Category Archives: Techniques

Integration of Parts

Come Together

I remember once I went to see a movie a while back with this girl I was dating. It was this particularly large multi plex with around thirty screens or so. When we went, we didn’t really have any specific movie that we wanted to see, just that we’d decided to see a movie. Talk about information overload. It took us almost half an hour to decide what to see. Even if I’d been there by myself, I would have likely taken me a while.

It reminded me of another time, one particularly long day at work. As soon as I got home, I decided I wanted fast food. A big bag of greasy, fatty, fast food. I didn’t eat lunch, it was Friday night, and all I wanted to do was gorge myself before falling asleep, most likely in front of the TV. So I jumped back in my car, and drove through my residential neighborhood until I came to the main road. Decision time. Turn right for big chain tacos or burgers, turn left for a couple smaller, but just as greasy and fatty, taco, burrito, and burger shops.

I must have sat there for about ten minutes trying to decide. I’m sure you’ve experienced this. You have a general idea of what you want, but can’t decide on the specifics. Part of you wants to go this way, and another part of you wants to go the other way.

This can be frustrating when it comes to small things like fast food and movie choices, and you can’t really mess up by choosing one over the other. It’s not like I was going to go into a tailspin of depression if I got halfway through my burger and decided I really would rather have gotten a sack of tacos instead.

But what about bigger issues? What happens when you are conflicted on really important stuff? Or what happens if the choices are between action, and inaction, such as applying for a job, or asking out girl? What then?

Luckily, there’s a helpful NLP procedure that can get to the bottom of this. Imagine a discussion between a business owner, and a union leader. The business owner wants the cheapest labor, for the cheapest product, for the maximum profit. The union leader wants the most wages and benefits, for the least amount of work. If the business leader has his way, he’d pay everybody ten cents an hour, with zero benefits. If the union leader had his way, the blue-collar line workers would earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, with massive benefits and vacation time.

So what do they do? Both need each other, so they can’t really just walk away. They negotiate. They find solutions that will satisfy both their needs. Sometimes this takes a while, but usually, they eventually come to an agreement that will satisfy both parties. They workers might have to give up their dental plan, while the business owner might have to accept a higher cost of doing business, and therefore a smaller profit.

How about on a personal level? There’s a theory, or an idea, that people are made up of different metaphorical parts. So when you say that a part of you wants to eat tacos, and another part wants to eat burgers, that is actually an accurate description of what is going on.

And to resolve internal conflicts, you go about it the same way as a business negotiation. The cool part about this is most of the negotiating takes places unconsciously. All you have to do is set up the meeting between your parts.

The name of this procedure is called Integration of Parts. I know, creative, huh?

Here’s how you do it. Think of an internal conflict. Any conflict where you have an idea that one part wants to do this, and the other part wants to do that. Got it? Ok, good.

Now sit down someplace quiet, and someplace where there aren’t a lot of people. This looks a little bit strange for the uninitiated. Make sure to read through this a couple times so you really understand this. That way it will be easier to do later on.

OK. Sit down, take a deep breath. You are going to be talking to your different parts. For the example, I’ll use waking up early to exercise. Part of me wants to wake up early to exercise, while the other part wants to sleep in.

So I ask the part that wants to exercise if he’d like to come out for a bit. Wait for an internal “yes” or “no,” whatever that may be. I put that part in my right hand. Then I describe that part in as much detail as possible. Color, texture, weight, thickness, etc. Then I ask that part, what’s important about getting up early to exercise? Health. Ok. Then I ask him what’s important about that? Live longer. OK. Maybe one more. What’s important about that? Enjoy life more. OK, good. So I’ve gotten a pretty good idea of not only what that part looks and feels like, but what’s important to him. (Or it or however you want to refer to it/him/her).

Next, I ask if the part that wants to sleep in wants to come out. Make sure to keep holding the first in your right palm, don’t drop him!

I got through the same procedure with the part in my left hand, the part that wants to sleep in. First describe it, and then start asking the questions. Be sure to go slow, as these parts can sometimes be shy.

What’s important about sleeping in? It feels good. What’s important about feeling good? It makes me happy. And what’s important about feeling happy? I can enjoy life more.

AHA!

Both parts want the same thing, but they have two separate strategies to get there. Now for the integration.

Talk to them both at the same time. Explain to them that they both have the same things in mind. (Now you know why you should do this alone!)

Since they both really want the same thing, ask them if they’d like to join forces. To get together to make a new part, and have much more resources to get their goals met. If they say yes, then slowly allow your hands to come together, both palms up, both holding the parts. Slowly merge the two parts together as one palm slips under the other. Once the new part is formed, slowly bring it to your chest, and take a deep slow breath as you press the new part into your heart.

Take a few slow breaths, and allow the newly formed part to work out its new place.

