Monthly Archives: March 2016

Zebra Crossing

The Biggest Risk Of All

I was driving somewhere the other day with an Australian friend.

We were going to some restaurant, she knew where it was, I didn’t, so she was giving me directions.

She said, “turn left up there after the zebra crossing.”

And I immediately thought, “What? I don’t see any zebras?”

See in the states, where I’m from, we call them “cross walks” or “pedestrian crossing.”

And if you’re driving in the mountains you might see a warning sign that says, “Deer crossing.”

So when she said “zebra crossing,” it sounded like a place where zebras cross the street.

Of course, a second later I realized that the “zebra” was a description of what it LOOKED LIKE, rather than a description of what it was USED FOR.

The old, “form” vs. “function” argument.

Some things are described by how they look, others are described by what they do.

In Japan, they say that “every meal is enjoyed twice.”

Once when you look at it, and once when you eat it. This means when they prepare meals, the PRESENTATION is just as important as the TASTE. Sometimes more so.

Now, personally, I’m the type of guy who’d rather pay ONLY for taste. I don’t really care what it looks like. But that’s just me.

I’m NOT the kind of guy who takes photos of his meal before he eats. In fact, I’m usually FINISHED before everyone else has started! (But I digress…)

The point is that if you spend TOO MUCH time worried about what you LOOK LIKE, you’ll impact what you are able to DO.

Form is fantastic, so long as it doesn’t impede function.

Now, what is the FUNCTION of your life, you may ask?

The truth is that YOU are the ONLY ONE who can answer that question.

Of course, since very few people take the time to determine the purpose of their own lives, it generally gets decided by others.

Bosses, spouses, kids, parents, TV commercials.

It seems that people are desperate to find meaning ANYWHERE but within themselves.

The problem is if you look OUTSIDE yourself for meaning, YOU, and YOUR LIFE will eventually be DEFINED by those outside sources.

Not yourself.

And since this happens very slowly, you run a HUGE RISK.

And that is you’ll get to the end of your life and wonder what the heck just happened!

And guess what? Why do people look OUTSIDE themselves for answers?

They are AFRAID of choosing on their own. And making a mistake. And having to “do over.”

So instead of living through several “short term” and “low consequence” risks, they leave ALL THE RISK to the end of their lives.

Hoping it will end up OK!

Well, I don’t know about you, but screw that noise!

Of course, living ON PURPOSE requires courageous introspection. You MUST be willing to question things about yourself most are too scared to.

But if you do, you’ll get things MOST NEVER KNOW.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

Raining Cats and Dogs

Get Your Mental Black Belt

Once I got into a discussion with a friend of mine over the origin of the expression, “raining cats and dogs.”

We argued over what it meant, so we looked it up.

Turns out that nobody really knows. There are a few sort of plausible explanations.

My favorite was from back in the day when English people were pretty filthy.

They would just throw their garbage out onto the street, and wait for the rains to wash it away.

So when it rained particularly heavy, they would see all the garbage flowing down.

Often times, mixed in would be dead animals. Cats and dogs, specifically.

So people would joke that it was “raining cats and dogs.”

Now, whether or not this is the “correct” “meaning” for this particular expression doesn’t really matter.

The English language is FILLED with metaphors like this where EXPERTS have zero clue where they come from.

Sure, everybody’s got their own pet theory, but they are really just guesses.

Kick the bucket, buy the farm, sell somebody down the river, and on and on.

Stephen Pinker, a famous linguistic tells our that our brains don’t really need to know WHY they mean what they do. All we need to know is that both “kick the bucket” and “buy the farm” means to die.

So when somebody uses it, we understand what they mean. If enough people around us are using it, we’ll start to use it to, usually subconsciously.

Most of our beliefs are like that.

We picked them up without really questioning what they mean or how they got there.

Public speaking is scary, talking to pretty girls is horrifying, making money is difficult, losing weight is hard.

But since SOME people on Planet Earth live their lives in direct OPPPOSITIION of these beliefs, that CAN’T be objectively true.

