Monthly Archives: May 2016

Afraid of Mistakes?

When I was a kid I loved popcorn.

Both making it, and eating it.

Once I tried to make some, but I couldn’t find any oil.

I found some other stuff that looked like oil, but wasn’t oil.

Only I didn’t find out until I’d mixed it with the popcorn and heated it on the fire.

Instead of getting a bowl of popcorn, I got a gooey inedible mess.

Now, at the time, I was pretty disappointed. Not only did I didn’t get what I wanted, but I had a huge mess to clean up.

But at the same time, it was kind of fun to experiment. To try and see.

Something else I used to love as a kid. Most of the time, the results were neutral, or good. Sometimes they backfired. Once I almost caught my room on fire.

Consider what your life would be like if were impossible to be curious. Impossible to wonder “what if.”

You’d only be able to do stuff that was “safe.”

Only stuff that others had tried and succeeded. Always be a follower, and not a leader.

Sure, you’d never catch stuff on fire and you wouldn’t have any expected messes, but it would be pretty boring.

Some people are happy to live a boring life.

Some people would RATHER live a boring life.

Think of the most magnificent thing you’d like in life, right now.

Are you willing to make tons of goofy mistakes in order to get there?

Because that is what it will take.

Nobody went from normal to king or queen without plenty of mishaps along the way.

Two steps forward and one step back. All the way to the top.

Accepting, owning, and learning from your mistakes is the singular most important thing you can do.

If you are afraid to do this, you’ll be stuck right where you are.

If you’re willing to mess up BIG, and keep on rolling, you’ll be fine.

After all, you’re only a “failure” when you stop moving forward.

What do YOU want to learn?

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Get Some Imaginary Friends

When I was in college, my friends and I used to play this goofy game.

I’d stand in some conspicuous location and my friends would feed me horribly cheesy lines to yell out at girls as they walked past.

The game was to see how big of a reaction we could get.

Now, doing this with my buddies behind me was easy.

But if I did the same thing on my own, that’d be a different story.

Anything can be a lot easier if you’ve got a group of good friends at your back.

But sometimes, most of the time, this simply isn’t feasible.

Imagine if you walked into your boss’ office and presented a new business idea with a group of hooligans cheering you on!

However, you CAN imagine having an imaginary Mastermind group following you around.

Not really a mastermind group, as that is to collectively come up with new ideas.

This is more of a master “coach” group.

Now, at first glance, this seems pretty strange. But if you make sure you don’t tell anybody, it will work out pretty well.

Just choose two or three people. Best if they are actual characters. Historical figures or people from history or role models you’ve actually met.

The more you “recall” them, the more “real” they’ll seem

Imagine them with you when you’re doing borings, mundane things, everyday things.

Get used to having them looking over your shoulder, checking your work.

Not to criticize you, but to be impressed by you.

Of course, this is all a hallucination.

But being able to switch from “student mode” to “coach mode’ in your brain is very helpful.

It can also help you keep an objective viewpoint when you’re doing important things.

This is just one technique you can start using TODAY to help make those “difficult” things just a little bit easier.

Because after all, it’s your willingness AND your ability to do the “difficult” thing that will make the difference between a life of mediocrity and one of fantastic success.

And you may as well use as many techniques as you can.

Learn More:

Mind Persuasion Ebooks

Conquer The Vast Unknown

When I was a kid I loved science.

Still do.

However, once I started to study science for real, it quickly became clear that the more we humans know, the more we realize we don’t know.

Human understanding has been described as a shoreline around an island. The more we expand the shoreline, the more of a huge ocean we see that we can’t fathom.

As big as our island of knowledge gets, it’s still an island that will always be surrounded by uncharted waters.

Now, there are a lot of ways to respond to this.

One is to shrug your shoulders and figure “well, since we’ll never know, I’ll just leave it up to the gods.”

Another way is to make up scientific “laws” that can’t be disproved, and make us feel really good.

If we’re not careful, this can lead to a trap. Where we don’t really DO anything except try and find some “secret” law of manifesting or creation. Some epic “short cut” that will get us the goods without needing to take a risk.