That’s all you need to do consciously. Pay attention to your intuition over the next couple of days. You’ll likely come up with some ideas that seem totally obvious now about what to do regarding sleeping in or getting up early to exercise.

This is just one powerful “procedure” of NLP. To learn many more, that can have profound effects on your life, click on the banner below. There is no limit to the uses of NLP to improve your life, relationships, and finances.

Success with NLP

Success with NLP

Social Manipulation Or Shrewd Marketing?

Beware The Door Buster

I was waiting in line down at this new electronics shop last weekend. They had this massive grand opening, and they were going to give away this really cool flat screen TV along with a home theater system. They said they’d give out free raffle tickets to the first five hundred people that showed up, and then they’d draw later on in the afternoon to see who won. The catch, of course, was you had to be there to claim your prize. And since they gave out the free raffle tickets at eight o clock in the morning, they were assured that five hundred people would not only likely buy something that morning, but make plans to come back later. Marketing plans like this are fairly obvious. Give somebody a gimmick to get them in the door, and then do your best to up sell them while they are there.

Car dealerships are notorious for doing this. They’ll run an add in the paper for a certain make and model for a ridiculously low price. Of course they’ll say in the small print that there is only one particular car at that price, you can tell as they list the VIN, or Vehicle Identification Number of the car in question. Sometimes they’ll have three or four at that price. People see the ad, and mistakenly believe (to the hopes of the dealer) that all of the cars are at that price.
Then when they show up, they’re told they all sold out. When that happens, the dealership has two powerful tools of influence naturally working in their favor.

The first is something called “Commitment and Consistency,” as pointed out in the often referenced “Influence, Science and Practice,” by Robert Cialdini. When people make a public commitment, they are much easier to be persuaded to do something that is along the lines of that commitment. Political campaigners know this. When they phone people the week before an election and ask them if they are going go out and vote, most people naturally say yes. Since they’ve made a public commitment, even to a complete stranger over the phone, they are much more likely to vote than the average citizen who hasn’t made such a commitment.

By going to the car dealership in search of a good deal on a car, you make a certain commitment. It’s not like the car salesman pulled you in cold off the street.

Another powerful factor they have working for them in this case is social proof. As much as we’d like to think otherwise, we humans are pack animals and are extremely susceptible to crowd behavior. We love to follow fashions, stick to the status quo (unless you are a singing basketball player), and follow the crowd. So when you show up, and the car you wanted is “all sold out (all one of them),” it gives the impression that many people are after the same car, which makes it more desirable.

So by putting those cheesy ads in the paper, and getting you to make a trip to the dealership, just by showing up you have two powerful forces of social influence guiding you to buy a new car.

It’s no wonder that stores use the same tactics. They work, and they work beautifully. Stores use them so much because they work so well. All those incredibly insane “door busters” that you see the day after Thanksgiving, or black Friday, are carefully designed instruments of social manipulation. In case you are unaware, the reason it’s called “Black Friday” is in reference to the black ink bookkeepers use when they are making a profit. In this case black is very good.

To make matters worse, sometime they’ll have free giveaways, but the “winner” is actually a ringer. A plant that works for the store. Even though this is clearly immoral and unethical, it’s pretty hard to uncover and prosecute. The only danger lies in a store being found out, and it’s business getting a bad reputation. Even when people have a suspicion that the winner may indeed be a “ringer,” they still line up, “just in case.” We humans can be terribly easy to manipulate sometimes.

If you can figure out a way to get the free stuff, without giving in to the temptation to buy whatever they convincing you to buy through their masterful social engineering, so much the better.

One thing I usually do in a case like the free TV giveaway is only take five dollars with me, and leave all my credit cards at home. That way even I’m persuaded by the slickest of salesman, I won’t be able to buy anything. Hopefully by the time I race home to get my credit card, I’ll stop and wonder if I really do need that beef jerky machine. It’s not like I eat beef jerky every day, or even once a week. Why in the world do I need to cook the stuff?

So as I was standing there in line, looking at all the awesome electronic gadgets that I would surely buy if I were rich enough, I started talking to the guy behind me. He was involved in several MLMs and told me places like this were a great opportunity spread his business. People were surrounded by all this stuff that they wished they had enough money to buy, so naturally they would be open to opportunities to make more money, at least in principle. This guy said that he had great success recruiting people for his “downline,” at these “free” offerings. He scans the paper every week, and goes to as many as these as possible. He said the best time is right before the actual drawing, when people’s interests are the highest.

He said he was kind of “piggybacking” on the social manipulation of the business. He would show up in the morning, talk to a few people in line, and not mention anything about his business. Then he would come back that afternoon, strike up a conversation again with the people he already met, like he was an old friend. Then while the excitement and expectation was high, he would slowly ease the conversation into his well-crafted sales pitch.