Only true for US. And only true because we don’t question them.

The good thing about beliefs is you can CHANGE THEM.

Sure, it takes effort. One MUST go through the natural learning process.

Unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and finally unconscious competence.

Imagine getting to the unconscious competence level of the following beliefs:

Money is good.

Making money is easy.

Talking to attractive people is fun.

Persuasion is easy.

Staying in shape is easy and natural.

What happens to your life then?

Few are willing to question their beliefs, let alone do the work to change them.

Just like few people willing to get a black belt in a martial art, or take the time to learn something complicated like Photoshop or a foreign language.

But all it takes is effort, and consistency.

What are you waiting for?

Get Started:

Emotional Freedom

Hot Sauce

Salsa Means You’re Sexy

There’s all kinds of weird things that marketers know about human nature.

Especially the kind of marketers who do research on grocery store placement.

They have TONS of data, and they are constantly sorting through the data to find relationships.

For example, there’s a kind of salsa that is preferred by people who have cats, or are “cat people.”

There’s a competing brand of salsa preferred by “dog people.”

The job of the marketer is to find these relationships, and then somehow leverage them.

They show this to the various salsa companies, who know where to put the ads for the most effect.

Now, it’s easy to misunderstand these “relationships.”

It’s not like if you start eating one particular salsa, you’ll morph into a cat person.

Kind of like those goofy “relationships” they are finding in the news.

People who drink diet soda, for example, have a higher risk of certain obesity related diseases.

But the news media make it sound as if you will drop dead of you drink diet soda.

They KNOW that most people misunderstand, or don’t know, the difference between “linked” or “correlated” and “cause and effect.”

Correlation, as they say, does NOT mean causation.

In fact, it RARELY does.

But our monkey brains tend to have a hard time with this.

Evolutionary biologists suspect assuming causation where none exist was to cut down on thinking time.

Instead of our ancient ancestors having to do a regression analysis every time they saw a tiger, or an apple tree, they just used the cause effect generator in their brains to assume what they saw MEANT something.

And the more “good” or the more “bad” that something was, the stronger the cause-effect linkage was.

Of course, today, that gets in the way of a happy life.

You apply for the job, don’t get it, and assume it MEANS you’re going to end up homeless.

You talk to that cute guy or girl and they reject you, and you assume it MEANS you’re going to be lonely.

You try and fail at your business and it MEANS you are going to be working minimum wage your whole life.

The truth is that anything can MEAN anything.

Especially when you are talking about the massively shifting variables that are always present in human relationships.

Of course, if you rely on your brain’s “go-to” meanings, they’ll be pretty scary.

Because your brain’s “go-to” meanings are necessarily survival based.

But your daily interactions are not.

Luckily, you can RE-PROGRAM your automatic cause-effect generator.

So those events can MEAN whatever you want them to mean.

That means everywhere you go, you’ll find PROOF that you are getting more of what you want.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

Frozen By Indecision?

Peanut Butter Or Ice Cream?

I used to play this game with my friends.

Either or.

We’d throw out two different choices, and whoever was on the receiving end had to answer FAST.

Often times it was a drinking game. If you hesitated, you had to drink.

The questions started off pretty easily.

Plain or peanut M&M’s?

Pizza or burgers?

But pretty soon they got intense. Of course, nobody really cared about the content.

The whole point was to try and come up with a TOUGH choice, so the person would hesitate when deciding.

Unfortunately, a LOT of us do that all the time.

Hesitate.

Part of us wants to do something, and we’d really like to get a good result, but we’re also afraid of not being successful, and looking foolish.

A lot of this stems from not having clearly identified goals. Not only short term, but long term as well.

Imagine if you KNEW beyond a shadow of a doubt you wanted a peanut butter sandwich, and you had five bucks.

Enough for a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter.

You’d be in and out of the store in a couple minutes. Even walking from your car to the door, you’d imagine EXACTLY where the peanut butter was, and EXACTLY where the bread was.

