Monthly Archives: April 2016

Model The Millionaire Mind

I love the book “Freakonomics.”

I always like different ways of looking at things.

One very flexible mindset to have is “models of the world.”

Too often we get caught up in our own way of thinking, which is necessarily limited.

We all have unique experiences, beliefs, biases, etc.

One way to “think outside the box” either for fun, or to shake things loose in your life is to try on different “models of the world.”

If you’re a fan of the old TV show, “The X-Files,” they did this all the time.

Two FBI agents investigating paranormal stuff. One guy believed in aliens, the other believed science always had an explanation.

One of the reasons the show was so successful, and developed a HUGE cult following, was that BOTH angles (science and paranormal) were plausible. Either could be used to describe what had happened in that particular episode.

One of the presuppositions of NLP is that “all else equal, the person with the most flexibility will prevail.”

Meaning if you are looking at a problem, and you only have ONE way to solve it, once you get stuck, you’re done.

But if you can switch out different “models of the world” until you find a solution, even if it isn’t one that fits your favorite “model,” you’ll generally do better than the one-model-wonders of the world.

As I’m sure you know, life is nothing but problems to be solved along the way to your goals that will be achieved.

The more successfully you can overcome those INEVITABLE obstacles, the easier of a time you’ll have.

One of the things they looked at in “Freakonomics” was that people that made a lot of money tended to have a lot of books.

Even in the book, “The Millionaire Next Door,” one of the things that found out about your average run of the mill millionaire is that they got their money very SLOWLY.

Not by mumbling some magic words from the Law of Attraction. By getting into the world, every day, and getting it done.

And their preferred form of entertainment as not TV or movies, but books. And not just fiction, but non-fiction.

You can learn a lot of “models of the world” by reading Biographies of famous people. Or classic stories from literature.

People from different times, different political and economic systems, different religions and different ethnicity’s.

The more you learn how OTHER PEOPLE throughout time have successfully solved their problems, the more flexible you’ll be when you come up upon your own.

You can even be like Napoleon Hill, who created an IMAGINARY GROUP of people from history that he talked to on a regular basis.

Whatever works!

They say you should spend ten percent of your income, and ten percent of your time, on self-improvement.

Learning skills. Improving skills.

After all, this strategy made a lot of people a lot of money.

Why not you?

Get Started:

Mind Persuasion Ebooks

Achieve Mastery In Anything

A have a friend who is an engineer for a company that makes industrial equipment.

Recently he took a trip to South Korea, as a big company there was one of his clients.

Before they let him in the facility, they made him surrender all his pens, phones, and papers.

They were extremely worried about trade secrets, and didn’t want him copying anything.

One of the unknown drivers of the industrial revolution was copyright infringement.

Everybody was copying the crap out of everybody else.

Even entire books were pirated and sold for a nickel.

All kinds of industrial espionage was taking place.

Ever since the first caveman decided it might be easier to throw a rock at a zebra instead of wrestle it to the ground and beat it to death, humans have been copying each other.

This is the heart of progress. Somebody gets an idea and turns it into a business.

Somebody else improves on it. And on and on.

Pretty soon we go from running to riding bicycles to riding on trains to flying in planes.

The process of modeling is the heart of NLP.

The whole set of language patterns was modeled from the some of the greatest therapists.

And then later the modeling process itself became part of the process.

When you were a kid, and you wanted to learn how to walk, you didn’t invent the process on your own.

You copied everybody around you until you could reproduce what they did.

Unconsciously, this is natural. Automatic.

When we get older, and we want to consciously learn things, it’s a bit more involved.

If you wanted to copy somebody playing the piano, you’d have to do more than sit and move your fingers around.

You’d have to copy their understanding of music. What all the notes mean.

One thing that is very helpful in any learning endeavor is to measure your progress.

Try something, see what happens, then step back and take a look.

A great way to do this is journaling. Write down the things you did, what you learned, and what you can do next to do even better next time.

It helps if you have some kind of reference material to help.

A set of ideas of principles to go by. You study them, then go out into the world and apply them.

Then later at home, write down what happened. Then study them some more, think of a different way to apply them based on your experience, and go out and try them again.

And keep repeating the process.

Do this every day, and pretty soon you’ll be an expert.

Of whatever it is you want to do.

Making money. Persuasion. Sales. Relationships. Anything.

Get Started:

Mind Persuasion Ebooks

Stop Insane Behavior

Once I had this bit of tendonitis in my wrist. It was something I had many times before.

