Category Archives: Perception

Energy Ball

Should You Split The Un-Splittalbe?

Once upon a time, splitting the atom was the holy grail of science.

The word “atomic” means “the most basic.”

Which means when they first called it an “atom” they thought it was the smallest possible thing.

They chose a name that meant, “the smallest possible thing.”

So the sentence, “split the atom” has a lot of significance.

It sort of means, “split the un-splittable.”

Understanding the historical concept, (creating a bomb more powerful than anybody could ever imagine) conjures up all sorts of mythology and metaphors.

Pandora’s box, for example.

Or the apple (knowledge) that the devil tricked Eve into eating.

In a very real way, it can easily be argued that there are some things that our human brains are better off not knowing.

Even used peacefully, for energy, it may turn out that splitting the atom may be much more trouble than it’s worth.

If you’re into conspiracy theories, there are stories of a giant coverup, that the Fukushima meltdown (that they are still having trouble dealing with) is going to eventually kill us all.

All of the radioactive water is being pumped into the ocean, which will eventually kill all the life, which will ultimately kill all living things on Earth.

As far as conspiracy theories go, it’s a doozy!

All because we dumb humans wanted to split the atom.

But there’s another way to use the atom.

And it creates MUCH MORE energy, and it’s much safer.

Instead of splitting the unsplittable (fission) the opposite would be to JOIN the unsplittable (fusion).

Fusion is what powers the sun, and subsequently ALL LIFE on earth.

Maybe we’re stuck in one of those disaster movies, where there’s a race against time.

We dumb humans have to discover how to harness the ultimate in cheap, clean energy (fusion) before we kill ourselves with Pandora’s Box, or Eve’s Apple.

Who would have thought such a tiny thing would cause so much problems?

You have a similar situation within yourself.

A POWERFUL energy source.

You can use it like fission, and deal with the likely consequences.

OR you can use it like FUSION, and have ultimate, clean energy that can power your human journey to levels unheard of in common life.

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Sex Transmutation

Be Different

What Have You Invented Today?

When I was a kid I had this electronics kit.

It was a “75 in 1” kit from Radio Shack.

It had a whole bunch of different circuit components.

And by hooking them together in different configurations, you could make 75 different electronic circuits.

The most exciting part was creating them for the first time.

But after I’d gone through all of them once or twice, it wasn’t as exciting, since you knew what was going to happen.

So I started to experiment.

I would hook the circuits up to the light in my bedroom, for example.

This is the natural human tendency when we run out of things to discover.

We invent more things to discover.

Now, most people don’t consider themselves “inventors.”

Most people don’t consider themselves “entrepreneurs” either.

But take away the finances, the fame and fortune, and that’s EXACTLY what we are.

The entirety of human history is inventing new things.

Even little kids who are bored will INVENT new games to play.

Every time you’ve found a better, simpler, more enjoyable way to do something, you have used your inner entrepreneur.

The only difference between normal, everyday entrepreneurialism (the stuff you do every day) and people that introduce themselves as “Entrepreneurs” at parties is monetization.

Back when I was in college, my major was physics.

There was kind of rivalry between physics majors and engineering majors.

A joke (that was funny to both sides) was, “What do you call an engineer? A physicist with a job.”

People that make their living as entrepreneurs are using their natural human talents, the same talents YOU have, to get paid.

If any part of your job is to “figure stuff out on your own” without being told EXACTLY what to do, you are being paid to be an entrepreneur.

Because this what entrepreneurs do. They solve problems.

Fortunately, you don’t have to quit your regular job, or endanger ANY source of income to tap your inner entrepreneurial money maker.

Even if you NEVER want to make money as an entrepreneur, and introduce yourself at parties as an entrepreneur, developing your NATURAL skills of creativity and inventiveness will take you a long ways.

Get Started:

Entrepreneurial Mind

Expand Your Desire

The Wolf Of Shave Ice

There are a lot of skills you can learn.

Unfortunately, we humans don’t really like doings things unless we have to, or there is a VERY compelling reason.

For example, plenty of “diets” are based on celebrities.

Like the Daniel Craig (James Bond) diet, for example.

Want to know the real secret of the Daniel Craig diet?

It’s got nothing to do with what he eats.

It has EVERYTHING to do with the incentives.

If YOU got paid millions to take your shirt off in the movies, you’d probably be able to get pretty ripped as well.

Unfortunately, few of us will ever be given a guarantee like that.

We normal humans have to try our best just to get a chance.

But then again, guys and gals like Daniel Craig didn’t get lucky.

It wasn’t like he was just strolling down the street one day and some Hollywood dude rolled up in his limo and asked if he wanted to play James Bond.

Usually people that have that much success started building it when they were very young.

Take Bill Gates, for example.

When he was a teenager, LONG BEFORE he even thought about an “operating system” he was hustling.