Now think of the same situation, but you only have VAGUE ideas to fulfill your INSTINCT for hunger.

You’d wander around the store FOREVER!

A lot of people are afraid to choose. Because what if you choose, and get what you want, and it turns out it’s not all that?

Well, that’s what life is all about!

Make a choice, take action, and then see what happens!

So what if that peanut butter sandwich doesn’t taste as good as you’d imagined.

You get another chance to eat a meal pretty soon! Probably in a few hours!

Another thing that makes us vacillate is our emotions.

Few things are as simple as figuring out what to eat.

There are ALWAYS other people involved.

This means that interacting with others, which is ALWAYS going to be in flux, is something you’ll just need to accept.

Some people go to great lengths to avoid this. Avoid giving speeches. Avoid confrontations. Avoid selling. Avoid being the guy or gal on the spot at the meeting.

But what if all this was EASY?

What if talking to ANYBODY, no matter WHAT the situation was, was a simple as making a sandwich?

No matter what happened, (delicious or not so delicious) you’d have another chance pretty soon?

How would your life be then?

Get Started:

Emotional Freedom

Grocery Store Manipulation

Auto Pilot Grocery Stores

There’s a common question when you start learning things like covert hypnosis and all the powerful language patterns of NLP.

And that is, “Is it possible to persuade somebody against their will?”

This is common question from both sides, the user and receiver of the language patterns.

There are those that would very much like to take advantage of others.

So when they come across something like “Covert Hypnosis,” the first they do is start rubbing their hands together like a cartoon super villain. The world belongs to me!

Then there are those who are terrified of salespeople, because they imagine salespeople use some super powerful NLP they won’t be able to resist.

Like they’ll walk into some store only to kill some time, and then suddenly find themselves at home two hours later with a $200 blender wondering what happened.

The truth is that neither of these are very likely.

BUT, there is something that is almost worse.

It is absolutely true that you CANNOT persuade somebody against their will.

But the SAD truth is that most people DON’T HAVE a will.

They don’t have a plan. They don’t have any idea of what they want. They just bounce around hoping something “good” happens to them.

Most of us are like this at least some of the time.

If you’ve ever been grocery shopping, and bought WAY more stuff than you intended, that’s EXACTLY what happened.

You walked in their WITHOUT a plan, and the GROCERY STORE (not some salesperson or anything) took advantage of you.

Think about that. It’s SO EASY to take advantage of people that “they” just need to set up the displays in the grocery store correctly, and they’ll run on their own AUTOPILOT INFLUENCE.

Pretty scary!

Of course, if you don’t want this to happen, you simply make a list.

(Just yesterday I saw some old guy in the store trying to read a list, while talking to his wife on the phone asking her WTF she’d written!)

This is true of EVERY SITUATION.

The problem is when you have a “wishy-washy” set of intentions.

AND you have an AUTOMATIC way of responding to certain situations.

Not only is THE WORLD going to pull your emotions all over the place, but sometimes you’ll feel pretty LOUSY!

Sure, it’s feels pretty good to get a smile from an attractive stranger, but if you are depending on chance, it’s going to be a two-way street.

Luckily, there are some POWERFUL exercises to help you plan for ANY contingency, AND be to handle ANYTHING the world throws at you like a tenth degree black belt ninja.

And you’ll NEVER feel “taken advantage of” again.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

Don't Get Angry

How To Bounce Our Of Mental Ruts

I remember once when I was in college, I had a job interview.

I was in a hurry, and was worried about how it was going to go.

It was only a summer job, but a couple of my friends worked there, and told me what an awesome gig it was.

Professional, had to wear a tie, pay was pretty good.

But halfway there, I reached into my pocket, pulled out the directions, and realized I’d grabbed the wrong sheet of paper.

I was angry, frustrated, and scared all at once. Punched the windshield. Cracked it.

Drove home, grabbed the directions and drove back.

Luckily, I still got the job. However, if it hadn’t been my friends who had put in a good word for me, I likely wouldn’t have.

This is an example of how “out of control” emotions can sneak up on us. Or pop out at any time.