And I knew if I went to the doctor, they would tell me the same thing.

Take some Advil, put some ice on it, and it if keeps hurting, we’ll inject you with cortisone.

Basically, since I knew the drill by heart, it was my “go-to” routine whenever it would flair up.

Only once a female friend talked me into going to the doctor.

Since this was the first time she saw me with this ailment, it was new.

And foolishly, I gave in. Went and waited an hour. Paid the co-payment (which at the time was $70.)

And was told the same thing. Advil, ice, cortisone if it doesn’t work.

She seemed happy. She said, “Well, at least you know!”

But I already knew.

She seemed to think the doctor would use some secret doctor magic to fix it, and when he didn’t she fell back on the “Well, at least you know!” answer.

This is what all of us do all the time. We have some goal or intention. We fail. Then we RE-FRAME our original intention, so we don’t feel like a failure.

We do this to protect our ego. If every time we didn’t get what we wanted, and we did feel like a failure, pretty soon we’d stop trying.

However, when we do something when we KNOW what’s going to happen, (like some doctor charging you $70 to tell you to take some Advil) it’s kind of foolish.

This is what they mean when they talk about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Humans are goal driven creatures. Every single day, we have hundreds, if not thousands, of small goals.

We set them, we take action, we achieve them. Sure, some of these are pretty simple, like eating and going to the toilet.

But often times they are of the “insanity” type. We keep trying the same thing, but it still doesn’t work.

Our brains are incredibly fast and powerful, which can sometimes be our achilles heal.

Meaning we’re doing the same things over and over, but we’re pretending we’re doing different things.

Maybe talking to different people and different locations, but we’re using the same strategies and operating from the same mindset of beliefs.

If you’ve got a horrible golf swing, buying new clubs won’t help. Or if you suck at playing the piano, buying a new keyboard won’t help. But that’s we do, while pretending we’re “doing something different.”

A fantastic way to beat this common mistake is to keep a journal. Write down your big life goals, and every day, write down what you did to get closer.

Then write down what happened.

Then write down what you could do tomorrow.

This way, you’ll elevate your natural goal setting and getting mechanism up to the conscious level.

And THAT’S when things start to click.

These can help:

Mind Persuasion Ebooks

Build Your Castle

Occasionally, I’ll re-read a novel I’ve read a long time ago.

I can’t do this with every book, only a few.

The ones I really get into, the characters I identify with or would like to identify with.

It’s interesting to read an epic in different points in your life.

Your response to it, and how you imagine yourself within it is much different from a Junior High School perspective than as an adult.

That’s one of the reasons classics are classics. They appeal across all times, ages, and levels of life experience.

Especially super old stories like mythology or Aesop’s fables.

They touch on the common truths of human existence. What it’s like to struggle. To fail. To succeed.

Many times two people are playing eye contact games across a crowded room.

And they are each thinking the same thing.

“I like that person. I’d like to talk to them. But I’m nervous to make the first move. If they walked over here and started talking with me, that would certainly be cool.”

Most of the time, though, nobody makes a move, and both people go home wondering “what if.”

Most people spend their entire lives like that. Waiting for some external “spark” to get them going.

Even in common stories, there’s always some external “event” that FORCES the hero onto his or her journey.

Rarely does some normal person wake up, and decide that they are going to create a brand new life.

But if you WANT a brand new life, that’s what you’ve got to do.

Remember, stories are the way we WISH life was, not the way it really is.

If they made books and movies about the way our lives REALLY were, they’d be pretty boring.

Even those “reality” shows are highly scripted. Sure, the stuff people are saying and doing are “in the moment.”

But those people are carefully selected in hopes they’ll be MAXIMUM fireworks. And they film a whole week and only edit together the best hour.

Sure, it’s great to get “discovered.” To get “picked,” but it’s not always the best strategy.

Generally speaking, in the real world, people who succeed the most are the people that get out there and make things happen.

Not those who wait for things to happen.

But you don’t have to kill dragons every day. Not even close. All you need is a huge goal, WAY OUT in your future.

And every day, simply take small steps in that direction.

Because you build a massive life the same way you build a massive castle.

One brick at a time.

Get Stated:

Mind Persuasion Ebooks

Who Are You Waiting For?

When I was a kid my friends and I saw this cool picture in a magazine.

It was of this woman who’d stacked up three golf balls on top of each other.

Now, the article was about something completely different, and the stacked up golf balls were only there to make it look interesting.

