Category Archives: Resources

Tap the Wisdom of Your Mind with the Ancient Secrets of the Pendulum

You’ve received a stunning job offer. It has everything you want. Money, perks, the corner office with a window. Three secretaries. Only one problem, it is halfway across the country.

What do you do?

You have a job you truly enjoy that offers incredible personal satisfaction, and you know you are really making a difference, but you only earn minimum wage. You receive a letter in the mail saying you’ve been accepted in that MBA program you applied for only half seriously a few months ago. Do you give up your rewarding minimum wage job in the pursuit of financial success? Or do you stay in your low paying job, content in the knowledge that making a difference is what truly matters?

What do you do?

It’s Friday night. You’ve decided to order a pizza. You are not sure if you want pepperoni, or anchovies. You love them both. But if you eat them at the same time, they will mix and create a gastric disaster.

What do you do?

There are two ways to make a decision. Rational, logical, like Mr. Spock, or the other way. The old fashioned way. The way that the Samurai’s of ancient Japan referred to when they said that “every life changing decision must be made within seven breaths.” Trust your instinct. Your intuition. Your gut.

But how do you know? Unless your gut talks to you, (and if you think it does, maybe you should see a doctor,) how do you know exactly what your gut is telling you?

There are two ways to look at this. According to the laws of known science, and according to the esoteric laws of metaphysics.

According to the laws of metaphysics, your intuition can be thought of as a connection to ‘infinite knowledge, or infinite intelligence.” Many have spoken about this. Brian Tracy, Napoleon Hill, Wallace Wattles. According to these sages, who incidentally based their information on the sages that came generations before them, say that there is some ‘source’ of information that everyone can access. This ‘source’ has infinite knowledge of all that is, all that was, and all that will ever be. We might not have the capacity to understand all of this knowledge, but you can get general advice if you quiet your mind enough, so that you can listen carefully.

According to the rules, or understandings of science, biology and neurophysiology, the brain is an incredibly powerful computer. Able to take in literally billions of bits of information at time, sort and categorize, and then decide which to make consciously available, and which to store unconsciously, for later use. According to this model, when you ask yourself a life changing question, the brain sorts through all of your life experiences, compares them to the experience you are contemplating, and then comes up with an answer. Sounds wonderful and helpful, until you realize that this ‘answer’ usually comes in the form of a vague feeling. If we could only get our brains to make us feel hungry for yes, or thirsty for no, it might be easier.

One really cool way to tap your unconscious is to use a pendulum. Any pendulum will do, a chain with a weight on the end, like a necklace. Or a piece of string with a paper clip, anything that can swing back and forth.

What you need to do first is to calibrate it. Get a flat surface to swing your pendulum over, something that you can write on. A piece of paper on a table or desk will work fine. It’s important to keep the paper from moving, you’ll understand why in a second.

Hold the pendulum so that it hangs over the center of the paper. Now ask yourself a question where you know the answer will be yes. For example “Am I male (or female)?” Then just relax, and watch which way the pendulum swings. Ask another “yes” question. Watch the pendulum swing. Wherever the pendulum swings most over the paper for your ‘yes’ questions, is your yes ‘quadrant’ of your paper. After you have determined your ‘yes quadrant,’ make sure your don’t turn the paper. That will mess up your results. I usually tape it on the table or desk before I begin.

Next, you do the same thing, only this time use several ‘no’ questions. Questions you know that you’ll get a ‘no’ answer to. This will determine your ‘no quadrant.’

Now you need to ask your real question, phrased in a yes or no question. (Just like the magic eight ball.)  If you are getting fuzzy results, that is, if the answers are neither clearly yes or no, keep rephrasing the question. Pretty soon you should get a clear answer. You’ll be amazed at how well this works, and how well you can use this to unlock the wisdom of your own subconscious mind to help you get what you want out of life.

One thing to keep in mind, is that you will have to re-calibrate every time you do this. You’ll need to check and see where the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ quadrants are, because they will change based on your mood, tiredness, hunger, emotional state and other factors. It only takes a few minutes, and this can be a valuable tool that you can use in your quest to make decisions that support your goals in life.

