Tag Archives: NLP

Why Turtles Will Someday Rule The World

Once upon a time there was a small community of turtles. They had existed relatively peacefully over the years, surrounded by various other communities of various other animals. Sometimes there had been some interactions between communities, of different levels. Although on the surface the reasons for such interactions were humanitarian, the underlying reason was always the same.

Competition for resources.

They would always meet under the pretense of exploring the outlying regions, which neither of the communities had the ability to do alone, and they were always worried about what they would discover. On the one hand, they worried that they would discover a magnificent resource, which would lead to ultimate war and destruction.

On the other hand, they were worried that they would discover something much greater than they were, something that would think they were a mere resource, to be used and discarded. And of course that would also lead to the ultimate destruction of them all.

Either way they ventured out into the unknown each time with a great deal of trepidation. And each time they returned empty handed. Until this time.

This time they found something so incredibly powerful they couldn’t help but to question their own existence. They couldn’t help but to question the reason for their small communities on the bottom of the ocean.

The other day I was eating a tuna fish sandwich, when suddenly I realized I had forgotten to set the timer on the washing machine. I don’t usually do that, which is strange because I don’t even have a washing machine, let alone a timer. And sometime when I forget to do things that I don’t normally remember how I was wondering about this, it kind of makes me step back and think about the reason for all of this.

Anyways, back to our story.

So they found this magnificent resource, and instead of fighting for, they decided to see if they could share it. And they tried valiantly for thousands of years before they realized that it was just no use at all. And that’s when they came to the startling revelation that they didn’t really need to get along, and that by warring over resources, they were actually improving their species.

Which of course leads to another point about this story.

Turtles almost never forget. Which is why they will someday rule the world.

How To Find Your Niche – The Baker’s Success Story

There used to be this guy that worked in a bakery. It was a small shop in a small neighborhood. He had owned the bakery for several years, and had slowly developed a large following in the town, inasmuch as baker can develop a following.  He was he go to guy for all of the birthday parties, wedding celebrations and all other gatherings of friends and family that required any kind of bread product. He was the man.

It wasn’t always that way. When he first moved into town, he didn’t have a nickel to his name. He moved into town back during the transitional time in the local economy, when the city was just starting out. The city had been a small bedroom community for many manufacturing plants in the next town over. Many people that worked in the plants made their home in this small town.

The baker, who back then wasn’t yet a baker, moved to town in hopes of finding a good job in one of the factories. He had just finished six years in the service, and was hoping to apply his skills to one of the many technical based manufacturing plants in the area.

Unfortunately, things didn’t work out quite as well as he’d hoped. Just when he moved into town, the economy suffered a series of serious setbacks. Jobs moving overseas, a significant drop in demand for the manufactured products. Many people lost their jobs, and a lot of secondary businesses that depended on those people simply went out of business. It’s hard to stay in business when nobody can afford to buy your product.

So this ex military man was in a bit of a tough spot. He had saved enough money to get him by for a couple months, but he had really been depending on the source of income from one of the factories. That was his first lesson.

Never depend on a source of income that isn’t yours yet.

So he did a quick inventory of his skills. In the service he had been assigned to the maintenance department on large carriers. He was pretty good at fixing things, small things, big things. Anything mechanical, he could fix it.

That is what led him to his first job fixing the bread machine. He had always loved sourdough bread, and one day he happened into a bread shop to buy a loaf, or half a loaf. The owner was very sad, because his large mixing machine wasn’t working properly. He explained to the ex military man that the part was on order, but wasn’t expected for at least a week. He was beside himself, because without the mixing machine, he would lose what little business he had left. That’s when the ex military man recognized the second lesson.

Always have a back up plan.

Of course, the bread shop owner didn’t have a back up plan, and was exposed to significant risk. The ex-military man, his heart set on eating some sourdough bread, decided to offer his services. He wasn’t doing anything, and maybe the shop owner would give him some free bread. He suggested the trade, and the shop owner quickly agreed.