But for the next several days, that’s all my friends and I did.

Try and see how many golf balls we could stack up.

Most I ever got was three. My friend did four.

You need a very steady hand and as surface that won’t move.

I was also big into building card houses. Seeing how many stories we could get them.

Things like this are hard to build, and they collapse pretty easily.

Clearly, if you want to build something that will last, you need to make sure you’ve got a lot of things in place.

Solid ground. Sturdy construction equipment. A legitimate reason for doing it, since it’s going to take a while.

The most important thing, of course, is your life.

Yet most people spend zero time considering how to build it.

Imagine if you had a plot of land, and a pile of lumber. And you sat there waiting for somebody to come along and tell you what to do.

Or worse, you sat their waiting for somebody else to come and build your house for you!

Most people use this as their main strategy for building their lives, without even realizing it.

This used to work out fine, maybe fifty years or so ago. You just did what you were told, maybe figured out what you were good at, and showed up to work every day.

That was enough.

Not any more.

Now every single day can be seen as a balancing act. Unless you take your time to choose the building blocks wisely, who knows when it will come tumbling down.

Luckily, it’s not as difficult as it seems. But there is ONE crucial ingredient that most people don’t even want to talk about.

And THAT is self-responsibility. Sure, it’s not YOUR fault the world is messed up and everything is rigged.

But it is.

How YOU respond, though, is up to you. And ONLY you.

Since every single person has the same problem, namely, how to get their needs met in a world that is increasingly chaotic and rigged, few people are going to have spare time to lend you a hand.

So if you wait for somebody to come knocking on your door, take you by the hand and show you some secret step by step system that only a “few” people know about, you’ll be waiting a while.

But here’s the good news.

If you ARE willing to shoulder the responsibility for your life, you really can build it as big as you want.

Get Started:

Mind Persuasion Ebooks

Do This And They’ll Never Forget You

What are two of your most important resources?

There’s a lot of ways to answer this.

If you were in the middle of the desert, you may say water and shade.

Once I was in this discussion group, and as an ice breaker, we had a list of ten items.

We had to choose half that we’d use if we were stranded on an island.

There actually were some sensible answers, it wasn’t like one of those goofy philosophical/psychological questions that don’t have an answer.

Like if you saw a penguin on railroad track, and a box of coconuts, which would you throw overboard first?

(That didn’t even make sense.)

I read this horrible story once about a factory explosion in North Korea that happened many years ago.

Some people actually died, because as their houses were burning down, the rushed back inside to grab their most prized possession.

A giant portrait of their Dear Leader.

Most of us would grab our personal photos, or something else that had huge personal value.

They have those game shows where you go into a supermarket and you have one minute to put as many things in your shopping cart as you can.

Most people go for the meat, or the booze, as it’s the highest cost per weight or volume.

There’s an old saying in business:

“You can have it fast, it can be inexpensive, or it can be high quality. Choose two.”

This is why Economics is referred to as the “Dismal Science.”

Because it forces us to choose.

Contrary to what most politicians tell us, we can’t have everything we want without some kind of cost.

Unfortunately, most politicians today have figured out how to defer the cost a few generations out into the future.

(If we ever make it that far, lol)

So, back to the original question.

What are your two most important resources, especially when it comes to communicating with others?

One useful answer (there are, of course, many) is your time and your attention.

If you waste your time on something that doesn’t work, you’ll never get it back.

If you’re looking at the wrong place at the wrong time, you’ll miss out on opportunities.

Contrary to some gurus, YOU have to find opportunities. There’s seven billion people on Earth, don’t expect them to come looking for you.

What does this mean?

For one, most people kind of know this intuitively. We all know not to walk downtown and stare at a brick wall. We know where the action is.

And we all know to get the heck out of dodge if some homeless person starts yelling at us. We can spend our time doing better things.

Which is why when you choose to focus YOUR time and attention on somebody else, they will feel really good.

ESPECIALLY if it’s the RIGHT attention. Most people walk up and start talking about themselves.

But when YOU walk up and start asking the right questions about THEM, they’ll NEVER forget you.

In fact, they’ll start to wonder how they can help YOU, and do whatever YOU want, just so you’ll hang around.

Which questions should you ask?

These:

Interpersonal Resonance

Get Them To Do Anything

When I was a kid I learned this neat trick.

You take a bunch of salt and pepper and put it in a shallow pan of water, so it floats on the top.

Then you dip your finger in soap, and stick it in the center.