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Powerfully Develop Bullet Proof Self Esteem

Try this little mind experiment, just for fun. Say to yourself “I can do whatever I want.” Or if you want to, you can say something specific like “I can sell anything to anybody,” if you are a salesman. Or you can try “I own my own house,” or “I will own my own business,” if those are appropriate. After you say them, do you hear any responses from your mind? Are there any insidious voices inside saying “yea, right,” or “get real,” or “ha ha ha!”

If you do hear those voices, or sense that they are there, don’t worry. Most people have them. How they got there is not really important. What’s important is how to get rid of them. Most of us go through carrying judgments of ourselves that didn’t even come from us. Maybe when you were six, your teacher said something, that she thought might’ve been helpful at the time, but turned out to be a limiting statement like “you can’t do that!” when you trying to do something that you weren’t supposed to. I remember once in kindergarten I was having a ball painting blue paint all over everything. How was I supposed to know you were supposed to keep it on the paper?

Other times an adult will say something out of anger, when they are not really angry at us, but it seems that way at the time. So we carry that judgment with us, almost without knowing.

These judgments and opinions that others have given us over the years build up and mix with our own opinions of ourselves. Even if we have great ideas and plans, it’s hard to achieve them if we have those old tapes playing over and over in our heads.

A great way to help yourself to easily achieve what you want in life is to choose to release others’ judgments of you, release those old voices. Choose to listen to yourself, and yourself only. Let the others go. They aren’t important any more. The more you work on releasing their influence, the easier it will be to achieve greater success in your life.

One of the things that I’ve found that works fantastically well for this is a product I’ve been using for at least ten years. It’s only about thirty dollars, and it’s amazing to listen to. It uses a kind of hypnosis called a dual voice induction. You can hear a different voice in each ear. Each one telling a beautifully crafted metaphor, which are specially designed to guide your brain into more resourceful thinking. The particular one I’m talking about is called the Self Esteem Supercharger. Even though I’ve listened to it hundreds of times, I’m still not completely sure what’s on it, because I zone out completely every time. It doesn’t use any subliminals or any other secret technology, so there are no hidden messages. It’s a completely relaxing experience that can free you to feel more resourceful and less dependent upon the opinions of others. The name of the company is called Learning Strategies. I’ve bought and used several different products from them, and I can confidently say that they are one of the best companies out there if you are interested in self improvement. And trust me, I’m a self development junkie.

In the future I’ll be posting more reviews of their products, as they are incredibly helpful in making it almost automatic for you achieve whatever you want in life.

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How to Create Reality to Match Your Desire

What would be the odds of flipping a coin twice, and getting heads both times? One out of four, or 50% times 50% (1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4).
How about tossing it four times in a row and getting heads each time? One in sixteen, or (1/2×1/2 x1/2 x1/2 = 1/16).
How about ten times in a row, and getting heads each time? A little over a thousand, or (1/2)^10.

How about the odds of hitting the random button on wikipedia and hoping to get an article on the Klingon language? About one in a million?
What about the odds of winning the California state lotto? About one in 13 million.

Of all the billions of people that have lived in the world, are living in the world, and will live in the world, what are the odds that you happened to have been born in an age of unprecedented communication technology which allows you to read blogs like this one? A billion to one? More?

Of all the of planets that exist in the universe, how many can support life? How many of those can support human life?

Starting from just before the big bang, when all there was was a pure concentrated focus of pure consciousness, what were the odds that it would explode and trigger  billions upon billions years of interstellar and planetary evolution to create that which sits and reads these words? They are to staggering to even begin to try to comprehend.

The miracle of the universe is not the unlockable secrets of physics that make it all simple to understand and predict. It is not the incredibly improbable events after improbable events that led to life on this rock we call earth. It is not the connection of machines spanning the world that can send messages between citizens of different countries at the speed of life. It is not even the message itself.

The miracle is you.

Of all the possible outcomes that could have resulted from all the interstellar and biological activity since the dawn of time, here you sit. Reading these words. Having thoughts in your head. Thoughts that can create wonder if only you direct them in the right way.

You are constantly on the cusp of eternity. Reality is continuously being created before your eyes. You have two choices. Watch it unfold, or make it unfold.

Which do you choose?