It doesn’t have to be anger. It can be shame. Guilt. Fear. Frustration.

ALL of these have the effect of making us feel “stuck.” Like we’re trapped within a very narrow band of behavior.

Not much choice.

On the other hand, when we’re relaxed, have a lot of options, feel safe and confident, we are the OPPOSITE of stuck.

We can FEEL the forward progress. We go to sleep every night thinking, “Dang, I did a lot of stuff today!”

Notice that this is different from, “wow, I RECEIVED a lot of stuff today.”

When you accomplish things based on your own ACTIONS, it feels a million times better than when somebody hands you something for free.

This, however, requires you GET OUT of those stuck states as SOON as you find yourself in them.

You’ll NEVER avoid them, that’s just of life.

You WILL forget the directions. You WILL make mistakes.

It’s how you RESPOND that makes all the difference.

The more quickly you can respond, and the more RESOURCEFULLY you can respond, the less those random events will slow you down.

On the other hand, if you don’t feel you have a lot of options, it can be super easy to feel victimized by almost anything.

You can see those “events” as PROOF that you are a victim, and you’re doomed.

Or you can see those “events” as simply obstacles to get around, and FEEL CONFIDENT after the fact. Maybe even learning a thing or two along the way.

This requires that you dig inside your emotions and find your own unique “emotional sore spots.”

While everybody’s is similar in structure, your own unique “sore spots” have their own unique recipe based on your own unique history.

But it’s easy to go back in time, and RE-DEFINTE how you labeled those early events.

So current events bother you a LOT less.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

Massive Social Status

Stop Getting Sucker Punched

One of the biggest causes of human suffering is an instinct mismatch.

Take hunger for example.

In a hunter-gatherer environment, if you didn’t the tendency to eat as much as you could whenever there was food, you didn’t have much of a chance of surviving.

Since food was limited. When you had some, you had to get as many calories in you (and ON YOU in terms of energy storage) as possible.

But nowadays, that’s a very dangerous strategy. For obvious reasons.

A lot of our instincts were GREAT for primitive times, not so much today.

A couple of these are authority and social proof.

Countless nations have gone nuts because they had a crazy leader (authority) that everybody rallied behind (social proof).

Even today, it’s VERY HARD to admit that we ourselves are influenced by these.

We LIKE to think we are rational, consciously driven, awake, etc.

But next time you’re considering doing something, ask yourself these questions:

Would you still do it if NOBODY else was doing it?

Would you still do it if there were ZERO authority figures behind it?

This is hard. Most of us don’t like to think of ourselves as pack animals.

But as I’m sure you know, many of the greatest inventors, scientists, researchers and explorers of all time didn’t wait around for social or authority approval.

Often times they did so despite not having ANY of that.

Another thing that can in the way of living a fulfilled life is emotional blind spots.

Things that suddenly pop up out of nowhere, and feel like a sucker punch.

Consciously, you have no idea why these things bother you.

They SUBCONSCIOUSLY remind you of some pretty scary things that happened as a kid.

When you were young, inexperienced, and were TOTALLY DEPENDENT on those around you.

The only problem is your lightning fast brain makes such fast associations, that something that is even SIMILAR today to something that happened long ago is going to FEEL just as scary.

Often times without having a rational explanation why.

Kind of like when you KNOW you just ate an hour ago, but you can’t help opening another box of cookies.

The way to “handle” your instincts is to manage them.

The way to “handle” those emotional blind spots is to RE-PROGRAM them.

This is much, much easier. You won’t have to manage them, since they’ll disappear.

Not like your HUNGER will ALWAYS be there.

Those emotional blind spots can be ERASED.

For Good.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

Bikini Girls Are Everywhere

Bikini Girls Are Everywhere

There’s a famous story of a couple of Buddhists walking along a river.

They come around this curve, to where they are going to cross.

And they see this hot girl in a bikini.

And the bikini girl says, “Will you help me get across?”

The older Buddhist picks her up, and carries her. His younger companion looks kind of butt-hurt.

