Monthly Archives: September 2015

Are You Using Magic Straw?

See The Whole Story

When I was a kid my older brother used to take me places.

He could drive, and I couldn’t.

Once he convinced me the car was magic. He would wave his hands over the AC, and it would turn on. He would wave his hands again, and it would turn off.

He had a hidden switch over on his side that I couldn’t see.

This is the heart of all magic. Misdirection. Sleight of hand. Doing something to take our attention off the real stuff that’s happening behind the scenes.

This is also why things like manifesting or overnight success seem like magic.

It’s like the straw that breaks the camel’s back, but in reverse.

Imagine if we only saw on piece of straw come down and shatter that poor camel. We’d think it was some super magical piece of straw. We might pick it up and reverse engineer it. Study books on magic straw. Figure out how to throw pieces of straw in the right way. Do the correct straw meditation.

Then when it didn’t work, we might think this whole “Magic Straw Theory” was all nonsense. A con.

Of course, we’d be ignoring all the other pieces of straw, identical to the “magic” straw, that had been piling up on that poor camel’s back for YEARS.

Success is the same way.

I read an interesting statistic the other day. People over 50 are much more likely to have successful start up companies.

It’s also interesting to note that in “Think and Grow Rich,” Hill pointed out that most people don’t “get rich” until they’re well past their forties.

Hmm.

Maybe they were lazy? Maybe they were busy playing video games until they were fifty until they finally got around to reading the right “LOA” books and finally started doing the “right” affirmations?

Or maybe they’ve been busting their hump (see what I did there?) their whole lives and all their years of experience (or trial and feedback) and now it’s starting to pay off.

Does that mean it HAS to take that long?

Nope.

But it doesn’t HAVE TO be instantaneous either.

One way or the other, it DOES take action. Effort. Trial and feedback. Other people. Communication.

And I’ll wager NONE of those guys and gals who eventually became successful ever said, “Wow, this is EXACTLY how I planned it was going to be!”

Luckily, life is TOO UNPREDICABLE to be boring. Cookie cutter. Paint by numbers. Step by step.

It’s filled with wonderful things and people and experiences to discover on your way to riches.

If you haven’t started yet, get started.

These tools will help:

Mind Persuasion

Choose, Start, Never Stop

Transform Your World

Long time ago I ran an R and D lab for a big medical company.

We designed surgical devices.

Often times we’d have to come up with something out of thin air to run a particular experiment.

My buddy who worked in the machine shop was my go-to-guy for this.

I’d explain kind of what I needed, and he’d take a chunk of metal and use his mad skills and mad tools to turn that chunk of metal into a perfect piece of precision.

Sometimes I wouldn’t even be able to describe what I needed it to do. I’d just show him a rough sketch, he’d come to the lab and take a look, and understand.

An hour or two later, he’d have a precisely engineered device, made from a raw hunk of metal.

This is what makes us human. We look at something, and imagine something much better. Those with skills take things from their environment, and transform them.

Dirt into huge fields of food production that can feed millions.

Raw metal from the earth into complicated electronic circuitry that allows people around the globe to chat in real time.

Inside your brain are those same structures. Those same neural connections that allow for you to imagine a better future, and then create it.

Everything you have now is directly related to your thoughts you had before.

The quality of your thinking today will have a direct impact on your life tomorrow.

What do you think of?

What do you dream of?

More importantly, what are your strategies for making those dreams come true? Because they aren’t going to happen on their own.

It takes work, effort, risk, failure, and your inherent resilience to never give up.

Because your choice to give up or keep pushing forward is the ONLY difference between achieving your life’s vision or watching others achieve theirs.

What’s it going to be?

If you haven’t chosen the life you want, choose.

If you’ve chosen and have started to make it happen, start.

These will help:

Mind Persuasion

True Meaning Beneath The Surface

Who Are You?

We use way more metaphors than we realize.

Step up to the plate, take the bull by the horns, measure twice cut once.

