Tag Archives: NLP

These Two Things Are Essential To Effectively Use The Law of Attraction

How To Properly Manifest Your Desires

I used to watch this TV show when I was a kid, I’m sure you’ve heard of it. “I Dream of Genie,” was the title. I watched it for two reasons, one because the girl that played the Genie was super hot, and was always wearing these sexy genie clothes. And two because I thought it would be awesome to just cross your arms and blink your eyes and make something come into existence. To have some sexy genie dressed in skimpy genie clothes doing that for you is pretty much a secret (or not so secret) dream of all men.

That is a pretty common theme in human history. Much has been written about metaphysics and alchemy. Alchemy is a specific category of metaphysics where you take any metal, and turn it into gold. This would be similar to today’s “law of attraction” and other metaphysical manifestation techniques. Most people would like to attract more money.

The whole concept of metaphysics is interesting to me. I see it as kind of a vague placeholder in our imagination to describe things that are just outside our realm of understanding. They aren’t really magical or mystical or beyond our capabilities, just outside of our normal every day realm of the cause and effect reality that we think we live in.

A couple of examples. Most of our physical laws make sense, but only because we see them happening on a daily basis. When we see something that “makes sense,” what we really mean is that it matches our experience, so it doesn’t require any extra thought to describe it.

The first time kids study gravity in school, it can be a little bit unfamiliar, kind of like a fish studying water currents. When you show a diagram of planets and the sun, it’s pretty easy to make the leap. Of course the math, which is pretty complicated, is another issue.

It can take an extraordinary imagine to figure out laws that aren’t so obvious. Maxwell was a physicist who came up with a bunch of very complicated equations that described electromagnetic radiation. These are both light waves and magnetic waves. These can’t be seen, so you have to have a very highly developed imagination to play around with pictures in your head and then describe them with complex mathematical equations that actually prove to be true when applied to everyday things like electricity and photo voltage measurements.

One of my favorites is when quantum physicists and solid state physicists were having a hard time describing these small spaces that had an extraordinary large number of particles bouncing around. They could pretty easily describer one or two particles, but after that, the math got exceedingly complex.

Then one guy thought of an idea. Instead of thinking of the system of a boatload of particles stuffed in there, each with it’s own mass and charge and spin and whatever else properties particles have, why not think of it as a system with a couple of holes, with all the properties associated with particles assigned a zero value? (To physicists, zero is as just a valid number as 43).

Well, it worked. It described the system perfectly and made the math a lot easier. All by pretending there was this hole there bouncing around, with zero mass, and zero charge, and zero spin, and zero whatever else particles have.

Ok, back to metaphysics.

My own personal belief about metaphysical laws is they are very similar to the holes in the above example. The “law of attraction” and other metaphysical laws of manifestation are simple placeholders to make our thinking about complex issues much simpler, much like the math was made simpler in the hole theory.

Example.

You are a salesperson. You’ve been around salespeople for a while. You’ve been around really good salespeople, and you’ve been around pretty cruddy salespeople. You are an average salesperson, but you’d like to improve your skills to become one of the best. You have two options.

Option One

You study sales book after sales book. You attend sales seminars. You take notes after every sales call, and analyze every sentence. You even ask some customers if you could bring in a video camera and tape yourself so you can later watch it and analyze your body language, your tone of voice, your inflection, the actual words that you use, etc etc etc. You buy some expensive statistical software and collect as much data as possible from every single sales call. From time of day, what color suit your wore, what color clothes your customer wore, where you sat with respect to North and South, the number of minutes that elapsed before you “asked for the sale,” every possible piece of data you collect, and plug into your software. Then on a weekly basis, you look at your sales, and tweak your performance to slowly and gradually improve your sales.

Option Two

You read a book on the law of attraction, and affirmations. Before going to sleep every night you tell yourself “I am the best salesperson at my company.” And just like all the books say, you put feeling and emotion into your affirmations. And just like the books say, when you go about your day, you release your affirmations to the superconscious, or whatever, and wait for the changes to take place.

So which do you think would work better? Believe it or not, method two would work much better. Not because of any mystical law or anything, but because of the massively powerful computational powers of your brain. When you tell your brain enough times that you want to be the best salesperson at your company, really program yourself to do that with powerful emotions, it will automatically do everything outlined in option one. But it will be doing it all unconsciously, so you won’t really notice. From a conscious mind point of view, you are only doing affirmations every night, and then magically in a couple months, you are the number one salesperson.

This requires a couple of things. First is a goal that is within your grasp based on your current situation. If you have sales experience, it’s pretty easy to go from average to excellent. Second, you are surrounded by some good salespeople, so you brain has something to model your behavior after.