It didn’t take long for the shop owner to realize what a resource the military man was. The shop owner was getting old, and he knew an opportunity when he saw one. He had worked in this same shop for almost twenty years, and all the equipment was very old. If he could convince this ex military man to be his repairman, he could stay in business a few years longer. So they struck a bargain.

The ex military man would help out around the shop, and repair and keep all the equipment running smoothly. The bread shop owner would pay him a modest salary, and give him all the bread he could eat. Both the ex-military man the bread shop owner noticed the third lesson at the same time.

Always be open to new opportunities.

It didn’t take long for the military man to realize he had a love for bread. He began experimenting with different recipes, different cooking methods, and more and more people began coming to the shop to eat the delicious bread made by this ex sailor.

It didn’t take long for the townspeople to forget about his military past and see him only as the baker’s apprentice. The baker himself began to plan his retirement, certain that his apprentice would take over.

And when he did retire, and the bakers apprentice became the baker, it was a smooth a transition as you could imagine.  There was a big celebration, a farewell party of sorts (although the retired baker still lived in the town and was president of the Lions Club), and the apprentice became the baker.

And maybe he realized it, maybe he didn’t, but here’s the fourth lesson:

Sometimes you find your niche in life, but more often than not, your niche will find you.

Easily Remove Fear and Anxiety With the Swish Pattern

If you ever run across situations that give you anything less than an immediate resourceful and beneficial emotional response, then this post is for you. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, hang in there; it will make sense in a second.

Let’s say somebody mentions to you that you have to give a presentation at work next week. You weren’t expecting it, so what happens? If you’re like most people, you’d likely get nervous, anxious, even fearful. It’s no secret that speaking in public is the biggest fear for most people.

But what if you were able to have a different response? What if your automatic response was much more supportive and resourceful? What if instead of getting fearful and anxious, you felt confident of yet another opportunity to share with others your incredible awesomeness?

Well, there’s a simple way to reprogram your brain to respond however you like to situations like that. It takes only a few minutes to learn, and about a minute to practice it, whenever and wherever you like, the only exception being while driving, but you can do it at stoplights.

You may have even heard of it. It’s the famous swish pattern from NLP, and it’s been around for many years. Probably because it is so easy to learn and teach, it’s likely the most popular of all NLP procedures.

Here’s how you do it.

First, think of something that gives you a feeling of anxiety. For now, pick something that’s not that big a deal. Once you learn the procedure, you can move on to bigger things.

Got it? Ok, now what triggers that anxiety or emotion? Is it a picture you make in your mind, a sound, and somebody’s tone of voice? Take a few moments to get clear.
Got it? Ok, good. Put that picture or sound or whatever it is in your left hand. Move your left hand so it is completely outside of your peripheral vision.

As you slowly move your left hand closer to your face, with your palm open, allow the feeling of anxiety to grow as your hand get closer. Do this a couple times to “set” your anxiety response to your left hand motion.

Ok, clear your head. Think of something neutral, like banana chicken ice cream.

Now, think of something that gives you a really good feeling. Confident, playful, self-assured. Whatever it is, from anywhere in your past. A great golf shot, or when you told that joke that went over really well that one time, or that time when you made that special person feel really good.

Do the thing with that good feeling, and your right hand. Slowly move it closer to your face, palm open, and allow that good feeling to swell, as it gets closer.

Ok, now clear your head with another mental bowl of strawberry pizza.

Now the good part. Bring both hands so they are outside your peripheral vision. Slowly bring your left hand in, and just as it creeps across the threshold of sight, and you begin to feeling the attempted awakenings of those old unhelpful emotions, immediately drop your left hand and bring your right towards your face, and allow the full brunt of those new, powerful, helpful emotions to overwhelm you, like that gust of hot wind as you walk out of the freezing cold casino into the hot desert of Vegas, or that wave that came out of nowhere and crashed over you, destroying your plans to wade in slowly.

