Category Archives: Resources

Nature Or Nurture?

Peer Pressure

I just finished reading this fascinating book by Steven Pinker called “The Blank Slate.” In it he challenges the popular notion that people are blank slates when we are born, and are easily shaped by our environment, parent, religious upbringing and childhood. It’s a fairly controversial idea, as many people think that the idea of people coming into the world with some kind of pre set nature will lead to discrimination, or something like eugenics, (or worse, nazism) which was all the rage at the beginning of the last century.

He touched on several hot button topics in the book, ranging from politics to race to feminism. Most of his points were well argued, and he had plenty of data to back up his claims.

One hot button topic he spoke about at length was the influencing factors that contribute to an individual’s behavior. There’s always been the old “nurture vs. nature” debate. Are we the way we are because of our genes, or because of our environment? The answer, according to a growing number of social scientists is both, which makes sense. Our collection of behaviors as adults is due more or less to fifty percent genetics, and fifty percent environment. Of course some behaviors will be influenced much more than others than environment, so not every individual behavior is fifty-fifty. But taken collectively, our general behaviors, beliefs, ideas, and personalities all mashed into who we are (or who we think we are) is roughly fifty percent from our genes, and fifty percent from our environment.

But the shocking part (for some) is the particular environment that we are shaped from. When they say fifty percent of our behaviors are due to our environment, they are referring to our non-family environment. That means our behavior is determined much more by our peers than our parents. Who we are has nothing to do with how we were raised, by how we related to our friends and our peer groups growing up. What roles we played in the group, whether they were a positive influence, or a negative influence.

Study after study after study, involving twins raised together, twins raised apart, adopted kids raised in the same family, non twin siblings raised together, and raised apart bear this out.

This makes sense when you consider the social influence factors described by Cialdini in “Influence, Science and Practice.” Two of the biggest factors of influence are authority, and social proof. Authority is pretty much anybody who knows what they’re talking about, and is generally respected as such by those that he or she is talking to. Social proof is simply going along with the crowd. Of course, these two can powerfully work together, as authority of any one person can be greatly enhanced by social proof.

Anyone who studies covert language and hypnosis for sales or seduction knows one of the key skills to have is to gain rapport with your target before persuading them. By gaining rapport, you show that you are one of them. You are part of their social group. But gaining rapport is only the beginning. You’ve got to not only pace, but eventually you’ve got to start to lead if you want them buying your product. You’ve got to convince them that you are an authority in their world enough so they’ll feel comfortable buying your product, or doing whatever else it is you want them to do.

And if you’re a kid growing up, who do you have the most rapport with? Your parents? Your teachers? Or your friends? And who them, has the most authority in your world? You may fear punishment by your parents or teachers, or you may crave the rewards, both emotional and otherwise, from your parents and teachers, but he “leaders” in your peer group have the most juice when it comes to real authority. If you’re a parent, you how seemingly impossible to fight peer pressure. Often times a threat of severe punishment is the only way to persuade. And if you’re in sales, using a threat of punishment in order to persuade somebody usually doesn’t work so well.

In NLP, there are a lot of procedures to change behaviors based on re engineering your past. There’s even a procedure called “Perfect Parents.” It’s a popular notion that if you are “messed up” as an adult it’s due in large part to your parents not doing such a great job bringing you up. But what if the most influence your parents had on you was by giving you their genes? What if those that influenced you the most were the kids you hung out with while growing up?

All those procedures in NLP to change the way your parents brought you up may actually be barking up the wrong tree. It may be helpful to reengineer your historical peer group, or our place in your peer group next time you try on a different history to see how it affects you present.

When trying to learn a new skill, it can help to remember times in your past where you exhibited some aspect of that skill while you were with your friends, and there weren’t any adults around.

These ideas may turn out to be completely full of holes, but at least you’ll gain some flexibility when looking into your past to understand your behaviors and beliefs in the present. And as a general rule, the more flexible you are, the easier it will be to come up to a solution to any problem that may come up, and a way to conquer whatever obstacles you may be dealing with.

It’s a sad truth that many adults carry around a deep resentment for something their parents did to them, or didn’t do to them when they were kids. But it may turn out that whatever they did, or didn’t do, has no impact whatsoever on your life today. Anyone harboring any deep-seated resentment for their parents would do well to remember the words of Nelson Mandela:

“If you hold a grudge, it’s like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.”