This is the number one reason people fail when they “use” the law of attraction. They are either giving their brains some vague instructions, so it doesn’t really know what to go after, or they are giving specific instructions, but not exposing themselves to examples of how to get there.

When you make sure both of these are present, a clear objection, and sufficient examples of how to get there, with properly constructed affirmations, you can pretty much allow turn over any goals to your unconscious and let it soak up the behaviors from people around you.

Of course, this requires that you have the underlying beliefs that you are capable of actually performing the objective you claim you want, but that’s for another post.

For now, whenever you choose to do affirmations, remember the more clear you are the better, and the more examples you expose yourself to, in as many forms as possible, the better. That way you’ll have a much better chance of achieving your goals.

The Power Of Influence – Tool Or Weapon?

Do You Know When Your Strings Are Being Pulled?

There are two laws of influence that can be used in a particularly powerful combination. These two laws have been identified by Robert Cialdini in his bestselling book, “Influence, Science And Practice.” If you are interested in influence at all, and would like to either become better at it, or just to understand how pretty much everybody around you is using these techniques, you should read this book.

There is a vague belief that persuasion is kind of an “art,” and that people that are good at it are like musicians or painters who are born with some natural talent. But Dr. Cialdini has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that persuasion is indeed a science, rather than an art. A science that can be learned and applied either to benefit an individual, a company, or the leader of a nation.

There are several examples of how these principles of influence have been used without much concern for ethical considerations, but they still work nevertheless.

There is one fantastic example that comes to mind, which I’d like to share with you today. This was illustrated in “Influence.”

The first principle this involves is one of “commitment and consistency.” This is the idea that people are much more willing to do something if they have already publicly stated they will something, or have done something before that is similar.

A great Internet example is “click through.” If you visit a website of somebody trying to sell you something, you’ll likely have to click through several different pages to actually get to the point where you type in your credit card number. The reasoning behind this is people are much more likely to take the next step if they’ve already taken several previous steps.

If you land on some web page, and read some advertising text, and there is a button at the bottom that says “Buy Now!” The percentage of people that click on it is fairly low. But instead, if you shorten your sales page, and on the bottom is a button that says, “Click to Read More!” You’ll get much more people clicking through. Once you get visitors to click through three or four pages, they’ll be much more likely to click on a “Buy Now” button.

Another example is in jury trials. When they finish a trial, and the jury convenes they will often conduct a “straw vote” meaning that just give their first impression, guilty or not guilty, before the jury starts to discuss the case. Here’s the interesting part.

In jury deliberations where each juror publicly states, out loud, whether they feel the defendant is guilty or not guilty, the deliberations last more than twice as long as those where they jurors submit their initial guilty or innocent vote via anonymous slips of paper.

When people state their opinions out loud, they are much less likely to later change them. But when they submit their opinions in private, on an anonymous slip of paper, they later change their minds rather easily.

Another principle is one called scarcity. I’m sure you are well aware of this. Limited supply. Sale only lasts for two days. Only the first one hundred customers.

Study after study shows that people will give something a much higher value when they think it is scarce. A group of researchers did an experiment where they had people sample a cookie. In one case, they convinced the samplers that there were plenty of cookies, and the test would be going for quite a while, etc etc.

Then they told a different group of testers that the cookies were a limited batch, and it was a recipe that was only being tried out for a short period of time, and the testers were lucky to be in on the experiment. Keep in mind the testers or samplers were never sold anything, so there was no buying pressure.

The results? The samplers who were told there were many more cookies of the same kind gave it an average rating. The testers who were told that it was a small group of cookies, and they were a select group of testers gave it an excellent rating.

But they were the same exact cookie. Simply by telling people it was scarce, it made the cookie taste better.

Now for the powerful, Christmas time combination. I have no idea if this still happens today, but this story was illustrated in “Influence,” the book I mentioned previous.

There was a toy manufacturer. They made a toy, and put all kinds of TV commercials on, directed at little kids. They used all kinds of marketing tricks, mainly scarcity. Only a limited number of dolls made. Get yours today. Everybody wants this doll for Christmas.

Only when the parents went to the store to get the doll, they were all sold out. So they had to get a substitute gift for their kid. Then, a couple months after Christmas, they somehow found a hidden warehouse filled with these dolls. Of course, the kids saw this, told their parents, and their parents were pretty much obligated to buy the toy, as they had promised to buy it at Christmas but couldn’t find it.

Here’s how it works. Kid sees toy, bugs parent. Parents promises kid to buy them that particular toy. When buying time comes, toy isn’t available. Parent buys replacement gift. Two months later, toy reappears. Kid says, “But Daddy, you promised!” Daddy now has to go and buy gift.