Do this several times. After about ten times or so, you should begin to automatically feel those new feelings and emotions whenever you think of that old trigger. You’ve effectively kept the same trigger, but changed the emotions that it triggered.

If you only this once, it can be helpful, but unfortunately it usually wears off after a couple days. The trick is to keep doing this every few days for a few weeks, until the old emotional response is completely gone. The stronger the old emotional response, the longer it will take.

The good part is it only takes more than a minute at first, when you set your left and right hands, and choose which emotions you want to replace with what. Once you got that down, you literally do this ten times at every stop light on your way to and from work.

And once you prove to yourself that this really works, you will be amazed how much more resourceful you can program your mind to be. The opportunities for self improvement and self-development are limitless.

Have fun.

The Chipmunks And The Winter Goddess

Once upon a time, there were some friends. They lived in the forest, and they had a fairly easy life. They were all chipmunks, and because they were chipmunks they were very aware of the effect that the cycle of the seasons had on their lives. They couldn’t just go down to the supermarket whenever they wanted to get some food. They had to rely on what nature provided.

But they also had to rely on their ability to predict the times when nature wouldn’t provide, so they would be ok. They were all very good about watching each other and checking different temperature patterns so they would know when it was time to start saving a little bit of what they collected.

Normally, during times of good weather, they didn’t really have to worry about what they collected. They just collected, and ate what they collected, whenever they felt like it. It was always a little bit of sad time for them on the day when they realized that winter was coming. On that day, they had to start saving a little bit of what they collected for later. They were sad because they couldn’t devote their minds to only playing; they had to think a little bit about the future.

Of course when they were young, their parents had to practically force them to start saving when the time came. Because they were young and inexperienced, they never really understood the significance of the coming winter.

But as they transitioned to young adulthood, they started to recognize the importance of having to save. Each of their parents was very good about making sure they experienced enough worry during winter to remember to collect for the next year. Not enough worry to cause them any emotional harm, but just enough to make them aware of the importance of saving.

Some of their friends didn’t have it so easy. Their parents were selfish, and didn’t want to share any of their worry. They kept it all to themselves. They thought they were being good parents by always providing for their kids, without allowing them the luxury of learning how to provide for themselves.

When they grew up, and these young chipmunks had to leave their parents and live on their own, some of them were very unprepared to handle the changes of the weather on their own. And sadly, some of these didn’t make it.

Which is why every year, even thought they were sad their playtime was over, they were glad they had developed the skills to shift from pure play in to only partial play and partial work. Sometimes, they were excited when winter came, because just thinking of all the resources they’d saved up made them feel very proud of themselves, and confident in their ability to handle the changing seasons.

They had fully understood and appreciated the gift of worry, but only if you listen to it, and take steps to make sure what you are worried about doesn’t happen. When you do that, worry can turn into the powerful confidence of self-sufficiency.

How To Change Your History and Change Your Future

Have you ever done something that you later regretted, or at the very least wish you would have done things differently? Ok, stupid question. We all have. I usually do stuff on a daily basis that I later regret, or at least wish I had done differently. Said thank you a little bit more loudly, smiled at some cute girl you see instead of just making passive eye contact, said something to that rude person that cut in front of you in line at the supermarket. I’m sure you can think of many things like this, maybe not so important things, but things that maybe you wish you could have done differently. 20/20 hindsight, and all that.

Well, luckily there is a process from NLP that can help you to reprogram your daily life on a regular basis to slowly change how you habitually and automatically behave in certain situations. This is perfect if you are aware of some kind of situation you’d rather behave differently than you normally do, but you usually don’t think about it until it’s too late.

For example, let’s say there is a girl you see at the supermarket that you stop by on your way home from work. You don’t know much about her except hat you think she is cute, and you might want to get to know her a little bit better. So you wish you could think of some clever thing to say, not a super mack pick up line, just a comment about something to peak her interest a little bit.

