Category Archives: Unconcscious Mind

How He Lost His Bad Habit

Watch Out For Ducks Who Stare

Once upon a time there was a family of ducks. These were normal ducks; they didn’t have a deformed kid who later found out that he grew up in the wrong family, like in that other story. This was your normal, every day run of the mill duck family. They, like all other ducks, had their own collection of problems.

The father duck didn’t really like his boss very much, nor his job, but he realized that as an adult, a wife and three little ducklings, he couldn’t really afford to go back to school to get an advanced degree. His wife was supportive, she realized he wasn’t fulfilling his dream sin his job, and went to work every day largely out of familial obligations, for which she was grateful, and helped to ease his pain any way she could. She was all too aware of the growing problem of duck fathers leaving their families for more personally satisfying pursuits.

The kids were just as normal, not the smartest ducks in the class, but not the dumbest. Their grades were ok, and if they continued to proceed, they would likely get into decent duck college. But this is where things began to get a little strange for this seemingly normal duck family.

As it turns out, the youngest duck, which happened to be a boy, had a collection of special gifts that he had known about since elementary school, but kept to himself, for reasons he wasn’t quite sure of. These gifts were very strange, and at first he was very worried when he found out about them. But as time went on, and he learned to accept them, he grew more accustomed to them, and even enjoyed them.

One of his special talents was to impose a momentarily bout of amnesia on anybody that he focused his mind on. They would be in the middle of a sentence, and then suddenly pause, completely unsure of anything. For several seconds, they would develop a complete and utter blank for everything. They would forget who they were, where they were, what their names were, who the people were around them, and even how to speak. This usually lasted about five seconds, and then everything came flooding back.

This young duck would have great fun playing with his teachers and friends with this secret trick of his. He dared not tell his friends or family about it for fear of what might happen.

When he was younger, there was a young boy who lived up the street who developed some strange behaviors, and they came and took him away. And nobody ever saw him again. So this young duck was terribly afraid that once they figured out he had this gift, they would sneak up behind him, and steal him away to the insane asylum, from which nobody ever returned.

And then one day, the duck made a startling discovery. By focusing his mind strong enough, he was able to permanently erase another’s memory completely. He was very angry with another boy who teased him at school when he discovered this. He focused his energy with great anger, and they boy stopped talking, and sat down with a look of complete and utter bewilderment on his face. And he never recovered. They came and took him away, drooling and smiling vaguely. His parents, especially his mother, wailed uncontrollably, as he was their only child.

They would visit him in the special hospital, but he never did anything to acknowledge them. He just sat with a blank expression on his face, and drooled, and occasionally mumbled strange, incoherent words that nobody understood.

The thing that surprised the duck the most was that he actually felt pleasure when he thought of him, alone in his small room, drooling with a blank look on his face. He started to look forward to doing this to other people.

Pretty soon he would go downtown, where nobody would recognize him. He would choose people at random, and “melt their brain,” as he thought of it. He would feel immense pleasure at seeing somebody who was otherwise normal, walking through their daily life suddenly turn into a drooling, nonsense speaking burden on society. Once he did it to a taxi driver, who promptly crashed, killing all the people in his car.

Then one day the unthinkable happened. He was getting ready to melt he brain of an unsuspecting girl, whom he smiled at but didn’t return the smile, when he heard a voice in his head.

“We know who you are. And we know what you’ve been doing. If you don’t stop, you will suffer unimaginable pain and anguish. Do not doubt us.”

The young duck spun around, but nobody was looking at him. Nobody even looked as if they were trying to ignore him. He shook his head, wondering if he imagined it. He focused his concentration back on the girl, and readied himself to erase her brain.

“You did not imagine this.” The voice said.

“This is your last warning. If you even consider meddling with the thoughts of another, we assure you your consciousness will be transported forever to a world of torment and agony.”

The duck looked at the innocent girl again, who looked at him finally, and smiled.

How To Explode Your Creativity

Re Discover Your Inner Genius

Have you ever been really curious about something, I mean like really insatiably curious? Like maybe when you were a kid, and it was a couple days before Christmas, and you saw a big box under the tree, and you couldn’t help but to wonder what exactly was inside this?

