to glimpse the third stage, even once, is that because you can see what’s up ahead, you will never fall back to your old ways.

The first stage is infancy. We have desires, and we express them the only way we know how. We cry and scream, and if that doesn’t work, then we scream and cry. It works ok if we get picked up right away, but if there is a time lapse, we start to wonder what the heck is going on. And that creates confusion, and since the mind hates confusion, it comes up with a reason why our expression of desire isn’t being immediately met.  So we start to develop anxiety about expressing our desires, because sometimes they get fulfilled, and sometimes they don’t. Since we can’t make any words, or can’t move around much, we don’t have much options except to lie there passively and hope.

The second stage of life is when we develop motor and vocal skills. We can move around, talk, walk, form sentences. When we have a desire at this stage, we can articulate it in a number of ways. We can move around and ask other people. We can even ask in different languages if we want. The problem with this stage is that we still carry that anxiety from long ago, when the mere expression of desire caused anxiety. Before, we really had no control over when or even if the desire would be fulfilled. Scientists have done plenty of experiments that show uncertainty is one of the greatest sources of anxiety, adversely affecting both mental and physical health. So for most of us, the mere expression of desire is linked with anxiety deep within our subconscious. It’s nobody’s fault, it’s just the way our brains grow.  Unfortunately, many people stay stuck in this level their whole lives. The best strategy for some people is to blame some aspect of the outside world for not getting the good stuff in life.

The third stage of life is the best part. This is when we realize that the expression of desire is but the starting point to a life full of abundance, happiness, wealth, fantastic relationships, and every other cool thing you can imagine. The trick is to begin to notice on a deep level that if our desires aren’t fulfilled, it means nothing about us personally, only that we have about a million other ways to keep expressing your desire until it gets fulfilled.  Fully adult, you can realize that simply because you can walk and talk, and read and write, you really do have the power to create whatever life you want. And creating the life you want is merely a matter of tapping into your natural genius creativity, and plugging away until you eventually make all your dreams come true.

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Increase Your Abundance Through Focused Communication

One of the best ways to increase your influence with others is to be a secret agent. I learned this from a Dale Carnegie self study course I bought a long time ago. For those of you that don’t know, Dale Carnegie the guy who wrote the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” which if you haven’t read, I can’t recommend it enough.

Now when I say secret agent, I’m not talking about sneaking around in a trench coat like in “Spy vs. Spy,” but I mean using your latent psychic abilities to really understand what it is that the other person in question wants. Of course you don’t need to use any psychic abilities if you don’t want to, as some people don’t have their paranormal powers tuned in as much as the rest of you.

The secret to influencing other people boils down to giving other people what they need, and they will naturally want to help you any way they can. And you already know the secret to what it is they want, even without turning on your ESP. This is because underneath all of our surface desires, is really the same thing.

To feel wanted. To feel needed. To feel recognized. To feel approval from your peers. And this is the easiest thing to give to somebody. All you need to do is engage them in a simple straightforward conversation, and listen, really listen to what it is that they have to say.

Most of the time when we listen, we are too busy thinking of what we want to say next, or thinking of what we are planning on doing later, or wondering why whatever we did before didn’t turn out as well. Try this little experiment. Next time you are talking to somebody, just listen. And watch carefully for how they speak, and pay close attention to certain words that they use with certain emphasis.

And just simply repeat those words back to them, exactly the same way that they said it, and ask them to elaborate on it. When you do this you will naturally begin to realize not only how easy it is to make somebody feel good, but how to have a really positive effect on another person. And when you do that, you will naturally create an aura of charisma that will make it easier and easier to move through life and create the reality that you want.

Because when you think about, the whole of our existence is completely dependent on our ability to interact with other people. If you move through life with the easy to develop yet rarely practiced skill of really listening to somebody, you will find your expressed desires being readily filled by willing supporters.

It was Brian Tracy who described this secret agent policy of giving others what they want. By knowing what you want, you automatically have the inside scoop on what others want. And once you understand that by giving to others first you subsequently enrich your own life, your personal abundance will skyrocket to new levels. 

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Dig Into The Meaning Of Life One Hundred Percent

One of the reasons I like to study Chinese Characters is because each particular character has it’s own individual meaning. So even if you don’t know how to pronounce a group of characters, you can sort of figure out what the meaning by guessing the combinations. Although sometimes, due to historical anomalies, you get some strange combinations. For example, the combination of “parents” and “cut” yields “kind.”  Most make a bit more sense, but they are interesting nonetheless.