He said that if he only gets one person per “giveaway,” then it is well worth his while, because in the long run, each person that joins his “downline” is worth potentially thousands of dollars, if not more.

And, of course, I didn’t win the TV, and I bought this cool little vacuum cleaner for my keyboard, that plugs into my USB port. And a new computer mouse, because my old one, was, kind of, you know, needed replacing. Or something.

Get Relief From Stress NOW

One Simple Trick To Quickly Banish Stress

There is a quick way to beat stress, and once you realize how simple it is, you can do it more and more often, allowing you to get so good at it that it becomes almost automatic. This will have a profound impact on your life, as most of our problems are either caused by stress, or made much worse by stress in the from of unnecessary worry and anxiety.

We are all very busy today. It seems that there is less and less time to focus on ourselves, and our own desires. It seem that everybody would love no more than to steal one hundred percent of our attention for their own needs. Work, family, obligations. They can add up.

When most people think of a vacation, they think of a couple weeks off from work, on a plane to some island getaway. These can be wonderful. But when you consider that most people can only experience something like this once in a great while, they tend to lose their effectiveness in our daily lives.

So we need to develop the ability to get the same results without actually going anywhere. This is like taking a mini vacation. Once you get good at this, you will be able to do this several times a day, no matter where you are. At stoplights, during commercials, even while sitting in meetings. Pretty soon you’ll be able to do this during conversations with others (although I wouldn’t recommend doing this during serious conversations with loved ones or family members.)

The trick is to completely shut off all thoughts of the past, and all thoughts of the future. In the past are all of our memories. The first thing to realize is that most of our memories are inaccurate. We rarely remember things exactly as they happened. This is one reason that if all the police have is eyewitness testimony, they often times won’t pursue a case. It has been shown in several studies by leading psychologists that human memory is spotty at best.

The second thing about human memory is we usually tend to be overly critical on ourselves when remembering events.

I should have…

I wish I would have…

Why did I….

Why did he/she……

These are statements we usually use to frame the past. Rarely do we remember soemthing and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. So when you develop the ability to temporarily shut off your memories of the past, you also shut off the guilt, worry and stress associated with how you frame those memories.

The other side of the coin is the future. Unless you just won an all expense paid trip to Paris, (or somewhere else cool) when you think of the future, if you are like most people, you think of it with at least a little bit of worry and anxiety.

Will I be able to pay the bills?
What will he/she say?
What if I fail?
What if I screw up?

When we think of the future in these terms, it’s no wonder we have stress related health problems.

So the second trick is to temporarily cut off all thoughts of the future. When you do this, you can notice a small bit of relief in the present moment.

How do you do this? Focus on now. Focus on the physical feelings you are experiencing. Take a slow, deep breath and focus your concentration as much as possible on your physical body. Start with your feet and slowly move your awareness all the way up. Go for as long as you can without letting thoughts of the future or past creep into your mind.

Assert to yourself that you have the power over your own choice. You have the power over where your attention goes. Your mind goes where you tell it, not the other way around.

One way to do this is when you slowly breath in, say to yourself:’

“I choose…”

And as you slowly breathe out, say to yourself:

“Now.”

By combining your concentration on those two sentences, your breath, and whatever physical sensations you are feeling, you’ll effectively shut out thoughts of the past and the future.

Your conscious mind is like a computer. It only has so much processing power. By forcing yourself to think about your breath, your body, and those two statements (or whatever similar statements you want to use) you are effectively using one hundred percent of your conscious processing power.

One important thing to keep in mind is that it will be difficult to keep those other thoughts away for long. Thinking of the future and the past have been necessary for human survival for hundreds of thousands of years, and it can take a lot of practice to shut them out for more than a few moments. But that is all it takes to put a crack in stress and see the light of now, that can shine through and give you a small bit of needed relief.

The more you practice, the better you’ll get at this. Soon you’ll be a master of your own mind.

Rapport Building Secrets That Will Skyrocket Your Persuasion And Seduction Skills

How To Master Body Language To Maximize Your Covert Persuasion With Seemingly Psychic Abilities

Several people have emailed me asking to write more about creating rapport. So today I’ll delve a little bit deeper into exactly how to create rapport, and exactly what to do with it. Many people have a misconception about rapport. The word seems to be thrown around in certain circles, mostly sales and seduction.

You can usually tell by the way it’s being used that most people aren’t really sure exactly what it is, how to get it, and how to test to make sure you have it. Another cool thing, (at least for guys) is that once you learn how to see it in other people, you can pretty much read a room fairly quickly, just by scanning everybody’s body language. You can tell who is into whom, who is fighting, who is wishing whom would leave them alone, etc. Most women, of course, are naturals at this. With practice, men can get just as good.