However, if you’re honest, the ONLY way to measure your progress is through your results.

And this is only possible if you have a well-defined outcome that you’re going after.

That way, you’ll have something to measure your progress against.

Because us humans are SO GOOD at deceiving ourselves, it’s pretty easy to convince ourselves we’re doing better when we’re really just spinning our wheels.

So, ask yourself. What do you want?

How will you know when you get it?

Once you get this out of the way, you can start trying things.

If it gets you closer, do more.

If if doesn’t get you closer, do something different.

There IS one thing that can get in your way.

And that is when you KNOW what you need to do, but you simply can’t bring yourself to do it.

Like presenting your idea in a meeting at work, or taking what feels like a HUGE risk and starting your own business, or anything else that’s REQUIRED but certainly not EASY.

That’s ok.

So long as you break it down into small chunks, you’ll do fine.

These books are filled with tools and mental exercises that will help.

Making whatever you want easier than ever.

Mind Persuasion Ebooks

How Ideas Make Love

I read an interesting book recently about the history of prosperity.

How societies went from a bunch of people who chased down zebras for dinner to the kinds of things we have now.

Now, a lot of things were necessary for this massive and continuous improvement.

But a couple of things stuck out.

One is we humans LOVE to copy each other.

One of the often overlooked aspect of the Industrial Revolution, for example, is the massive amount of copying that was going on.

Businessmen would visit factories, come with some excuse to get a tour, and then quickly memorize how everything was set up. When they got back home they’d write down as much as they could remember.

This is essentially how ALL progress is made.

Business compete by more or less copying and improving on each other.

A second thing that stuck out was what author called “ideas having sex.”

Meaning people would come up with interesting ideas, theories, and different ways of looking at the world.

Then those ideas would get into other people’s heads, and THOSE people would put their own unique spin on things.

And after a bunch of iterations, the “ideas” would kind of take on a life of their own.

Changing and evolving and pretty soon, a entire new concept would pop up. Medicine, philosophy, science, art, etc.

What’s cool is YOU can use both of these ideas in your daily life.

One is to ALWAYS spend some time each day in “observer-learner” mode. Where you watch people, not to pass the time or laugh about how goofy they are, but to get ideas.

This can either be in real life, or on TV or YouTube. Just watch people doing things and see if you might get some ideas.

The second phase comes is when you do daily journaling. This is when your “ideas” can mix with your observations to create new ideas, discoveries and insights.

“I saw a person doing X today, and I might try that to do Y, and if I did that, I might get Z, which would be pretty cool because then I’d be able to do XX…”

If you keep doing this on a regular basis, pretty soon you’ll come up with some genius ideas that when acted upon, maybe literally CHANGE your life.

This is just ONE of the many techniques you’ll learn in all of the Mind Persuasion Kindle books.

Helping you to dig into your brain to find YOUR genius.

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Are You Reciting Magic Words?

When I was a kid my mom would always get on my case.

I’d go to my friends, we’d get into all kinds of trouble, have a lot of fun, etc.

Then my mom would ask me what we’d done, conversationally, and I’d say, “nothing.”

Or when we had something really BIG planned, she’d ask me what I was doing that weekend.

And I’d say, “Nothing. Just going to my friends house.”

One of the things our conscious brains to, to save processing power, is to distort, generalize, and delete.

Imagine if you had a really delicious chicken dinner, with eighteen courses, and waitresses that juggled fire while you ate, all on top of this spinning disk on top of a two thousand story tower.

Now, you could take an hour or two to fully explain your experience to a colleague at work a couple weeks later.

OR you could say, “I went to this chicken restaurant that had a pretty good show.”

Most of the time this works pretty well. It’s a lot of effort to describe everything, and the poor guy who asked you about your weekend doesn’t really want to hang around for three hours while you describe it in excruciating detail.

However, this tendency to WAY oversimplify things CAN get in the way.

Like take somebody who spend ten years building a million dollar business.

They started out trying various things. They tried and failed TONS before they made a nickel. Their friends (who later turned out not to be friends) thought they were crazy.