English words, on the other hand, may require a bit of etymological investigation before breaking a word into parts (if that’s the kind of thing you are into.)
For example, ‘century,’ which means one hundred years, is based on the same ‘cent’ which is one hundredth of a dollar, and the ‘cent’ in the centigrade that means one hundred grades (between freezing and boiling of water.) Also in centimeter, and centipede. ‘Ped’ of course meaning foot, as in ‘pedal’ and ‘pedestrian.’

These are just some basic examples, but words are really fascinating when you look below the surface. You can really discover interesting things if you stop and think of the story and history behind things.

Like when I was taking the bus the other day. I was sitting next to this really interesting older woman, who was telling me about her granddaughter who just became engaged to this guy from Bangladesh. And he comes from a very large family, I believe she said six brothers and four sisters, if I recall correctly. And one of the brothers was showing her recently how to make this really spicy Thai dish, but that’s another story. Anyway, this guy was saying that each moment in time space continuum (those are his words, not mine) is an opportunity to really dig underneath reality to discover what is really there.

If you take the time to stop and watch the ‘unfolding’ as he referred to it, you can catch the moment when your thoughts and reality merge. When humans give meaning to events. He said that it is a lot better to stay open as long as possible when interacting with reality, because once you give meaning to something, while it’s not set in stone, it’s a lot more efficient to create the possibility for a more resourceful meaning beforehand, rather than waiting until after the fact.

I wasn’t sure I understood her when she was describing this too me, and I don’t she was able to completely understand it either, because it sounded a lot like some Eastern Philosophies that I’ve read about. I think the gist of it was to stay open, and make sure you don’t give away any meanings to events unless you are really one hundred percent sure you know what happened. And since we are almost never one hundred percent sure of what really ever happens, it’s best to keep an open mind.

Like when you pass by somebody in the hallway, and you say “hi,” and they don’t say “hi” back, it would be best to give the benefit of the doubt, and not assume they are angry at your or something. Otherwise you might get your feelings hurt over something that was only in your head. 

Although the fellow described this in eastern philosophical terms which might have been a bit esoteric, I think we are all talking about the same concept. And because you are reading this, you are likely wise enough to have known about this anyways. I’m sure you already know that giving people the benefit of the doubt and assuming they are most likely operating from some kind of positive intention is usually a good idea.

I just think that the concept of standing back and watching the unfolding of reality is a beautiful concept, one that we don’t take the time to really appreciate, since it is happening all around us, all the time.

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Follow Your Brains Advice to New Realities

If you’ve ever wondered about something that might have caused anxiety concerning an event that may or may not happen, I recently found out something that might help. For example, let’s say you have a meeting with your boss that afternoon. Something important, like your annual review, or you are going to ask for a raise or something else that you’d deem something a little bit less than a walk in the park.

If you are like most normal people, you might start to imagine all kinds of things that will happen. And I’m sure if you take the time to think back, now, about those times before when you used to imagine things that might come to pass, you might realize that they never did. Like if you had a big golf game or something with your boss’s boss, you might have imagined accidental hooking the ball into his head or something. Ok, maybe not that bad, but you get the idea.

And I’m pretty sure that you’ve heard the old saying “Most of the bad stuff that you imagine never happens.” Well, even if you understand that basic principle about the human mind, it doesn’t really help when you are laying in bed and are unable to sleep due the horrific images your brain keeps delivering to you against your consent.

But I was listening to this internet radio show the other day, and there were these two guys talking about the human mind and how it works. Unfortunately I didn’t remember which internet radio station I was listening to, as I was aimlessly surfing like I sometimes do.  Like when you are surfing around the web and find this really cool blog, and you think, wow you really need to read this everyday, but then you can’t remember where it is, so you can’t come back and read it everyday like you’d like to.

So anyway this guy was saying that when people imagine all those horrible things that might happen in the future, it’s really an evolutionary manifestation of a brain early warning system. It’s thinking about all the possible things that might happen, and just kind of giving you a heads up, so you can prepare for the worst. Then he said that if you pay attention to the messages that your brain is giving you, you can kind of imagine how you’d handle whatever situation that you were afraid might come up. As soon as you imagine handling it from a few different angles, it satisfies the brains warning system, and your brain will settle down.

And the other guy was commenting that is evidence of the other old saying: “If you can imagine it, you can create it.” Because why in the world would your brain imagine up something that wasn’t possible to come true? And that simply means, that you can use your anxiety as a starting point to create whatever future reality that you’d like. Just use your imagination to take care of whatever your brain is warning you about, and then just imagine the best possible outcome by preventing it from happening by doing the opposite.