Simply by manipulating the supply of the toys (scarcity) to increase demand, and depending on commitment and consistency (Daddy, you promised!) the toy company was able to double it’s Christmas sales. They sold a slew of replacement gifts (jacked up in price because of daddy’s guilt for not finding the promised toy) and then again a couple months later, when the original gift magically appeared, they had an increase in sales when all their competitor were suffering from a post Christmas slump

The beauty (or evilness, depending on how you look at it) of a plan like this is that this is almost impossible to defend against. What parent is going to tell their child they can’t have what the TV has said every other kid is getting? What parent is going to break a promise to their kid?

Everywhere you look, there are advertisements developed by companies who know and apply these principles on a daily basis. It helps to understand these principles so that you can use them yourself (in an ethical, win win scenario, of course) and to defend against them when they are used against you.

How To Always Expand Your Horizons

The Beauty Of Never Ending Progress

So this morning I was out on my morning walk, like normal. And I came across this guy that was building this model airplane. Not just a regular model airplane that you build and put it up on your shelf. This was the kind that had an engine, and a propeller, and a remote control to fly it. It wasn’t quite like most remote controlled airplanes that you buy straight out of the box and send flying. This was the kind you have to build from the ground up.

I asked him now long he’d been working on it, and he said for a few weeks. He mentioned that he had flown other planes, the out of the box kind, but they didn’t quite give him the pleasure of actually building something from scratch, and then seeing it take off. He said the possibility of making a mistake is enough motivation to get him to focus on his project so he makes sure to put it together correctly.

I remember once I had this kid when I was a kid. It was a 75 in 1 electronics kit from Radio Shack, which is a chain of small electronics shops. You could build lots of things, from a simple light with a push button switch, to a lie detector, where you could actually hook up the electrodes to people and question them regarding there whereabouts on the night of August 17th, or whatever.

I seem to remember that at first, when I built simple things like the push button light bulb, it gave me a pretty quick sense of accomplishment, but it was short lived. After all, it only required hooking up three wires. Anybody could do that. The lie detector was a bit more complicated, and took almost an hour to set up the first time. After a couple of times, though, that became pretty easy as well, and didn’t quite give the initial satisfaction that it did the first time.

So of course, I moved on to bigger things. I tried taking my regular bedside lamp, cutting the plug that went into the wall socket, and running it through the switch. When I realized that it worked, I was amazed. I actually had built an additional switch into my bedside lamp. I tried it again with the strobe light circuit. And it worked. Now I had a strobe light in my bedroom. My mind spun with the possibilities.

Here I was looking at this kit, inside this wooden box with a built in circuit board that was supposed to be used only with the self-contained things in that kit. Nowhere in the instructions did it say it was ok to take normal, everyday object like a light and run it through these small circuits, but I did it anyway.

And it worked.

Thinking of this story reminds me of this book about evolution I was reading the other day. One of the many books by Richard Dawkins. Be careful of reading him if you are of any kind of a religious mind, because he makes it quite clear where he stands on that particular set of beliefs.

But what he was talking about in this book is the problem that keeps coming up among evolutionary biologists. Why did man become the predominant species on the planet? What was it about homo sapiens sapiens that made us be able to build cars and houses and waffle makers?

Many argue that one that humans have developed, that no others animals have developed is adaptability. We can (and have) survive; even thrive, in pretty much any environment. If you take a bunch of penguins or polar bears, and stick them in the Sahara desert, they won’t last long. If you take a sidewinder snake and put him on the North Pole, he’ll be dead in a few hours.

But humans are different. We have learned to adapt, to change, and to expand to match the size of our containers, until we break the container and expand even further. How else would some societies be able to dig holes and live in the sides of cliffs?

When you realize that your human potential comes pre programmed with the capacity to learn from, use and overcome your environment, you can gain massive amounts of clarity when it comes to facing the challenges of everyday life. The history of humanity is filled with examples of people meeting the challenges of their environment or situation, and overcoming them with incredibly innovate solutions, many of which eventually make it into mainstream consciousness.

If you look at a shark from a million years ago, they still swam around hunting in exactly the same way they do today. Prehistoric bees still made honey the same way they make it today. Humankind, on the other hand, seems to make huge progress with every generation, the current generation being no exception.

Even if you look at your own life, I’m sure you can find plenty of examples of things that you are more than capable of excelling at today, that you had no clue how to do only a short time ago. When you compare the skills you have today to only a couple of years ago, just imagine what you’ll be like five years from now?

After I had success with my bedside lamp, I tried to run it through the handheld speed control on my electric race care set. It was this track with cars that ran around it through this slot, which were connected to a hand held speed control. I wondered what would happen if I ran the hand held speed control through my Radio Shack electronics kit. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out so well. The first time I tried it, it literally burst into flames in my hand. I was dejected, but vowed to continue.

