Category Archives: Achievement

Chased By Marines

Thomas Jefferson is a guy whose name can cause some reaction.

Some people love him, some people hate him.

Whatever you feel about him, try and put that aside.

One of my favorite quotes of his has absolutely nothing to do with politics or economics or anything normally associated with him.

The quote?

“The sun hasn’t caught me in bed for fifty years.”

Despite how you may feel about the dude, you gotta respect somebody who gets up BEFORE the crack of dawn as a matter of course.

This isn’t easy by any stretch.

One of the most difficult things to do for us modern humans is respond to our own incentives.

For example, suppose you joined the marines, and were shipped off to boot camp.

If you KNEW that waking up even one minute late would mean you and your friends running all day, waking up would be easy.

Anybody could wake up in those situations.

Or if you went away to some weight loss camp, where there was literally NO FOOD to snack on, anybody could lose weight in those situations.

These are situations that have EXTERNAL incentives.

Responding to those are AUTOMATIC.

One time I ran a 10K.

I was pretty out of shape. My goal was to run it in less than an hour, which is pretty slow.

But I was very lucky.

Because about a hundred meters behind me, for the entire race, was a group of marines.

And they were doing their marine “chant” the ENTIRE race.

It was very easy to imagine they were CHASING me, and I had to stay ahead of them.

This EXTERNAL incentive helped me achieve my goal.

The thing is though, that ANYBODY can pretty much do ANYTHING if the external incentives are strong enough.

What’s really powerful is if you can set and respond to your own internal incentives.

Getting up at the crack of dawn when nobody but you is going to know.

Sticking to your diet when nobody but you is going to know.

Hitting your financial goals when nobody but you is going to know.

Because if you CAN create and OBEY your own internal incentives, you can do ANYTHING.

Any.

Thing.

Luckily, you DO have an internal guidance system.

One that you may have forgotten about.

Or worse, one that you may even think is your enemy.

In its current state, it can certainly seem like an enemy.

But if you can understand why, you can recalibrate it.

And turn it into your most loyal friend.

A friend whose support will help you create and obey any internal incentive you want.

To get anything you want.

Learn How:

Ego Taming

How To Play The Long Game

I read this interesting article about how corporations take over governments.

It’s a highly complex process that involves a lot of parts.

And a lot of entities that are controlled by the corporations.

For example, they’ll have a research subsidiary, and a public relations subsidiary.

Both appear to be independent companies, but if you do some digging you’ll see the connections.

Over the course of 7-10 years, they do research (where they know ahead of time what the results will be) and then use their public relations subsidiary to carefully publicize the “shocking” results.

Once the general public see it as a problem, then they’ll have their contacts quietly contact members of congress.

A year or so later, congress creates a law that “solves” the problem.

A law that coincidentally benefits the corporation, who started the process.

The reason they can do this is they can think in long term time-lines.

Long game.

Politicians, on the other hand, must think in terms of short game.

Since they always need to worry about their approval levels.

Media are also worried about the short game.

Very short game.

Since they have to worry about eyeballs and ad clicks.

In any given system, whoever can make and maintain the longest game plan usually wins out in the end.

This goes for us as individuals as well.

Imagine if you could only see two feet in front of you as you walked.

You had some bubble around you keeping you from seeing further out.

If you got to a wall, you would have to just keep walking along the wall, hoping for an opening.

Sadly, this is how most people live.

They can only “see” a few days ahead.

When asked questions about one year or five year plans, they kind of shrug their shoulders.

On the other hand, image being able to see miles all around.

Walls would never be a problem.

You would see them far enough ahead of time so you would just make one small shift.

The further out you are from the wall, the smaller the shift you need to make to avoid it.

But with only two-foot vision, you might not EVER get around it.

How do you develop long range vision, so you can overcome huge obstacles with small shifts?

There are plenty of easy things that done daily, will slowly open your vision FAR into the future.

So all you’ll ever need to do is make small shifts.

Life is easy when you play the long game.

The short game, not so much.

Learn More:

Seven Disciplines

Waiting For Magic Corn

Imagine you were out driving around.

And in this hallucination (which will require a bit of suspended disbelief) you were thinking about a new career.

Let’s say you passed by a guy who was harvesting corn.

In this metaphor, you don’t really know much about anything.

In fact, you don’t really know where food comes from.

(other than on the shelf at the supermarket).

So you drive onto the farmer’s land, pull up, and get out.

“Where does all this corn come from?” you ask, absolutely flabbergasted.

“The ground,” the farmer says, smiling.

“But how?” You ask.

The farmer smiles. Let’s suppose, for the sake of this story, that he’s a church going farmer.

“Have patience, and Lord will provide,” he answers, not quite sure he understands the question.

“But it just comes up out of the ground like that?” You ask, still trying to wrap your mind around this mysterious concept.

Food coming straight out of the dirt? That’s crazy!

“Like, every day?” you ask. The farmer smiles and shakes his head.