For example, if you imagine your boss yelling at you for being late on a project or something, simply come up some really good reasons why the project is late, and then come up with a few benefits for the project being late, and then hit your boss with these benefits before he gets a chance to even remember that it’s late in the first place. He’ll not only see you as being proactive, which is highly valued in today’s economy, but he’ll think of you as somebody that he can depend on when things get rough.

And it all starts with  having a solid respect for the images that your brain delivers to you, all the time. Once you can tap BOTH the positive and the negative images, which you will start to realize aren’t so negative after all when you use this technique, your world will really open up.

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Leverage Mistakes to Increase Success

This morning I was out on my morning walk, and being how I am still trying to discover new ways so that I can become familiar, I made a wrong turn. I usually walk around an area of perhaps 1 or 2 square kilometers. It is kind of a rectangle,and on the inside are rice fields. Because as I write this it is neither rice planting nor rice harvesting season, the fields are pretty bare.

So far I have the spot where I make the first turn worked out. And the part where I make the last turn I have pretty much under control. The middle part is what’s been giving me trouble. After I make the first turn, I walk along a fairly busy road, at least busy for the rural part that I live in. The problem is most of the buildings along this road obscure the view of the rice fields, so I haven’t nailed down exactly where to turn. This building? That building? Yesterday I overshot and had to backtrack, so this morning I had decided that it was important to get it exactly perfect.

I turned where I thought would be the right spot, but it as it turned out, it wasn’t even close. I ended up walking right through the center of the collection of unused rice fields around which I had been hoping to walk. At first I was upset at myself, I mean, I’ve been here a week already, and I should have at least my morning walk worked out by now, right?

Well a funny thing happened. The storm I wrote about yesterday was breaking up, but there were still several clouds in the air. Big black clouds, with just a splash of blue peaking through. Actually, not so much blue, as the sun was just beginning to rise. And the sun happened to be rising just in the direction I was walking toward.

So there I was, walking through a rectangular collection of rice fields, about two or three hundred meters wide a couple of kilometers long, toward a sun struggling to rise against the leftover clouds from last nights storm. Magnificent.

And for some strange reason, it made me think of a quote from Brian Tracy about a famous corporate executive, whose name I can’t recall. He was reportedly asked, “How do I double my success rate?” To which he immediately responded  “Double your failure rate.”

How many times do we try to get something completely perfect, and get upset at ourselves when we fall short of the mark. Do you ever allow yourself the pleasure of standing back, and instead of seeing a mistake, seeing a result? And what happens when you ask yourself, “how can you use this result to improve whatever it is that you want to improve?”

Because when you think about it, we are the result of millions of years of mistakes. I’m not sure if most people can understand this concept, but because you’ve read so far I’m sure your smart enough to begin to realize how powerful it is. All through the evolution of man, every advantage, every significant edge we have developed has been the result of a mistake.  An error in reproduction of our genes. And these mistakes that nature deemed successful are what makes us who we are today.

I wonder, in how many ways can you start to understand that as you step back and look at the results you create, instead of what you used to call ‘mistakes,’ will you be able to notice so much more than you have previously?

How many ways can you learn to appreciate ALL results that you create in life, now?

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How to Stay Open to Solutions For Your Problems

A huge storm is blowing my neck of the woods. It might even snow tonight. I kind of like snow, because I never really got a chance to experience it much as a kid. Of course I have a friend that grew up in Minnesota, and now he can’t get enough sun. The hotter the better. I guess your experience can determine what you like, proving that reality can be subjective, when you take things into consideration.

One of the drawbacks of this huge storm coming in is there has been a large door banging shut somewhere. Since I’ve only been in my building for about a week, I’ve been listening to it for the past couple of days without really being sure where it was. You know when you can hear something, but every time you think you’ve got the location pinned down, it seems to be coming from somewhere else? Or when you think you can find the source, you seem to have trouble being able to find your way to the beginning of something? 

So tonight is extremely windy, and the door was really BANGING shut every couple of minutes. And I thought to myself, there’s now way I’m going to be able to sleep soundly with all that racket, so I’d better go have a look.

Off I go to investigate. It seems that it is a big metal door that is on the stairwell on the west side of my building. The door is really big, and really heavy. My first thought was to just simply shut the door, and that will be that. But there are two problems with that. The first problem is that it only shuts with a latch from the inside, which is inaccessible from the outside. So if I were to close the door, it wouldn’t allow other people to come in. It would be great for me, but not so great for other people. 

Sometimes when the obvious solution to something doesn’t seem so great when you take time to think how it will effect other people. If you just take a little bit of extra time to think of others, you can really create more benefit. Of course most people, like you, understand this, but a few people don’t, so I think it’s important to always go the extra step.