Meaning he was always trying things to see if he could make money.

Or that guy in the “Wolf of Wall ST.” movie.

(Jordan Belfort played by DiCaprio)

Before he was a wolf of wall street, before he even knew ANYTHING about wall street, he and his buddies sold shave ice on the beach.

On their own, they bought the raw materials (ice, flavoring, some kind of cart, etc.) and in one summer they netted 10K.

Nobody told them what to do. Nobody game them any guarantees.

They just had a deep DRIVE to succeed, and they went out and made it happen.

If you check your favorite Actors page on IMDB, you’ll see the same story.

Most A-listers today started when they were VERY YOUNG.

Even AC DC teaches the same story.

“It’s a long way to the top if you want to Rock n Roll…”

But here’s the thing.

That DRIVE isn’t just in SOME people.

It’s in EVERYBODY.

YOU.

Sure, some people are “lucky” in that they find a quick and easy way to “monetize” this natural human drive.

But it only SEEMS easy when we look at them AFTER they succeed.

Every huge success had the same fears, worries and concerns.

But they pushed through them, and kept their eyes on the prize.

So can you.

Learn How:

Entrepreneurial Mind

Flow

Resonate The Flow Of Life

What does it mean to be “Self Actualized?”

Some say this is being at the top of our potential.

Of performing as effectively as we can.

According to Maslow’s famous hierarchy, we need to satisfy “lower” need before we can satisfy “higher” needs.

Once we get these lower needs out of the way, (food, safety, sex,) we can move up the ladder.

But is it possible to “be” self actualized?

After all, you can’t just stop eating. What happens when you’re at the top of the “self actualized” pyramid and you get hungry?

Or what happens if everything’s perfect, your living your “higher purpose” but then an earthquake hits, and your house starts falling apart?

There’s a saying in enlightenment circles, “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

Meaning that no matter HOW “enlightened” you become, you still gotta eat. You still have to put on your seatbelt. You still have to pay your electric bill or else all your ice cream will melt.

Consider that “self actualization” is not a destination, like Las Vegas.

Where you can see it up ahead, and you whoop and holler when you cross the border.

Consider that “self actualization” is a delicate balance.

When you, an unfathomably complex mind-body system, is operating at a high level of efficiency.

Csikszentmihalyi (seriously!) studied athletes. When they are “self actualized” he called it a “flow state.” Those RARE moments when they act purely unconsciously, when they “be the ball.”

When conscious thought stops and they perform with utmost efficiency, grace and skill.

But here’s the thing.

Even the BEST athletes only experience true “flow” sporadically.

After all, if they could reproduce it at will, they would never lose.

What does that mean for us normal humans?

Can we EVER become self actualized?

Yes, yes we can.

How?

Consider a couple of simple concepts.

One is we can NEVER predict the future.

Which means every time we take action, something UNEXPECTED will happen.

And every time something unexpected happens, we learn something.

This means that every single time we do something, we IMPROVE our ability to look out our future and decide what to do.

Since we are ALWAYS updating our “map of reality” we can NEVER arrive at point where we understand everything.

Which means being “self actualized” is an orientation, a way operating, rather than a static state.

Kind of like a high performance race car. The engine is only “self actualized” on straight roads when it can hit those high RPMs.

Consider that the MOST “actualized” we can be is when success is just out of reach, and we are operating as efficiently as we can to get there.

And lucky for us, the more we succeed, the more we CAN succeed.

Learn How:

Entrepreneurial Mind

It Sees All - It Knows All

Unlock Life’s Puzzles

I remember back in college my roommate had one of those 3D books.

The kind that looked like some abstract picture, but if you stared at it, you could see some 3D object.

It took me a while (longer than most) but when I “got it” it was pretty cool.

And once you “got it” on one picture, you could “get it’ on a lot of other pictures.

Optical illusions are cool because they leverage one of our “shortcuts” in thinking.

Because it takes a lot of brain processor time to look at EVERYTHING every single time, our brain has a kind of “cache” memory.

Scientists believe that up to forty percent of what we see isn’t what we’re REALLY seeing.

It’s what we’re ASSUMING based on that “cache.”

So when we look at an optical illusion, something that is PURPOSELY drawn differently in some way, it kind of sends our brain into a loop.

Like in Excel or any other spreadsheet program where you try and “divide by zero.”

These can be fun, but they can also cause problems.

Like when we’re trying to do something IMPORTANT (not look at some goofy picture) and we keep getting mistakes.

One of the problems with our brains is we tend to generalize quite a bit.

We also distort and delete.

If we had to process EVERY SINGLE THING outside of our senses, we’d go insane.

In order to keep up, we’ve got to “perceive” the bare minimum.

But if we’re getting the bare minimum wrong (which is pretty easy considering the small sliver of stuff we perceive compared to what is actually there) it can be maddening.

Of course “wrong” is purely subjective.