Or maybe your birthday was coming up, and you could tell the people around you were behaving kind of strange, like they were planning something really big, but were trying their hardest to pretend that everything was normal?

Curiosity is a huge driver for discovery and self-growth. Of course sometimes it can be dangerous, which is why the expression “curiosity killed the cat” somehow made its way into our collective unconscious.

But is curiosity really that bad? Curiosity was the spark that caused Edison to try and try again until he found a filament that worked in the light bulb. Curiosity is what sparked the Wright brothers to keep at it until they reached success.

When we are kids, we are insatiably curious, about every single thing. We want to touch, feel, look at taste everything around us. Whenever I see kid on the train, they are always looking around at all the people, out the window at the passing scenery with a look of complete astonishment and wonder.

The adults, on the other hand, almost always have their heads down, as if they are terrified of making contact with another human. They usually have their heads buried in a book, or staring intently at their cell phones, as if they are anxiously waiting for the results of the World Series or something.

Why does that curiosity stifling expression about the cat make it’s way into our consciousness? Why, or how, do we learn that it’s dangerous to want to explore and find out about new things?
If you have kids, you know the reason. At first it’s cute when a little kids running around checking things out. But if you are a normal adult, and aren’t financially well off enough to sit and play with your kid all day, you’ve got other things to do. And like any normal adult, you love your kid and would be horrified if he or she came into any sort of harm.

So the natural response then, is to chastise and admonish kids whenever they start to behave in a way that may prove to be dangerous, or messy, or cause problems.

Don’t touch that!

Put that down!

Don’t put that in your mouth!

Clean that up!

While this may be making our lives more convenient as adults, it is killing our kid’s creativity. Buckminster Fuller once said that every single person is born a genius, but 99.99% of us are de-geniused by the time we grow up.

The point here is not to let your kids run amuck and create all kinds of damage that you, as the adult, will have to fix. There likely isn’t any better way, unless you are super rich, and have no hobbies, or any other interests other than following your kid around all day and fostering their creative genius.

No, the point here is for you reading this to reach inside and find that insatiable curiosity that you gave up on long ago as too dangerous, too embarrassing, or to scary to express, for fear of incurring the wrath of the adults around you.

You are the adult now, and you can choose to listen to those who may criticize you, or you can choose to ignore them. You can reach inside to that little kid that still lives deep in your unconscious and let them know it’s safe to pick things up and examine them. It’s safe to look at things in different ways; it’s safe to explore your world.

New and better ideas, even those that work are not always accepted at first. Some are outright rejected, and can take time before they build momentum. Many a creative genius gives up all too soon simply because the rewards aren’t immediate and immense.

Sure, for every ten new ideas you come up with, 9 of them might suck. But that one out of ten will make it all worthwhile. Progress is not made by people sitting around waiting for others to figure stuff out. Progress is made by those willing to take risks and to try new things.

When most people get the wisp of a new, creative idea in their heads, it is quickly silenced by fears of “what if it doesn’t work,” or “what if I fail?” or even “that’s stupid.”

The secret is to train yourself to think like President John F. Kennedy, and not ask yourself “what if it doesn’t work,” but instead to courageously ask yourself

“What if it does work?”

And let your creative genius run wild with the possibilities.

Nurture Vs. Nature – Why It Doesn’t Matter

How To Program Yourself For Automatic Success

There has been an ongoing debate for a while among people that study human development and potential, and believe it or not, linguists. There is one camp that believes that when humans are born, we are completely blank, and don’t know anything about anything. It would be the equivalent of buying a brand new computer with no operating system, not software, nothing.

Similar to the computers of many years ago. They didn’t even know how to start. So every time you had to start up your computer, you actually had to insert a punch card that was configured to give the program the start up parameters.

There are those that feel humans are completely and utterly blank when we come into the world, and that all we are is a result of our environment.

From a purely physical standpoint, that seems a bit ridiculous. As a general rule, and maybe you’ve noticed this, but children of Asian parents usually grow up with Asian features (e.g. black hair, brown eyes). Same with people from other parts of the world. Of course you could likely explain that different climates in different parts of the world gave rise to different physical features over hundreds of thousand so years of evolution, but you could hardly say that this process is repeated for each generation.

So at the very least, it appears that we come pre programmed for at least some kinds of things, such as certain physical traits, which are based both on our ethnicity and our parents. Tall parents usually produce tall kids, etc.