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To learn powerful skills to re-engineer your life and build it exactly as you like, check out the link below:

Success with NLP

Success with NLP

How To Use Your Unconscious Mind To Automatically Attract Money, Sex, and Love

If you’ve ever doubted the power of your subconscious mind, this article may be reminder of the massive amounts of untapped power you likely have sitting between your ears.

It’s no secret that several best selling books have been written on the subject, and perhaps you may have even read a few of them. Sometimes it can seem like they are talking about “somebody else” in those books. It can be easy reading about all those wonderful things happening to “other people” in the examples presented in those books, and somehow feel they don’t apply to you.

A quick way to banish this erroneous thought is to simply find experiences where you have been well served by your unconscious. Anytime you’ve acted on intuition, or what you may have called a gut instinct has been due to your unconscious.

Or anytime you were trying to think of something, a name of somebody, or a name of a band or dessert, and it was “just on the tip of your tongue,” and then you forgot about it, only to have it magically pop into your mind when you least expected it. That was your unconscious mind presenting you with the information you were requesting earlier.

One useful way to think of your subconscious is like a giant computer that contains all the information you’ve ever experienced. And when I say experienced, I mean stuff you’ve read, things you’ve seen, emotions you’ve felt, or anything else that has been filtered from the outside world, through any one of you five senses, and into your brain.

But wait, there’s more.

The unconscious is not merely a gigantic billion gigabyte hard drive in you brain. It is also jillion-gigahertz multi-parallel processor as well. It takes all the raw data, in the form of pictures, emotions, tastes, snippets of old conversations, and runs them through several algorithms so complicated it would make the best programmers at Google look like cavemen just learning to paint on their cave walls.

And the great thing about your unconscious is that it never stops working. It is always sorting through your data to present you with the best possible information to achieve whatever it is you want to achieve.

If you don’t program your brain with a specific direction, it will default to it’s factory installed programming, which is to point you in the direction of safety, being well fed, and sexually satisfaction. The order in which these appear is based on whatever threat might be present at the moment. Many times, there is perceived threats which interfere with your ability to achieve on or all of the above.

For example. You see a really attractive member of the opposite sex, and you’d really like to stroll on over and copulate, but something holds you back. What is holding you back of course, is fear. Fear is the big stopper of action.

Fear is a good thing though, it has kept mankind safe for hundreds of thousands of years, and will likely keep you from getting slapped if you walk over to that girl or guy and suggest some copulation over in the corner.

But I digress.

The big power of the subconscious is when you give it programming in additional to it’s factory installed programming. When you choose a specific goal, and charge that goal with enough energy so that your unconscious starts to find ways to make it happen.

Example.

Let’s say you are really hungry. A base need for humans. Everybody knows it is a horrible idea to go shopping at the grocery store when you are hungry. You have this strong desire for food, and everything looks good. Because of your strong desire, your unconscious is sorting through the environment and finding all those things that will satisfy this deep craving.

You ignore the sexy blond standing next to you, you ignore the sale they are having in Wii’s, you pretty much only see the food.

Another example. (The old new car stand by example.)

You buy a new car. It is very important to you. Suddenly you see the same car everywhere. You swear they weren’t there before. But because you have given your brain the temporary message that a purple Toyota Corolla (or whatever car you want for this example) is super important, you see them everywhere.

When you take something that you really want, like money, or a relationship, or a new house, and charge it strong enough, your unconscious will start to point out all kinds of things to you that will help you make it happen.

And the way to charge your subconscious is with pictures, feelings, sounds, tastes, and smells of what your desire will be like when you get it. When you make as many as you want, and charge them with powerful emotions on a daily basis, you’ll start to see all kinds of opportunities pop up.

It seems like magic, and to hear some of the people from “The Secret,” it sounds like magic. But I reality, all those opportunities were there before, just like all those purple Corolla’s were there before, it’s just that you didn’t notice them.

And the thing about opportunities is that they can be a double-edged sword. They are a little bit more complicated to spot that a purple Toyota. You might need to see a couple things, and thing of a creative way to combine to create something useful. Like maybe you’ll run into two different people within a week, and think of a creative way to combine everybody’s skills to create a really cool product that will make you millions.

If you hadn’t’ charged your brain to look for opportunities, you might have missed out. But when you program your brain through regular practice, and emotional visualizations, you’ll start to see opportunities of a lifetime on a regular basis.

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How To Avoid Doctors, Drugs, And Surgery

I remember when I was younger; I used to love to play racquetball. It was my favorite sport, not necessarily the one I was best at, but my favorite nonetheless. When I was in university, my first two years I lived in a dorm which was next to the university sports center, which had several indoor racquetball courts.