And the guy I saw on my walk this morning got pretty excited when he started telling me about this model airplane convention he is going to in a couple weeks. They’ll be a lot of like-minded people there to share new ideas and tips, as well as many vendors with the latest gadgets and accessories. It should be interesting to see what happens.

A History Of Power Abuse By An Under Sea King

A Short History Of The Decline Of The Jellyfish Empire

Once upon a time there was a jellyfish king. He was a mean king, and ruled with an iron, jellyfish fist. Nobody was ever without a little bit of fear or anxiety. The jellyfish king was also fearful and anxious, as he was worried that somebody would sneak up behind him, conk him in the head the steal his throne, as he did to his predecessor, and his predecessor did to the jellyfish king before him.

Now there had long been a legend about the mysterious power of the monkey liver. Monkey livers were long thought to have special powers that would make jellyfish kings impossible to kill. Most jellyfish kings at some point had at least entertained the idea of finding the elusive monkey live and making the life protecting elixir from it.

Now, jellyfish live in the water, and since monkeys live on the land, they never really have come in contact with each other. Until this story. See in this story, the jellyfish king in question had a magic sea turtle working for him. How this particular sea turtle came about his magical powers is the subject of another blog post, so I won’t get into it too much here. Suffice it to say that this sea turtle had magical powers that would put Obi Won Kenobi to shame.

So the jellyfish king called upon the magical sea turtle to create magic “bubble” in which his two most trusted jellyfish spies to fit inside of in their quest for the monkey liver.

So the two jellyfish equipped themselves with the aura of water and off they went into the jungle. At first they were confused at what they saw. People had to either walk to fly, they couldn’t swim. And those that couldn’t fly were stuck to move in two-dimensional space. And those that could fly were restricted to certain flight paths and lengths. They always had to focus on where they were going, or they would crash into a tree or the side of a billboard or something.

But once they got used to it, they set off to find the mysterious monkey. They haven’t found a way to trick the monkey out of his liver. They were fairly sure that if they did find monkey, he would probably be still using his liver, and quite ready to part with it.

So finally they found a monkey. And after a few rounds of drinks the local monkey, the two jellyfish realized they were becoming fast friends with this monkey, because he was a lot like them. He had a job he didn’t like so much, a boss that was a pain in the neck, and not nearly enough vacation time every year.

And of course, the monkey as well as the two jellyfish spies didn’t get paid nearly enough money for their efforts at work. So after a few drinks, they finally spilled their guts. They told the monkey everything. That there was a secret undersea world that was ruled by an evil jellyfish king, who terrified and intimidated his subjects.

They instructed the monkey to never ever trust jellyfish (this was easy, because, after, these two jellyfish were spies, and were capable of quickly shifting their allegiances). They also told the monkey that they were bound by jellyfish duty to report their findings to the jellyfish kind, and he would keep sending spy after spy to try and steal the monkey liver.

They monkey thanked them, finished his whiskey, and went off to warn his monkey friends.

Little did they know they were being watched by another spy. The elder of the secret community of turtle wizards. Turtle wizardry goes further back than recorded history. And wizard turtles have long been infiltrating societies to make sure they behave according to the ancient code of undersea conduct.

The turtle wizard master summoned all of his friends, and met with the jellyfish spies just as they were reporting their findings to the jellyfish king. They did some turtle magic, and told the jellyfish that they were being punished for breaking the sea world, land world interface. And as punishment, they would be doomed to float in the ocean forever, at the whims of the current and tides. Since jellyfish had broken the rules and abused their power, they would not longer be able to choose their own destiny.

The turtles took away all the bones of the jellyfish. And to this day, jellyfish are forced to float around, with only skin and very weak muscle, and some kind of an endocrine system to help them along their way. And they are always bitter, always angry, which is why they developed their sting.

Beware Of Mind Poison

How To Inoculate Yourself Against Manipulation

There was once a pretty interesting promotion an airline had a few years back. This was before September 11, and there were fewer restrictions. Also this was only a domestic airline, so they didn’t have to worry about any international laws. Here’s what the promotion was. You showed up at the airport and paid a pretty cheap price, I think it was fifty or a hundred dollars. And in return, you’d get two round trip tickets and two nights in a hotel somewhere.

The only rub was that you didn’t know where you were going until about thirty minutes before you flight left. Kind of a travel lottery. They did have a list of about 30 different cities that you may fly into. From New York, to some town in North Dakota, you could pretty much end up anywhere in the United States for the weekend. It seemed to be a fun thing to do for a weekend for an adventurous couple.