On the other extreme is those that argue that we come in with pretty much everything all configured, and life is nothing more than a discovery of that configuration. People will usually point out cases of twins who although separated at birth, grew up into mysteriously similar lives. Same lives, same names of their wives, same habits, down to the brand of cigarettes.

Of course, these cases are few and far between, they are anything but the norm. Those that study statistics will tell you that you can prove any theory, no matter how hair brained, by choosing certain data to represent your case. Nostradamus, and the appearance of the twin towers on a folded twenty-dollar bill to name a couple.

But along those two endpoints of the spectrum, we have to lie someplace in the middle. We do seem to come pre programmed with some kinds of pre-determined characteristics.

Despite how this seems to suggest that we are doomed by fate, there is a ray of hope in something called meta programs. These are a shorthand collection of decisions the brain groups together to conserve valuable processing time. The reason I say ray of hope is because although in many people these usually go undiscovered and therefore unchanged, once you find out your own metaprograms you can change them to improve your results. Here are a couple important ones. As you read, ask yourself which “endpoint” resonates most with you, and just be aware of it as you go through your daily life, to determine if it serves you, or if you want to change.

The first one is motivation. Are you motivated more by fear of pain, or the promise of reward? Many people are motivated by the fear of pain, and take action in the right direction. But as soon as they make progress, the fear of pain diminishes, as does their motivation. This is one of the main reasons it’s so hard to stick to a diet once you start it.

In order to overcome this, focus on the end results, and make it really big and compelling.

Another one is sorting. Do you see similarities in things, or differences? If you see differences more so than similarities, the world can seem to be a dangerous and confusing place. The human brain is more comfortable with similarity. If you want to try to something new, and only see how it’s different than what you are used to, it might be hard to get started. However, if you train your self to find similarities it will make doing new things easier.

For example, starting a new job can be a frightening experience, if you are always comparing how different it is to your old job. But if you consciously look for similarities instead, it will be much easier to adjust.

Another important one is verification. When you choose something, how do you know it’s the right choice? The two options here are internal and external. If you seek external verification for all your choices, you will always be following somebody else’s lead. What diet to go on, what to order at a restaurant, what movie to rent at the video shop, all these decisions will require you get somebody else’s opinion first.

On the flip side, if you only need to rely on yourself, then you’ll have much more freedom to choose. This can be the toughest one to change because it is very easy to rely on the opinions of others. If you find yourself asking others opinions often, try choosing by yourself, and be happy with your choice. Take small steps, and as your confidence continues to increase, it will become easier.

When you start to examine your own meta programs and how the help you achieve what you want in life, it opens up a huge realm of possibility. Just by noticing how you choose things, you will be far ahead of most other people.

To summarize here are the three main ones:

Pain or Pleasure – Which motivates you the most?

Same of Different – What do you see the most?

Internal or External – Do you always need others opinions, or is yours enough?

After you get skilled with these, there are about twenty other ones I’ll be writing about later on to help you make success automatic for you.

Embedded Commands for Powerful Persuasion

One powerful tool that you can use in your toolkit of persuasion and influence is the embedded command. An embedded command is likely the most popular, easiest to learn, hardest to detect (and therefore one of the most powerful) ways to influence others.

They do take some time to learn, but once you have them down, you’ll notice that you are using them in your everyday speech. When you combine an unconscious skill of embedded commands with a strong win/win intention or outcome, you can be a powerfully unstoppable and charismatic force.

It’s no secret that most people would rather rally around a strong, charismatic leader than step up the plate themselves. Humans are designed to follow one leader in every group of people. Many studies of psychology and sociology have been done that illustrate this simple point. If you’ve every been in a business meeting, you know that most people would happily submit to a powerful, authoritative leader than take responsibility for themselves.

When you develop the use of embedded commands, you will be tapping into peoples deep evolutionarily based need to follow directions, and become incredibly influential. And the great thing is that they are very simple to use and apply.

First, take a short sentence, which is in the imperative form. A short command. Some examples.

Eat sushi.
Drink CC Lemon.
Watch Television
Add water.
Buy my product.
The structure is the first word is a verb in its basic present tense form. Then you have two or three words after it, that go along with the verb.