My roommate and I used to play frequently, at least a couple times a week. Normally in racquetball, the games are played to fifteen, and you usually play best of three, or five, or sometimes seven if you have the time and the energy.

My friend and I would play one game to one hundred and one. No breaks, no rests, just keep playing until one of us (usually my friend) made it to 101. They usually lasted a couple of hours, and more often than not I had a serious elbow problem that evening. I would usually get a very large icepack and strap it to my elbow with an ace bandage and leave it there when I went to sleep.

Usually, being young and able to bounce back from things like that, when I woke up the next morning the pain was gone, and forgotten (except for the puddle from the melted ice).

Being older now, I really appreciate how much abuse I gave my body when I was younger. I’ve had several cases of achilles tendonitis, and several knee problems. Nothing serious, nothing that I handful of Advils won’t take care of (or at least make bearable) but sometimes I long for the days when I could bounce back from a seriously over worked joint or tendon with only an ice pack.

I thought that I would have to pretty much accept that my body wouldn’t ever bounce back as much as it used to, and that living with joint pain (albeit tolerable) was going to be a normal part of life.

Then, through a chiropractor friend of mine, I found this really good book. It is completely filled with all kinds of stretches and strengthening exercises to rehabilitate (on your own) almost any kind of physical problem.

There is even as section in there in carpal tunnel syndrome. I once had a really severe case of carpal tunnel syndrome, and because at the time I didn’t have any insurance, I wasn’t sure what to do. A friend once had carpal tunnel and went to the doctor, and right off the bat (right off the bat after they checked to make sure she had enough insurance to pay) they schedule her for two surgeries, one for each hand.

In my case, however, I turned to this book, that had a section on several exercises, gripping exercises, hand-flexing exercises, that virtually made my symptoms vanish within a couple weeks. Granted I had to spend about twenty minutes a day on these exercises, but I would much rather do that than have two surgeries, one on each hand.

One of the exercises was to crumple up newspapers. Depending on your strength level, start with a whole newspaper page, or a half, or a quarter, and then grab the corner, and with only one hand, crumple the page into a ball.

Do this ten times a day with each hand. Yes, your hands will get dirty, and yes you’ll end up with a pile of crumpled up newspapers, but you’ll be surprised how much it can get rid of wrist pain and carpal tunnel syndrome rather quickly.

Another fantastic way I’ve found to remove pain without the need for drugs or surgery is finding a really good acupuncturist. Unfortunately, this can be hard to do depending on where you live. I found an acupuncturist who had a really good reputation, and he helped me several times with tendonitis, and even blood pressure.

When you can step back and avoid the automatic reaction to “see a doctor” you’ll be surprised how many natural remedies you can find. And especially in today’s raging debate about health care, with everybody trying to stay profitable, it can be easy to find these things.

Of course, if you have a serious medical problem, you should always see your doctor first. There is a place for western style medicine, and even surgery, if you really need it.

I’ve had my appendix taken out, and if I thought I could relieve my appendicitis by exercise or acupuncture, I might not be here today. But for joint pain, tendonitis pain, ligament pain, there is a lot more available to you that doctors, drugs, and surgery.

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.

The Hills Are Alive with Wave Energy

When I was a kid there was a new family that moved in. They had two young boys that were about the same age as me. Of course, being boys, the first thing we did when we saw each other was to start throwing rocks at each other. We didn’t actually hit each other, but it took a while for us to get over our imagined differences that you sometimes see when are doing things like this. After we started to play together, without wanting to kill each other, we started going to a park that was behind our neighborhood. It was an old park, I don’t if they city had given up on it, but they kind of let it get overgrown and stuff. It wasn’t really dangerous, there weren’t any poisonous snakes or patches of quicksand or anything like that, and it was just an old park that had a bunch of overgrown trees and stuff. It had large hill in the middle of it, but the hill was heavily populated with trees, so you couldn’t really ride your bike down the hill or anything, because you might crash into a bunch of trees if you weren’t careful.