Even within common sentences like “fall in love,” or “work through problems” are metaphors.

The nouns “love” and “problems” don’t really exist. Sure, they exist in our minds, but you can’t pick them up and throw them out the window. They are metaphors to describe very complicated underlying phenomena.

But when we use them in sentences, our monkey brains have to use them AS IF they were regular objects.

If you know anything about NLP, you know the famous saying, “The Map Is Not The Territory.” (Which, by the way, was invented by a guy who had nothing to do with NLP…).

What does this mean? Metaphors are only an approximation. NOT the real thing.

Sometimes we start to think that the metaphor IS the thing, rather than a handy description of something that we can NEVER truly understand.

What’s the biggest metaphor of all?

You.

Your sense of self. The idea of you. Always changing. Every few years, all the molecules, cells, etc. will be replaced. Every breath is an exchange of matter. Inorganic matter that somehow sustains life.

The YOU who is reading this sentence now is a different YOU that started reading this sentence.

Every moment you are updating your memories, rearranging your thoughts, and even shifting slightly in your posture based on millions of subconscious programs all running at once.

There’s a saying in the dating community that “Women aren’t meant to be understood, only appreciated.”

Maybe this applies to YOU as well.

Sometimes it’s necessary to understand why you do things. What made you say that thing to that person, or why you want to do something but are too nervous. Once you can figure that out, you can go back in your mind and tweak your personal history a bit. Give yourself more freedom and choice. Less fear and more courage.

Other times, though, it’s better to stop wondering. Stop asking. Stop trying to figure yourself out.

Just relax, sink deep into your thoughts, and appreciate yourself. Appreciate your energy. A connection to the source. From far back to the moment of creation, far out into the future.

That endless stream of energy in which you are now relaxing.

Take some time every day, to sit with yourself just a few minutes. Close your eyes. Feel your feelings. Feel your energy. And appreciate yourself.

Just as you are.

And when you’re ready to get even better, check these out:

Mind Persuasion

Avoid The Two Tragedies of Life

They Both Suck

One thing your brain is good at is categorizing things.

Scientists have discovered that primitive cultures have an inherent knowledge of different plant species.

They intuitively know which plants, even when they see them the first time, whether they’ll be good for medicine, or eating, or clothing.

Surprisingly, these instinctive categories match up pretty closely with scientific categories.

One of the Meta Programs, those semi-permanent filters we carry around with us, is to sort by similarity, or sort by differences.

Like if you looked at a bunch of shapes, you might automatically see how they were similar to each other, or different from each other.

Knowing how you do this can help. Sometimes sorting by similarity is helpful, sometimes sorting by difference is helpful.

If you always choose “bad” relationship partners, for example, you might be sorting for something similar when you should be sorting for something different.

They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

One way to get out of any rut is to make a pretty big change. Nothing HUGE, like moving to new city, but rearranging all your furniture, or changing your schedule around.

This can kind of shake up the way you look at things, so you’ll see things a bit differently. Start noticing things that are helpful, and suddenly not notice those things that aren’t helpful.

Often times we think we want something, but only part of us does. Or we want only part of what we think we want.

Whenever we’re attempting to manifest something, we often overlook two crucial areas.

One is what we’ll have to give up if we get it. The other is what we’ll have to accept if we get it.

They say there are two tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want. The other is getting it.

Why is this?

Well, if you never get what you want, or never even try, that clearly sucks.

But if you DO get what you want, what then? Sit around and watch TV? Hang out down at the bar and watch TV there?

The truth is that the pursuit of goals is where you’re most happy. When you’re taking action, measuring your results, and getting closer and closer.

Think about this. You’ve got this HUGE goal out there. You figure it may take a couple of years. So you start taking action. Then you start getting closer. Then you come to a FANTASTIC realization.

That original goal is simply to big enough. The closer you get, the bigger you make it, and the further you push it out there.

If you haven’t chosen something BIG, or haven’t started moving toward it, you should.