All the pepper magically goes to the outside of the pan.

I’m sure you know a lot of people that are like that.

Usually a boss or somebody of authority.

Sometimes it’s one of the “those” bosses that thinks everybody likes him or her.

But they are only nice because they are the boss.

So if you were to ever see them about in public, you’d quickly hide your face so they didn’t see you.

In truth, a lot of us are like that to a lot of people.

Like it or not, most of us just rub people the wrong way.

Of course, we don’t see it like that.

We see them as the problem.

Obviously, we are perfect. There’s NOTHING wrong with us.

So when people don’t go along with our ideas, or don’t laugh at our jokes, they must have some kind of mental problem, right?

The funny thing is that EVERYBODY (no matter how crazy their ideas are) can find people who agree with them.

But if you are going to ONLY look for people who ALREADY agree with you, you’re going to be limiting yourself to a very small slice of the population.

Wouldn’t it be better to simply find a better METHOD of getting people to agree with you? So you wouldn’t be forced to sort through so many people?

Luckily, there is.

All you’ve got to do is amplify THEIR criteria first.

The secret of human nature is EVERYBODY always has a huge collection of unmet needs and wants.

If you start talking about YOUR wants and needs first, you’re hoping to get lucky.

But if you start talking about THEIR wants and needs first, you’ll be doing something completely different.

By talking about their wants, and expanding on them, they’ll start to see YOU through THEIR lens of unique desires.

So before you even talk about what you want, you’ve already made it much easier on them.

This is what advertisers have been doing since it was invented.

Taking a product and framing it in the best possible way.

Well, the BEST possible to frame ANYTHING is through somebody’s OWN DESIRES.

And when they start to look at YOU through THEIR desires, they’ll be eager to agree with pretty much anything.

(Yes, ANYTHING!)

Learn How:

Interpersonal Resonance

How To Get Them To Love Your Message

I watched this interesting documentary the other day on Netflix.

Kind of positive but sad at the same time.

About an American family that wanted kids, but couldn’t have them, so they adopted a couple from Russia.

These kids were already speaking, so they could speak Russian but not English.

Positive because the parents were trying to improve all of their lives (theirs and the kids).

But sad because they had troubles communicating.

They kept trying to lecture the kids in English, but you could tell the kids didn’t really know what the parents were saying.

Once I was in Thailand, haggling over the price of some tourist knick-knack from a street vendor.

Not only did she not speak English, but she didn’t speak. Deaf-mute.

But we communicated perfectly. In fact, I enjoyed the conversation very much.

One thing I get a kick out of is haggling over prices, especially if the other guy or girl likes haggling as well, as this lady clearly did.

But even though we could only use gestures, we got our messages across perfectly.

They say in NLP that the purpose of your communication is the outcome you get.

Meaning it doesn’t matter WHAT your intention is, it ONLY matters how the other person will perceive your message.

In a tragic case showing this, a Japanese student was in Texas looking for a Halloween party. He was dressed up, and went into the wrong house.

The owner pointed a gun at him and told him to FREEZE.

But the Japanese guy misunderstood, kept moving forward, and was killed.

If it’s really important for you to get your message across, it may be a good idea to take a little time to make sure it’s heard.

The adoptive parents didn’t, and it cause problems.

The sidewalk vendor did, and made a sale. I was HAPPY to give her my money, if only for the experience.

So, how do you know how to best present your message?

How do you know it will be heard, and understood?

Ask!

If you ask other people what they want, BEFORE you throw a random jumble of word salad at their brains, you’ll have a much better chance of your message getting across.

And them taking your advice, or buying your product, or giving you their phone number.

The truth about us humans is we are a walking, talking collection of unmet needs and desires.

Once we get them satisfied, we want something else.

Even where you are right now, as you read this, it will be hard to sit or stand very long before you shift your position.

We are ALWAYS on the lookout to improve our state.

Sometimes subconsciously, in the second to second short term.

Sometimes consciously, in the year to year long term.

If you KNOW what they want, and frame YOUR message in terms of THEIR desires, they’ll LOVE listening to you.

Learn How:

Interpersonal Resonance

Are You Digging Or Shooting?

One of my favorite movie quotes is from the Clint Eastwood movie, “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.”

It’s where Eastwood’s character (the famous man with no name) and his buddy are about to dig for the gold they’ve been searching for.

It’s hidden in some graveyard.

Clint says, “There are two types of people in this world. Those with loaded guns, and those who dig. You dig.”

