Category Archives: Success

The I-Have-No-Clue Method of Increasing Wisdom and Happiness

One of the best ways to find a good place to eat is ask local people. I’ve found more really good restaurants by asking locals and ignoring guidebooks and restaurant review guides than anything else. There are some interesting reasons why this is so. One of the main thoughts is to consider why the person is reviewing the particular restaurant. Some restaurant reviewers are concerned solely with reporting the quality of the food and the service as accurately as possible. Others seem to want to promote their own article writing skills, or their own culinary expertise. Of course, if that kind of thing is important to you, eating in a restaurant that has been compared with many other well-known and famous restaurants, then by all means. And I mean that sincerely, without any sarcasm.

My favorite kind of food is cheap and good. I am not a big fan of ambiance, or presentation, or the view from my table. I’m not even that concerned with the cleanliness of the restaurant. Some of my all time favorite meals have been eaten for less than a few dollars from street vendors of questionable sanitation.
Tacos in Mexico, Grilled chicken in Thailand, who knows what in Taiwan. It’s all cheap, and it’s all good.

I guess the difference is asking somebody who really knows, versus asking somebody who wants to pretend that they know, or is afraid of admitting that they don’t know. Sometimes one is a cover up for the other, and vice versa. Here in Japan it is considered socially rude to say, “I don’t know” to a customer. I learned that the hard way when I went looking for a specific map. I went to three bookstores before I realized that they didn’t have the map I was looking for. But because of social rules and constraints, they could only tell me to try and search in another bookstore, even though in hindsight I suspect that they knew I wasn’t going to find what I was looking for.

Sometimes it’s hard to admit that you don’t know. Maybe it’s because when we were kids and you did something wrong, and your parents would say, “Why did you do that!” When our best response was “I don’t know,” we got into more trouble. Maybe because every time in school when teacher asked us a question, and we said “I don’t know, ” we felt foolish and the teacher gave us a dirty look. (Or maybe this only happened to me!)

Whatever the reason, as adults it can be really hard for us to say, “I don’t know,” when somebody asks us a direct question. I was talking to this guy the other day, and he was telling me about his two neighbors that were talking once, and he overheard one of them explaining what his uncle told him when he was a kid:

An admission of not knowing is the starting point for all knowledge. When you allow yourself to admit to somebody, or even yourself, that you have no clue, that opens up space in your brain for more information and experience. When you pretend you know, and you really don’t, you are actually closing yourself to from these things.

Which is I guess why a lot of business management and sales books advise to answer with “I don’t know but I’ll find out,” and then to actually go and find out, and report back to the person in a timely manner. That will show you are honest, resourceful, and dependable, AND they will have the answer to their question. For many people though, this can be hard to do, as it sometimes feels dangerous to the ego. The secret of the ego is that most of the things that it is scared of are actually the opposite of what will really make you happy. When your ego thinks it is keeping you safe, it is actually keeping you from experiencing more success. But you don’t know that until you take a tiny leap of faith. I guess that’s why so many people live the way they do, behind the protective wall of imagined comfort.

But you’re not like that, right? Because you are reading this, and because you’ve had those experiences in your life, you can naturally take that tiny step beyond imaginary fear and experience life the way it was meant to be experienced. One of the greatest things about stepping beyond the imagined limits of the ego is that because so few people are willing to do that, you will be seen as some kind of super human demi-god. Or at least most people will look up to you. Which, paradoxically, will get you all those things you thought you were preserving, but didn’t really have, behind that protective wall of ego safety.

How to Achieve Anything

As you sit there, reading this post, feeling the feelings in your chair, you might begin to recall a time when you thought about something that you wanted in life. Perhaps it was a new car, or a relationship, or a box of chocolate flavored marshmallows. If you’ve ever had the experience of wishing for something that didn’t come true, then this article is for you. In this you will learn the exact steps to take that will turn those “wishes” into strong desires that will in turn manifest into reality.

I’m not sure if this works because there is some underlying metaphysical principle that governs our lives, or if it is because of the unique nature of our brains due to the complex process of evolution. Either way, this simple process has brought untold riches and happiness to many people. Unfortunately, throughout time, some of these truths were twisted and misinterpreted, either on purpose or accidentally, to achieve social control and power. If you’ve heard about the controversy of Napoleon Hill’s original “Think and Grow Rich,” manuscript, with respect to organized religions, you’ll understand the power of these techniques.