Let’s first talk about what rapport is. Rapport is a deep, usually unconscious feeling that you feel connected to somebody. You feel safe and comfortable. You don’t have your defenses up. For example, if you went to a Mets game, and you were the only one in the stands with a Yankees jacket on. You would likely feel very left out. But if while waiting in the hot dog line, you saw another person wearing a Yankee’s jacket, you would suddenly feel connected to them. You share something with them that you don’t share with all the other people around. And this would be regardless if they were a different gender, age bracket or ethnicity.

Another example. Lets say you are on a flight from Chicago to Nigeria. And you are sitting on a plane full of Nigerians. You start talking to the person next to you, and after a few minutes of conversation you realize that not only does she collect stamps, but also she collects stamps that were produced by previous Soviet Bloc countries (if they indeed exist.) You both know all the ins and outs of that particular niche hobby, and you have a long and wonderful conversation regarding methods and your respective collections, etc.

Both of the examples above are deep and powerful rapport. If either of people asked to borrow five dollars to buy a drink, you’d be much more willing if they were a total stranger you only exchanged a couple words with. There is one problem with both of the above. One, it was completely random, and happened by chance. Two, it is purely contextual. Meaning that so long as you are talking about stamps, or the Yankees, you’re allright. As soon as you deviate from those two topics, you’ll likely lose rapport rather quickly.

That is how most sales people, and most people trying to create “rapport” with would be boyfriends/girfriends go about doing it. They start a conversation, and hope to find similar interests, backgrounds, hobbies, etc. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. This is what people usually mean when they say they are “trying to build rapport.” They are talking to the person and hopefully creating that feeling of trust and connection.

But there is a much more easier way. A much more powerful way, that cuts through any surface small talk filled conversation you might be having. And because it is not dependent on the conversation, you can still create strong rapport even if you are talking about something you both vehemently disagree on.

How do you do this? You simply match everything you can about the other person. No, I don’t mean go out and buy an outfit just like theirs. That would take too long, and they might suspect you are up to something.

You match their body language, and other non-verbal behavior, and everything you can about their speech. If they speak slowly, you speak slowly. If they smile when they speak, you smile when you speak. If they cross their legs, you cross your legs.

Many people are afraid they are going to get caught doing this. But this hardly ever happens. If they scratch their nose, and you stare at their nose intently, and then stare at your hand, and then bring it slowly to your nose, they’ll know something is up. Usually, however, they will have no idea. They’ll only know that they feel a strange connection to you.

Try this with a friend. Sit facing each other. Try to be as open as possible (e.g. no crossed legs or arms). And match each other’s body language as much as possible. Then talk about something you disagree on. Focus on keeping the match between your body language.

Then switch. Mismatch body language as much as possible. Then talk about something you both agree on.

What you’ll discover is that when talking about something you disagree on, your matching language has more of an effect than the subject you’re talking about. And likewise when you are purposely mismatching. Even though you are talking about something you both like or agree with, you’ll have this funny feeling that something is amiss.

So how do you test to make sure you really have strong rapport? Simple. After you’ve spent five or ten minutes on normal, everyday conversation, and you’ve slowly matched their body language, start to lead a little bit. This means that you move first, and see if they follow. Like lean back in your chair, or cross and uncross your legs, any small movement. Most often they will follow, without even knowing.

Once you get to this stage, you can use a number of any other persuasive techniques to get their agreement. If you are talking to a girl in a bar, you can ask for her phone number. If you were a salesperson with a client, now would be a good time to suggest moving to the next stage in the sales process.

Knowing this gives you great insight whenever you see a room full of people. Next time you are at Starbucks or a similar public place where people are sitting around in groups, take a look around. Who is in rapport with whom? Who is out of rapport with whom?

If you want to use this to help meet somebody, here’s a neat trick. Get close to them, wherever you are. Party, bar, friends house, Starbucks, wherever. And just get into rapport with them before you go and introduce yourself.

People have much more powerful peripheral vision and brain computational capacity than most of us realize. At all times, people are scanning the area around us and checking every single person to determine if they are friend or foe. We may be advanced, but we still carry baggage from our evolutionary days.

If you are nervous, and scared, and you go and approach somebody, they will know it before you even open your mouth. However, if you take the time to develop rapport with them before you talk to them, they will feel this as well. Their guard will be down, and they’ll be more likely to engage in friendly conversation without getting nervous or anxious about being approached by a complete stranger.

Despite how powerful the above methods are, this is just scratching the surface o how to develop powerful, unconscious rapport with people. Try these, and see how they work out. Have fun.

How To Use Neurolinguistic Programming To Maximize Your Sales Skills

If you’ve ever heard of neurolinguistic programming, then you know that it is an incredibly powerful tool to be used in almost any area of life, from almost any perspective.