Imagine if you were trying to drive a car, and you perceived the world as if it were an optical illusion, like those stairs that go all over the place!

(It’d be like the movie, “Inception!”)

Luckily, once you recalibrate what’s out there, and more importantly the part that will help you get where you want to go, it’s pretty easy.

Kind of like those optical illusion puzzles.

Once you “get” one of them, you can “get” all of them.

And once you figure out how to “get” one thing you want, you can use the same strategy for everything else.

Learn How:

End Self Sabotage

Crash Through Barriers

Overcome Duration Mismatch

Imagine going on a bike ride with a friend.

Only you were on a tandem bike. And both of you were pedaling at different frequencies.

It would be frustrating. You’d be much better off on two separate bikes, so you could pedal at your own rate.

Back in the days before banks became speculation machines, they had something called “duration mismatch.”

People would deposit their money to earn interest. And then the bank would loan out that money, to earn MORE interest.

The theory was that the bank made their money from the difference. If they paid out 2% interest on deposits, and charged 5% interest on loans, they’d pocket the 3% difference.

Only the loans (money going out) were for fixed terms. Usually long terms. Car loans are five years. Home loans are fifteen or thirty years.

But the deposits (money coming in) could be pulled out at any time.

Even if people got a CD (certificate of deposit) to get a higher interest, it was for only a year.

So the money coming IN was short term. The money going OUT was long term.

The trick was to make sure it was always in balance.

When the Great Depression happened, all the money was pulled out, and plenty of banks went out of business.

When humans do things, (or try to do things) there are always different “levels.”

Like in the short term, it feels good to eat pizza (or nachos or whatever).

In the long term, we’d rather be fit and in shape.

Kind of like a “duration mismatch” of our wants.

Often times what we want in the SHORT TERM is different than what we want in the LONG TERM.

Usually the opposite.

This is the heart of what most people call “self sabotage.”

Like two people on a bike pedaling at different speeds.

Instead of combining their efforts, they cancel each other out.

Putting in all that effort for nothing.

When you have different parts of you fighting each other, it sucks.

But there’s a way to fix it.

A way to start slowly, and improve slowly, so that EVERYBODY involved (all the different parts of you wanting things at different times) are FINALLY working together.

And just like two people pedaling together on a bike, you can get going pretty fast.

Learn How:

Stop Self Sabotage

Break Out Of Comfort

Become The Middle Porridge

When I was a kid, me and my friends were into video games.

This was way back in the day when they cost a quarter.

They had TV games, but the ones in the arcades (or the ice cream shops) were much better.

Back then, like today, they had hidden “cheats.” Ways you could “beat” the system. Certain things you could do that would GUARANTEE you could get to the next level.

Those were cool, but once you found the cheat, it wasn’t much fun.

The whole point of “playing” games is you DON’T know how they are going to come out.

This is why sports is so exciting, as well as well-written books, movies, and stories.

Nobody likes a movie when everybody can figure out how it’s going to end.

When I was a kid we used to take car trips.

It was always exciting, because we were going somewhere cool, and part of the fun was enjoying the process of getting there.

Of course, looking back as an adult, it was always some hotel or motel somewhere, and if you’ve seen one of those, you’ve seen them all.

But as a kid it CAN be a real adventure.

If you use any kind of measuring equipment, you know how important it is to keep it calibrated.

IF you were making cookies for example, imagine if you had a cup you “thought” was an actual cup, but was really only half a cup.

The cookies wouldn’t come out so good.

Now imagine building something complicated, like a jet engine, with tools that AREN’T calibrated.

A bunch of mechanics just throwing stuff together and “hoping” it doesn’t break apart a top speed.

Life itself can fall into three general categories.

A grand adventure, a nightmare, or something really boring.

If you charge ahead without calibration, without knowing what you’re doing, it can be good, but the chance of “nightmare” outcomes goes up.

If you don’t do anything, you’ll end up pretty boring.

The magic is in the middle.

Just like in the three bears.

Not too hot, not too cold.

One or two steps out of your comfort zone. Small actions, measure the results, and then re-calibrate.

Doing that will turn life into a grand adventure where you get the BEST of both worlds.

Always on the journey, and always close to the safety of home.

Learn More:

End Self Sabotage

Changing Minds

Metaphors Are Everywhere

What language do humans speak?

According to Noam Chomsky, one of the world’s recognized experts on linguistics, we only speak one language.

Just that from country to country, we speak in different “dialects.”

He famously pointed out that all world language have the same components.

Verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc.

There have also been a few interesting cases where people had to “make up” a language, and they “made up” a language that had those parts of speech.

This led Chomsky to come up with his “X-bar theory.”

Where we have a bunch of “switches” in our brain.

And when a kid is between 0 and about 2, they are setting these switches based on the “local structure” of this “world language.”