The other day a friend of mine and I, who both are avid fans of NLP, were talking about manipulation, and how a strongly manipulative person makes heavy use of what are called linguistic presuppositions. These are sentence patterns that kind of force the listener, through some really twisted word logic, to accept an underlying assertion by the manipulator without really being able to defend against it. What the manipulator is hoping for is that the person being manipulated will do is take the underlying assertion (usually something very strong and very childish, like you don’t love me, you don’t care about me, and something they would not usually say outright) and respond to it, giving the manipulator the satisfaction of getting their needs met in a roundabout way.

My friend said a good analogy would be training animals with negative reinforcement. Whenever they screw up, you punish them, until their entire behavior is motivated by avoiding punishment. A person who is in a relationship with strong manipulator usually feels the same way.

While there are specific language patterns you can learn to dismantle manipulative statements that can be extremely tedious, and can get confrontational in a hurry if you don’t have a complete handle on your own emotions.

So my friend and I started talking about an inoculation of sorts that would completely shield someone from manipulation from others. Not that others wouldn’t try, just that their attempts wouldn’t have any effect.

We decided that the best defensive would be a good offense. When they are getting ready to say something manipulative, punch them in the face.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

In order to inoculate yourself from being manipulated, you must make your emotions impervious to their underlying assertions. Meaning you cannot fear their truth. While this can be difficult to do once you are already in a relationship, it can be fairly easy to set your mindset up this way, so that any relationships you do create, with coworkers, friends, etc will be programmed from the start to be manipulation free.

How do you do this?

First of all, realize that humans come preprogrammed with a set of intentions. The are vague, but they are there. Get food, get sex, stay safe. These are programmed into us by evolution, or God, or aliens, so that we have the base programming to live long enough to make more people.

If you don’t do anything but follow the crowd your whole life, and not do one bit of thinking for yourself, you have a high probability of achieving all three.

However, without choosing specific ways with specific strategies to achieve various aspects of all three, you leave yourself open to be manipulated. Because if you don’t have specific targets to fulfill your base needs, you’ll always be a little bit worried about not achieving them. And because the thought of not achieving them can create the most horrible feelings imaginable, we do anything to avoid those thoughts.

Enter the manipulator. When we have fuzzy ways to achieve our prime directives, and a manipulator throws some covert mind poison at us, it triggers those fears of not achieving our prime directives, usually with a strong sense of impending rejection, so we do whatever we can to avoid that pain. Just like the animals that are trained by negative reinforcement, we learn to live by avoiding pain rather than finding new and interesting ways to satisfy our prime directives.

The simple way to inoculate yourself then, is to create several different specific goals, which satisfy all three of your prime directives. And for each goal, figure several different strategies for achieving them.

This collection of goals, and strategies to achieve them can act as filter through which you experience the world. You only accept those things and situations and relationships into your life that have a good chance of satisfying your particular goals.

When people drift through life with only vague ideas of what they want, they usually end up taking whatever they can get, which opens them up to be terribly afraid of losing what little they have. This can be a huge motivating factor.

By setting up your filters properly, and screening the world through them, you will create an environment rich with opportunities and relationships that are designed to fulfill your goals in many different ways, so any manipulative mind poison thrown your will have little effect.

Of course, this is easier said that done. Which is why so many of us are in relationships where we have a sinking feeling that maybe we could do better, if we tried, but since we are afraid to try, we don’t.

Simply through examining your goals and ways to get them, you’ll open up some breathing room in your mind for all the possibilities that are around you. And once you start to see them, the fear will slowly go away.

The Meaning Of Life (For Real)

Ok, Seriously, Why Are We Here?

There have been, are, and will be plenty of discussions regarding the meaning of life. From the spiritual to the metaphysical to the clinically scientific, there is no end to the plethora of opinions about why we are here. It is something that I have been particularly interested in, as a hobby more than anything else, so I’ve come across some very interesting viewpoints that I’d like to share. None of them are likely true, as we will not ever know what our true purpose is here. But the path of discovery is like no other.

The first thing I’d like to mention is the idea of “models.” When you take a look at reality, and it behaves in ways that you simply do not understand, the human brain has this capacity for creating a working “model,” some kind of organized structure so that we can depend on it. There is something about accepting reality as some random sequence of events that is particularly unsettling on a very deep psychological level.

As man progresses through history, and we find better ways to observe and measure our reality, we come up with more detailed models of the world. A great example is that everybody used to think the world was flat. It was a largely accepted fact, until somebody sailed around the world to prove it wasn’t. Literally overnight, people rejected the flat earth model and accepted the better, more realistic round earth model.

When humans first started coming up with “stories” about how the world worked, they were surrounded by mythology and characters much like themselves. When it rained, the gods of the sky were angry, when it was sunny and warm the gods of the sky were happy. Different societies have different myths that were largely based on their predominant environmental structures.