All it takes is to just project your thought out, just only a little bit. Go into every situation and imagine the outcome just a few seconds ahead of where you are.

For example, you are walking down the street. You see a cute girl or guy. Instead of wondering if you should smile, or hoping that they smile first, all you need to do is hold a powerful image of them smiling. Only just a second before you would normally smile. This will naturally make you smile, which will naturally make them smile to match the image you created. If you create a strong enough image, it will become reality.

Try it. You will be amazed at the results you’ve easily created.

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Your Incredible Power of Thought

Have you seen the movie, Titanic? The one where that ship crashed into the iceberg, and sank? I’m sure you realize that the reason they crashed into the iceberg is because ninety percent of the iceberg is below water, where they can’t see it. And of course, since they didn’t have very advanced sonar back in those days, they didn’t really see it coming. The fact that they were trying to go fast to impress the newspapers, and weren’t willing to always pay attention didn’t help either.

How about that episode of Seinfeld, where George went the movie theater and that guy was shining a laser pointer at the screen? Because everyone thought it was so funny, George decided he would try the same thing, only he got different results.

Or how about those books that have all those satellite pictures from space? When you look down at small towns in sparsely populated areas, you can barely see a dot of light. Yet in that dot of light are hundreds if not thousands of people, all with thoughts, dreams, fears, hopes, and memories of wonderful pleasure.

Your brain is like that. The thoughts that you are thinking now are the proverbial tip of the iceberg, because there are literally millions of thoughts that are going on in your mind that you aren’t aware of. And the difference between the thoughts that you know about, and the thoughts you don’t know about, are a lot different than the 90/10 ratio in that iceberg. George’s laser is a little bit closer, with the dot being the thoughts you are conscious of, and the whole screen being your other than conscious thoughts. 

For example, what are you thinking right now? What were you thinking before you thought that? What are you thinking now, as you read these words, and remember to feel your left foot? How about as you feel your left foot and begin to wonder what is going to happen exactly one week from now? And when you think about that, can you remember your birthday when you turned seven years old? How about your first kiss? How about the first amount of money that you truly earned? How about the first time you were alone with that someone special? How about the night you were so scared, you didn’t think you were going to make it? (But thankfully you did!) How about that time you were so happy you cried, and then wondered if anybody noticed?

One of the most fantastic thing about the brain being set up like this is that there are literally millions of thoughts in your mind that you can harness to support you. While the magnificent potential is always there, sometimes our thoughts aren’t as cooperative with each other as you’d like. It’s when you give your brain a clear, strong, direction, infused with good emotions, that these thoughts start to sychronize.

A great way to do this is to think of something you want to accomplish or attain. Imagine how it will look when you accomplish it. What will you see, what will you feel, what will you hear that will show you, without a doubt, that you were able to accomplish this? Make another picture, filled with other pieces of evidence of your accomplishment. 

For example, imagine that you want to earn a certain amount of money. Decide on the exact amount. How many things can you picture that show evidence that you have your goal, already achieved? What do you hear people saying to you about your achievement? How do you feel? Can you feel the paper? Is it a bank statement? Are you opening an envelope? Can you feel the weight of the actual cash in your hands?

Once you have a picture in your mind of what you want, close your eyes and sit with it for a few minutes, and really feel gratitude for having it. Really feel thankful for yourself, already achieving it. Feel thankful for all the people that have helped you achieve this goal.

Do this at least twice a day, every day. This will powerfully align the thoughts in your brain to be more cooperative so you can achieve what you want.

And if you think that this is encouraging, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

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Four Power Sources for Success

In all the interactions that you’ve ever had, all the interactions you ever will have, there are only four things that are in your control. Luckily, these four sources of power are all you will ever need to achieve any dream, manifest any goal, and create any situation that you desire in life. These are not something you need to go out and get. You cannot buy these, you cannot steal these. You need do absolutely nothing to attain these, for you already have them.

These are your thoughts, your emotions, your words, and your actions.

Everything you see around you was created with these. All things tangible and intangible. From the great Sphinx to the very computer screen you are now reading, all were created with only these four powers.

Lets see how you can tap them now.

