Monthly Archives: August 2015

Can You Get Rich Eating Ice Cream?

You Need To Look Past Instant Gratification

Look Into Your Future

Economists tell us that humans became civilized when we learned to delay gratification.

Meaning when we started taking our activities and measured them not only against how they would affect our “right now” lives, but how they’d affect our “out in the future” lives.

Lower animals are simply incapable of doing this. They are driven purely by instincts.

If we allow ourselves to be driven by instinct, we usually don’t end up so well.

In front of the couch, glued to the TV, stuffing our face endlessly with processed food.

Not thinking how this will affect us out into the future.

Now, there’s certainly a case that that’s precisely what “they” want us to do.

Those that stand to make money and political power from our weakness.

Maybe, maybe not. You can certainly make yourself crazy by thinking like that.

However, there IS benefit in thinking out in the future when considering acting now.

This is certainly not automatic. It does take some practice.

But remember the words of Ben Franklin. “Early to bed, early to rise, makes you healthy, wealthy and wise.”

That simple, often discarded statement may indeed be the gateway to wealth.

Because in that greeting card logic lies truth.

The more you delay gratification, putting off small pleasure NOW for a much bigger pleasure LATER, the more money you’ll make. The healthier you’ll be. The smarter you’ll be.

How do you do that?

You bring that future pleasure into the “now.”

Thinking about that bowl of ice cream, in front of you, gives you a BIG and IMMEDIATE sense of pleasure.

One that doesn’t require much thought.

But consider taking some time to IMAGINE a much BETTER pleasure out in the future.

Imagine having a six pack. Imagine all those sexy people checking out your sexy body. Imagine somehow that you can see them thinking, as they look at you, “Damn! I want some of that!”

Build up that imagination of a FUTURE PLEASURE until it is stronger than the NOW pleasure.

So the choice to delay gratification becomes automatic.

Granted, this takes some time. Some dedication. Some mental discipline.

Things most people simply do not have.

But considering the things that most people do not get, you can maybe see it’s a good idea to start doing the things that most people do not do.

And start getting WAY MORE than the average ice-creaming eating couch-rider.

No matter what you want, you can get.

If you’re willing to DO WHAT IT TAKES to get it.

Are You Afraid Of Broccoli Cake?

Delicious Cake!

Everything Requires Practice

If you want to get better at anything, you need to practice.

This seems obvious, but many times we misunderstand this.

For example, if you were to see some guy walking down the street that was absolutely ripped, with very little body fat, you’d make some assumptions.

One is that he spends a LOT of his time in the gym. Two is that he’s very careful about what he eats.

Sometimes though, when we see somebody that’s good at something, we assume they’ve always been good, or at least gifted.

When we see popular musicians, for example, we don’t automatically imagine all the time they spent learning their instruments, writing and rewriting their songs, and rehearsing them over and over.

Some of us assume they just picked up a guitar one day, and started jamming without effort.

One thing we almost never consider is something like interpersonal skills.

Meaning if we see somebody that’s really friendly and outgoing, a natural conversationalist, we assume they’ve always been like that.

Or if they weren’t they learned some hidden “secret” that suddenly flipped a switch in their brain, turning them from a shy introvert to a charismatic and persuasive extrovert.

Sure, there are people who were lucky enough to have a super supportive family life growing up, wonderful teachers, fantastic friends, and their whole lives the stars aligned in their favor to make them a super natural when they grew up.

But most of the time, they’ve got those skills simply because they decided, at one point, that they wanted them. Then they got busy getting them.

Which is both good news AND bad news at the same time.

It’s good news because you really CAN do anything you want, if only you want it enough.

It’s bad news because there really is only one way to get it. Practice. Effort. Time.

Three things most people treat like superman treats kryptonite.

But if you can identify what you want, and describe it clearly enough, you WILL get it.

If you want to bake a cake, it will take a little practice, effort and time.

But once you get started, the outcome is absolutely certain.

Every. Single. Time.

Nobody ever expects to put chocolate cake batter in the oven only to find a pile of broccoli thirty minutes later.

What do you want?

What skills would you like have? One year from now? Five years from now? Ten years from now?

If you are willing to do the work, you WILL get the results.

Have You Chosen Yet?

Choose Your Hero's Journey

Create Your Mission

One of the most common themes in superhero movies is an “origin story.”

We like to see how the hero “became” a hero.

The general progression is first there’s a story about the hero in his or her prime.

Then maybe another story or two. And then the origin story.

Even in modern movies, origin stories are often times the LAST of a franchise.

Even for ultra bad guys, like Darth Vader, first we see the bad guy, then we get the origin story.

A catholic priest explained to me this was precisely how the “story” of Jesus unfolded.

The first written gospels (Mark and Luke) started in the peak of his ministry. Later they touched on his “origins” (Matthew). Still later, they finally got to the beginnings (John).