Then I thought of something. If I opened the door all the way open, like it normally sits without any latches or anything, it would be fine. The problem was that the extra wind was somehow getting in behind it and pulling it shut. Normally it just sits open, inside of a sunken frame just slightly bigger than the door itself. Because it’s so heavy, apparently it never closes unless somebody (or a very strong wind) pulls it shut. So I had an idea. All I had to do was find something to jam in between the door and the sunken frame, so it would stay open, and it would work fine. There seemed to be about a quarter to half a centimeter space.

So I came back to my apartment, and looked for something to jam in. AHA! One chopstick. I grabbed a hammer, and off I went.

Perfect fit. I pulled to make sure, and it was solid. Held open. Wouldn’t budge.

Not only was the obvious solution inappropriate given the consideration of others, the best way to fix it seemed to be exactly the opposite of what I’d expected.

Funny how that works.

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Discover Something You Knew Already

One of the great things about my new neighborhood is all the small local supermarkets which are filled with locally grown foods. I enjoy cooking, so naturally I enjoy shopping for different foods to cook. Like sometimes I’ll cook a big pot of something that I’ll eat for the next several days, and other times I’ll buy several different kinds of ingredients, and then figure out what to cook day by day, in smaller amounts.

The second thing I discovered about having so many supermarkets around is being able to discover what kinds of unique style each market has. Of course they all have the main ingredients, milk, eggs, peanuts. But different markets have different kinds of vegetables, and fish, and different kinds and cuts of meat. And I find it really easy to become curious about what this has, and what that has.

Like when you buy a new computer that has all kinds of pre loaded software. You can find it easy to develop a desire to want to know more. And the more you discover, the more it makes you realize how much there really is here. I bought a laptop a couple of years ago, and was in the unfortunate situation of having to be in the hospital for a few days. It wasn’t any big deal, I didn’t need surgery or anything, but being in the hospital sure is boring. And a friend brought my laptop for me to play with. And even though that at the time I had already been using it for almost a year, I was still able to get really curious about what I could find to help me have fun while I was laying in the hospital. And I found several games that I didn’t even know that I had, and they really helped me to pass the time.

It’s funny when that happens. You see something that you’ve seen before, and you think you already know everything there is to know about this. But the more you keep reading, the more you can really start to want to discover more and more. Like when you have a friend for a long time, and you discover something about them that you hadn’t know for a long time. I had a friend once, and we’d know each other for years before I realized she had a thing for Japanese Anime. Personally, I don’t really see the draw, but to each his own, right?

Of course because of all this, I’m going to need to go grocery shopping soon. I can’t wait to see how much I will become curious to see what I can discover something new, but I’m sure you’ve realized by now that that was something you knew already.

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Increase Your Abundance of Perspective

This morning was another exploration into my new neighborhood. To those of you who haven’t read my previous articles, I’ve recently moved, and because I like to go for a walk every morning, I’ve been finding it a good opportunity to see what’s around me. Like when you are in some kind of environment, and you really don’t know what kind of things you have to you can use these things to your benefit. Just like that I find myself walking new paths every morning as I find new things of interest.

One thing that I found interesting was three different perspectives on my neighborhood from three different levels. And from each level, you can see different things, if you can open yourself to what is around you all the time.

The first level, of course, is ground level. On this level you can only see just what’s up ahead. And if you look behind you, you can see that as well. Only if something really big is on the horizon does it come into your conscious awareness. Like big buildings, or the Ferris Wheel that is on top of the department store downtown. Other things, which are big and important, you really can’t notice them until you are right on top of them. You need to be careful, because when you are out walking around, you have to make sure the path you are traveling on doesn’t end abruptly. Because then you’ll have to turn around and go back, and hopefully find your way on to where you were going in the first place.

The second level is up higher. I live on the fifth floor, so I’ve been stopping on stairwell landing just outside the hallway. From there you can see where you’ve been, and where I want to walk tomorrow morning. The long roads around the small rice fields look very neat and organized from higher up. And the things that seem so big up close, don’t really look that big when you compare them to other things, like the hills in the background, and the sea that you can’t see but you know is off in the distance somewhere, as they always are. Of course I only have a limited view, so I can only see one direction. I don’t really know what’s behind be.

The best view is the third one. This is if I only go up one flight of stairs higher. Normally, I wouldn’t go up any higher, because I live on the fifth. But when you increase your viewpoint just for the sake of looking rather than needing a reason, you really can see all around. I can see the Ferris Wheel downtown, the baseball stadium that is behind me, and a whole nother set of hills that I didn’t even know where there. And all this time I thought I was getting a good exploration simply by walking around on the ground level.