Many people are aware of neurolinguistic programming, or NLP, as a tool for persuasion in both sales and seduction. Many sales techniques employ NLP to increase sales and income for astute salespeople, and others use it to improve their dating skills.

One of the often passed over areas of NLP is the method through which it was discovered itself. The word ‘discovered’ isn’t quite the right term, nor is invented, or created or any other terms that are used to describe a new technology.

The reason this is so is that NLP is not new technology at all. It is a collection of many techniques that were modeled and codified from people that were “natural’s” in there respective fields.

Many times people will look at somebody that is naturally persuasive, or naturally charismatic and say “Oh, look! He’s using NLP! I wonder where he studied?” usually the person in question is not using NLP at all, at least not to their knowledge. They really are a “natural.”

A natural is anybody that is skilled in on area. Salespeople, public speakers, and guys that are wildly successful with seducing women. Most of these people have no idea that they are using “NLP.” They just do what comes “natural” to them, and it gets them massive success in their field.

History is filled with people that use skills that are “taught” in NLP, even though they existed thousands of years ago. One good example is the letters of St. Paul. In case you’ve never heard of St. Paul, he a was this guy who used to be named Saul, then he had a vision of Jesus one day. At the time, Saul was against the rising cult of Christianity, and persecuted them every chance he got. When he saw Christ in a vision, he quickly changed his tune, and became a champion of Christianity.

He traveled to all of the Christian communities made it his life mission to spread Christianity. If any of his letters are an indication, he was a powerfully persuasive speaker. And his oration, if it was anything like his writing style, contained many elements taught in NLP.

Where the idea of NLP came into play was through the area of “modeling,” one of NLP’s most overlooked but perhaps most powerful application. Everybody wants to know the right patterns, the correct vocal inflections, how exactly to read people.

Having decent modeling skills is much more powerful. With modeling skills you have the ability to learn anything, from anybody, and apply in your own area of choice. You don’t even have to model all the characteristics of the person you are modeling, only the one’s you’d like to use for yourself.

The secret to modeling is to model everything about the person you are modeling What are they doing, how are they doing it, what do they believe about their own skills, how do they prepare themselves mentally for what they are doing.

For example, if you were to model Tiger Woods, you’d need to first model your body after his as closely as possible. Muscle strength, muscle flexibility, body fat percentage, etc. Then you’d have to model his technique as closely as possible. Exactly how far back he swings, his weight distribution on his feet as he hits the ball, the exact force with which he smashes the ball a million yards down the center of the fairway.

But you couldn’t stop there. You would next need to model his mindset, his beliefs, and his self-talk. What does he say to himself about his skills? What exactly does he visualize before he shoots? Does he get any physical sensations in his body while he is visualizing? If so where?

Most people (myself included) only get as far as holding a club and swinging it clumsily at a ball before declaring that they suck at golf.

One mistake many make when modeling is by asking somebody questions that they can’t answer. For example, lets say you want to model a fantastic salesperson at your company. So you ask them, “why are you such a good salesperson?”

If you’re lucky, they became a good salesperson because they studied sales technique after sales technique, tried them in different scenarios, kept the ones that worked, and improved on them while discarding the one’s that didn’t. They can then share with you the precise methods they studied, how they practiced, what exercises and drills they did to get to where they are.

Unfortunately, most people that are good in sales are just naturally good in sales. And they likely have no idea why they are good in sales. So you’ll get an answer like “Well, when I was a kid I always like mowing other people’s lawns and got really interested in figuring out how to make money, I guess.”

Not very helpful.

Better, more in depth questions would be:

How do you feel when you sell?
What do you say to yourself when you sell?
How do you feel when you don’t get a sale?
What do you say to yourself when you don’t get a sale?
What kinds of things do you visualize just before you meet a prospect?
What happens when a prospect has objections? What do you think, feel, and say to yourself?
How do you feel about our prospects as you are talking to them?
How do you feel about the product you are selling?

These are just a few of the questions that will help you to model somebody and be able to improve your skills.

All humans are natural modelers. Everything we learned, we learned from modeling. We learned to walk and talk by watching and copying others. We learned our ideas, beliefs and models of the world by looking at the adults as we grew up and simply copied them.

It would be fantastic if the top salesperson at your company would let you follow him around for a few months until you were selling as good as he was, but that isn’t likely.

As adults, we need to model consciously as well as unconsciously. One way is through a relaxed visualization. Take the top salesperson as an example. Say he or she let you tag along with them on a few sales. You just sat back and watched them in action.

Then later, you can relax, close your eyes, and visualize them making a sale. Then slowly replace yourself for them in your visualization. Do this a few times, and let your unconscious learn from them how to sell. This is a particularly powerful method, and when combined with asking them the right questions, you can dramatically improve your skills. When you add in learning proven methods from other materials, you can safely assure yourself of massive success.