So what are some of the basic models in our society? Let’s start with religious.
The entire universe was created by some kind of conscious, super intelligent, perhaps infinitely intelligent entity. He or She knows all that ever was, and all that will ever be, down to the minutest of details. From what your boyfriend will say to you tonight about what you decide to wear, to the very moment of your death. There has been much discussion and essays by some very smart people that elaborate exactly how it is possible for a supreme entity to know everything, while still maintaining the idea of human free will. Your boyfriend certainly can choose exactly what he is going to say about that outfit tonight, but the Creator knows exactly what he will choose.

The purpose of the creation that we live in is a mystery, and only our Creator knows the purpose, and where we are headed. Some believe that we get one shot on earth, and the rest of our eternity will be determined by how we live this one shot, while others hold to the notion of reincarnation and the ability to improve on the last go through.

This model provides for a general guideline in the form of religion, and a loving, omniscient Creator who is watching our every move and rooting for us to make the right choices.

Many of the world’s religions, whether they be mono- or poly-theistic fall under this general umbrella model of the world.

The next model is similar, but the Creator lacks a specific identity. It is more a collective of human consciousness. A nameless, faceless infinite intelligence that exists somewhere, somehow that everybody is capable of tapping into. Generally it is believed that this creative, intelligent “force” is at the heart of all “energy” that permeates all matter in the universe. This “force” is generally good, and is the underlying energy beneath all human behavior. This force is ambivalent, and behaves like natural laws. Those that know how to tap into it and maximize its live lives of unlimited abundance and happiness. Those that are either unaware of ignorant of it’s existent are destined to live lives of destitution and struggle.

Many eastern religions fall under this umbrella, as it doesn’t require a human like entity at it’s core as the creator and guardian of all that. The central, creative force is just that, a force, like the wind. You can build sail and harness it’s power, or you can curse it as it blows your leaves around, or you can be completely ambivalent.

The next and final model is the purely scientific model. This holds that there is no intelligent, creative “force” in the universe. We are merely a collection of matter that has, through the course of billions of years and measurable, repeatable, and describable physical laws, organized itself somehow into feeling and thinking creatures that can write long winded posts about the nature of its own existence on the Internet, and hope that many other like minded, self organized blobs of matter will read this and find enlightenment from it. This view doesn’t hold that our meager human minds have the capacity to even begin to understand the incredible detail and depth of all these naturally occurring physical laws. It just holds that there isn’t some “spaghetti monster’ in the sky watching our backs the whole time.

Of course, these three views are not mutually exclusive, and by no means exhaustive. There is plenty of overlap. And many times you may find yourself believing in one more so than the other two, and then out of the blue, some even, maybe random, maybe not will completely and forever change your worldview.

But regardless of where you are on the spectrum of the many theories of existence, you certainly can appreciate the fact that we are here at all, living in a time where such massive communication between people is so easy.

It is truly wonderful to be alive. I hope you feel the same.

The Untapped Power Of Negative Thinking

What Can You Learn From Your Fears?

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, and she was unloading some of her problems on me. I guess that’s what friends are for. They weren’t really any life threatening problems, just the kind that build up, and if you keep them that way they can explode in an unhealthy way, so it helps to find someone to complain to. Which is pretty much what she was doing. Boyfriend problems, boss problems, parent problems. It seems like the entire universe was conspiring against this poor girl.

It got me thinking of a seminar I went to once. (One great way to allow people to vent without getting too emotionally involved is to let your mind drift to other things while they are venting.) This guy was talking about the value of negative thinking. Up until that point, I had always assumed that negative thinking was bad, and should be avoided at all costs. But this guy had a different take.

He said that everything we do naturally has a purpose. Some believe that purpose was put there by God, others (like myself) believe that purpose slowly evolved over time through natural selection, still others (like the guy teaching this seminar) believe in a metaphysical combination of the two. There is some life force that was present right at the big bang that inhabits all of us, and there is a purpose to all the crap we have to go through.

Anyway, he was explaining that negative thinking is a natural outcome of human’s special ability to think and plan for the future. Some biologists think this all started when humans started using tools to hunt animals. We had to kind of plan ahead when we threw a spear at our dinner as it was running away. The brain had to develop a way to accurately predict where the animal would be in a few seconds, and throw our spears accordingly.

This grew into our ability to plan for the future based on current events around. The way it works is the brain will sort through all of our possible choices, and then extrapolate all those choices out into the future, and create several likely scenarios and present them to our imagination. Based on what we imagine, we choose our behaviors accordingly. This happens pretty quickly and unconsciously. When we make a decision that has the potential for a negative outcome, we get nervous an anxious about the future. When we choose behavior that has an almost guaranteed positive outcome, then we get really excited about the future.