Next, you need to say them with the right tonality. Pretend you have your own personal robot. They will do everything you ask, and their feelings won’t get hurt. Say each of the above sentences with a slight downward tonality.

Ok? Ok. Next, take the above small snippets of speech, and put them into a larger sentence. This is where it gets tricky. You’ll need to say the command part a little bit different from the rest of the sentence. But make sure not to linger too long when you say the command, otherwise the people you are talking to will know that something is up. Pause just a little bit before the command, and a little bit afterwards, and then continue on with your sentence as if nothing happened.

This way, even if the person you are speaking with suspects something is up, by continuing on as if nothing happened, they’ll quickly forget their suspicions. Even if they notice something is up, they likely won’t know exactly what it is (other than maybe, you are talking funny, but this rarely happens.)

For example, let say you want to convince your girlfriend to eat sushi. You could try looking at her like Rasputin, and say EAT SUSHI! But she’ll likely think you are a nutcase. Or you could say something like this:

The other day, I was listening to this doctor on a radio talk show. He was discussing a study about people who eat sushi, and how they are healthier. He says that when you eat sushi, you get lots of good monounsaturated fats, and people that eat sushi on a regular basis tend to live longer. Hey, I’m getting kind of hungry by the way; do you want to get something to eat?

I remember when I was a kid; I went to some amusement park. In the amusement park they had this animal show, where they had a dog and a cat do a bunch of tricks. They had a sort of joke trick, where they would pull a kid out of the audience, and the trainer would tell him to whisper an article of clothing in the dog’s ear, and then he would go and get it.

Every time they kid would whisper women’s underwear, and the dog would come back with a bra, and you could hear a woman scream from backstage. They called me up on stage, and sure enough, I chose to whisper in the dog’s ear a woman’s bra. I thought it was my own choice to choose a woman’s bra, but my brother later explained what was up.

He would describe all the things I could choose, but he always used embedded commands (although at the time I had no idea what they were) when he mentioned to “choose a woman’s bra,” so inevitable, all the kids that went up on stage would choose that. And that was the only thing the dog was trained to go and get from back stage. It was a pretty good way to set up an easy trick.

These are great to use over the phone if you are in sales, or are talking to your girlfriend or boyfriend. They are particularly powerful if you start with a command that is easy to accept, and slowly lead to a more powerful command that you’d like your listener to perform.

For example

Become interested.
Get curious.
Get excited about this.
Want this.
Make a decision
Get this.
Buy this.
Do this.
Choose now.
Be happy.
Share with your friends.

Whatever it is you are talking about, if you start slow, and work your way up to a big finish, this can be very powerful. At first you’ll have to think these through before you deliver them, but after a while (with practice) you’ll be able to choose a destination and then automatically give people easy steps to get there by following your commands.

Of course, like any other powerful persuasion techniques, these should be used with caution. The quickest way to make a bad name for yourself is to convince somebody to commit money or emotions to something that isn’t in their best interests. The reasons powerful leaders are so powerful, and that people trust them is because they truly have the people’s interest at heart. You don’t have to look back through history to find reviled, hated and despised dictator that took advantage of their leadership.

When you use these ethically, they can be a lot of fun, and make a lot of people (including yourself) very happy.

What You can See From the Ferris Wheel

There is a department store downtown where I live. It is a fairly upscale department store, and it is right next to the main station, where all the different lines converge. The department store has eight different floors, with different items on each floor. As is customary in Japan, there is a large supermarket in the basement, which has many delicious foods from all over the world. That is not what is interesting about this particular department store. If you’ve ever been shopping in Japan, or know somebody that has, having a large, multi story department store with a large international supermarket in the basement is nothing special.

What is particularly interesting about this department store is that there is a gigantic, and I mean gigantic, Ferris wheel on the roof. Not exactly on the roof, if you go to the ninth floor, you can board, if that is the correct word, the Ferris wheel and sit in the carriage as it takes it’s time to go round the large circle, giving you a splendid view of the surrounding areas, including the Seto Inland Sea.

It’s interesting the different perspective you get from seeing something from a different viewpoint. Sometimes I ride my bicycle from my apartment to downtown, and sometimes I take the train. Both offer a different and unique perspective of the journey. When I’m riding my bike, I have to be careful for traffic lights, pedestrians, and if I choose, I can take different routes. There are many ways to get from point A to point B in any city, as I’m sure you are aware. Different modes of transportation allow for different ways to travel.