But every time you see her, you are either busy, or there are people around, or you just can’t think of anything to say in the moment. Then twenty minutes later, after you get home, you think of saying something about some button or something she had pinned on her uniform. Let’s say she had a “get out the vote” button, and you thought about mentioning that you volunteered for a local politicians campaign recently. Of course it’s to late, and next time you see her, she may or may not be wearing that button.

What you do is re-imagine the interaction, re-imagine your experience from that particular day. Only don’t remember it the way it happened, remember it the way you would like it to have happened. Something simple like “Oh you think voting is important? I do to. I actually volunteered for Mr. X’s campaign last spring.” That’s it. It’s important to only remember your part of the changed memory, because you can’t control other people reactions.

Do this a few times until the “re-recorded” memory seems as real as the real memory. What this does is program your subconscious with what you want to happen, rather than what actually happened. Your brain is like a computer, and you can program it like a computer. Only with your brain, you have to program it with images and feelings, (since your brain can’t really speak Fortran or C++).

What this does is give your brain the directive to say something interesting based on the environment when you see that girl, instead of just passively paying our money and collecting your receipt.

This may take a few tries, but when you do this on a regular basis, you will see some profound changes in your daily life. And the strange thing is, they will come almost naturally. You’ll have to really pay attention to notice them.

Rewriting your daily history is a great and powerful way to reprogram your automatic behavior so you can experience more pleasure in life and give more pleasure to others. And when you can do that, you’re doing pretty good.

Tap Egyptian Power of Success

I was sitting in a bowling alley recently, waiting for my turn, and this guy sitting next to me started talking about the Egyptian Pyramids. He was explaining all the historical and political significance of them, which I had never really thought of before. When most people think of the pyramids, they naturally think of these giant structures that were built out in the middle of the desert, many thousands of years ago by a culture that we can’t begin to understand. Some even believe they had influence from alien life forms, as some of the structural mathematics matches up keenly with certain elements of our solar system and out galaxy.

This guy was telling me how it was a brilliant political maneuver by the government at the time. They were very dependent on the Nile for almost all of their food, and when the Nile didn’t provide sufficient water, many people suffered. Every year the Nile would flood, submerging many peoples houses and farms, so they were not only dependent on the Nile, but they had to live and move according to its behavior.

Having a whole people who felt they were at the mercy of the gods was not an easy people to govern. Any edict the Pharaoh would proclaim would always be conspired in light of the heavens and the forces of nature, and would consequently take a back seat.

Enter the pyramids.

Deciding to build the pyramids was a stroke of genius. It gave virtually every Egyptian a feeling of being in control of something, for the first time in their lives. They knew they were building a very large structure, and they could even imagine a point up in the sky that they were aiming for, and that they would one day reach. To go even further, the engineers designed the pyramids so that when they were finished, they would point to a certain and prominent star in the sky, so even at night the people could connect their daily activity towards a specific goal to a far of distant point of light in the mysterious night sky.

If you’ve ever taken the time to look at your goals, it’s important to have them defined in two different ways. One way so that you can determine exactly when you have accomplished them, and giving you a specific time and place to focus your attention. Keep your eyes and mind on the finish line at all time, so to speak. This way your brain knows exactly what behaviors to do and not to do in order to get you to your goal. Many people set goals and fail, not because they don’t want them, but because they are not set with enough clarity and specificity.

The other important factor is to set a goal in a direction that you want to go in. Once you achieve your goal, you are going to have to come up with another one. Resting on your laurels has long been known as a killer of motivation and success. When you choose a far of direction, like the horizon, or a star in the sky, you will keep on going in the right direction, and can keep your motivation when you stumble along the way.

When you set both of these with enough clarity and specificity, you will almost get to your goal automatically. Just like the pyramids, once they set the plans, gave everybody a clear idea of where the were going, the pyramids went up almost automatically. And anything you want to create in life will go up just as quickly and as smoothly.

One thing that did go very smoothly, was my bowling. It seemed that every time I released it, it would roll very smoothly straight to the gutter, and my friends very quickly erupted in laughter and told me what an entertaining bowler I am to watch.