Why do we tend to progress through this familiar process? Hero in his prime, then the origin story?

Maybe because we are keenly interested in our origins. First we figure out who we are, then we begin to wonder where we came from. 

Perhaps we feel this can help us better understand the complexities of life that we encounter on a day to day basis.

If we know where we came from, and why we are here, then we’ll maybe have an easier time dealing that stuff we don’t really want to deal with, but have to.

The great promise of life is that to a large extent, we get to DEFINE why we are here.

We are given a great deal of instincts, but even a greater range of learning abilities.

We don’t have wings, but we’ve learned to fly. We don’t have gills, yet we’ve learned to travel great distances underwater.

Our true purpose is that we are to choose our purpose.

To dream big, and then boldly move into our future with nothing but an expectation that we’ll learn more as we move forward.

They say that most people live lives of quiet desperation.

As if many of us are waiting for somebody to come and tell us what to do. Where to go. How to get there.

Once you realize that person is YOU, then it becomes clear.

Where do YOU want to go?

All you need to do is choose, and get going.

How To Build A Burning Desire

Generate A Burning Desire

The Reason For Daily Visualization

It’s widely accepted that setting a positive, huge goal for your life is crucial.

Napoleon Hill spoke about having a “burning desire” to achieve this.

Meaning you had to have a desire so strong, it would overpower everything that life through up in the way.

For example, if you were walking down a random street and there was a pile of smelly trash in the way, you’d probably just choose a different street.

But if you KNEW there was a sack of cash at the end of that street, you wouldn’t hesitate to climb over that pile of trash.

This is why having a burning desire is so crucial. The bigger the strength of your burning desire, the easier it will be to overcome the inevitable obstacles that come up.

And they WILL come up!

After all, if it were easy, it wouldn’t be any fun!

A great way to build up your burning desire is to simply spend a few minutes a day visualizing your goal. 

Some people misinterpret the reason for this. Some believe that visualizing your goal is all that’s required.

While in reality, visualizing your goal is what gives you the motivation to go out into the world and get it.

One of the best examples of  this is the California gold rush. In the mid 1800’s, gold was discovered in California.

This set off one of the largest mass migrations in history. People took off across the country, many on foot, with only a burning desire of finding gold.

Every single day, they got up, and overcame different obstacles. And everyday, they kept their burning desire in mind.

This is the power of the human spirit. YOUR human spirit.

With a sufficient burning desire in mind, you can achieve ANYTHING.

Sure, it will take time. Sure it will be difficult. Sure there will be setbacks.

But this is the purpose of life itself. To set big dreams, and CHOOSE to go after them.

What do you want?

Can you picture it? Does it get you excited? Do you think about it when you’re at stoplights, in the elevator, or waiting in line at the supermarket?

You should.

The more you burn that desire into your brain, the more motivation you’ll feel, and the faster and easier it will come.

How To Increase Awareness

Shift Your Filters

Shift Your Filters

Most sunglasses come with polarized lenses.

This means that they only let in the vertical component of the electromagnetic spectrum. 

This is to reduce the glare, which usually bounces off objects and comes horizontally.

If you take two lenses, one in front of the other, and turn them, they’ll suddenly turn black, not letting any light through.

One lens is cutting off everything but the horizontal component, and the other is cutting off everything but the vertical component. So zero light gets through.

The Hubble telescope was launched several years ago with great fanfare. Then they realized that the lenses were kind of messed up, so all the awesome pictures they were expecting came out blurry.

I saw this YouTube video the other day by a makeup artist. He was saying that a lot of girls come in to his shop and ask to be made up like models they see in magazines.

He explained that those are put through so many filters in Photoshop, it’s pretty impossible to get that effect naturally.

There are many things that can get between what’s out there, and what we see, or perceive.

Even now as your read this, you can shift your auditory filters, from low deep sounds, to high pitches hisses, and hear different things.

There’s a game where you stare at a picture with many objects for a few seconds, and then see how many you can remember.

Most can’t remember very many.

Think of all the things that you pass by, every single day. All the people that you could smile at, but don’t.

All the amazing things you could stop and appreciate, but don’t. All the opportunities that you could take advantage of, but don’t.

This is not wrong, or an example of any kind of limitation. It is simply IMPOSSIBLE to not see more than a small slice of a tiny sliver of what’s out there.

But generally speaking, what you look for, you will find.

If you expect to see unhappy people, you’ll see unhappy people.

If you expect to see friendly people waiting to lend you a hand, you will.

Many people try and experiment to find money. They purposely decide to find coins on the ground.

And guess what? They do.

Most people don’t even realize these filters exist, let alone how to shift them.

But when you do shift them, you can fine tune them to find pretty much anything.

What do YOU want?

See Through The Noise

See Through The Haze

Adjust Your Vision

If you’ve ever seen those hidden 3D pictures, you know how frustrating they can be.