Thought

Those ideas you have floating around in your head. The result of billions neural synapses firing to create mental images. Created by evolution or God, to assist you in moving through the world to plan, learn and conquer. Have a look on the article regarding focus to get an idea how you can begin to control your thoughts, so that they don’t control you.

Emotions

Emotions arise in our minds when we use our thoughts to give meaning to events. Suppose you sit next a cute girl (or a cute guy, depending on your gender or tastes) at a coffee shop. As soon you sit, you notice that she inhales, and then turns her body slightly away from you. What just happened? If you assume that she finds you repulsive, and turned so she wouldn’t have to face you, what emotion would that cause? If you assume she finds you irresistibly attractive, and suddenly became very shy, what emotion would that cause? The secret here? Any meaning you give to a situation is perfect. The important thing is not whether it’s accurate or not, because we never really know why other people do what they do, but what emotions we create in ourselves by giving certain meanings to things.  When you start to pay attention to how you interpret the world around you, you can start to play around with giving different meanings to give yourself better emotions. This takes time and effort, and I will be writing several future articles to that end, so stay tuned.

Words

Words can be powerful. Words can be eloquent. Speeches throughout history have moved people to great heights of goodness and love, and to evil, horrible depths of destruction. A kind string of words can convince somebody not to kill themself. A kindly said “hello” can change a persons complete outlook. The Jurassic 5’s The Verbal Herman Munster said “..word power can plow through acres of cornfields, paragraphs cut like warm steel..” When you begin to pay attention to the words that you use, you can become incredibly powerful. It’s no coincidence that the ‘spell’ which describes the correct order of letters in a word is the same ‘spell’ that describes the correct order of words in a magic incantation.

Actions

The vehicle that carries the sum of our power is our actions. What we do. How we do it. Not just large physical movements. Body language, facial expressions, smiles, frowns. Our actions and words can synchronize together to either display a congruence so powerful that we can become kings, or with such chaotic psychosis that people steer wide to avoid us altogether.

Our reality is indeed a reflection of how we manage, control and use our four powers to our advantage. By releasing the childishly dependent strategy of hoping for free gifts from others, you can realize that when you harness your four powers for great achievements, you will receive more abundance than you ever imagined possible.

Good thoughts lead to good feelings, which naturally spawn congruent words and actions which lead to success. If reality is not how you like you need only go to your source of power. Change your thoughts, change your world.

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The Power of Focus

Drifting aimlessly. Meandering here and there. Wandering up and down, back and forth, left and right. Not traveling in any discernable direction. Seemingly without aim or purpose. Reacting, rather than acting. Reacting automatically to an environment that is as unpredictable as the earth is old. These are your thoughts. And unless you learn to control your thoughts, your thoughts will control you.

Unfortunately if you allow that to happen, which all too many people do, you place yourself under the control of a infinitely complex feedback loop to which you have no option other than follow blindly, and hope everything works out.  You know too well that it rarely does.

And the worse part is that those times when it doesn’t work out, although it seems like the responsibility lies outside your wonderfully developed mind-body biological system, in truth, the responsibility lies with you. And only you. I believe it was Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin that said it best.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way. God, Mother Nature, the wonderfully random process of Darwinian Natural Selection, whoever or whatever it was that created you, didn’t create such a magnificent collection of cells and bones and muscles, and your fantastically powerful brain to just wander aimlessly through life.

You were created for a purpose, a reason, a destination. You are a missile with a highly sophisticated guidance system that scientiests are just now starting to understand. And known to only a few people, and put into practice by even fewer, is one of the easiest ways to harness the awesome power of your mind. To develop the power of concentration.

Remember when you were a kid, and you or some of your friends would play with a magnifying glass? You could take a very inexpensive magnifying glass, even one made of cheap plastic, and use it to focus the passive rays of the sun into incredible power. Power to burn, power to start fires. That power was harnessed by taking only a minuscule sliver of the suns total power and focusing it. The sun is a giant ball of fire, much bigger than the Earth fueled by the process of nuclear fusion, changing hydrogen atoms into helium atoms. One substance, one process, and enough energy to power an entire planet through eon after eon.