“No, not every day. You must be patient, and the Lord will provide,” he answers.

You get back in your car and think about it.

If you could get food out of the ground, you could sell it!

When you buy corn at the store, it’s a dollar an ear.

And that farmer had HUNDREDS, maybe THOUSANDS of ears!

You’re going to be rich!

So you find some land.

And you sit in the middle.

“OK, Lord,” you say, looking up to the sky.

“I’m ready for my corn!”

And you wait patiently for it to spring forth.

But you’re waiting a while.

The only thing that grows are weeds.

You think maybe you didn’t ask correctly. Or maybe you weren’t thinking correctly.

So you ask again, only with more enthusiasm.

“Lord, I promise. I’m really ready to receive this time,” you say.

After another few weeks pass by, the weeds are over your head.

How in the heck did that farmer get corn out of the ground, when you only got weeds?

The farmer, however, misunderstood you. He just assumed you know about farming, and planting seeds, and taking care of the soil.

But all you saw was the end result.

Not the daily consistent behaviors that were REQUIRED to get the result.

And in just sitting there, staring at the sky and asking for magic corn, you looked kind of silly.

Hopefully you’re seeing some parallels in this metaphor and how people go about getting (or trying to get) good things.

Most people focus on the outcome, rather than the required daily behaviors.

But the required daily behaviors to get anything are pretty simple.

So simple you could get started today.

Whatever seeds you plant, they will grow.

Learn How:

Seven Disciplines

Three Operator Mindset

Long time ago, I got a job selling cars.

I was running out of money, and jobs were hard to come by.

Plenty of places like retail sales, especially if you don’t need a license, will more or less hire anybody.

They hire people based on the number theory.

The same kind of statistics some guys use when approaching girls.

If you chat up ten girls a day, you’ll eventually run into a few you click with.

And among those you click with, you’ll eventually find a pretty good one.

It is a very common sales strategy, referred to as the funnel.

A bunch of prospects go into the top, and a few sales come out the bottom.

Sales places hire people this way.

They hire about twenty new salespeople a month.

Every month.

They figure even if 19 of them eventually quit, they’ll end up with a team of skilled sellers.

On the other side of the equation is that once these skilled sellers realize that they are, indeed, skilled sellers, they go somewhere else.

If you are good at selling things, a car lot is the LAST place you want to be.

Stand up all day, usually outside. Really long hours.

But one thing that surprised me the most is the transition people make.

They come in terrified of the salespeople.

Most customers give of a dangerous kind of body language.

The kind that says, “Don’t you DARE come near me!”

This is why so many people quit.

But once you get past that “defense zone,” they open up pretty easily.

Talk about what they want, show them what you’ve got, and one out of ten or so will end up buying something.

What always got me was their internal transition.

From when they walked onto the lot, to the time they bought something.

They went from looking like they wanted to kill me, to acting like I was their best friend.

Since they’d overcome all their internal objections, all they had was pure desire.

Everybody loves buying stuff.

When we want it and can afford it, it’s a pretty good feeling.

Even if you’re buying lunch, that feeling when the waitress sets down your plate is a pretty good one.

One way to look at sales, (and all persuasion) is by imagining three operators.

There’s you, and the part of your target who wants to get something, and the part of your target who’s afraid to get that same thing.

Most people look at persuasion and sales as “one on one” battle.

But EVERYBODY is conflicted when buying something.

Even when ordering food in a restaurant, most of us have to think about it.

So when persuading, (or selling or seducing) think about the three operator mindset.

You, the part of them that wants what you want, and the part of them that isn’t so sure.

Three things will happen.

One is it will now be two against one.

Two is you can use plenty of sneaky patterns to HELP the good guys win.

Three is when you DO help the good guys when, there will only be two of you left.

You and your grateful friend.

Learn How:

Seven Laws

Secret Pac Man Magic

When I was a kid me and my buddies loved to play Pac Man.

There were lots of old school video games.

But Pac Man was unique.

In that there was allegedly some secret “pattern” that once you learned it, it would allow you to easily escape the dudes trying to eat Pac Man.

Lots of video games have “cheats,” but for Pac Man it was a little different.

It was like a secret system.

Of course, nobody knew what that system was.

Everybody knew somebody who saw somebody use it.

It seems we humans love to think along these lines.

Of some secret shortcut that exists, and only those “in the know” have access to it.

Once I was told by a professor in college that companies had secretly invented tires that never wear down and nylons that never run.

But if they released them to the public, they wouldn’t make nearly as much money.

Maybe it’s true, maybe not, but it seems that with some clever marketing, if you DID have a tire that never wore down, you’d make a ton of money.

On the other hand, there ARE some things that do seem like shortcuts.

But they only appear to be shortcuts to others who don’t know the “system.”

If you work any system long enough, you’ll figure out all the angles.

Kind of like that movie, “Groundhog Day.”

Poor guy lived the same day over and over and over.

But by the end, he had everything down PERFECTLY.