Now, some people can see them right away. But not me.

The first few times, it felt like I just couldn’t “get it” while everybody else was saying how cool it was.

But when it finally clicked, it WAS pretty cool.

Even after that, it still took me a while, but once I got it, it was easy to get.

It’s kind of a focus thing, you need to look beyond what’s right in front of you. Pretend to look deeper than what’s really there.

Once I was out hiking with my buddies. I was up a couple hundred meters ahead. I came across this one hill, and saw this bear. I wanted to reach up and grab my camera, which was hanging over my pack.

But I was so close, that I was worried just the camera-grabbing motion would startle the bear, and either chase him away, or make him angry.

So I just stood there, as motionless as I could, and enjoyed being so close a to a VERY powerful force of nature.

He even looked right at me, and then quickly dismissed me. I imagined he thought something like, “I could kill you, but I’m too lazy.”

After a few minutes, I went up the slope, and over the rise.

When I came down on the other side, I saw something that TERRIFIED ME.

Two bear cubs!

Suddenly this powerful force of nature became WAY more dangerous. You NEVER get between a mama and her cubs!

So I FROZE. Only when my friends started showing up, and the bear and her cubs started walking down the hill away from me, did I grab my camera.

I thought I would have an AWESOME picture, one that would certainly amaze my friends.

Only when the pictures came out (this was before digital cameras were popular) you could barely see the bear.

Since I knew what to look for, I could see it. But none of my friends could, unless I pointed it out to them.

Even then they didn’t believe me.

Imagine if those people who made those 3D pictures never explained how to see them!

This is the danger of living with your eyes closed.

One the one hand, there are TONS of stuff out there that we simply can’t see. 

However, there’s nobody really there to point things out.

Which means it’s up to us. To change our filters, to have faith in ourselves to see deeper than most.

To look through the noise and see the treasures hidden right out in the open.

They’re there.

Waiting.

Can you see them?

Are You Kind To Your Best Friend?

Listen To Your Friend

Strengthen Your Instincts

When people go to Vegas, they hope to get “lucky.”

When people go to the track, they hope to get “lucky.”

Now, there’s blind luck, and there’s inspired luck.

For example, if you can learn to count cards, and stay focused, you can generally win most of the time.

So much so that if you start to win a lot, you’ll get kicked out. In the movie “Bringing Down The House,” which was based on the true story book, a group of students (and their professor played by Kevin Spacey) did just that.

With a pretty ingenious “group” card counting system, they won big. Consistently.

I also know a guy who’s pretty good at the track. He knows which horses are going to win, generally, before the race goes off. I don’t understand how he does it, but it’s a combination of reading body language (of the horses and their owners) as well as some advanced statistical analysis of past races for all the horses involved.

And he makes a very nice income from this “hobby.” More than most people make in a regular job. 

The truth is that all things are like this. Of course, most people are hoping for blind luck. They expect (or want) good things to come gift wrapped from some kind of fairy godmother.

But those that get lucky, consistently, instead of sitting around wishing, know that you need to put in a little effort.

But you’d be surprised how easy it is to learn to count cards. The theory is very simple, and it’s really a matter of a couple hours practice.

Most other “luck” is just as easy as well. It’s just a matter of understanding how the game works, and how to operate within it effectively.

For example, most people get hunches all the time. This is your subconscious speaking to you. Giving you a hint that there’s something good out there. Just waiting for you to grab it.

Most people are too scared, or too busy checking Facebook to notice.

Are you?

Imagine if you had a close friend, that was ALWAYS giving you fantastic advice, but you never listened. How long do you think they’d keep it up? They’d probably get gun shy after a while.

Now imagine if you finally started listening. Not only listening, but actually taking action based on their advice.

And imagine if once they saw you actually not only listening, but taking action, this made them MUCH MORE effective in spotting opportunities. So much they were literally speaking non-stop about all the things around you that you could turn into money, love, or anything else you wanted.

The truth is that friend is with you right now. They’ve always been with you and they always will be.

Will you start to listen? To take action based on their subtle advice?

You KNOW what will happen when you do!

Have You Made The Second Switch?

Switch On Your Life

Turn Yourself On

Efficiency is an interesting concept.

Basically, the more output you get per input, the more efficient your system is.

The more efficient your car is, the more output (miles) you get per input (gas).

The other day I was talking to a friend about language learning.

When you have to translate the language in your head, you’re pretty inefficient.

Foreign language in, internal translation (twice) and then foreign language out.

The magic “switch” comes when you get rid of the internal translation part, and start thinking in your target language.

Chomsky’s great contribution to linguistics was the idea of a “grammar organ” in our brain.

Between the ages of 0 and 2, we are busily trying to decipher the “structure” of our “native language.”

Once we get the structure worked out, it’s just a matter of filling in the parts to the empty machine, or the words onto the grammar structure.