This guy at he seminar was saying that our negative thinking about the future can be a powerful warning sign to indicate some problems that may come up. Since we can never be really sure of anything, he was saying to give yourself the luxury of following your imagination for a while, and see what terrible things might happen, and plan accordingly to minimize any bad outcome.

He kept referring to the famous quote by Mark Twain, (which I’m paraphrasing here) “I’ve experienced many terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” Which means that rarely do our worst fears come true.

By allowing yourself to slip into negative thinking can be helpful if you consciously think and plan to avoid the negative outcome. It can be a bad thing if you allow your fears of the future to keep you from taking any action at all. That would be the often referred to condition of “paralysis by analysis.”

People that suffer from this need to plan everything in great detail, so they will be virtually guaranteed of a positive outcome. Of course, we all know that doesn’t always work that way. No matter how much you plan, stuff can happen to disrupt he best-laid plans.

The guy was saying that the people that are the most successful take a balanced approach. They respect their negative thinking enough to make good decisions, but they also respect the randomness of life to have a “Damn the Torpedoes, full speed ahead,” attitude when it comes to taking action.

People that rush in without too much thinking, with a “shoot first, aim later” attitude can be very successful, but they also have to be able to put up with a lot of setbacks and readjustments.

People that won’t even take the first baby step without being completely assured of safe and automatic success leave the starting blocks.

It’s that magical place in the middle where you can tune in just long enough to your negative thinking to put in a few safeguards, and then plow right on through life, confident you can handle and deal with anything that comes up along the way.

And by the time my friend stopped venting, she seemed to be feeling much better. She even had a couple of ideas on how to fix a few of her problems. She thanked me profusely for being such a good listener, and even paid for lunch. She seemed to be in a pretty good mood when we parted ways.

Abundance Or Scarcity, Independence Or Dependence?

Which Mind Set Do You Have – Rich Or Poor?

The other day I was talking to my neighbor. She was telling me about all the stress her kids are giving her. Not bad stress, just normal mom stress. Her youngest just entered junior high school, and her oldest is a junior in high school. I don’t remember what age the middle one is, but she is somewhere in between.
They are all girls, and they are all very pretty. They get a lot of attention from the boys at school.

My neighbor is of the opinion that girls should be able to make it in the world on their own without having to rely on their looks. Here in Japan that is still kind of a not so popular idea. Many girls today are still taught from a very early age that if you were pretty and feminine you can expect to get a decent husband. Being a housewife is still a dream for many girls here.

Which is exactly why my neighbor is concerned. Her daughters are all pretty smart, they consistently do very well on standardized tests, which are pretty much the norm here. If you can’t do well on tests, it’s hard to succeed here.

Getting into a university here is much harder than the west. But once you are in, it’s fairly easy. College life here is fairly relaxed. Most people focus on getting into a good university starting around junior high school, or even sooner. Many top high schools here have strict entrance examinations. Many people consider public schools here to be substandard. If you can’t get into a good private high school, then you are going to have a second rate career, and a second rate life.

There are many who think that children getting into a good high school or university, especially one of the top universities, is nothing more than a status symbol for the parents. Many of my friends have noted that parents whose children are in good universities are very quick to point this out to their friends (whose kids are in “lesser” universities.) Of course, not everyone is like that.

Progress is bit slow here in that regard, but there still is progress. When my neighbor was in high school, most girls aspired to go to “finishing schools” for lack of a better term.

These were schools that girls from upper class families went to learn proper etiquette, and traditional Japanese customs like flower arranging and the proper wearing of a kimono. All in the hopes of attracting a potential wealthy husband.

It has been said that Japan lags behind the west by twenty years or so when it comes to things like human rights and equal opportunities. It seems that more and more couples here are facing the harsh reality that in order to raise a family, both parents have to work.

There was a “golden” time in the United States after World War II where families could easily survive on one income. That was when they made TV shows like “Leave it to Beaver,” “Father Knows Best,” “Happy Days,” and all those other shows from the fifties where dad went to work and mom was a happy homemaker. Most economists agree, and are backed by a lot of data, that that was just a temporary set of conditions that made it easy to survive on one income. Most of the time before that, and most of the time since, and likely for any foreseeable future, it’s going to take two incomes to support a family.

Not to say that situation might never happen again, but it’s better to realize that good times that are based only on a coincidental confluence of events never last. The best times are the ones you create yourself, based on a thorough understanding of the environment in which you live, and you skills to maximize that environment.

I heard an interesting quote the other day that the difference between rich people and poor people is that while poor people look for problems and excuses, rich people are always on the lookout for opportunities.

