Category Archives: Caveman

Match Your Goals To Your Instincts

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.

Get Started:
Mind Persuasion Ebooks

Wisdom Of Cavemen

Only One More Zebra?

One More Zebra

​One common theme in many stories is a “magic key.”

A key, or map, or answer to a riddle.

Whoever finds the answer gets all the good stuff.

A famous one was Gordian’s Knot. Story goes there was this super complicated knot that nobody could unravel.

Whoever could, would get mad rewards.

So Alexander (The Great) shows up and hacks it in half with his sword.

That’s one way to solve problems! Not much elegance, but certainly effective.

They tell us that symbols that keep popping up in mythology (swords in stones, treasure maps, etc) are there because we have a deep subconscious need for them.

In your day to day life, what is the biggest “magic answer” you might be looking for?

It might be the perfect thing to say to that person you’ve got your eye on. It might be the perfect investment strategy. It might be the one thing that finally gets you unstuck from your rut so you can finally get some.

It can be tempting to slip into the “all I need” mode of thinking. If I ONLY had a boyfriend, everything else would be PERFECT.

If I ONLY had ten percent more money every month, everything would be PERFECT. Etc. Etc. Etc.

However, this is a trap. Because once you get that “thing,” it won’t last long. This isn’t bad. This isn’t some con of life. This isn’t a trick of being human.

This is just the way you are. Built to ALWAYS want more. ALWAYS want to know more, be more, do more, see more, achieve more.

Imagine a bunch of cavemen a couple hundred thousand years ago. “Man, all we need is ONE MORE ZEBRA, and we’ll be set for life!”

Luckily they didn’t think like that. They likely NEVER thought in the “all I need” mode, at least for very long.

We are all descendents of those ancient cavemen who thought in the “tide me over” mode.

They knew a big kill was good, but it was only for a couple weeks, at best.

That one guy or girl you may have your eye on may be GREAT when you get them, but only so you can go out and get MORE stuff next time.

That ten percent raise will feel fantastic when it comes, but only to push you to see even MORE money in six months or so.

If you think in terms of “I only need,” then you’re life will ALWAYS seem incomplete.

But when you think in terms of “tide me over,” your life will ALWAYS have purpose.

Forward momentum. Consistent achievement. Endless growth.

Whatever you’ve got now, get some more.

These will help:

Do You Prefer Checkers Or Chess?

How To Think A Few Moves Ahead

Ditch The Caveman Brain

There’s an old joke whenever two politicians get together.

This is usually when one guy is thought to be “smart” while the other is thought to be “stupid.”

Of course, we all think our guy is smart, and the “other people’s guy” is stupid.

This can apply to any two politicians, from any point in time.

Anyhow, the way the joke goes is “guy A is playing chess, while guy B is playing checkers.”

Meaning one guy is only thinking in the short term, while the other guy is thinking many, many moves ahead.

Being able to plan far out into the future is a very good trait to have. This requires that you not think of ONLY what’s in it for you now, but what might happen tomorrow or a week or even a month from now.

The problem is our instincts are designed to look only a few moments into the future.

It’s been said that “being civilized” simply means planning on a more distant future, rather than relying on our instincts, which can only think of the future right in front of our faces.

This isn’t easy, it isn’t natural and it definitely takes practice.

This is thinking behind Benjamin Franklin’s famous statement, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

Our instincts our telling us to stay up late and sleep in. But if we can overcome our instincts with conscious planning, (sleeping and waking up early) we’ll be much more likely to make something of ourselves.

Here’s another way of looking at it.

If you’re only focused on the near term future, you have a kind of tunnel vision. But if you are focused FAR out into the future, you can see a lot more things. A lot more paths. A lot more opportunities. A lot more options that you might have otherwise missed.

But here’s the cool thing.

Part of you is ALWAYS looking WAY out in the future. That super genius part of you that operates BELOW your conscious  awareness. That part of you that is ALWAYS playing a VERY LONG RANGE game of chess, while our conscious minds are always playing checkers.

Unfortunately, that super genius part of us can ONLY speak to us in intuition. Feelings. A gut level hunch that tells us we should maybe choose option B when our short term checkers brain is telling us option A is best.

When you tune into this part of you, magic will happen.