On the train, however, I am completely limited both in time and in location. I have to catch the train according to the train’s schedule. If I am late, it will not wait. If I am early, I have to sit and wait. On my bicycle, I can leave whenever I want, take my time, and eventually get to my destination. I can even change my mind and arrive at a different destination that I originally planned. This is impossible on the train. I suppose I could go one or two exits past my intended destination, but then I would be face with the embarrassment of having a ticket with an insufficient fare. I would then have to pay the extra in coins. On a bicycle, I don’t’ have to worry about any of that. I don’t even have to worry about looking at my watch. I don’t even need to wear a watch.

The train, of course, does have its advantages. It is air conditioned, which is nice during the summer. You can read a book or study philosophy or practice yoga on the way there. All of these are difficult on a bicycle. The train is a lot faster. You have the opportunity to chat to your neighbor on the train if you so desire. That is hard to do on a bicycle. I don’t know if you’ve ever ridden up next to a stranger and started a conversation, but it doesn’t usually work out very well. They tend to look at you as if you are a bit off. A train, on the other hand, provides a fairly easy way to do this. You can comment on a book she is reading, or take your time to exchange flirty eye contact, or even ask an innocuous question to open up the conversation.

But something really eye opening happens when you see all the possible train and bicycle routes from high above the ground. I’m not sure how many actual stories the Ferris wheel is, but at the top, it’s at least another five stories above the ninth floor of the department store building. It gives you a perspective that you normally don’t even consider when stuck down in the subjective experience of life.

Sometimes a great way to see a problem from a useful and resourceful angle is to see it from many different perspectives. The Japanese are famous for looking at their business problems from five, ten and even one hundred year perspectives. It gives them insight that can help them be really successful in the long run. Other people have told me that they sometimes ask themselves how they will feel about a certain course of action in a few weeks time. That sometimes can help them decide to do the right thing. Many people are easily tricked into only thinking about the short-term ramifications of their decision-making. For example, if you only were able to think twenty minutes into the future, you’d likely eat, drink and sex yourself to death. Of course this would be fun for a while, but when you think of what your life would be one year from now, it gives you a different perspective on things.

I don’t know if you’ve ever considered something like this, but what happens when you imagine your life thirteen or so years from now having taken this new idea into account. Does your life look better from thirteen years about? It’s interesting when you think about it, isn’t’ it.

The Metal Work Saviors – The South I

South was having problems. They left the same time as the other groups, and spent the first three days as required walking a straight line to put sufficient distance between them and the original village. The problems began on the first day, as they passed the outskirts. Elder started having stomach pains. At first they all thought, including Elder, that it was just nerves. After taking several breaks, they realized they had to make a decision. The village counsel was clear on this. No member may slow the group. The purpose was to find new earth that would support the entire village for at least another generation. If one member of the search party became ill, or fell to attack, or did not make it to their nightly rendezvous point, the directions were clear. Leave him, and continue.

When Elder, whose name used to be John before being selected, had agreed with his parents to submit his name to the council, he never dreamed he would be chosen. Surely there were many boys more fit than he to carry this lofty burden. He was the youngest, and the only boy in his family. His older sisters were in the processing of selecting their mates for the second half of their lives, and they had their fate already chosen. John’s father was one of better-respected metal workers in the community, coming from a long, lone line of expert craftsman. None of their line had ever been chosen to be a voyager, to venture out into the territory to find new earth filled with abundant minerals with which they could continue their prosperity.

When John had first submitted his name, as all boys were required to do, he had never expected to be chosen so he hadn’t even allowed himself to imagine what it would be like. To venture with two other boys in one of the main directions, in search of a new source. The actual tests that he’d gone through were much easier than he’d anticipated. Of course, the actual metal working tests were easy, as his family had long taught boys those skills from a very early age. Where he excelled much more than expected was in reading soil, and reading the land and the elements, as if he was in some kind of primordial communication with them.