I remember watching a surfing competition once, and there was a big pier in the middle of the contest. While it certainly wasn’t required, for insurance and legal purposes, to “shoot the pier,” that is to catch a wave on one side of the pier and ride it through the pier, without crashing into the pier itself, surfers who would venture through this would ooh and ahh the crowd. Of course, the judges weren’t’ allowed to give any extra points for this, because they might be held liable for any body that injured themselves. Sometimes it’s important to make sure the recognition you want to receive from something is the kind of recognition that wants you. It’s important to balance the recognition that pays your rent, and bread and butter that inspires you to greater things.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been surfing, but it’s an interesting study in how to harness a naturally occurring phenomenon. Waves have been around long before mankind ever showed up on earth, and will likely be around long after mankind has left. The waves don’t care if you are in a good mood, or if you just got fired from your job. They just keep coming in regardless, based solely on a few basic laws of physics and gravity.

It’s interesting the different ways that humans have used to harness naturally occurring phenomenon. Wind energy, solar energy, and recently ocean currents have been, and continue to be a valuable source for electricity. And no matter how many billions of people live on Earth, the wind and solar and ocean currents will remain unchanged. It’s amazing the things that have been around for millions of years, before humans were a gleam in a single cell bacteria’s eye, and will likely be here long after out demise, will continue to consistently behave in a predictable way. And when you consider how ancient people used these same resources, compared to how we use them today, you can only imagine the creative ways humans will be using them a few thousand years from now.

After the new kids and I went to the park a few times, we realized that the densely wooded hill would be a perfect place for playing wargames, like capture the flag, and laser tag, and paintball. Before, I had never considered doing something like that. Maybe it was because our first instinct was to throw rocks at each other, but using that area for much different kind of games proved to be a great way to create lasting friendships, and build teamwork skills. We spent many summers trying to think of creative ways to run around those woods trying to pretend to kill and sneak attack each other. It’s really amazing what you can do when you figure out how to use the resources that have been around you since before you took the time to notice them, now.

Let Your Curiosity Lead the Way

I met a woman and her husband yesterday as I was hanging out in my favorite mall coffee shop. They were very friendly, and we had a lot in common, so we chatted for quite a while. He was telling me that they were getting ready to be relocated to the other side of the country. It was a promotion, so he was getting more money, and better benefits. But nevertheless, they were both nervous. They had both lived in this relatively small town their whole lives, and were going to be moving to a big city. You know how it is, right? You feel comfortable, like you’ve gotten the hang of everything, then suddenly it gets all turned upside down. You don’t know if you will be ok, or get what you need. You don’t even know where to start because everything is so new. On the one hand, you are glad to have this opportunity, but on the other hand, you are nervous, because you don’t know how this will turn out, and you don’t even know how to proceed.

They were telling me how their daughter was just learning to walk. She just turned two. She is at the age where you just become really curious about everything. You see something new, and you want to discover what this is. The only requirements are that you haven’t seen this before. You spend your whole existence, exploring, and walking around. Touching things, smelling things, tasting things. Many neuroscientists think this is the greatest resource of humanity, the power of curiosity. To seek new things. To search and discover simply for the sake of searching and discovering. You will never know when you will find this useful and interesting.

It’s like sometimes as adults, we can just let go of any expectation, and just let our curiosity lead us. We are old enough to stay away from danger, and to know this is a resource when we see something we like. Many of the great discoveries that we still use today came from when people were just able to let go of expectations and ask “What if?” Life can seem dreary and repetitive when we forget to do this on a regular basis. Let your curiosity lead the way.

They were telling me their happiest times (so far!) of being parents was to watch their kid find something she thought was exciting, and just feel good for discovering this. Like you can really feel a sense of accomplishment when your curiosity has led you to something cool like this. She was telling me that she likes to follow her kid around in bookstores, just like the one we were sitting in, and watch her daughter go through the joys of being able to learn something new.

Which is why he was telling me that although they were a bit nervous about leaving their comfortable small town, with the same people and the same shops and the same restaurants, they were really excited about moving to the huge metropolis where they were going. He said that he jumped on the opportunity when it presented itself. I’m sure they will do fantastic in their new life.

Five Ways to Boost Your Chi to Improve Your Life

According to certain esoteric philosophies, there is a life force called Chi than runs through everything. Like The Force in Star Wars, it runs through and around every living thing. According to what esoteric philosophy you subscribe to, it also permeates the non physical as well. When you visit a practitioner of acupuncture, they use small needles to remove the blockages of Chi throughout your body. A greater, cleaner flow of Chi naturally leads to a healthier mind and body. The practitioner I used to visit used acupuncture when his wive delivered their baby, and he suffered no pain whatsoever.