How To Propel Your Creativity To Superhuman Levels

Have you ever wondered why some people are always good at coming up with fresh new ideas? Somebody gets an idea, everybody agrees that it sounds really cool, maybe it even makes them some, or a lot of money.

Maybe it’s somebody you know, or maybe it is a company that has taken a couple of seemingly obvious ideas, and by putting them together makes some incredible new product that everybody is raving about and can’t buy enough of.

Meanwhile, you are sitting back thinking, “Wait, isn’t that just a combination of this thing and that other thing that have been around, for, like, ever?”

Welcome to the club. It has been said many times by many people that nothing under the sun is new. Everything is merely re-packaged, re-shaped, remarketed in a new and unique angle.

I was at a seminar once for different writers and publishers in the self help industry. There was a speaker who was in charge of new products for a huge, well-known, multi million dollars a year distributor of self-help products. They didn’t produce any products; merely they packaged and sold them.

His advice? Anything you create only needs to be ten percent different or “better” than anything else that is on the market. You absolutely do not need to create anything from scratch. Just take whatever is out there, and make it a little bit better, or different, or put a different spin or angle on it.

On the one hand, that might say something about the gullibility of us humans. On the other hand, it provides a seemingly limitless opportunity of ideas that will get you lots of props, attention, and perhaps money if you market your idea right.

So how do you create the ability to do this? I’ll show you. There is one simple, but kind of weird trick that will help you to virtually explode your creativity and make connections between things that others have not noticed before.

Here’s the trick. You look at an ordinary object, like a book for example. But instead of saying “book,” you say something else entirely. And try to make your temporary “label” as different as possible. Different color, different category, different use. So don’t say “magazine,” or “information.” Say something like “elephant,” or “airplane.”

Do this for three or four objects in a row, and you’ll notice your brain is having a hard time. What you are doing is forcing your brain to create new neural connections where none exist. Whenever you can think of something easily, your brain is using pre-existing neural pathways. By forcing your brain to make new ones, you are creating the framework for massive creativity.

Make sure to make your new “labels” as different from each other as possible as well. Meaning don’t look at a book, chair, and a desk and say “car, boat, airplane.” Because all your new labels are in the same category, it doesn’t give your brain much of a workout.

When you do this every day for five minutes or so, you’ll soon notice a huge explosion in the way you look at reality. You’ll start making connections that no other people can see, and it will only be a matter of time before you come up with that million dollar idea that everybody will absolutely have to get their hands on.

How To Quickly Skyrocket Your Creativity To Genius Levels

If you’ve ever felt the need for a sudden burst, of creativity, then this article is for you. I’ll show you how you can dig through the seemingly limitless resources in your mind to come up with such wildly creative ideas people will think you are a naturally gifted genius.

Scientists are always being surprised by the complexities and depth of the human mind. Just as they are beginning to scratch the surface, they continue to be amazed at the sheer processing power of the brain. If all the computers of the world were connected together, and tasked with “thinking” about one singular problem, they wouldn’t come close to the power of one human brain.

The structure of the human brain is thought to be of a lattice structure, with nodes connecting to several nodes, each of which are connected to several other nodes. What this does is create a structure where one “thought” or memory stored at one node has a seemingly infinite connection to every other “thought” or memory through the connection of only a couple other nodes.

Similar in nature to the theory of Six Degrees of Separation, which states that every human on earth is connected to every other human through no less than six people. For example, you know somebody, that knows somebody, that has met the Pope. And the Pope, of course, has met most of the world’s leaders. You therefore have about three or four degrees of separation between all of the world’s leaders.

The brain works in a similar fashion. One thought or memory is connected to several others directly, which in turn is connected to several others. Pretty soon every thought can easily be connected to every other thought through only three or four nodes.

When you can harness this idea towards creative thought, you can virtually become genius. The key is to focus on your outcome, and let your mind roam until you find a solution. With practice, you’ll be able to do this within a few seconds, silently, and come up with a solution to almost any problem on the spot. This works great for brainstorming sessions at work.

The way to get started is to simply practice letting your mind wander. One simple way is to create an ABC list of several different items, with each list constrained to a specific category. For example, one list may be of musical instruments, starting with each letter of the alphabet. (Don’t worry; you can cheat if you need to.) For example A = “A guitar”, B= “Bongo drums”, C = “Clarinet,” and so on.

Another list may be food. So A is apple, B is banana, C is Candy, etc.

Once you have your lists, just pick a letter, and start writing about anything that comes to mind regarding whatever to item’s you’ve selected. It might feel strange and clunky at first, but you’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly. It’s best to use some kind of word processor, and just type away without concern for spelling or grammar.

If you do this for five minutes a day, you’ll be giving your brain a tremendous workout, and will be strengthening your lateral thinking ability. Once you get the hang of it, you can start problem solving. Simply choose one word that describes your problem, and use the first letter of that word to select items from your various ABC lists. Then just start free associating, starting with whatever items you’ve chosen.