A metal worker usually doesn’t need these skills, as the sources are identified, and the village is established. Skills of reading the land and the earth are only needed in a great while, and are not routinely taught to the young. Because John had demonstrated such a talent for this, he was chosen unanimously by the council. The families of the other two boys that were in John’s group were happy when they learned of John’s talents. Surely his skills would bring the boys home safely after the six-month ordeal.

That was three days ago, and Elder, having shed his given name, was on his knees, doubled over, clenching his stomach in excruciating agony. Eldest and Younger looked on in disbelief and horror. Their orders were clear. They must leave him. Because they had all sworn their lives in the name of the village, they had taken a solemn oath. And because, after this oath, their lives, and happiness, and even physical comfort were only incidental to the success of the mission, they knew they must do the unthinkable.

They must leave Elder, alone, writhing in pain.

He looked up, and summoned enough courage to disregard his suffering. He slowly looked each of them in the eyes.

“You must go. Find a new source. I will recover, and I will catch up. You will see. Go. Now.” Exhausted by the supreme effort it took to ignore the pain long enough to speak, Elder slumped forward, close to unconsciousness.

He was fifteen.

To be continued….

Tap Your Intuition

Some have called it universal intelligence. Others have referred to it as the super conscious mind, a powerful storehouse of all the information in the universe accessible to all who know it’s secret.  A few have called it intuition. Edison used it. Einstein used it. You can use it.

You can not only easily learn now to tap this incredible power, but if you do so on a consistent basis you will develop your skill of intuition to levels unheard of in common men. What happens when you imagine the insight you’ll gain when you learn to listen to what Rumi, the 13th century Sufi Poet referred to as “your friend” when he said:

“Listen to your friend. When you are obedient to that one, you will be free.”

I’ve written a few articles about the power of this source of information on my blog, but I’ve never given such clear steps to access it as I’m about to give. You will be surprised how simple they are. How easy they are to harness to give you answers to life’s most complicated questions. And one of the most strangest things, is the more you practice this simple technique, the stronger your “intuition” muscle will get, so you will notice that you will just “know” things, without really knowing how you know.

The magic in this technique lies in the persistence you will use to get through the critical, logical part of your brain in order to uncover the wisdom within. It may take a while, but once you get there, you’ll know. Here’s how you do it.

Think of a problem that you are having. Its’ good to start of with a minor problem, so it will be easy to do. This way, you’ll not only prove to your deeper self that it really works, but you will begin to get the hang of it rather quickly.

Phrase the problem as specifically as you can. Let’s say you want to lose five pounds. So your problem would be losing five pounds. So you create a question that begins with either “How” or “What.”  The following questions would be a good start for this particular problem:

How can I lose five pounds easily and without effort?
What is the easiest way to lose five pounds without changing my lifestyle?
How can I easily lose five pounds without extra willpower?

Once you get the question set up that feels right, here’s what you do next.

Get a blank piece of paper, and write, in long hand, as typing isn’t nearly as effective, your question at the top of the sheet.
Then ask yourself the question, and as quickly as you can, write the first thing that comes to your mind as soon as you ask the question. Many of the response you get will be obvious, like “eat less.” Duh. Many will not make any sense, like “green plants need water.” The important thing is to write everything thing down as soon as it pops into your brain. Once you get down past ten or twenty answers, you’ll start to get to the good stuff. You’ll want to keep writing until you get a few “aha” answers that you really “feel” are the right answers. It’s as simple as that. Of course, it’s up to you to carry out with the solution. Usually the ‘right’ answer has such a powerful impact that the knowledge alone will cause you to automatically follow through. Once you begin to use your inner intuitive voice as the guiding force in your life, you will, as Rumi predicted, be free.

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The Monkeys’ Discovery

Once upon a time there was a large group of circus monkeys. They had previously worked for a circus. Not really a circus, more like a traveling carnival. And the owner of the carnival wasn’t a very nice person. He was always treating the monkeys and the other employees rather unkindly. Because he had purchased the monkeys at a very young age from a monkey farm, they didn’t really realize how bad they had it. One thing about monkeys is they adapt very well to their environment. If they grow up in the snow, for example, they will get really good at building igloos, and not be aware that they may have cousins on another island that may be writing Shakespeare to disprove a popular theory of social randomness. But these monkeys didn’t live in the snow, nor did they know anything about Shakespeare or any other social theories. They did know, however, that their life in the traveling carnival wasn’t the way things were supposed to be. They kind of had a feeling.