The process is simple, but it does require some diligence, and some patience. It is quite a shame that the vast majority of people throughout time have lived lives of “quiet desperation,” when there is this simple method that can get you exactly what you want.

The first step is to create an absolutely clear goal of what it is that you want. You have to make sure that you truly want it, and you haven’t been brainwashed by society or church or your family into thinking that you want this. This may take some time, so be patient. Dig through your desires until you find one that you can really accept if it comes true without reservation.

The second step is to put it in present tense writing. Clear, concise, accurate writing. I own a red convertible, 1967 corvette. I have six pack abs that I can see in the mirror every morning when I wake up. I have a golf handicap of 10.

The third step is to come up with at least three or four mind pictures of what your goal looks, smells, tastes, sounds and feels like. Take your time and come up with as many rich representations as you can.

The fourth step is to get in the habit of repeating your goal to yourself several times a day, while picturing the various images of it in your mind. It’s very important to feel a strong emotional appreciation for your choice. At first this may seem fruitless, as you will feel weird imagining that you have something that you don’t. Be patient. This is the part where most people fail. They try this a few times, and after a week without a sack of money magically appearing on their doorstep, they give up. If you don’t feel a strong emotion at first, keep doing this. You will be building actual neurological pathways in your brain every time you visualize this. The more you do this, the easier it will be to do, and the more real it will seem and the easier it will to really feel that sense of appreciation for what you are creating. It’s important to feel the appreciation in the present, as if you already have this.

You should do this visualization step several times a day, for five minutes or so each time, and as you fall asleep every night. Again, this crucial step is the reason so many people don’t achieve what they want in life. We are too distracted by TV, news, swine flu, anything else that keeps us from quiet reflection. Don’t give to the giving up your thoughts to brain candy.

The best way to get started with this is choose something easy; to make sure that this really works. Simple personal habits good for this, like smiling and saying hi to strangers as part of your personality. Or waking up naturally at a certain time every morning. When you easily achieve this, you can move on to bigger and better things.

For resources, I recommend the following books:

Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich
Dr. Maxwell Maltz, Psycho Cybernetics
Dr. Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

There is nothing that you cannot achieve with the right use of your mind.

Plant the Right Seeds in Your Mind to Claim the Fruits of Life

I was watching my neighbor the other day work in her field. She has a small field that has a couple rows of cabbages, and some kind of long white turnip that only grows around here. She was spending a lot of time preparing the ground for the spring planting. She needed to start mixing this stuff into the soil, and then she goes out to add this other stuff. She explained it all to me, but it sounded really involved. I always thought that you just planted some seeds, and hopefully remembered to water them, and then like a month later you’d have an apple tree or an orange bush or a bunch of tomatoes or something. I guess growing stuff is kind of complicated. I’m sure glad some people know to do it, because I would get pretty hungry otherwise.

Which kind of reminded me of that old commercial for Carl’s Junior. It showed a guy in the supermarket looking for food, and he was wondering how to cook it. And then the tag line of the ad said “If it wasn’t for Carl’s, people would go hungry,” or something like that. I thought it was clever tag line, pretty funny. It’s amazing what ideas people can come up with to grab your attention. When you think about it, they have  really tough job. You’re sitting there, watching TV, and then the show stops, and you know a commercial is coming, so you automatically fire up your anti commercial defense shield. And every commercial you see is mixed in with every other commercial. These marketing guys know there stuff, because they can come up with something entertaining and capable of blasting through your anti commercial defense shield, all in thirty seconds for less. I don’t know if that is a wonder of modern advertising, or a result of the modern day short attention span.

I was hanging out at this yoga class a friend had talked me into going to. (Of course I was supposed to meet her there, and she didn’t show up, but that’s another story,) and he started talking about how important it was to cultivate your thoughts. He said underneath your everyday thoughts are base thoughts. These base thought contain your beliefs, values, how you think about yourself compared to the rest of the world. He was saying that these base thoughts are very powerful and can make life exceptionally easy and rewarding, or exceptionally difficult, depending on the quality of the base thought. The problem is that not only is your base thought difficult to change, but most people don’t even know that it’s there. He said the clearest indication of the quality of your base thought is the quality of your life. And like a gigantic ship, it takes a while to turn. And most people just don’t have the discipline to keep feeding your base thoughts consistent surface thoughts on a regular basis. He said these surface thoughts are like giving water to a plant. You have to feed your base thoughts with consistent surface thoughts in the direction you want your life to move. The problem is most people get this, and try to do this, but they give up after only a couple of weeks. He said it would be like planting a seed and then digging it up every couple of weeks to see if it had sprouted yet. You need to be patient, and most importantly, you need to be consistent with your surface thoughts that you feed your deeper self with positive ideas about your future that is coming true for you, now.