It’s pretty exciting when you do.

These will help:

Mind Persuasion

How To Practice Spontaneity

Program In Flexibility

When I was in high school I was a wrestler.

One thing the coach drilled into us was having three or four moves drilled deep into our brains.

So when the match started, we’d do those three or four moves, in quick order.

And then we’d have to have a backup plan if we ever met the same opponent. Otherwise, they’d know what we were going to do.

Once I sat in a baseball dugout with a friend who was a high school coach. I was amazed amount of stats they had on every single player on the opposing team. For each batter, for example, they knew which percentage of the time he’d swing at the first pitch, regardless.

So if they had a guy that ALWAYS swung at the first pitch, for example, they’d throw a sinker or something that looked like a fastball but wasn’t.

In sports, when the rules are clearly defined, it’s pretty easy to develop a specific step by step strategy.

In life, on the other hand, having some general rules is about is close as you’re going to get.

When you talk to somebody new, for example, it would be great if there were a set of memorized lines that would get you the right response. But for every person you talk to, you’ll need to come up with a slightly different combination of words and ideas.

And since most of the things we want in life involve other people (relationships, incomes, etc.) we have to have a lot of flexibility and creativity.

But how do you practice flexibility and creativity? Sure, you can practice something simple and repeatable like free throws and piano scales.

Is it possible to practice being in the moment and being spontaneous based on the situation?

Sure it is.

Just try something, and see what happens. Daily journaling is a great way. Every night, write down whatever opportunities came up, and what you did.

Then think of a couple of things you might have done differently, and write those down.

This means every single opportunity is worth twice as much. It’s worth something simply because it’s an opportunity. But it’s also worth something because it can help you figure out what to do better next time.

Keep this up, and whatever you want in life will get easier and easier.

It is up to you, however, to get out there and get in the mix!

These tools will help:

Mind Persuasion

How To Quit Giving Up

Transform Wishes Into Goals

If you’re like me, you’ve started and stopped a lot of projects in your life.

When I was a kid I had a friend who built all kinds of models. Planes, cars, buildings.

I convinced my mom to buy me one, and I gave up after a couple of days.

I have a friend who’s always starting new hobbies. Ham radio, remote controlled helicopters, learning the bass. Yet he always loses his excitement (much to his wife’s frustration) as soon as his new toy comes in the mail.

He’s got a huge antenna up on his roof. I don’t think he’s used it more than a few times.

When people set goals, often times they aren’t really goals. They are wishes. Then we get started, and realize how much work is involved. Sure, we’d love to get them if somebody would just give them to us.

But when we realize how much work is involved, it kinds of puts things into perspective.

Then there’s that “opportunity cost” that most people don’t like to consider.

After all, we only have so much time and money. If we are going to spend an hour or two a day becoming a world class martial artist, you can’t really spend another hour or two a day learning to be a world class pianist.

That’s why it’s really a good idea to choose ONE major goal for each area of your life. Financial, career, hobby, relationship, etc.

And along the way, you’ll branch off, learn new things, redefine your ultimate goal. This is what makes life worth living. The pursuit of things that are important to YOU.

Even then it’s difficult. Any goal requires being able to measure your progress. Otherwise you don’t know if you’re REALLY moving forward, or just kidding yourself.

That’s why a very IMPORTANT area of life is your health.

Not only is it the most crucial part, but it’s the EASIEST to measure.

Even if you get out and walk every day, you can measure the time. The distance. The frequency.

And once you PROVE to yourself that you can get real results (instead of imaginary results), it makes all those other goals much more believable.

They slowly transform from wishes, to goals, to daily actions, to consistent achievements.

It all starts with making the decision to move your body. Somehow. Someway. On a regular basis.

Get Started:

Fitness Accelerator

Does Your Subconscious Believe You?

Don’t Lie To Yourself

It’s easy to feel “separate.”

Like you’re on the outside, looking in. If you’re at a party for example, seeing all the people having fun, hooking up, while you’re holding the wall up.