His genius insight was that there is a “meta-structure” that all “native structures” are part of.

Which is why you can take any baby from any household on Earth, stick them in any other household on Earth, and they’ll learn the “new” “native language” like a champ.

This is also why when kids learn foreign languages when they are very young, they speak them fluently, without any discernable accents.

However, this is often misunderstood.

Many people assume that since that “language learning center” of our brains is most “open” when we are young, that all other learning ONLY happens when we are young.

Luckily, this is absolutely FALSE.

There is one very powerful “switch” that people NEVER turn on.

And just like when the “language structure switch” is turned on, when THIS switch is turned, like magic the world around us suddenly changes.

Obviously, none of us can remember what it was like to not know how to put words together and describe the world around us. However the switch from babbling nonsense to suddenly running around and describing people, events, and interactions with extremely accuracy is nothing short of miraculous.

That SAME shift can still happen.

All you’ve got to do is flip another switch.

A “meta switch” that will give you a whole new understanding of the world around you.

The people that have made this switch see things differently, and operate in their reality (which is the SAME as your reality) with much more efficiency.

The get more, do more, and enjoy more.

Which switch is this?

Shift Your Luck Filter

Find Better Tools

Get Some More Tools

When all you have is a hammer, all you see is nails.

This is a very basic description of human perception.

How we perceive the world around us is directly related to our own filters.

Some of these filters are pretty hard wired. These are throwbacks from evolution and kept us safe when we were running around in the jungle chasing dinner.

Since cavemen weren’t famous for their intellectual reasoning, Mother Nature had to make certain things automatic.

So when they saw something out of the corner of their eye that was a potential threat, that flight or fight response AUTOMATICALLY kicked in. They’d take off running before they knew what was what.

We’ve still got those filters today, which is pretty funny whenever we jump at shadows!

Other filters are based on our recent experience. Things that we’ve been thinking about a lot lately will start showing up.

Others are kind of in between, and they are not set in stone, but they take some effort to change.

They are also structurally based, rather than content based.

In NLP, these are called “Meta Programs.”

Like if you are more motivated by fear or pleasure. Or if you see a new situation, do you automatically find things you are familiar with, or things you are unfamiliar with? 

Or when you make a decision, does it come from the inside, or do you need to hear validation from the outside?

One thing that’s crucial is how open you are to seeing opportunities.

You can have the attitude of “nothing good ever happens to me,” or “why doesn’t anything happen to me.”

Many people have these thought patterns running through their heads.

And guess what? Nothing ever happens to them!

Others have the idea of “Something fantastic is going to happen,” or even “I wonder what cool thing is going to happen?”

And guess what? Those people usually find some pretty good things. Some may say they are extraordinary lucky.

Imagine if you saw an interesting person across the room. Instead of thinking, “I’d like to talk to them, but I might get rejected,” you thought, “I wonder what cool things I can find out about that person?”

Imagine going into a job interview and instead of thinking, “I hope I don’t mess up,” you think, “Hmm, I wonder if this is the right opportunity for me?”

Now, this wouldn’t magically change your life. It wouldn’t rain money.

But you would create a LOT more positive events.

All it takes is a shift inside, and you’ll see a shift outside.

See The Structure Of Reality

See The Structure of Reality

Behind The Curtains

One of the biggest lessons from NLP and hypnosis is content vs. structure.

Structure is what moves us, but we tend to focus on content.

There are plenty of instinctive triggers that drive our behavior, like social proof, authority, scarcity, etc.

But we tend to ignore those, and focus on the content.

If you were to walk down the street, and saw a huge crowd in front of a restaurant, you’d assume the food was pretty good.

But if you were to walk down on a different day, and saw no people, you’d assume the place was lousy.

All without tasting the food, or the content.

Advertisers have known for years that a very good marketing campaign can sell a mediocre product.

While a really, really good product will sit on the shelf gathering dust, if it’s not promoted right.

Many years ago people were buying rocks. But since they were called “pet rocks,” and were marketed pretty cleverly, everybody HAD to have one.

One of the greatest skills you can develop is to easily switch between content and structure.

It’s like having x-ray vision into reality, seeing things most people miss.

You can start seeing the real drivers of not only human behavior, but larger events as well.

It’s been said that there are three types of people in the world.

Those that make things happen, those that watch things happen, and those that say, “What happened?”

With most people in the last group, it’s no wonder why most people seem to never catch any breaks, and when they do it’s usually thought to be once in a long while type of thing.

But when you shift your thinking into structure view, you’ll be in that small minority that can see things unfolding, and then position yourself to take advantage of them.

Everybody will think you’ve become incredibly lucky, but you’ll know what’s up.

It does take some practice. It’s kind of like paying attention to the grammatical structure of your speech WHILE you’re talking.

But once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty amazing.