After about couple miles down the river, the younger Buddhist looks up.

Problem? Says the older Buddhist.

Yes, says younger guy. We aren’t supposed to touch women.

Ah, I see your problem, says the older guy. I put her down way back there, but you’re still carrying her.

Ok, so may she wasn’t a bikini girl in the original story, but you get the idea.

Most of us are carrying things that happened to us a LONG time ago.

That time you got up the nerve to talk to that guy or girl, and got shot down.

The time in class when you asked an honest question and the teacher looked at you like you were speaking nonsense.

Or any of the million other things that left a negative impression.

That made you respond by covering up your brilliance with a protective layer of crap.

Now when you go out into the world, that protective layer of gunk is still there.

Most people see not you, but your protective layer.

Which means they aren’t really seeing YOU. They’re seeing your DEFENSE SYSTEM.

And defense systems are NOT designed to attract people, or opportunities, or income.

They are designed to REPEL them.

What’s worse, everybody ELSE has their OWN defense system.

It’s no wonder it’s tough meeting people.

Or saying what your really mean. Or sharing your TRUE self.

It is also why it feels like nobody can see the real you.

Not only can they NOT dig through your protective layer, but they have to get rid of THEIRS as well.

Which is why it SEEMS that you can only “click” on those rare and wonderful opportunities.

The GOOD NEWS is you can get rid of that layer of protection pretty easily.

All you’ve got to do is go back in time (mentally, of course) and RE-DEFINE those early events.

So in the present, you’ll feel much more open and natural. And less fearful.

So you can pick up bikini girls all over the place. (Or whatever you’d like to pick up, money, friends, new jobs, etc).

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

De-Hypnotize Yourself

How To Un Hypnotize Yourself

They say the best defense is a good offense.

Meaning if you can score a kajillion points, you don’t need to worry so much about the other team.

However, what happens if you’re playing a team that believes the opposite?

That the best offense is a good defense?

Meaning THEIR offense can take it easy if they allow ZERO points?

Naturally, there are many ways of looking at things.

Since our brains are necessarily constrained, at least our conscious brains, what we see is HEAVILY filtered.

So it’s pretty impossible to “get” something that we have a predisposition to “not get.”

Psychologists call this “confirmation bias.” We only see what we want to see.

We all are walking around with TONS of filters.

Many of these are unconscious.

You may know somebody who ALWAYS gets into relationships with the same type of person, for example.

Or they find themselves in the same types of situations, for example.

It’s VERY EASY, and VERY COMMON to imagine that it’s “the world” out there that is doing it.

But it’s really our filters that are predisposing us to get into those situations.

We have a conscious brain, and an unconscious brain. The ratio of what’s REALLY out there is about 25,000 to one.

Our “pre-conscious” filter has to sort everything before we see it or experience.

Based on those filters.

Here’s an interesting concept. Take a minute to let it sink in.

We would rather be able to MAKE SENSE of the world, AND have a crappy life, than to see things that don’t make sense.

Meaning the idea that we are living in a nonsensical world, (where up is down and left is right, etc) is WORSE than always ending up in crappy relationships, jobs, situations.

So even though somebody HATES their life, living in a world that DOES NOT MAKE SENSE is far, far worse.

Because then it’s off to the looney bin.

What’s the answer?

Well, since we can’t FORCE ourselves to see things our pre-conscious filter is trying to protect us from, we’ve got to get creative.

We simply need to change our filters.

From the inside out. The bottom up.

This is why this sometimes SEEMS like magic.

Imagine if you were super thirsty, and in a room filled with glasses of ice water. But you couldn’t see them, because you’d been hypnotized to NOT see them.

Once you de-hypnotized yourself, you’d see water EVERYWHERE, where there was nothing before.

This is what happens when you go through and CHANGE YOUR FILTERS.

You’ll suddenly find yourself in better situations. Better relationships. Better jobs.

It will SEEM like magic, but you’ll know the truth.

Get Started:

Emotional Freedom