Powering Flowers can lead to Startling Realizations

Once there was a lady that owned a flower shop. She had opened the flower shop several years ago, and after the inevitable rough start up times that many small business face, she started to eke out a profit. Within a year she had realized one of her life long dreams. Ever since she was a little girl, she had dreamed of owning a small flower shop. Buying the flowers from the distributors, arranging them, selling them to people knowing that they would in turn give them to others to increase pleasure and happiness. This was probably her greatest reward, knowing that she was supplying people with something that they used to make others feel good.

After a few years, she started to notice that her sales, and her customer base were fairly consistent. After the first couple of years where moved out of the red and started to make a profit, her profits slowly increased every year, until recently. In the past three or four years, her profits had been almost exactly the same. She started seeing the same customers come into her shop, and she noticed she was selling the same arrangements to the same people during the same times of year.

Even valentines day she noticed the same people come in, that she usually only saw once per year, and by a dozen roses or some other traditional arrangement. Her original satisfaction that she had enjoyed when she started to make money was starting to grow into a complacency that she hadn’t expected. It wasn’t long before she saw her dream turn into another routine that she did on a daily basis. Gone were the times when she was able to generate good feelings as she headed into she shop every morning. More and more often, she would wake up sometimes with a feeling of just another day at work.

She started to notice this attitude among her customers as well. She wasn’t sure if it was she that was affecting them, or they affecting her. It was like everybody was trapped in a routine that they couldn’t’ escape from. Pretty soon the flowers themselves stopped looking so pretty, and began to take on a mundane everyday part of the background feeling to them.

She didn’t’ really notice this, as things like this usually sneak up on you slowly, and before you know it, something that was exciting is suddenly normal and you feel like you’ve always been doing this. You don’t really want to stop, because you’ve been doing it for so long, and it seems that the only that is really keeping you going is inertial. It’s like you are in some kind of a daze, doing the same things over and over again without any real feeling to them.

Then something terrible happened. Her neighbor’s daughter was hit by a car. She was rushed to the hospital and into surgery for three hours. After a long horrible wait, the doctors said she would be fine. It was close though. Her parents were obviously relieved. The flower shop lady decided to visit this little girl in the hospital, as she always exchanged a few words with her on the way to work.

What she saw in the hospital shocked her beyond belief. She had never been in a hospital. She was lucky enough to never have been sick, and although she was happily married, she didn’t have any children. What she saw was the abundance of flowers in the hospital. And she saw looks of happiness on people’s face that she had never seen before in her flower shop. When she visited the little girls room, she couldn’t help but to burst into tears at what happened. The little girls room was filled with flowers bought for the little girl by all of the neighbors. All from the lady’s flower shop. She didn’t notice this at first, but when she walked in, the little girl, who was still recovering from a painful three-hour surgery, beamed at her.

“Look at all your flowers! Did you know you had so many pretty flowers?”

And she did know, and she did notice. And she never forgot.

If You Ask, They Will Give

Once upon a time there was a magic restaurant, run by a retired wizard. He used to be a very powerful wizard, and though he would enjoy playing golf after he retired, but that was kind of boring. So he opened a restaurant. It was kind of a fast food place, but there were also tables that people could see waitresses bringing food. There were three guys that would always come by and stand outside the restaurant and look in, but they were afraid to go in because they didn’t have any idea what kind of restaurant it was, what kind of food it was, or even if it was a traditional restaurant, where you sit down and order, or a hybrid, where you place your order at the front, and then somebody brings it to your table, or where you place your order at the front and have to sit around and wait at the front for your order.

They three guys watched with great interest as they observed different people doing different things. Some people would walk in and order, and sit down and the food was brought to them, others stood and waited, and still others walked in straight away and sat down. Once they even saw somebody walk in, and linger around near the front, and then some woman came out and led him to a table.