I especially like watching the Superbowl, specifically because they have such great commercials. And one of my favorite things to do when I’m bored, is look up good commercials on Youtube. You can see my current favorite if you go there and type in “Nike let your game speak.” I find that one especially inspiring.

And my neighbor was telling me that although now is the busy time, getting the soil ready, getting the seedlings ready, getting ready for the spring planting festival, the best part is the waiting. Because once they plant the right seeds in the right soil, it is inevitable that the right fruit will come up.

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Fight For What You Want

Last week I was having a look around in the university library near my apartment. I was looking for a particular book on psychology that was recommended to me by a friend, but I wasn’t having any luck. I had been looking for a few hours. And I really wasn’t interested in finding anything else, I was ready to give up hope. I had scanned the medical section several times, as it was a book on clinical psychology. I was really depressed. You know you get. When you start to wonder if you will ever find what you are looking for. Not only do you start to feel depressed because you can’t find what you are looking for, you start to wonder what else you could have been doing with your time that you’ve wasted. Normally I love going to the library, because there so many fascinating things you can find there, but not that day. I felt like some goldfish stuck in a dirty fishbowl that keeps swimming around hoping to find a way out.

I went to the new aquarium downtown, and they have some interesting fish. They have these fish that eat small fish like things, then have these bigger fish that eat actual fish, then they have fish so big that they need to feed them chunks of meat. There was one fish tank that had several fish of different sizes. I don’t know if they were different ages, or something else, but I’m pretty sure they were the same species, because they all had the same blue and silver design on their sides. It was really interesting to watch them being fed. The guy would come in at the same time every day, and throw in a bunch of food, which I think he said were dried squid flakes or something. And the fish would scramble and crash into one another as they would fight for the food. The cool thing was, the smallest fish never seemed to give up. He always seemed to keep trying regardless of how many times he got bumped out of the way. It was like he knew that if he was able to keep trying, he would get what he was after.

He (or she, I’m not sure how to tell boy fish from girl fish) reminded me of a professor I had at university. He was a math professor, but he was very opinionated in matters other than math. He said the difference in life between winners and losers has nothing to do with intelligence or upbringing, or social skills or anything that you’d normally think of. He said that winners are the people that simply never give up. Losers always find a reason to stop trying, while winners always find a reason to keep trying. He kept mentioning this old Chinese proverb: “If you wait by the riverside long enough, you will see the bodies of your enemies floating by.” I’m not sure if I wanted to see the bodies of my enemies, but it was an interesting point. He kept telling us that winners know that failure is only one step closer to success, and in reality, there is no failure if you alwasy learn something. Interesting thought.

And it turns out that particular brand of fish is the kind where there are literally hundreds born in every litter (or whatever they call a bunch of baby fish) but only three or four survive. It’s natures way of making sure that only the fittest live long enough to make more fish. So that little fish, simply by staying alive and fighting for what he wanted, was proving to the world how worthy he thought he was.

Finally, a really nice receptionist asked me if I was looking for something in particular. The only reason it took her so long to ask me was the incredible scowl on my face. It turned out that somebody had misplaced that particular book, and had filed it downstairs in the engineering department. Had she not asked me, I would never have found it.

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Cultivating Ideas can Lead to Greatness

Everywhere you look today you can’t help but find bad news. You’d have to dig pretty deep in order to find something uplifting and inspiring. I don’t know if it’s because there really is a lot of bad things happening, or if reporting bad news is the easiest way to grab your attention in an effort to get you to buy whatever it is that the particular advertisers are trying to get you to buy. They try to get your attention by telling you how bad the economy is so you’ll buy what the advertisers are trying to sell. Somebody is making money. When you think about it, the fact that people go to great lengths to fight for your attention is a supreme compliment. Because your attention is very important resource to advertisers and businesses.

According to most evolutionary biologists, the whole idea of consciousness itself is based on a drive to get resources. Because humans are the most flexible of animals, able to live and flourish under almost any situation and environment, we developed our consciousness many hundreds of thousands if not millions of years ago to  help us to search for resources to use. In the beginning, these resources were simple things, like food and water, and fuel for fire. Later they turned into shelter and animal skins for clothing to keep us warm. And later, we developed complex social skills to be able to exist coherently in larger and larger groups. Finally, a few thousand years after discovering agriculture, humankind began to discover our most precious resource.