When you do the ancient Chinese exercise Qi Kong, pronounced Chi Gong, you are moving Chi. The Ki in the Japanese “genki” meaning vigor literally means original, or source energy. Increased levels of chi can increase your charisma, increase your sexual attractiveness to the opposite sex, and has been know to attract financial abundance. 

Luckily, you aren’t stuck with the Chi that you have. You can naturally and effectively increase it with these five simple ways:

One:  Focused Breathing

There are many ways to practice focused breathing. The most important part is to breath slowly. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Keep the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth while doing so, and keep a smile on your face. Close your eyes if it is convenient. Try for at least nine slow, deep, relaxed breaths. When you breath in, visualize the white energy of the universe entering into your heart. Then hold the breath, and breath out all blocks of chi. If you don’t know how to visualize chi blockages, whatever your mind comes up with is fine. Focus all your mental energy on the breath.

Two: Proper Sleep

Yes, this is important. Don’t eat too close to bedtime. Try not to drink too much alcohol or coffee late in the day. Most importantly, it’s a good idea to go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day. Even if you aren’t tired, at lay down in bed and do some chi breathing, this should help you fall asleep.

Three: Slow to Judgment

This is difficult, I know. But when you judge others, you are really hurting yourself. Remember that everybody is at different stages in life, and trying the best they can based on their own condition and experience. Release any judgments or bad feelings you might be harboring for other people. Remember what Nelson Mandela said: “When you hold a grudge, it is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.”

Four: Stretch your Muscles

Yoga is the best for this, and there are many styles to choose from. If you don’t have the time for an ‘official’ yoga class, google some poses, or at the very least stretch your major muscle groups in the morning. Just like breathing, make sure you use long, slow meditative stretches.

Five: Lemon Juice

Yep. Lemon juice has only been recently accepted in the west as a source of health benefits. I was first turned onto it by my acupuncturist I mentioned above. It increases your Chi and lowers blood pressure as well. And it has vitamin C, to help you keep colds at bay. I usually pour a couple shots into a two liter bottle of tap water. Tastes delicious.

There you have it. Five simple ways to improve your chi, and improve your life. When you practice the above suggestions, you will not only  notice a marked increase in your physical and metal health, but your friends and family will as well.

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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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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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Three Undisputable Powers of Humanity

Have you ever sat down and thought about what is really important in life? Really important to you? What kinds of things do you usually come up with? Love, Respect, Communication? Being recognized for a job well done? Freedom to create and express your life to others?

How about in your family? Have you ever sat down as a family and discussed what was important to you as a group? Or maybe your Mom or Dad ‘laid down the law’ so to speak. What was important then? Kids doing their homework? Coming home before curfew? A good education?

What about at work? I’m sure you’ve heard or read about or have been involved with creating a ‘mission statement’ for a company at one time or another.

“Our company shall strive to provide real time solutions to emerging problems in a timely manner with respect for the environment and the community.”

“Company XYZ envisions a future where everybody uses XYZ products for the enlightenment of man and the realization of life’s purpose.”

How about this one: “McDonald’s vision is to be the world’s best quick service restaurant experience. Being the best means providing outstanding quality, service, cleanliness and value, so that we make every customer in every restaurant smile.” No kidding.

What about the mission statement for the leaders of your country?

What do you think the three most important values of the entire human race are? Well, let’s have a look, shall we?

One way to look at what’s important is what are the most widely spoken languages in the world today. Perhaps they can give us a clue.

The most spoken language today is Mandarin Chinese, with about a billion speakers. That’s a lot of people. How’d they get so numerous? Well, most of them live in China, so they didn’t invade surrounding countries to spread their language. So one conclusion is that they got to be number one in terms of language spoken by sheer reproductive success and effectiveness. So the most spoken language in the world is spoken by the people that made the most people.

How about the second most spoken language in the world? English. And how did English get to be so popular? Maybe it might have something to do with the fact that up until a couple hundred years ago, “the sun never set on the English empire.” So English, then, was spread around the world because the English themselves spread it around the world. For what purpose? Namely trade. Business. So the second most spoken language in the world was spread because of worldwide interest in commerce.

How about the third most spoken language in the world? Spanish. And who spread the Spanish language? Spain of course. And what was the underlying motivation for Spanish people in the old days roaming the planet and spreading their language? Religion. Generally speaking, first the priests would come, and then the conquistadors.

So there you have it. A quick study in how different languages were spread around the world yields a quick and dirty look into the three most important things that have generally been important to the human race over the last thousand years or so.

Sex.

Money.

God. 

 

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