The friends that DID stick by them turned out to be ULTRA LOYAL.

They lost TONS of sleep worrying about whether or not they’d succeed, felt more anxiety than they thought they could bear.

And then FINALLY they started to become successful. A little bit. Then they got a little bit more.

THEN they got to that magic tipping point where success bred more success.

And let’s say you asked them the secret of their success.

Would they REALLY spend hours and hours explaining everything?

Or would they sum it up in a short, easy to understand sentence? Like these:

Follow Your Bliss

Never Give Up

Have Faith In Yourself

Believe In Yourself

Believe it and You’ll Achieve It

What would you do?

Repeat these as if they were magic words, and then get angry when the success fairy didn’t show up?

Would you “follow your bliss” by watching TV or eating ice cream, since that what you REALLY like doing, and wonder why you’re not rich?

Silly as it sounds, this is what MOST PEOPLE do.

What about you?

Do you believe in “magic” or you relentless drive to succeed no matter what?

It takes time, it takes effort.

But you wouldn’t be reading this now if you didn’t have it in you.

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Mind Persuasion Ebooks

Satisfy Your Inner Caveman

I saw this weird competition once on TV.

A group of high school kids, about fifty of them, side by side, with their legs tied together.

So wherever you were in the line, your legs were tied to the guys on either side of you.

They were all on one side of a big field.

And they had a run a 100 yards.

Each school had a team, and they saw how fast it was.

Clearly, these kids practiced, because they were VERY tight.

If you’ve ever been in a “three legged race” where there’s only TWO people like this, it’s pretty tough.

Especially if you haven’t practiced.

Whenever you have two opposing forces, you can create A LOT if they are in sync, but you can be held back just as much if they are going in different directions.

Humans are goal seeking machines.

We can’t exist for more than a couple seconds without acting. Just shifting in your seat is an example.

And all action is for a purpose. None of it is random. It may not seem that way, but consider what happens when you shift in your seat.

Certain muscles get tired, and they need a rest. Muscles that are more rested decide to take on more weight, and take off weight of the muscles (or muscle angles). The shift has a PURPOSE of increasing comfort, and decreasing discomfort.

Every single goal you have, whether conscious or unconscious has this INTENTION.

Sure, if you completely misunderstand the situation, you may do something that makes everything worse.

But this INTENTION (increase comfort and decrease discomfort) is always there.

Now sometimes we realize that to increase comfort in the LONG TERM, we have to experience intermediate periods of DISCOMFORT.

Like when a caveman sees a tiger. Running away screaming with huge amounts of fear is not exactly more comfortable than just standing there.

But your brain is also MASSIVELY quick. So it CALCULATES all the possible outcomes in the near and medium term future.

In microseconds.

It chooses what will give you the BEST possible outcome given all your options.

Humans have a lot of PRE-PROGRAMMED desires.

Food, companionship, safety, sex, esteem, social status, recognition and validation.

If you try and ignore these, meaning if you try and OVERRULE your caveman instincts with your conscious mind, you won’t usually get very far.

That’s precisely why willpower based diets NEVER work very long.

But when you carefully CHOOSE YOUR GOALS that are congruent with your caveman goals, or at the very least, figure out a way to take your CHOSEN GOALS and put them in the context so your CAVEMAN will ALSO be happy, you’ll have a much better chance.

You can learn and do anything you want, so long the skills you are building are CONGRUENT with your deepest instincts.

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Calmly Speak Your Desires

Most people wish they were more assertive.

In fact, most people misunderstand being assertive.

They often confuse it with being aggressive, or being belligerent.

And as I’m sure you know, all of us have shades of both passiveness and aggressiveness.

However, what really IS assertive behavior?

Well, it’s being able to “assert” something.

And what does THAT mean?

Simply stating what’s on your mind, or asking for what you want.

But it ALSO means allowing the OTHER PERSON to be assertive as well.

Say you see an interesting person. You’d like their phone number.