Feelings are interesting. I was reading a book the other day that was talking about feelings. The book was saying that feelings are really the brains’ way of communicating with us in a simple format. Because they are so many millions of calculations going on inside our heads at all times, it would be impossible for our brains to make sense of it all. So the job of the unconscious mind, according to this book, is to sort through all the data, and compare it to what we’ve decided is what is important to us, and then present us with a feeling. Some call this feeling intuition, some call it a gut instinct, others ignore it altogether, and claim to be enlightened, rational thinking beings. I don’t know how logical you can be if you ignore over 99% of your brains extensively thought out calculations. Of course, in our society, claiming that you base your decisions on your feelings probably won’t get you very far.

Which is interesting in and of itself. If you really think about it, people have feelings, and then later come up with a rational, plausible reason. They explain those reasons to us, which we accept or reject based on our own feelings, which we immediately cover up with rational plausible logical reasons. It’s interesting that as advanced as humans are, we tend to let our logic get in the way sometimes. If you can just trust your feelings, you’ll be amazed how well you can communicate with others. Some argue that because the whole purpose for the evolution of the unconscious is for high-level communications with others on an emotional level, which is the true measure of our humanness. Your ability to communicate with others on congruent emotional level. When you can do this, you really are able to realize your potential. When you can just let go, and fully trust your unconscious, you will be amazed at how much the world opens up for you. Perhaps I’m wrong. Maybe you won’t be amazed.

Many scientists have used this instinct to help them in their discoveries. Edison, Einstein, and Kekule among many others knew the true power of being able to tap your creative genius that lives in everybody. Logic can be helpful, but sometimes it just gets in the way.

After they’d wandered for a few days, the monkeys got another feeling. They saw a forest, or what they thought was a forest. They had been walking for a while, and then just out of nowhere, it appeared. And as it turns out, they forest had many other monkeys of the same kind living in it, so it was like a big homecoming for them. It feels good to finally come back to where you belong, where everything is familiar for the first time, isn’t it?

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Unconscious Guidance

The other day I was walking somewhere and got sidetracked. Has that ever happened to you? You will have this clear goal in mind, this clear outcome that you’ve decided is what you want to do. You set out to achieve this goal, sure that you will achieve it. But then something happens, and either because you didn’t allow yourself to see all the possibilities, or maybe your original goal was well formed enough, you just kind of end up in another place.

One way to get around this is to be aware of what your underlying intentions are. It helps to be able to dig deeper to find the real reason behind your goals. When you search beneath what is pretending to be the important part, you’ll be surprised to discover that many of your goals fall under the same basic categories. Safety, comfort, recognition, personal growth.

As I got off the streetcar (yes they have street cars where I live) I saw my goal in sight. The coffee shop where I had intended to relax and spend an hour or so writing in my journal. As it happened, the weather was particularly nice, and there were a fair number of people out and about. There is a street going just past that I’ve always kind of wondered about. There was a steady stream of people walking up this street, that looked as if they were going to some kind of event. You can sort of tell when people are going to find something special here. Because of the way they are dressed, many of them carrying water bottles, cameras, other things that make it appear as if they are on a mini-trek that might take a few hours.

But something funny happened. Usually when I’ve made a choice, (other than to wander around without a clear choice) and I see a distraction, I have at least a few moments of indecision. Should I go this way? What about my other plans? Which is better? Hmm. But not this time. My coffee shop plans instantly disappeared as I followed the crowd up the street. When I emerged back about two hours later, much richer for the experience, I never even gave my abandoned coffee shop plans a second thought.

If you are thinking this is completely platitudinous and futile, maybe you’re right. The thing that struck me was the speed at which I’d abandoned my coffee shop plans for an unknown trek up the street, merely using the crowd as my guidance. Which leads me to suspect that something told me that the underlying reason I wanted to hang out at the coffee shop would better be served by following the crowd up the street. On  an unconscious level, the change in plans didn’t even warrant a the token elevation into consciousness. My desire just shifted, without any conscious thought.