Your brain is infinitely more complex and intricate than that. Infinitely more rich. Infinitely more resourceful. The sun produces heat, and fire, and radiation. Your brain can produce ideas, which can turn into cities, art, cathedrals, poems, songs, equations. Whatever you can imagine, you can create. And you have the power to focus yourself.  Strengthen your mind so you focus your thoughts only on what supports and enlightens you. Focus your thoughts only on ideas that can increase happiness and abundance for you and those you love.

How to do that? How to gain that elusive power that through simple practice will give you an edge almost unheard of in today’s world?

Consistent practice. Opposite of the practice of meditation, in which you practice the emptying of your mind. To practice focus, think of an object. An apple. A bright red apple. Hold the thought in your mind of only an apple. Hold it for as long as you can. If you can hold it for five seconds, you’re doing pretty good. Practice whenever you get a chance. Red lights. In the bathroom. On the elevator. Decide to choose a thought, and hold only that thought for as long as you can.

When you can hold a simple thought, of a simple picture, move on to more complicated pictures. Ones containing a small amount of motion. A hummingbird floating next to a feeder. A clown juggling three bowling balls. A seal with a phone book balanced on its nose.

When you get good at that, you can move on to the next step. You’ll need to prepare yourself with five fantastic memories. If you ever notice your thoughts drifting to unhappy imaginations about the future, you can pull up your five happy memories, and force out the bad guys.

Start by remembering a happy memory from childhood. Really get into it. Close your eyes and easily allow yourself to float back into that memory. Really relive it. Relive it several times. Every time you relive this, put the memory into your left thumb. That’s right, put that wonderful memory into your left thumb. Use what you learned about pegging in the articles on memory and associate that memory with your left thumb.

Do the same with your forefinger, middle finger, ring finger and pinky. Take your time. They don’t have to be childhood memories. Any good memory will do. Make sure it’s a strong, powerful memory. Sex, money, sports, anything that causes you to automatically remember good feelings will work.

You might need to practice a few times before it really sets. But after you take the time to really attach those good memories to your left hand, you will have a powerful source to instantly and powerfully re direct your brain should you ever find yourself thinking less than supportive thoughts. Just open your left hand, and take a moment with your thumb and your fingers recalling all those good memories you’ve programmed in. Once you cycle through all five, make a fist and hold it up to sybolically chase the bad thoughts that have crept into your brain.

After you do this consciously a few times you won’t even have to recall the memories. By training your brain in this manner, simply by clenching your left hand into a fist will immediately flood your brain with good thoughts.

In future articles, I will teach you how install resources, goals, and other skills so you can automatically direct your brain, giving you the power to accomplish great things in your life.

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Easily Visualize Success

How would like you dramatically increase your sports skills? How would you like to go into any social situation with ease and behave with such powerful confidence that people who don’t know you wonder if you’re some kind of movie star? What would it feel like to go into an unfamiliar situation, yet behave as though you’ve done it a hundred times before?

There is an often talked about skill whose power is realized by few, and practiced by even fewer. If you take the time to not only read and understand this article, but to put these techniques into practice, you will be light years ahead of anyone else.

The skill I’m talking about is visualization. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. If you haven’t that’s ok. Visualization is when you practice something in your mind before you actually do it, so when it comes time to take care of business, you’ve already pre-built success into your neurology.

One of the frustrations when you do this is that few sources tell you exactly what to do, so it can be tough to learn to visualize properly.

In this article I will tell you the very basics, so you can start to practice right away. When you become proficient, you can check back often, because I will be writing other articles about additional skills, so that when you add them on top of your powerful visualization skills, you will be a potent force in the world.

There are two types of visualization. Associated and disassociated. Associated is when you visualize something as you normally see it. Through your own eyes. Disassociated is when you watch yourself performing a task, as if you were watching yourself on video tape. You will need to develop both of these skills, so that when you learn additional skills you can easily incorporate them together in such a way that  you will be absolutely amazed by how incredibly powerful you can use them to change your life.

Try it and see. Close your eyes, and see something you did recently in an associated perspective. Is it easy? Difficult? If you have trouble, don’t worry. The brain responds quickly when you practice with focus.

Try the other way. Close your eyes, and this time watch a recent memory, but this time watch yourself as if you are somehow floating off to the side.  If this seems a bit more difficult, you can relax because the more you practice, the easier it will get.