Your thoughts. Because, as Napoleon Hill so eloquently drove home in his international best seller, “Think and Grow Rich,” thoughts are things. People had to develop long reaching plans to be able to cultivate large crops and ideas that could feed the multitudes. You had to use your brain for things other than chasing and killing animals for food. You had to build cities, castles, cathedrals. Man learned to create art, and music, and poetry. And the more man created beautiful things with your wonderful human brain, the more society flourished. The thoughts that you think on a daily basis create your reality. When you notice and control your thoughts, you will be able to notice and control your reality. That genius potential of the past that allowed men and women to create magnificent works of art and science and literature, resides in your head. Right here, right now.

And I don’t know if evolutionary biologists ever intend to take their theories to the metaphysical like this, but there it is. Either by design or by creation or by random chance, here you are. With your thoughts that you can learn to control, or let someone else control, whereby you actually give up control. The choice was, is, and always be yours on where to put your attention. On this thought I suggest you begin to notice who is trying to sway your mind. Who is trying to lead your thoughts.

Because in these times of economic crisis, no matter your place in life or your financial level of success or failure, you will never ever lose your most precious resource. Your mind, your thoughts, your imagination, your wonderful creativity with which you can create whatever reality you desire. Now.

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Reading for Pleasure

So you’re sitting there, reading this, wondering how you got here. You may be wondering whether or not you can find this useful, or you may be wondering if you will find this interesting. I know the feeling. You start to do this, and wonder how much you are going to get out of it. Sometimes you find benefit, sometimes you don’t. It can be a metaphor for life, if you think about it. You wonder exactly what it is you’re doing, and if you can really find this useful. Many others that regularly read this blog, like you, have been able to find really cool stuff here. Like book reviews.

I have a friend who works at a bookstore. He doesn’t really make that much money. In fact it makes barely above minimum wage. Despite the less than stellar pay, he is able to find it really interesting. He just loves to read. He finds it fascinating looking through all the books, arranging them on the shelves, picking up the ones people leave on the table when they are sitting around drinking coffee. (I love doing that.) He says just picking up the books and reading the backs as he is returning them to the shelves is the second best part of the job. He has this cart that he wheels around, and he takes his time, so he can read this and that. And he finds some really fascinating things that he didn’t even know existed. Cookbooks, exercise books, photography books. It’s absolutely incredible the amount of information you can find in a book store. And like I said, that’s not even the best part.

I actually met him a few weeks ago after he finished working. We met in the cafe section, and there happened to be a Toastmasters group that was meeting. And this guy gave a speech about goals. He was talking about setting goals, and how you need to make sure you know what is really important when choosing the things that you want to make come true in life. He said that it starts by thinking of something, now, that you want to achieve in life. Something really nice that you want to achieve. And when you think of that, you can ask yourself, what’s important about that? What is really important about having that thing that you want to achieve? And when you really start to imagine what is important about that, you can really begin to imagine how nice it will be when achieve that. And as you read this, you  might be able to do that yourself. I don’t know if you are able think of that now while you read this, but you can really find value in this, because doing this can help you achieve many things in life.

So after the guy finished his speech, my friend told me the absolute best part of working at a bookstore. He gets to talk to all kinds of different people each day. Especially when they come in to his shop, but they aren’t sure exactly what they want. He can help them make a decision, find something that they can really enjoy. And then he takes them and guides them to where the book is, and shows them how to choose from many options, so they can be sure that this is what they really want, and they can be really happy that they’ve chosen this. And since my friend is single, and half of the customers are females, well, you get the idea.

Which is what many people find when they read this blog on a regular basis. Because I like to write on so many different subjects, you can find many things here to read and enjoy. And reading things that you can enjoy is one of the greatest pleasures in life.

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Leverage Mistakes to Increase Success

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Deliver a Powerfully Persuasive Speech

You stand up slowly, and turn to face the room. You face the spellbound crowd, waiting to hear your wisdom. You pause to collect your thoughts, imagining exactly how you want the crowd to respond to your call to action, knowing full well they will once they hear your irresistible message. You take a deep breath, not to calm your nerves, but to give your voice power and strength, enough to capture the attention and imagination of those sitting in the back row.