It’s really amazing what you can see when you raise yourself up so you aren’t blocked by things in your way. And it’s kind of silly to think that one can let themselves be blocked by something that can’t move. Because all you need to do is go around.

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Feel Youthful Dreams At Any Age

So today I was hanging out with these four junior high school kids. Which isn’t really something I normally do, but sometimes when you find yourself in an odd situation that happens every once in a while, you can use this opportunity to learn something new that maybe you’d forgotten about. Like sometimes when you get older, you sort of forget what it’s like to be a kid, so when you talk to them, they seem to have a fresh and new perspective on things, until you realize that they are really looking at the world through eyes that you’d had before, and you’d neglected to look through for too long of a while.

So I was asking these kids what they wanted to be when they grew up. One kid said she wanted to be a nurse. Ok, sounds good. A job where you can help people, work in a hospital, wear a cool uniform. The next kid said he wanted to be a teacher. So far, so good. Help out kids to learn about life, help them to discover new things everyday. Next kid said he wanted to be a professional soccer player. Now we’re talking.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a professional baseball player. That was before you learned that you sort of had to be good at what you want to be when you grow up. Because I wasn’t all that great in baseball. In fact, when I was as old as these kids, I didn’t even make the junior high school team. Before you feel sympathy, realize that I was kind of relieved, because by that time, I’d learned that the baseball team was always the last to go home everyday.

Kind of strange how that works out. You develop these big dreams, then you sometimes realize that your dreams aren’t really based on anything other than a wish. You sort of make your goals based on what you see on TV, which really is just a bunch of imaginary stuff when you think about it. Not that watching baseball on TV is imaginary. It’s just that they only show the fun part, or at least what they think that you’ll think is the fun part. Who wants to watch the part where they stretch and practice and line the field? Unless you really enjoy that, which I guess professional baseball players do, which is why they are professionals, and I didn’t make the junior high school baseball team.

But as you go through life and learn new things, you start to really get a taste for what it is you want to spend your time doing something rewarding, right? I don’t suppose you could be a professional singer unless you really enjoyed band practice.

The thing that struck me the most, is that you can develop a realistic view of life as you grow and learn and experience, and still retain your youthful expectation that you always have the possibility of being able to become something greater than you are. I mean, who wants to stay a junior high school student your whole life?

And the fourth kid said that he wanted to be a taxi driver, which is actually my favorite answer of them all. Because instead of saying something that he thought other people might approve of, he said something he thought would be really cool, for whatever reason it was. And when you can combine your youthful expectation of greatness with saying what’s really on your mind, you got yourself a winning combination. 

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The Road Is Better Than The Inn

I was having lunch with a friend of mine today, a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. He’s one of those people that even though you haven’t seen this person in a long time, when you meet up with them, you can just pick up where the two of you left off. Like when you learn something, like playing the piano, you can go for several years, but once you sit down, you can remember easily whatever it was that you learned so long ago. And it’s interesting how you can remember things, isn’t it?

So my friend was telling me about an addition he’s adding on to his house. He and his wife had been planning it for sometime, but they always think of a reason to not do it right away. Need money for this, have to buy that. You know how it is. And both are working full time, and trying their best to raise three kids. It’s no wonder they are so busy, they haven’t really been able to spend much quality time together. Which I think is a misnomer, because all time is really of the same quality, it’s how you can choose to spend your time is what really matters. Like you could spend time watching TV, or you could spend time working on a project that could make it easier for you to make money and improve yourself.

And he said that building the addition to the house was really turning into a special time for him and his wife. Both working together, on the same goal. Not that raising three kids isn’t working together on the same goal. I guess something happens when you spend time with somebody actually building something physical. It’s like you can stand back, and see the progress. You can look at your plans, and compare how you are doing with where you want to go. And my friend is actually not looking forward to finish the addition as much as he thought he would. He said he is really able to enjoy the process, rather than the expectation of an end result.

Like when I was a kid. I was in boy scouts, and every summer we’d go on these long hiking trips. Sometimes a week or longer. And although we went to some great, beautiful secluded spots with fantastic fishing, my fondest memories were hiking with my buddies, looking up at the mountain pass we were aiming for.

Some people look at life itself as a long process, ever changing, ever growing. The moment we begin to lose interest, or lose that spirit of wonder is when we fool ourselves into thinking that we have arrived. We get tricked into thinking that our everyday, day in, day out routine is what life is about.

One way you can jump start yourself off the same old same old routine is to look at experiences with fresh eyes. Ask yourself before falling to sleep every night, “What did I learn today?” And let the answers come in your dreams. You may be surprised to find that you knew the secret all along, you just needed to remember. 

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