You’ll be amazed how quickly you will come up with a solution to your problem seemingly out of nowhere. The trick is to be open and not censor yourself. When you get that “aha” feeling, you know you’ve arrived.

For example, let’s say you work at a manufacturing company, and you are having a problem with shipping. So you choose S, and look at your two ABC lists, and choose Saxophone, and Sandwich. (S instrument, and S food). Just start brainstorming away, using the two S words as your seeds, and see where you brain takes you. Just keep associating, and follow along wherever your brain takes you, and you’ll have a solution in no time.

Because you can really appreciate how easily you can use this information, you can sign up for the email list below.

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.

Create Internal Coalitions to Unlock Your Potential

The other day I was talking to an acquaintance of mine. She is a woman I met recently, and we have an occasion to bump into each other once in a while. I had asked her how her recent weekend was, and she explained that she had finally broken up with her boyfriend of many years. She seemed to exhibit an extreme feeling of lightness and relief when she described the breakup. Normally when you hear people talking about a breakup, they are sad, angry, frustrated, victimized. But not this lady. She was ecstatic, because the relationship had gone on much longer than she’d wanted to. I’m sure you know somebody that is in a relationship that, on one level, they realize it’s not very healthy, but on another level they don’t really have the courage to extract themselves from it. Such is the nature of human problems. They never are straightforward, or easy.

Despite the fact that she spent the last weekend happily removing any remembrance of him from her house, she was going to celebrate by going out drinking with her friends. She then explained that was the one thing that she and her ex boyfriend had in common, an affinity for alcohol. Then went on to explain some other lingering problems in her life, and was explicit in her reasons for drinking. It allows her to forget the stresses and worries of the day. Don’t get me wrong; I’m a big fan of forgetting the stresses and worries of the day. Too much focus on what’s ailing you (and believe me, all of us have something ailing us) will generally only make things seem much worse than they are. And I also fully appreciate the fantastic effects a few drinks can have on your mood. I’m a scotch on the rocks man myself.

But when she continued describing her plans to go out until the wee hours of the morning, she started seemed to lose her happiness. As she described how she usually dreaded the day after, as once she starts, she can’t really control herself, it became apparent that this might not be the best strategy for stress relief, at least not for her. All doubts disappeared when she voiced one of the biggest killers to human happiness:

“I want to quit, but I can’t.”

That short sentence sums up the vast horrors of personal emotional suffering. I want to….but I can’t….or I need to…. But I can’t… Or perhaps the most insidious, I have to….but I can’t….

Why are certain problems so difficult to get around? Some have called these paradoxical problems because as much as we want to get rid of them we are receiving some kind of benefit from perpetuating them, no matter how ludicrous or illogical it may seem.

One way to get to the heart of this is a mind experiment called “Parts Integration.” What this technique does is dig down beneath the reasons for holding on to behaviors that don’t seem to be helpful, and finding out the hidden benefit in them. Once you figure out the hidden benefit, you can find other ways to fulfill it. When can find better ways to do this, the unwanted behavior has no reason to stick around, and vanishes.

This kind of procedure can be best done with somebody else guiding you, but it’s not necessary. Here are the basic steps. (Be forewarned, it’s kind of goofy and requires liberal use of your imagination, such as having a two-way conversation with different parts of yourself.)

Ask the “part” of you that is responsible for the behavior to come out. Hold it in your right hand.

Ask the “part” of you that wants to stop the behavior to come out. Hold it in your left hand.

Keep asking the two parts their underlying reasons for doing what they are doing. Ask these “parts” questions like “Why is that important, what is important about that?” It’s important to be open for whatever answers present themselves, and to be accepting that grateful for the answers that do come. You will usually find that the part in your right hand is likely using a very old strategy to keep you safe and protected.
For example, you overeat because you feel good, you feel good so you won’t have to express yourself, and you don’t want to express yourself because you might get rejected. So in this case, overeating s (the bad behavior in this example) serves to protect you from getting rejected.

The part in your left hand wants you to stop eating because it’s not healthy. Being unhealthy will make you unattractive, and being unattractive will cause you to be shunned by others, and this will cause you your rejection.

In the above (way oversimplified) example, you find a place where both “parts” want the same thing, but they are each going about different ways to achieve it. Once “they” realize this, you can ask them to work together, and figure out a way that is both healthy, and will keep you safe and free from rejection. You ask the two “parts” to work together, and then bring them both to your chest. You then breathe in deeply and feel gratitude for this new relationship between the parts.