The good news is that we don’t need to relive every day, or take a bunch of time to learn all the angles.

Because there really IS a set of “shortcuts.”

Shortcuts in human thinking and behaving.

The people that know about these shortcuts, and more importantly, how to deliver them, make TONS of money.

And they have been for a LONG time.

And many of the folks that are naturally persuasive use these also.

They just don’t know it.

So when you learn these, and find out just how effective they are, it’s up to you whether you want to share them or not.

But it IS pretty cool to let others think you’ve discovered some kind of magic trick.

Learn How:
Seven Laws

Practice Your Superpower

The other night I watched the movie “Jumper” on Netflix.

About this kid that learned he could teleport himself everywhere.

Didn’t take him long to start showing up inside bank vaults, taking stacks of cash, and then going back home.

There’s another TV show about these ambulance drivers. One episode they were talking about the coolest superpower to have.

They all ended up choosing the superpower they thought would help them get laid.

There’s this interesting primate called the Bonobo.

One thing they do is have a lot of sex.

Everybody is pretty much nailing everybody else all the time.

They find a new grove of trees, they have an orgy to celebrate.

I recently read a book that suggested the main reason for our human intelligence was a tool to get laid.

It’s our own version of the Peacock’s tail.

If you could choose a super power, which super power would you choose?

The very first book every written about NLP was called “The Structure of Magic.”

It related Noam Chomsky’s theory of transformational grammar to the idea of “surface structure” vs. “deep structure.”

What we say and pay attention to is the surface structure.

But what we respond to is the deep structure.

When you learn how to “speak” NLP, you can speak and understand both.

Which means you’ll no longer be limited to seeing ONLY the surface structure of people’s communication.

You’ll know what they mean, know what they want, and what they are afraid of.

And when you can communicate at that level as well, that’s about as close to a super power as you’re going to get.

Funny thing about NLP is it’s usually taught as some kind of “once and done” type of deal.

Go to a seminar, have a bunch of stuff “installed” and then suddenly you’re “trained” in NLP.

Suppose you went to a basketball camp and thought you were “trained” in basketball?

What would happen if you went down the playground and tried some pickup ball?

Do you think it would help if you brought your “basketball practitioner” certificate?

If you want to get better at a skill, there’s two essential ingredients.

You’ve got to know how to do the skill in the first place.

AND you’ve got to practice.

How much?

How much practice would it take before you could stroll onto a basketball court anywhere in the country and hold your own?

How much practice would it take to become a black belt in your preferred martial art?

How much practice would it take to become fluent in a foreign language?

That much!

But here’s the good news.

Since so few people take time to practice ANYTHING related to NLP, most people couldn’t NLP their way out of a paper bag.

So when YOU start putting in the practice, your language will be YOUR superpower.

And it will get you all the things superpowers do.

Get Started:

Mind Persuasion Ebooks

Love The Rough Parts

Ups and Downs

Many people start off with a strong goal, and then lose motivation later on.

For example, if you go to your local gym a week after New Year’s, you’ll see that it’s packed with people.

But if you show up a month or two later, you’ll see far fewer.

If you can recall many of the projects you’ve started off in the past, you may notice a similar pattern.

One of the reasons for this may your particular Meta-Program when it comes to motivation.

Some people are motivated to move away from pain. Some people are motivated to move towards pleasure. Most are a mixture of both.

So anytime you start off a project without understanding and addressing both ends of the spectrum, it’s easy to lose motivation.

For example, if you looked at yourself in the mirror and didn’t like what you saw, you’d be motivated.

But as soon as you made a little progress, that negative feeling would have less of an effect. You’re replacing that negative feeling with positive action.

In this case, it’s best to acknowledge that the INITIAL motivation is to move away from something negative, but to keep going, you’ll need to create something positive to pull you forward.

It’s also common to be in a good rhythm, and then get stuck in a rut. Or even take a few steps back.

You’re jamming along, getting small success after small success, seeing that big goal getting closer and closer and BAM!

Something happens, and it seems as though everything’s falling apart.

During these periods, it’s really easy to get discouraged.

However, it’s important to understand that this is part of the process.

One of the tests of “randomness” in any system is whether or not there are “runs.”

Meaning if you flip a coin a thousand times, you’re going to get times when you get ten heads in a row, or ten tails in a row.

This is a statistical requirement. In fact, if you DON’T have runs, then something’s wrong.

So on your way to your goal, you should fully EXPECT to have rough patches. You should only start to worry if you NEVER have any rough patches.

Even in the movies, when things are too easy, the hero or heroine realizes something must be wrong.

Because it’s NEVER easy.

Remember this next time you hit a rough patch. It’s perfectly natural. It’s expected. It’s nature’s way of FORCING you to dig deep and reevaluate your strategy, so you can come up with something even BETTER than what you’ve been doing.

As the founder of Sony famously said, if you want to double your success rate, all you’ve got to do is double your failure rate.

Get Started:

Mind Persuasion