Poor people are always worried about the economy, while rich people are only concerned with their own economy that they can control. While its nice to live during times of low inflation, low interest rates, double digit yearly stock market returns, it’s never a good idea to depend on them.

Those that tend to be rich figure out a way to make things work for them regardless of the general economic conditions.

Which is why I think my neighbors daughters will be ok. Whenever I’ve spoken with them, they seem to be able to be flexible in their thinking, and focus always on their ultimate objectives, regardless of the meager expectations that society puts on them. They seem to have pretty good expectations of themselves, which no doubt, will carry them a long way.

How To Use Life’s Problems To Your Advantage

How To Powerfully Blast Through Any Obstacle With Ease

The other day a friend of mine and me were talking about how different people deal with adversary. His girlfriend is currently going through a crisis at her work, and the people that are employed there are having some difficulties.

Because of the economy, it is quite obvious to everyone that business is slowing down, and although the owner hasn’t come out and said anything, changes are coming, and they aren’t likely going to be pleasant. It is a small operation, and they don’t have a lot of reserves to fall back on. Lately it has become evident, at least through the company grapevine, that making payroll every month is getting more and more difficult for the owner.

Now my friend’s girlfriend has a side business that she has been secretly cultivating for a few months, and she is almost at the point where the income from her side business is the same as her salary. So she has the luxury of being an observer without running around trying to protect her livelihood in any way possible. And she has noticed some startling, or perhaps not so startling things about her coworkers.

She said they basically fall into two different categories. The first category are the people that have faith in their abilities and skills to find employment elsewhere if need be. Then there are those that seem to be getting more and more terrified as the days go by. These people have been working for this small company for a long time, and don’t know how they will survive if the company has to start letting people go, and they are one of the people.

An interesting paradox is that the people that seem to be most relaxed and confident in their skills seem to be doing the most to try and help the company stay afloat. They are the ones putting in extra hours, trying to come up with creative solutions to generate more business and income. The ones that seem to have the least amount to lose if the company goes under seem to be the ones that are trying their best to keep it going.

The second group, on the other hand, is doing the opposite. They seem to have the most to lose if the company goes down. And paradoxically, their behavior more on pure self-preservation rather than trying to help out the company. They seem to be more worried about positioning themselves so they aren’t the ones that get laid off. And she says they are doing so in really underhanded, and less than professional ways. Backstabbing, gossiping, spreading rumors that are not true, banding together to smear the reputation of others. Their behavior seems to be making the problem worse.

I remember reading a book about human behavior many years ago. There are things called paradoxical problems that pop up frequently in the human experience. As we move through life, we encounter all kinds of problems, in various forms and levels of severity. How we deal with the problems that come up can define our lives and how much pleasure we can experience. Usually we come up with familiar problems that we’ve overcome before, so they can be a valuable learning opportunity to foster growth and the development of useful skills.

Other times, however, we encounter problems, and for whatever reason, our best response to the problem, one that we think we help, actually makes the problem worse. And the more we try and solve the problem, the worse it gets directly as a result of our actions. And of course we respond with more of the same, which makes the problem even bigger.

Of course, we rarely realize the problem is getting bigger because of our actions. We usually blame some other, seemingly external cause. Our situation, the behavior of other people, some general state of society, likes the economy or whatever. These paradoxical problems will persist until we “step out” of ourselves and view our behavior and the problem as if we are completely on the outside looking in.

The method described in this book explained how to do this. You need to figure out your objective, take some action, then step back and judge your actions from a third party perspective and see if they effected the situation in the direction that you wanted. Then adjust accordingly, until the problem is overcome.

The reason this can seem difficult is many times our response to situations are unconscious, and we really aren’t aware of what we are doing. For example, if you wanted to lose weight, and you decided to try a new diet. Through sheer will power you kept on the diet for a couple weeks, but then gave up.

After giving up, you felt dejected and depressed, and you turned to the one thing that usually gives you comfort. Food. This of course makes the problem worse. You’d likely keep it up until you decided to diet again, and of course the same thing happens.

The solution is to decide upon a clear objective. Losing weight is kind of vague; it will help to be more specific. How about losing while enjoying the benefits of good food? That might be easier. So next time you try a diet, you’d step back periodically and ask yourself if you are meeting all the criteria of your objective. Are you losing weight? Are you enjoying the food you eat? If both answers are yes, then you’d likely continue your diet, and you wouldn’t fall of the wagon, and get dejected.

If you were losing weight, but weren’t enjoying the food, then you’d simply adjust to a different diet plan, until you found one that satisfied both requirements.

By doing this, you’ll learn a valuable lesson about yourself. You are much more resourceful than you think, and you can overcome any obstacle you come up against, providing you look at it with the right mindset.

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.