You may have to try this a few times before it “sticks,” but you’ll be amazed how freeing this exercise can be. Having patience pays off in this case. You find subtle shifts in the motivations that drive your behavior over time. Behaviors that you’ve had for a while can take some time to fully release, but it is absolutely possible to change your life around completely with this “procedure.”  There are many videos and resources available to help you get through this. This is but one of the many tools that are available to you that will allow you to unlock your potential.

Once you decide to make it a habit to always explore ways to improve yourself and your world, you’ll be light years ahead of where you used to be.

How to Create a Powerful Burning Desire

If you’ve ever read any books on goal achievement, or read any articles on the subject, I’m sure that you’ve heard the oft repeated phrase of “burning desire” or “white hot desire” or some other description. The idea being that you need to make sure that when you create a goal, it’s not some half baked wish that you kind of sort of hope might maybe come true someday, if everything goes ok, and as long as you don’t get in trouble. You need to charge your visualized picture of your realized goal with such strength of desire your brain will work on making it come true, even when you are not paying attention.

The problem is, few people have the discipline and the willpower to even create a visualization of a realized goal, let alone charge it several times a day with white hot burning desire. There are several reasons for this that I’d like to explore, and to come up with ways to help you create a goal, and charge it with sufficient desire in order to make it a reality, instead of some pie in the sky wish.

Imagine what it was like back in the old days. No, I don’t mean the old days before the Internet, I mean the really old days before agriculture. Many scientists believe that mankind lived in our present physical and mental state under the conditions prior to agriculture for at least a hundred thousand years. Living in groups of fifty to two hundred, life was tough. There wasn’t a consistent source of food, so we had to wander, and follow whatever we could to eat. Because humans are generally considered omnivores, meaning that we can eat pretty much anything, we generally took whatever we could find. Plants, animals, roots, each other.

In each group of hunter-gatherers, there was generally one “Alpha” male. Several studies done on chimps show that the alpha male gets most of the food, and most of the sex. The rest of us hacks had to fight for ours. Imagine what it was like living in this state. Always hungry. Living with desire as a constant companion, reminding us to always search and creatively think of ways to get our basic needs met.

Fast forward to today. When we’re hungry, we just stumble over to the fridge and shove food in our mouths. When we are thirsty, we drink. When we want sex, well, there’s always the Internet, if you catch my drift. We have come to think of any desire as a temporary inconvenience that needs to be quickly gotten rid of in the quickest way possible.
Is it any wonder so many people today are overweight, and underpaid? It is any wonder that so many of us drift through a life of mediocrity, never summoning the courage to demand from life what we really want?

The first step then, is to make friends with desire. Focus on the feeling of desire itself, instead of any frustration that comes up when it can’t be immediately pacified. Learn to live with desire. Hunger is your friend. It keeps you motivated to shun short-term sugary fixes, and focus your energies and creativity on more worthy, long-term goals.

The first step, of course, is to follow any good procedure to create well-formed goals. You can google “well formed goals” or search this site for ways to do this. When you have a well formed goal, the next step is to create three or four rich visualizations of what you will see, hear, feel, smell and taste when the goal is realized. Driving your new car, enjoying your new house, seeing and feeling the new paycheck. Choose three or four rich, descriptive, fully associated pictures of your goal. Once you have a few pictures, you need to charge them.

Whenever you feel a desire, pause for a few moments before rushing to fulfill it. Breathe in the desire and experience the feelings in the now. Let go of any thoughts about the future, or imaginations about the past. Fully feel your desire. Now while you are still feeling the emotional now feeling of your desire, focus on one of your visualizations. Focus on your visualization until the physical/emotional feeling of the desire subsides.

Experiment with putting off the short-term satisfaction of your desires. If you desire is for food, wait a few moments before eating. Realize that your feeling of hunger can be tapped to power your desire of your goal. If your desire is for water, pause, and imagine the desire as your goal. When you eat or drink, imagine your desire as being fulfilled. Practice as well with your breath. Exhale completely, and wait until you feel a real desire to breath. Before inhaling, experience your visualization. As you inhale and feel the sweet breath fill your lungs, see your goal being achieved as well. There’s a reason those who have achieved greatness describe their success and “eating drinking and breathing their goal.”

If you want to really turbo charge your desires, experiment with your sexual desires. Feel the sexual desire, release any imaginations and feel only the physical feeling. Then while feeling and appreciating that feeling and desire, visualize your goals. The more often you can do this, and the longer you can charge your goals each time, the better. Napoleon Hill devoted a whole chapter to this in “Think and Grow Rich.” You an google this as well and read the entire chapter, or even the book, online for free. I would recommend keeping your own copy handy to refer to when you are waiting in the dentists office or at Starbucks.

Desire can be a source of fantastic power, or daily frustration, all depending on how you use it in conjunction with your mind and imagination. Many people throughout history have known this, but few have been able to truly tap this power for incredible success. There is no reason why you can’t start now to create the life of your dreams.

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