I used to be (still am, lol) a HUGE fan of Star Trek. They had something called the “Prime Directive,” their most important rule. When they visited a new planet, they weren’t allowed to interfere with the technological, social, scientific, or economic growth.

So they had to go in disguise, looking like the locals.

In a strange way, they were observing by creating MASSIVE rapport.

Being an outside observer by being as much of an insider as they could.

This is one of the things you practice in NLP seminars. Within a conversation, move around from different viewpoints.

Your perspective, their perspective, somebody who’s watching you.

Tough to do, but very helpful.

Often times we get so stuck in our own viewpoints, it’s easy to not see those of others.

One of the most important thresholds (according to goofy scientists to study this kind of thing) is when humans became sentient. Not that it happened one Saturday afternoon in 32,000 BC or something.

A slow process.

And a gradual spectrum from being totally dependent on instincts, to having a rational mind that can watch it’s own thoughts.

Many people talk about the mind-body connection as if it’s EVER possible to separate the two.

While it’s tempting to think we can sit around and will things into existence, we STILL have to get up and do stuff.

We will ALWAYS need our bodies. Even if we order a pizza using telepathy, we’ve still got to go and answer the door when it comes.

Many people overlook this fact. But the more you involve your body in the process, the more you’ll FEEL and instinctively KNOW the connection.

This is why visualizing your goals WHILE YOU ARE MOVING is a great way to solidify this “action is required” mindset.

Walking, jogging, doing sit ups. Anything but waiting around for a commercial.

Because when you’re moving with PURPOSE, instead of waiting for the TV to let you have a rest, you’re telling your subconscious you are SERIOUS.

Otherwise your helpful friend will think you’re just hoping for the money fairy to show up with a present.

When you’re MOVING, your inner genius creator will get the point.

Try it. Figure out what you want. Create a solid visualization. Put words to it. And SAY THEM, while visualizing, while moving. Outside, out loud.

This can help:

Fitness Accelerator

Multi-Dimensional Rabbits

The Meaning of Metaphors

There’s a saying that a dog can only chase one rabbit.

Meaning that if tries to chase two, he’ll get neither.

And all metaphors, they can be applied, or they can be misapplied.

The problem with metaphors is they are the “map” in that famous NLP saying, “The Map is Not The Territory.”

I am currently reading a very interesting history of Africa, going back over 5000 years.

One of the early questions was the source of the Nile. A huge river of MASSIVE importance to trade, agriculture, and the economic health. Naturally, people wanted to know where it started.

Like all things, once we understand how important something is, we want to find out where it came from. After all, if this thing is super ultra important, imagine the source!

Anyhow, a lot of those early explorers died trying to find the source of the Nile because they either had crappy maps, or no maps all.

Considering much of the “truths” in self development are really metaphors for VERY complicated underlying phenomenon, it SUCKS to find out you’ve been following the wrong metaphor (map) all this time!

I’m sure you know that in order to succeed, you’ve got to take risks. Nobody gets it right the first time. Even turning on your own light switch, in your own room, that you’ve lived in for YEARS requires some trial and error.

EVERYBODY needs to fumble around in the dark!

But for some reason, when we hear a simple metaphor that sounds true, we never question it.

But we should ALWAYS question everything. How? By asking if it’s working. One way to look at reality is the distance between where you are NOW, and where you want to be.

If you don’t KNOW where you want to be, then figure it out.

One thing that’s certainly NOT set in stone is having more than one destination.

Sure, if you’re a dog chasing rabbits, it really IS a good idea to only chase one rabbit at a time. Catch it, eat it, take a nap, and then chase another one.

But in life, you can have as many goals as you can imagine.

And you can chase them ALL at the same time. Because in the metaphysical plane of your mind, there are INFINITE dimensions. (That there is a metaphor that may or not be true!)

Money, relationships, health, ANYTHING. Chase them all!

Of course, the cornerstone to them is your health. Without that, there’s not much you can do.