Naturally, this is easy to apply to pretty much any society. Those who own all the means of production (and control all the cops and the military) and those who do all the work.

However, if ALL you have is some extremely simple “two types of people” argument, it’s pretty limiting.

Since humans are so complex, no matter WHAT kind of distinction you make, we all fall under both categories at one time or another, sometimes at the same time.

On the one hand, you could be the guy with the gun (or the guy in charge). But in another situation, you could be the guy digging (or the one doing the work).

Most of the time, these types of “distinctions” are two sides of the same coin.

Like in economics, they talk about “supply and demand” as if they are two separate things.

But if you are at your job, while consuming ANY kind of product (using your smartphone, drinking a pepsi, whatever) you are simultaneous both supply AND demand.

One of the biggest “arguments” on forums that talk about any type of persuasion (sales, relationships, etc.,) is the difference between “inner game” and “outer game.”

But you simply cannot have one without the other.

It’s long been known that “form follows function” as well as “function follows form.”

Meaning if you’re happy, you’ll smile.

But if you FORCE yourself to smile, you’ll start to feel happy.

Maybe holding that muscle pattern in your face REQUIRES certain memories in your brain to start being triggered.

Who knows.

Even if you FORCED yourself to believe that inner game and outer game are TOTALLY separate, it would be impossible to work on both.

For example, if you had a sales job, and you ignored all the “inner game” stuff like self confidence, assertiveness, etc., and ONLY focused on the words you were saying, something pretty cool would happen.

You’d start to change the words you said, and how you said, based on your feedback (sales, appointments, whatever).

Pretty soon you’d start getting more success. Which would automatically BOOST your confidence.

By practicing ONLY outer game, you naturally increase your inner game.

And by ONLY practicing inner game (doing mental drills, journaling, etc.) you’ll naturally increase your outer game.

Now matter HOW you intend to communicate with others, by focusing on inner OR outer game, you will DRAMATICALLY improve your results.

The good news is it’s easier than most people think.

Learn How:

Interpersonal Resonance

Get Them Thinking How You Want

Wayne Gretsky, the hockey player, famously said, “You’ll miss all the shots you don’t take.”

Meaning if you have an opportunity to take a shot, and you take it, you might score.

Or you might miss.

But if you don’t take the shot, you won’t score. Ever.

This is often used when motivating sales people and those who wish to collect phone numbers.

If you don’t ask, you’ll never get.

So you may as well ask, right?

Most people realize a shift in thinking when they understand that many endeavors can be seen as a “numbers game.”

This is certainly a helpful model.

After all, if you figured out after some experimentation that every seventeen phone calls you made, you would make a sale worth $50, then you’d simply see the total number of calls as worth about three bucks each. So long as you were consistent with your pitch, the more calls you made, the more money you’d make.

This goes with sending our resumes, grant proposals, business startups, even stocks you buy. If you follow the SAME strategy, and figure out what the “numbers” are, you’ll be in good shape.

However, we humans are good at something besides sorting through numbers.

And that is learning through experience.

Take some guy who’s talking to ladies hoping to get phone numbers. Sure, if he repeats the same robotic pick up line, he’ll get one number out of seventeen (or whatever).

But suppose he takes the time to LEARN from every encounter?

What if he not only IMPROVES his “routine” each time, but learns how to adjust it to whomever he’s talking to?

Think he’ll do MUCH BETTER than some goof who repeats the same lines over and over?

Of course he will!

The same goes for sales, job interviews, even talking to the SAME PERSON (like your kids, your spouse, your boss, that cute girl at Starbucks, etc.)

Dale Carnegie taught YEARS AGO that the best way to get somebody to do something is to get them to WANT to do it for THEIR OWN reasons.

What if there were a simple way to get other people, ANYBODY, to do things YOU want them to do but, for THEIR OWN reasons? Even agreeing that doing it (whatever it is) was a GREAT IDEA?

Think interacting with people would be easier? More enjoyable? More fun? More rewarding?

Of course it would!

Just remember the last time YOU did something for YOUR OWN REASONS that happened to be what somebody else wanted as well?

Like seeing the SAME MOVIE your friend wanted to see, or eating at the same restaurant.

That, “hey that’s a great idea, I was just thinking the same thing” type of feeling.

That is pretty easy to create in others.

All you’ve got to do is ask the right questions.

Easy to learn, easy to do.

Get Started:

Interpersonal Resonance