An example of assertive behavior would simply be to walk up, express that you think they are interesting, and ask for their phone number so you can get in touch with them later on. To know more about them. Because they are interesting.

Now, imagine doing that. Imagine walking up and saying that.

“Hi, I just noticed you standing there, and I thought you looked pretty interesting. I’m pretty busy right now, but how about if you give me your phone number, so I can call you later and we can meet up and hang out?”

Or something similar.

Of course, most people wouldn’t THINK of doing this. That is TERRIFYING!

But on another level, you probably realize that if you DID do this, and could say it with complete calmness and confidence, you’d get a lot of good results.

So how can you get to this level of calmness and confidence?

(And in case your wondering, you can substitute sales, or talking to your boss, or discussing difficult things with your partner, etc.)

The GOOD NEWS is that “assertiveness” is a transferable skill.

Like your chest muscles. If you work your chest muscles, ANYTHING physical you do, that involves your chest muscles will be easier.

Assertiveness works the same way.

To get better, all you’ve got to do is practice.

Any time you have an idea, an opinion, a desire, simply state it. Don’t force it on others. Don’t be belligerent with it, just state it as a FACT.

It’s raining out.

Today is cloudy.

I ate a cheeseburger last night.

I grew up in a one story house.

I’d like your phone number.

I didn’t like that movie.

I think that mustard and pizza go great together.

Don’t EXPECT agreement, but don’t EXPECT disagreement.

After all, you’re saying something that is ABSOLUTELY TRUE. For You.

Always look for opportunities to “strengthen” your assertiveness muscle.

Keep score. Write how many times you did it per day.

Try and keep a slightly increasing daily average.

And watch how easy it gets.

Learn More:

Mind Persuasion Ebooks

Are You At The Mercy of the Gods?

Cycles are everywhere.

On a huge galactic scale, all the way down to molecules.

Even the idea of Pi is pretty amazing.

There’s a theory that human history is not really linear, but circular.

Sure, we keep getting better inventions, both scientific and types of government.

But if you look back far enough, you’ll see there are always times of peace, growth, war, collapse, and rebirth.

Individually, we have “good days” and “bad days.”

In statistics, one of the “tests” for randomness is the presence of “runs.”

Like if you toss a coin a hundred times in a row, it would be EXTREMELY unlikely to get one each of heads and tails.

Instead, it’s HIGHLY LIKELY to a get a bunch of heads in a row, and then later on a bunch of tails in a row.

In fact, this is the heart of most Las Vegas style betting systems. When you’re hot, (lots of wins in a row) bet a lot. When you’re on a losing streak (lots of losses in a row) bet the minimum.

But for some reason, when we’re trying to improve ourselves, it’s VERY EASY to get discouraged when we have a few losses in a row.

Sales that don’t convert, people that aren’t interested in talking to us socially, business ideas that crash and burn.

One of two common responses is easy, but not very helpful.

One is to give up. That’s probably the most common.

The other is to just shrug your shoulders and figure “the world” is broken, and there’s not much you can do.

This certainly makes us feel better. Nobody likes to feel like a failure. It’s much easier to blame things outside of our control.

But if you do this, then you’re missing out on very VALUABLE information.

Because every time you do ANYTHING, you get feedback.

Information that you can use to do better next time.

This is easy when you practice daily journaling.

Just write down what you did.

Write down what happened.

Then write down what ELSE you could have done differently.

Something in YOUR control.

Then imagine what would have happened if you did THAT instead.

Like maybe approaching that person sooner, or trying to close the deal in a slightly different way, or maybe say something a little bit differently.

Then take some time imagining THAT, as if it actually happened.

This way, ever single thing you do, whether you got the result you wanted or not, will help you learn.

Help you improve.

Which will make you feel a lot more in control, instead of at the mercy of the gods.

Try this strategy with whatever you want to learn, do, or become, and see what happens.

What skills would you like?

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Mind Persuasion Ebooks

What Do You Practice?

Who are the best athletes in the world?

I mean not their names, or what they do, but what kind of ways could we characterize them?

One could be they are genetically gifted.