It’s also a GREAT reminder of what you CAN do. Feel your muscles, check your space between your gut and your belt, anything that PROVES you can do anything you can set your mind to.

Learn More:

Fitness Accelerator

Love The Path Get The Result

Rewire Your Brain

Getting in shape is a great metaphor for getting rich.

Most people want more money, and most people would like to be in better shape.

However, getting there, as most people imagine, is not so easy.

I saw a movie recently about these kids who were in a reform school. The older kids were in charge of the younger kids.

One of the younger kids (the hero of the movie) had angered one of the older kids. So the older kid had the younger kid move a pile of rocks.

One at a time. He was barely able to lift them. Once he’d move the pile, the older kid told him to move it back.

I know a guy who used to drive a forklift, and sometimes, to pretend they were busier than they really were, they would move stuff to one side of the warehouse, and then move it back.

They’d do this for weeks at a time, and anybody who walked in would see all this activity and then lay off giving them any new work.

If you were paid ten bucks an hour to be that kid moving the rocks, that would suck.

Really, really suck.

But what if the rocks were made of gold? What if every one you moved you got to keep?

Same labor, same physical activity, but a COMPLETELY different mental attitude.

This is the REAL secret between making tons of cash, getting your ideal soul mate to fall in love with you, or getting a super sexy sick pack.

It’s not CHANGING what you need to do to get there.

It’s simply LOVING the steps.

Take guys that are super naturals with girls. They don’t worry about rejection, or what to say. They just LOVE the entire process. They do the same thing anybody else would need to do in order to get the same results.

They just love doing it.

People that make tons of cash are the same way. They go through the same process. Trial and error, learning and improving, getting rejected over and over. Until finally they hit paydirt.

Only the they are LOVING every single minute of it. To them, it’s not work. It’s fun. It’s exciting. It’s anything but the normal, boring as crap, nine to five.

Getting in shape is the same way. Love the process, and the outcome is easy.

All you’ve go to is rewire your brain.

How?

Here’s how:

Fitness Accelerator

How To Make The Impossible Easy

Create Your Own Proof

Long time ago, it was thought impossible to run a mile faster than four minutes.

Then one guy did it. And pretty soon, lots of others did it.

If you look at the world record in various sporting events over the last 100 years, you’ll find that they consistently get better and better. Or faster and faster. Or stronger and stronger.

Yet if you compare the times for horse races, they’ve been about the same, time wise.

This is strong evidence that it’s not technology or nutrition that is pushing the limits of human performance, but what we believe is possible.

Most people are scared of doing something. Especially if nobody has ever done it before. But then when we see somebody do something, then everybody’s doing it.

This is the reason role models are so crucial. Especially when we’re young. We see how to behave, what’s possible, and how to deal with things that are unexpected.

Belief and behavior form an inextricable feedback loop.

The more you do something, the more you’ll believe you can do something. The more you believe you can do something, the more you’ll do more of that something.

Whether it’s making money, talking to attractive people, or doing pushups in the morning.

If you’ve never done one pushup, you might think ten is impossible.

If you do only one pushup every morning for a week, suddenly doing ten is pretty easy.

Maybe in a few weeks maybe 50 seems pretty easy.

Funny thing about your body is that you carry it with you everywhere you go.

Which makes it a PERFECT thing to PROVE to yourself that you can do anything.

For example, do you think it’s possible to do 100 sit ups, right now?

If you’re like most people, probably not.

But how long until you not only thought it was possible, but easy and natural?

Maybe a month or two.

Then you’d be carrying around PROOF, (right there in your gut) that using ONLY your mind and body, you can take what seems difficult or even impossible, and make it simple and easy.

Then when you come across an idea or situation, and you hesitate because of those common doubts, just pat yourself on the stomach to remind yourself of what you’re capable of.

“I can take the difficult, and make it easy.”

All it takes is a few minutes a day.

Get Started:

Fitness Accelerator