Maybe because I’ve been doing a lot of meditating lately, I was able to not need to question the greater wisdom of my unconscious. I just went with it, and had a much richer experience because of it. Of course I wasn’t doing brain surgery, or walking across a tightrope over the grand canyon, I was just wiling away a Sunday afternoon. But in that moment I experienced an unconscious guidance that I don’t usually experience.

Thank you unconscious, whatever you are. That was fun.

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Powerfully Change Your Present by Easily Changing Your Past

There has been a lot of talk in the media and in popular areas of discussion recently about the importance of happiness. Happiness is that elusive goal that you don’t really know how to define it, but you certainly can appreciate it when you have it. Many people have tried to define happiness in such a way as being measure by external circumstances. Money, Car, Friends, Relationships. Most people don’t realize that the path to happiness is an inside game. Of course, I’m sure you’re also aware that a solid inside game automatically leads to a fantastic outside reality. The mistake most people make, is that when they see an outside reality in somebody else’s life, they try to reproduce the outer effects, without realizing that you need to pay attention to the inside first, and the outside will naturally follow. One way to do this is to change your happiness set point.

One of the best way to increase your happiness set point is to change the thoughts that you habitually think. If this sounds confusing, don’t worry. It is actually fairly easy once you incorporate some easy habits into your daily life. Long term success is all about what you set up to do today, on a regular basis, so that your future will automatically come pre delivered the way you want it.

The first step in changing your habitual thoughts is to become aware of them. Most people amble through life, day after day, thinking the same thoughts over and over without really being aware of it. Because the brain is not only incredibly fast, but also incredibly efficient, there are thousands of thoughts that happen below the threshold of conscious awareness.

For example, when I was a kid, I was out riding my bike. I saw a big scary dog, that growled at me and showed me his big white sharp teeth, dripping with saliva he was no doubt hoping to use to digest my bones after he ate me. The standoff lasted for only a few seconds, but in my childhood mind, it seemed like an eternity. Now when I see a dog, my brain immediately notices that there is a dog in front of me. It then sorts through all my memories of dogs to determine the appropriate emotional response. When it finds that memory I described above, it comes back with the emotion of scary, danger, run away. This all happens so quickly that when I see a dog today, I seemingly immediately only notice a feeling of anxiety. I’m not aware that my brain is doing all that searching and deciding.

It’s only when I unpack that memory, and do some basic memory operation procedures to detach the unpleasantness from that memory of the dog from my current experience, that I can see a dog and feel a sense of happiness and safety, rather than anxiety and fear.

One way to look at your happiness set point is the sum total of your automatic responses to the environment that you encounter on a regular basis. If you are deathly afraid of snakes, and your next door neighbor has a pet boa constrictor that he takes out for a walk the same time as you every morning, you are not going to have a particularly high happiness set point.

What can be helpful, is to go back in time, in your mind, and change whatever memory is there that your brain uses as a reference to tell you to be afraid of snakes.

It sounds really bizarre, but it is pretty simple, and kind of fun when you can learn to do it fairly quickly. Here’s how I did it with my dog memory.

First thing I did was to go back and find the first memory of the dog. Because this can take some time, it may be the most cumbersome step. More practice will yield more memory dexterity, so don’t worry.

Next you tweak the heck out of the memory, so it doesn’t bother you any more. One way to do this, is to relive it, but change certain aspects of it. Like you can view it dissociated. That means that instead of being “in” the memory, I am actually watching myself have a showdown with the dog. And every time I relive that memory, I can change it. Like I can make the dog really small, with clown shoes on. Or I can make the dog dripping grape kool aid instead of child digesting saliva. Or I can have a flea circus performing on the dog’s back, complete with trapeze and the tiny clown fleas getting out of the even tinier clown flea VW bug.

And on top of all the above tricks, you can play the memory backwards, forwards, stuttered, black and white. You can even make the dog a person dressed in a dog costume. And the whole time I am doing this, I can imagine my adult self standing behind my child self, with my steady adult hand on my child shoulder, telling him how funny that dog looks.

I only had to do this a few times, before that memory lost it’s bite. (sorry.) And when you begin to go through your daily life, and systematically dig up and change memories that are giving you trouble, you can really start to raise up your happiness set point. Imagine what life will be like when ordinary objects that you see every day can give you feelings of hope and happiness instead of fear and anxiety.

After all, they are your thoughts. You can think them any way you want to.

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