Once these switches are set, the word explosion begins.

This is when kids shift from speaking gibberish to full blown sentences, some of which they NEVER could have heard.

Researchers test this, just to make sure.

They make up words for nouns and verbs.

Then the kids use them PERFECTLY.

Which strongly suggests that deep in our brain is the neural circuitry for language.

The actual words are kind of like filling in the blanks.

One thing that is used in all languages are metaphors.

Not just metaphorical sayings, but embedded within the language itself.

Like the simple expression, “fall in love.”

The verb “fall” explains how we feel about “love.”

Something that happens unexpectedly. Like you’re wandering down the street, staring at your phone and you fall into a hole.

Or the sentence, “We are going through some difficulties.”

If it’s a person or a company, you are thinking about those “difficulties” as if they are an actual object.

And in order to “deal with” that “object” you need to go through it.

Not go over it, or under it, or around it.

Through it.

And when you are going “through” something, it’s all around you.

Hopefully soon, you’ll be able to “put it” behind you.

And see it fading away in the rear view mirror.

Understanding the structure of human metaphors is very powerful.

You can move people on deep and profound levels.

Not knowing how to do so is like being in a foreign country and not speaking the language.

So long as you speak the HUMAN language, you can communicate a lot more effectively.

And impact people much more profoundly.

Learn How:

Hypnotic Storytelling

The Rainbow Of Your Brain

Confusing Brains and Tall Flowers

Language has a lot of vagueness.

But most of the time, when something is vague, we can figure stuff out from the context.

Occasionally, though, it’s kind of funny.

Once I was talking to this elderly Japanese woman.

She was telling me about the upcoming (at the time) prime minister election.

And since it was a pretty significant event, her face took on the facial expressions one does when talking about a significant upcoming event.

Only she sort of “mispronounced” the word election.

She got the look of “something is coming,” and said:

“This weekend there will be a prime minister erection.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. She asked why and I explained.

She thought it was pretty funny as well.

The picture of some old prime minister sitting there with all the press, hoping to get a boner.

Then when Prime Minister Jr. stands up, everybody politely claps.

“Prime Minister Erection Successful!”

You’ll see this technique used in comedy all the time.

But humor is not the ONLY way to leverage vagueness.

You can use it to “burn up” brain processor time.

For example, if I said, “Yesterday I went to the park and there were a lot of tall trees and flowers.”

What EXACTLY does this mean?

Tall trees and tall flowers?

Or tall trees and normally sized flowers?

Both make sense grammatically.

But what if I said:

“Yesterday I went to the park and there were some tall trees and flowers, but not all of the flowers were as tall as they used to be.”

This is like taking a selfie with your back to a mirror.

Your attention wants to keep swirling around those words to find out what the heck it really means.

And while your friend’s brain is doing that, you can KEEP slamming them with equally confusing sentences.

And one of the interesting things about confusing brains is they tend to look for ANYTHING to that makes sense.

A command, for example, in a sea of verbal confusion, is something the brain will grab hold of for dear life.

What command?

Whatever you want!

A few well-placed sentences, with secret commands side, can keep everybody’s brains spinning around for hours.

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Drill Into Some Cookies

Hammer Out Your Skill Zone

There are a lot of good metaphors about our comfort zone.

The elephant that was tied up as a kid, for example.

Then later, they removed the rope, but he still was afraid to go outside of his rope-zone.

That’s all he was comfortable with.

Or the shark whose growth was stunted because he was kept in a small tank.

But the thing about comfort zones is they distort our reality.

Sure, we can see things just on the outside of them, recognize that they make us uncomfortable.

Which means we can sort of define the “boundary” of our comfort zone.

You can think of a small area just outside our comfort zones as a kind of defining “outer limit” of what we MIGHT be capable of.

But beyond that, we really can’t perceive of anything at all.

I had a friend once who was baking cookies. She wanted to make three times as many, but she absolutely COULD NOT do the math required to do so.

So she was stuck.

She had an IDEA of what she wanted, but she couldn’t figure out how to do it.

Imagine somebody, on the other hand, who could EASILY complicated arithmetic in their heads.

They could plan things with a lot more accuracy.

Therefore they could SEE things in their future with a lot more accuracy.

We can only see based on what we MIGHT be able to do, in the case of the comfort zone and the cookies.

Imagine walking down the street in a foreign country, where you have NO IDEA what any of the signs meant.

Imagine that same scenario but with a HUGE “to-do” list.

Shopping, laundry, getting a haircut, buying shoes, etc.

Simple things would be difficult.

The more you are comfortable doing, the more clearly you’ll see MORE options.

The more things you are capable of understanding, the more clearly you’ll see all the opportunities outside of your SKILL zone.

If ALL you have is a hammer, you’ll only find nails.

But if you have a MASSIVE set of tools in your brain, you’ll find a lot more things to use them on.

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