You can do this naturally and easily, because you have the learned the skill of persuasive oratory. You have learned to project your message so those that hear cannot help but to do what you say. In case you’ve forgotten this skill, here are a few pointers to help you remember:

Step One

Start with a powerful attention getter. Something that will yank thier minds away from their normal everyday thoughts and towards your incredibly moving message. Once I gave a speech to my local toastmasters group on fear, how to embrace fear and use fear to your advantage. My attention getter? I screamed at the top of my lungs as if I was terrified. Did it work? Absolutely!

Step Two

Pace your audience. Say things that they can’t help but agree with.

“Today’s economy is tough.”
(No matter how bad or good the economy is, people will agree with that statement.)

“You all want to get ahead in life.”
(Who doesn’t?)

“You’ve come here to improve yourself.”
 (Who hasn’t?)

Spend three or four mintues getting your audience comfortable with agreeing with what you are saying.

Step Three

Demonstrate that you know about what they need. Identify their pain. Show them that you understand what it is they want.

“You are having problems making ends meet.”
“You need to improve your skills so you can make more money.”
“You want to be able to increase your sales.”

You will need to tailor the above statements to meet the specific needs of the people you are speaking to. If you tell a book club they need to increase their life insurance, they might disagree with you. But if you tell a group of soon to be graduating college students they need to sharpen their resume building and interview skills, they’re more likely to agree with you. 

Step Four

Introduce the pain of non-action. Now, it might sound mean to purposely cause somebody pain, but if your purpose is to help them in the long run, and if you believe by doing what you say, it will benefit them, it’s ok.

“If you don’t get your resume as good as your competition, you won’t get the job you want.”
“If you don’t practice and sharpen your interview skills, the person sitting next to you will get hired instead of you.”

Step Five

A call to action. Review their needs, the pain of non action, and then give them a specific step to move in the direction that you want them to go. (Please note, if you tell them to go in a direction that will only benefit you and not them, then you should become friends with this guy.)  If you are truly giving advice that will help others, make sure you will benefit as well. Win win situations are the best.

The more you realize that simply because you have life experience that can benefit others, the more you will be able to not only help out people, but increase your skills and help yourself out as well.

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Eruption

Once upon a time there were two rabbits.  Rupert and Rectangle. They were hanging out, doing rabbit stuff. Looking for carrots, finding turtles to race, and resting from making more rabbits, as it was their day off. Rupert, the younger rabbit, decided he wanted to make a model volcano. Kind of like Peter Brady, only without the electricity. Most rabbit experts will tell you that rabbits generally don’t use electricity.

So this young rabbit was building this volcano, but he couldn’t quite get it to work right. He didn’t have the lava mix quite down. I think he was using a combination of egg whites and mulch, or perhaps some kind of gelatin derivative.  He kept getting really frustrated, and he was about to give up. The wise older rabbit, Rectangle, said “Don’t give up yet, Rupert!” But Rupert just threw down his volcano making tools in dismay.

“Nothing is going right. I want to do this, and instead it does that. I want to make it lean right, and it wants to lean left.”

“Relax, Rupert relax. Go with the flow. Don’t fight against the natural order of things. It will come in time. It always does. Just remember to do things one step at a time. If it doesn’t go the way you want it, change what you are doing. Step back, take a bigger look, and figure out what to try next. It’s only practice, after all.”

Poor ruper was following along, but he didn’t quite understand the last part. “Practice? Practice for what?”

“Why tomorrow, of course. Everything you do today, is just practice for tomorrow. Because if you allow yourself to release your expectations, and let things be just the way they are, you’ll be fine. As long as you learn from what happens, you can do it better next time. Especially because you always have tomorrow to look forward to, right?”

“I guess so,” Rupert replied, “But how will I ever finish, if I only practice?”

“Take a look around you young sir, take a look at everything. Does everything look finished to you? Are all your friends not still growing? Are all the trees not still getting bigger? Does father not upgrade and improve your rabbit hole every winter? Do you not need to learn new things in school every year? Does your Uncle, the carrot farmer, not have to learn new carrot planting methods every year? Practice. It’s all just practice.”

 “Practice for tomorrow. I got it,” Rupert said, getting back to work on his volcano.

“And one of the best parts about realizing that everything is practice for tomorrow, is that no matter how bad you mess up or how well you do, you can always look forward to being able to get better.”

And Rupert proceeded to make the best volcano ever.

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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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