The three guys that were watching tried to formulate a theory about how the restaurant operated. At first, they thought that the difference was due to the socio-economic level of the people that came walking to the shop. They assumed that rich, upper class people got served better and with more respect that poor lower class people. But then they saw a few guys in expensive suits walk in, place their order, wait at the front for the order to put placed own in front of them, and then carry it themselves to a table, that sometimes they had to even bus themselves a little bit before sitting down.

And they saw a couple guys walk in that seemed to be wearing very old, very inexpensive clothing, and even smelling as though they hadn’t showered in a while. They saw a few of these guys treated with ultra first class treatment.

Then they decided that maybe it was due to the level of attractiveness of the people that came in. They figured that really attractive and sexy men and women that came in would receive first class treatment, while normal guys and gals might get the brown bag treatment. Then they saw some average guys receive first class treatment, and some people that looked as though they could be models of movie stars waiting at the front for their orders, which they had to carry themselves back to the table.

After weeks and weeks sitting outside, and formulating theory and theory, only to see it disproved, they finally they decided to experiment. They drew straws to see who would go in first. They the guy that was chosen to go in first, was very nervous. He wasn’t sure how to act, or what to say. He walked in, and stood around the front, waiting to see if somebody would lead him to a table. Nobody did. Then he went up slowly, and noticed there were no menu boards above the registers. Why didn’t they notice this before? He slowly walked up to the counter. The girl behind the register smiled at waited. Nervous, frustrated, anxious, he turned and ran.

The next guy went in two days later, after much discussion, they looked through the windows, watching what people were eating. Finally they decided that he would walk in, and order a cheeseburger, french fries, and a coke. Then he would wait and see what would happen.

Finally, it was his turn to walk in. He was even more nervous that the first guy. He timidly walked up to the register, and ordered a cheeseburger, fries, and a coke. The girl behind the register smiled, tapped a few buttons on the mysterious looking object, which they assumed had been a cash register, but now the second guy wasn’t so sure. Why hadn’t they noticed this before?

“For here or to go?” she asked helpfully.

He looked around, trying to get an idea of what to do. He saw beautiful waitresses taking orders from plain looking sitting patrons, he saw rich businessmen reading the newspaper waiting for their take out order.

“um, to go.” He managed, wanting to leave as quickly as possible. Before he knew it, his food was placed down in front of him in a non-descript paper bag. He grabbed it and left as quickly as he could

Now the three were more dumbfounded that ever. This something strange happened. The third guy saw his next door neighbor walk in, pause and two stunning waitresses came out and led him to a large booth next to a huge window with a view of a beautiful waterfall. Why hadn’t they noticed that before? They were shocked. They watched as the third guys next-door neighbor made his way through a seemingly exquisite fourteen-course meal, complete with some kind of French appetizer they thought was only an urban legend. Frustrated beyond belief, because the third guy new what an absolute dweeb his next door neighbor was, walked in, his frustration overpowering his anxiety and fears.

“I’d like the best table you have. And four of the most gorgeous waitresses that have ever walked the earth!” he proclaimed in a loud and confident voice.

Before he could even inhale after his outburst, four of the most gorgeous waitresses came walking out, wearing brilliant evening gowns.

“I want the largest booth in the place, with a view of the ocean.” He didn’t know why he asked for an ocean view, that’s just what came out.

“Certainly,” said the apparent head waitress. They led him to a booth, and he was amazed to see the most gorgeous beach view he could ever imagine.

Filled with confidence, he ordered every possible luxury item he could possibly think of. The waitresses merely scribbled furiously on their pads, and nodded their heads in agreement. After they left, he noticed his neighbor smiling, looking at him.

“This place is great, isn’t it? I don’t know how it works, but they will give you whatever you ask for. I don’t know why they don’t advertise this place; I guess they don’t want it to get too busy. You kind of have to figure it out on your own. But not matter what you want, all you have to do is ask for it, and they will be happy to give it to you. They funny thing is, is that if you are unsure of what you want, they will be unsure of what to give you, and then you’ll usually end up getting something that isn’t worth much of anything. But the more you know what you want, the more eager they will be to give it to you.”