After you develop these two powerful skills, you will be amazed in how many different ways you can use them to train your brain for all kinds of new and wonderful automatic behaviors that you might not be able to imagine doing now.

And be sure to check back often because the more new skills you learn, the easier it will be create your life exactly the way you want it.

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The Blackrock Pass of Logic

“This one!”

“What’s it about?”

“Some guy that does some crazy stuff.”

“Oh, wait dude, look, that one is here!”

 

There were three of us. At the new multiplex. Thirty screens. 6 new releases, and two blockbusters (after only one weekend) all starting within 40 minutes of each other.  If we had another two hours, maybe we could come to a decision. Too many choices. We hadn’t even gotten in line yet. I had a pretty good idea, what I’d though we’d all enjoy, but…

Kind of like when me and two of my other buddies were backpacking. We had a four day trip planned, and we were on our second day in. We had three possible routes to take, all big loops, depending on the weather and the fishing. The only problem was, we’d only agreed that those two things would determine our choices. We didn’t take the time to consider how they would affect our choices.

“If we go left, we can fish some more.”

“Dude, I only caught three small ones, I’m done fishing.”

“Yea, but look at the map, these lakes are bigger, there’s bound to be bigger fish here.”

“Yea, but if we go this way, we can go over Blackrock pass. It says it’s the highest in the area. Think of the views, man!”

I didn’t really care either way. I only know that I didn’t beg and plead for two extra days off over the holiday weekend so I could listen to these two fools argue.

“Just make up your minds for pete’s sake!” I exhorted.

They reminded me of a buddy I used to have in law school.  He told me that once he was in a lecture, given by this professor that was famous for never losing an argument with his students. I mean never.  And this guy was going on and on, and my friend was certain that he’d made a logical mistake in his arguement. Not a big one mind you, but a small and noticeable one that might have a big impact the outcome of his arguement. Kind of like how Amelia Earhart is widely thought to have gotten lost by a mere fraction of a degree mistake, which added up.  Amazing what happens when you can make a small change and then just stand back and watch it grow. But the funny thing is, my friend, who is normally kind of shy, and doesn’t speak out much in class, somehow was able to tap into some magical source of confidence, like when you really know exactly what it is that you want, and you know exactly how you are going to get it. How many times have you been able to experience that knowing?  So anyways, my friend waited until just the right moment when he was able to exploit the advantage, and needless to say, the class was shocked. The professor was dumbstruck. He stood there for what my friend said was almost 5 minutes, which is a long time for a law professor to stand there and not say anything. A mime, yea, but not a law professor. Then someting funny happened. When my friend spoke, up, he didn’t know exactly what was going to happen. He was able to just say it, and allow for whatever result. After the five minutes (which in reality was probably more like thirty seconds), the professor started to clap. And then so did the rest of the class. The professor said it was a pleasure and a wonderful surprise to be so skillfully out argued by an undergraduate. It does feel really good to out argue somebody, when you really know your stuff, doesn’t it?

So I made up my mind, and took the trail to the left. I didn’t say anything, I didn’t give any reason. I just made my choice. If they followed me, great. If they didn’t, well, I drove so I had the car keys.  Funny thing was, we took the path to the pass, which did have some fantastically spectacular views, AND on the other wise were some great lakes, which had some pretty decent sized trout.

And as far as which movie we picked, we decided to decide over a couple of drinks, and we met some people, and, well, that’s another story.

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The Girl and the Physics Experiment

So I was at the beach last week with a friend of mine.  It was a beach with a strange wave phenomenom. The waves come in at an angle, and then they bounce off the jetty, and then remerge with themselves. Its kind of like an interference pattern in physics.  The cool part is that the beach comes up really fast under the water, and when the waves rejoin themselves, they double in size, and at the same time, they come up on a beach that gets really shallow, really quickly, so the waves are able to transform their energy to produce this instantly huge and rideable wave.  Most people there don’t surf with boards, rather, they body surf. Because the waves come up and crash onto sand so quickly, it’s too hard to bail out if you have too much junk tied around your ankle. And we were watching this one guy, bobbing around in the water, and it didn’t really look like he knew what he was doing. Suddenly a wave pulled him up, and it looked like he was going to be pitched onto the sand. I looked around to see if there were any ambulances on hand, as people have been known to break their necks here.