Another could be they had a certain upbringing which put an emphasis on sports.

Yet another could be they were very lucky.

But one characteristic is absolutely certain across all athletes and all sports.

Practice.

Nobody gets to the top without daily practice. Hours of practice.

The same goes for the top musicians, programmers, and all other skills.

Even doctors call their business a “practice.”

Because every patient they see is different, which means they have treat each one uniquely. And since this gives them a new learning experience each and every time, it’s their “practice.”

And when they retire, they even use the verb. “I’m a doctor but I no longer practice.”

However, when it comes to the world of self development, we somehow don’t think we need to “practice.”

Like all we need to do is read a book, understand some new ideas, and POOF! We start living the good life.

Even something as simple as losing weight, or getting a six pack. We’ve been conned into thinking we really CAN get “five second abs” or “lose ten pounds a week while we sleep.”

I once saw this very interesting documentary on state lotteries.

The marketing director said that when they create their ads, they don’t promote a one dollar lottery ticket as a chance to win a million dollars.

They promote it (covertly) as a couple days to DREAM about a good life. For only a dollar.

Unfortunately, a lot of people treat self development the same way.

Whether it be prosperity, relationships, pick up, business, sales, what have you, it seems a lot of people only buy those books because while they are reading them, they are dreaming of that magical time in the future when everything is better.

And they keep that feeling for a couple weeks. And when it wears off, they buy another book, or go to another seminar, or order another DVD set.

But if you don’t start to practice, your life will never change.

The GOOD NEWS is that practicing is easy. It’s simple. So long as you start slow, and do the same little bit every day, you’ll get better and better.

Sure, there won’t be a magic switch that makes all your problems vanish while you sleep, but you’ll slowly be building a fantastic life for yourself.

And the more you practice, the easier it will be to practice. Mental exercises, journaling exercise, and when you’re ready, out in the real world talking to other people exercises.

That’s why ALL of these have TONS of exercises.

Things you can start doing TODAY, on a daily basis, to build whatever life you want.

Get Started:

Mind Persuasion Ebooks

How To Hallucinate Your Own Coach

Having a coach is a good idea for many reasons.

Sports, music, seduction, self-development, pretty much anything.

If anything to keep you honest. If you know you’re going to having somebody checking your work, on a regular basis, you’ll be much more likely to do it than if you’re on your own.

Even before traditional education was invented, you had to be an apprentice for a while before you were trusted.

Essentially, you had to work under a “coach” who would watch you, guide you, encourage you, and make sure you knew your stuff.

Your success was just as important to him or her, as is to you.

Even today doctors have to go through the same process.

But what happens if you don’t have the time or money for a coach?

You can make up your own.

It’s pretty cool trick that’s been used by a lot of people.

But since it’s pretty “weird” most people don’t really advertise it.

First thing is to figure out what you want to do.

Speak in public, be more outgoing, be more persuasive, play an instrument, anything.

Then choose a REAL PERSON who is a EXPERT in that field.

They can be living or dead, somebody you’ve met or somebody you’ve only read about.

Then you start to develop a “relationship” with this imaginary person.

Get to know their “personality.”

Then when you practice whatever it is you want to practice, imagine they are there helping you.

This will take a while before it feels real.

It’s a skill to imagine somebody’s there when they’re not, so give it some time.

But you’ll find it’s a lot easier than going alone.

If you REALLY want to kick your progress into high gear, you can “channel” them when you do daily journaling.

At the end of the day, just write down a few things you did to get closer to your goal or whatever skill you’re practicing.

Then give yourself an honest “evaluation” with good points and bad points. Only when you write the “evaluation” part, imagine that you’ve given THEM (your imaginary coach) control of your mind and hands as you journal.

Then allow “them” to give you homework assignments for the next day.

A short, easy to stick to, “to do” list.

This is DEFINITLY weird, so be careful who you share this with.

But is very useful. It’s really “you” talking to “you” anyway. Or your “higher self” talking to your “normal self.’

That way, you’ll never feel alone, and you’ll always feel encouraged.

A great way to learn some new skills.

Like These:

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