For some reason, the third guy felt a little reluctant to tell his friends about his discovery. Some things, he reckoned, are much much more rewarding when you discover them on your own.

How to be a Jedi Master of Conversation

So the other day I was hanging out with this new set of friends I had met previously. I had run into them a few nights ago in a local bar, and we started talking about various things that you usually talk about in bars with strangers. The conversation steered it’s way around to baseball, and I turned out the had an extra ticket to a game last weekend. They offered, and I accepted. So there we were hanging out in the parking lot, having a few and cooking some bbq like most people do before a baseball game.

It’s interesting when you pay attention to the way a conversation flows. It’s a highly dynamic and interesting phenomenon. It’s like it has a mind of its own. One interesting thing you can do next time you find yourself in a conversation that is kind of wandering around aimlessly without any intended direction is to do some experimentation. I wouldn’t recommend doing this when the conversation is somewhat important, like if you happen to be testifying before congress or anything. In that case you might want have your game face on.

But if you think of the topic of conversation as a separate, living, breathing organism, it can be fun to experiment with it and see how many different ways you can stretch it. Sometimes it’s like when you chase a chicken. You can delude yourself into thinking that you are controlling it, but in reality, a chicken has very limited intelligence, and is operating on pure panic and fleeing in any direction possible, sometimes completely irrelevant of the noises you are making to communicate to the poor chicken that you really aren’t going to chop off its head and eat it.

Try this experiment: Next time you find yourself in the middle of a conversation of little global economic importance, choose a topic, completely at random, and as completely far removed from the current topic as possible. Then try and slowly steer the conversation towards your selected topic, but try and do it in such a way that the other people bring up the new items of the conversation. To do this you’ll have to introduce little intermediate transitional breadcrumbs and hopefully covertly help people to think of the connection on their own. The more you practice this, the sooner you’ll realize you can steer a conversation any way you want, including towards things to your immediate benefit. Which will pretty much make you a Jedi master.

Untie Your Elephant Leg and Roam Free

The other day I was reading this really interesting article on the Internet. You know how you are just surfing around and come across something that intrigues you somehow. You get a feeling of curiosity, and you have to read this, like something here is really fascinating.

The article was about elephant trainers in India. It was talking about how when they take an elephant at a certain age, they tie a long rope around it’s leg, and the other end to a large post in the middle of the elephant training camp. The interesting thing about this is that they have to tie the rope to the elephant’s leg at just the right time, or else it won’t have the right effect.

Timing is very important in cases like this. People can realize how important timing is because life itself is a long succession of events, which are dependent upon events that transpired before them. When you think of how events are really based largely on what happens before them, you can appreciate the value of proper timing. I’m sure many comedians have made the mistake of telling a punch line at the wrong time, to unhappy professional consequence.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried stand up comedy, but it’s an interesting study in communication, there is a unique style of communication that makes doing stand up particularly humorous. And when you can combine the skills of stand up with other acting skills such as improv, then you can be really influential with your communication. There are lots of different books on this subject, if you are interested in improving your communication skills. Most people can realize the importance of being able to improve your communication skills.

So when they tie the elephant’s leg to the middle of the camp, they only need to keep him tied up for a few months before he learns of the limitation. Even when they remove the rope later on, the elephant still thinks he is constrained by a physical limitation that is no longer there. Some elephants can go their whole lives and be tied by an imaginary rope that was taken away a long time ago.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been constrained by something in the past that no longer applies, but it can be useful to look through the list of limitations in that you keep in your head and go through them. You might be surprised to find that many of them are no longer applicable. And when you can take any list of things where most of the items on the list don’t apply any more, most people just go ahead and crumple up the whole list and throw it in the garbage.

When you can remove all your limitations just like that, you are free to do pretty much anything. Have sex with beautiful men and women, make lots of money, run for president, whatever you can think of is how way more possible than when you had that old list of outdated ideas in your head. Something to think about next time it feels as though something is tugging at your leg.