Then my friend starts telling about this guy that he knows. It seems he really likes this girl, but he just can’t get up the nerve to go and talk to her.  He said that whenever he sees her, he can think of good things that he wants to say, but when he gets close, he starts to imagine all the bad things that might happen, and those overpower the good things. In his mind, at least. So I say, “Well, next time you see this guy, why don’t you..” and then my friend interrupts me, and says that he hasn’t seen this guy in like two months. And I say “Oh, so he’s one of THOSE kinds of friends.” And my friend nods and says “Yea. Low maintenance.”

Like the kind of person that you can go for three or four years with out seeing this person, and then next time you happen to bump into them, you are able to instantly remember good times, like you just got off the phone, chatting and talking about remembering good experiences. And then when you see them, you can just pick up where you left off, and everything is cool. And my friend said, “yea, just like that.”  So I asked him if he knew or had met the girl, and he said he did, and I said “so is she cool?” And he said “Yea, she’s totally cool.” “So it’s all in his head?” “Yea, it’s all in his head.” And I suggested that maybe he should just relax. Because I’m sure you know that good things happen when you stay out of your own way.

So anyways, the guy takes off on the wave, and it instantly becomes clear that not only does the guy know what he’s doing, because he expertly barrel rolled himself out just at the right moment, but it turned out he was the guy we’d been talking about. And right after a great ride, he came up to his spot on the beach where his girlfriend, apparantly, was waiting. “Is that her?” “Wow, yea it is,” he said with a chuckle. He waved, she waved, then I waved. Then we went and got some tacos, which is another story.

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The Excitement of Change

So there I was, standing just off stage.  I had done this exact same thing a year ago, but I didn’t remember it being so incredibly pulse quickening. Boom. Boom. Boom. Why was my heart beating so fast? I was so calm just a minute ago, when I was safely behind the curtain, watching all the people scurrying around like caffeine infused mice readying for the performance. But now, just off stage left, waiting for my cue, I peak out into the hall. Lower level. Full. Upper level Ful. Boom. Boom. Boom. What is happening? Why is something I didn’t think was a big deal a minute ago now giving me palpatations? There is my cue, as I step out…

Kind of like I step out for my walk every morning. I usually walk a kind of a loop that looks like a figure eight. On the top part of the figure eight I stop at a convenience store and buy a a small shot of yogurt drink. Good for the digestion, you see. The digestive track is something that you don’t really pay attention to until there is something wrong.  Like a couple time’s I’ve had the unfortunate (and uncomfortable) experience of having to pay attention to my digestive track, if you can see what I’m saying. So I make it a point every morning before I actually step out, to grab enough change from my change bowl, next to my front door, so I’ll be able to have the money to pay the girl at the convenience store for my yogurt drink.

Funny thing is that when I was a kid, I hated yogurt. And when I think back to why I did, I conclude that it was only because adults told me it was good for me, and therefore I should drink it. Becuase of course I’m sure you’ve realized many times before that it is good to do what is good for you, right? Of course I later discovered that sometimes it’s not always a good strategy to reject ideas simply because they don’t belong to you. Naturally the opposite is true. I don’t think you should accept new ideas automatically. You probably already know that it’s good idea is to check them to make sure that they are good for you, first. Good for you like yogurt. And delicious too. Which is why I make it a habit to remember to grab my change before I leave, so I can pay for the yogurt when I get to the convenience store. Because no money, no yogurt. (Or honey, if you’re into that as a morning drink).

Which is why, in retrospect, I guess it was good that my heart started pounding before I walked on stage. Because as soon as I walked out there, and realized why I was there, the nervousness was somehow able to magically change into excitement.  Obviously I enjoyed my small part (the introduction), the kids enjoyed their singing (It was for a kindergarden performance) and everbody was able to relax and be happy. And thankfully my body was smart enough to automatically grab the resources  it needed before I stepped out.

It’s amazing what happens when you trust yourself enough to come up with whatever you need whenever you need to perform well, isn’t it?

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