Category Archives: Dreams

How To Build A Fantastic Future

I read an interesting article the other day about “happiness.”

Seems it’s a pretty interesting topic, since it’s obviously something everybody wants.

So it’s pretty easy to get grant money, funding, etc., to do studies.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to study, because it’s hard to measure.

In fact, just asking the question, “What makes you feel happy?” Will require you to THINK about those things that make you happy.

And as I’m sure you know, happiness can be pretty fleeting. It generally doesn’t last, if the situation stays the same.

If you’re sore at the end of the day, the first few minutes you slip into a hot bath may make you feel incredibly happy.

You think of all you’ve accomplished, you relax knowing you’ve put in a good day’s work. You can look forward to a decent dinner and maybe your favorite TV show, or book or whatever.

But how long will that “feeling” last? If you sit in that tub long enough, the hot water will turn cold.

Because humans are always in some kind of PROCESS, rather than some static blob of chemicals, happiness may well be a process also.

Not a destination, but a side effect of forward momentum.

Most people feel pretty good when they are on the path of achieving something worthwhile.

Think of the last time you were preparing for a party. A part you would enjoy hosting or attending.

While you were preparing whatever it was (be it shopping for clothes or baking a cake) you probably felt pretty good.

You were CREATING something that was important to you, and LOOKING FORWARD into the future when something good was going to happen.

On the other hand, think of a time when you were just sitting there, doing nothing, with NOTHING to look forward to.

Quite a different experience!

It seems an easy conclusion that so long as you are in the process of changing something towards a better future, one that is largely in your control, happiness is a natural by product.

The good news is that ANYTHING will work. So long as you are taking some kind of action every single day, that isn’t just a pastime in and of itself, but something toward a goal YOU have chosen, you’ll be much more likely to be happy.

One thing can do is some mental exercises.

Since your brain, and the quality of your thoughts, is a PRIME INGREDIENT in anything you’ll be building in this life, working on your noggin seems to be a good choice.

Some daily practice will give you that feeling of forward momentum, enough so that when you look a year or two into your future, you’ll have a deep and real feeling that it WILL be awesome.

Get Started:

Intelligence Accelerator

What Will Your Genius Bring You?

Dreams Are Just The Beginning

Becoming an expert in something takes a while.

If you wanted to become the top of your field in photoshop, for example, you’d need to spend a lot of hours practicing.

Hopefully, that would be something you would both enjoy, both the learning part and the imagining when you are an expert part.

Same goes for pretty much anything. As the famous saying goes, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice!”

The truth is you can good at pretty much anything if you practice enough. Sure, some people are born with natural talent, but that will only take you so far. Genius, as somebody famously said, is one percent inspiration, and 99 percent perspiration.

Which means having a great idea or a dream is just the start of a LONG journey.

Many historians have theorized that there have been TONS of world changing inventions over the years. But most of them happened to come to people that didn’t have the time, OR the resources to try them out.

Imagine some dirt poor farmer in the middle ages having a brilliant idea for something. Only he spends 12-14 hours day growing enough to just BARELY feed his family, that genius idea is only a passing thought.

Today, on the other hand, there is a much higher chance that any one of us (that includes YOU) can have a genius idea that will change the world.

Sure, you’ve still got to put in the time, effort and perspiration to make it happen. This could mean talking to plenty of people, crowdsourcing some start up capital, and even talking to people face to face to get things going.

But you’d have a much easier time than a middle age farmer!

There IS one thing that is standing between where you are now, and your inevitable success.

And that is what you believe about yourself. It’s VERY difficult to get out there and talk to people, and even ask strangers for help, if you don’t believe in yourself.

However, if you DO believe that you’ll eventually be successful, you will. It won’t happen over night, but it will happen.

One of the biggest road blocks to ANY success is negative or limiting beliefs about money.

Because money is so closely tied in to our own feelings of self worth, our abilities to express our ideas to others, AND a fear of rejection.

But once you understand the TRUTH about money, you’ll realize that money is a blessing.

Without money we’d still be trading corn for shoes. (or whatever for whatever).

It’s BECAUSE of money that the world has come SO far in SUCH a short time.

To blast those beliefs right out of your head, and get in the game, check this out:

Money Love

Float Like A Butterfly

Lighten Your Load

Many people crave a step by step method of doing something.

Just tell me how to make money and I’ll do it.

Just tell me what to say to him/her to make them like me and I’ll do it.

Just tell me what to say in an interview and I’ll do it.

Just tell me how to lose weight and I’ll do it.

The problem with this thinking is twofold. One is that humans are incredibly complex. WAY more than anybody even realizes.

Meaning that even if you were to go back in time, and follow Bill Gates around since he was a little kid, you still might not be able to reproduce his behaviors and results.

Unless you WERE him, and could see the world the way he did, and respond to opportunities that way he did, you wouldn’t get the same results.

Everybody is different. Everybody has their own unique set of skills, learning styles, and desires.

For example, many rich people only got rich because they were always DESPERATELY afraid of being poor.

I don’t know about you, but imagining some scary poverty monster chasing me my whole life doesn’t sound like a lot of fun!

Another reason is that hoping to be told “what to do” is not such a great idea is because it’s not really the best question.

The truth about you is that you came into this world ALREADY preprogrammed to LEARN ANYTHING you need to learn.

Which means you don’t need to do more stuff in order to get whatever you want, you’ve got to do less stuff.

What stuff?

Stuff like listening to and believing those self doubts every time you’ve got a good idea.

Stuff like actually believing those memories where somebody told you you COULDN’T do something.

Stuff like that silly idea the failure is bad, or giving the wrong answer means you’re stupid, or asking “stupid” questions means you’re not as smart as everybody else.

I saw a goofy commercial once where a guy pulled into a service station, and wanted to know why he was getting such poor gas mileage. The attendant looked in his trunk and saw about 300 pounds of exercise weights.

“There’s your problem!” He said.

Eject all that junk you’ve been lugging around all this time, and you’ll feel fantastic.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

Super Sonic Skill Learning

How To Model Others

One powerful way to learn something is to reverse engineer somebody who’s already doing it.

Ever since the first caveman picked up a rock and threw it at a zebra, we’ve been copying each other, and improving on it ever since.

Somebody opens a cheeseburger restaurant and does well.

Somebody else opens up a bacon-cheeseburger restaurant and does better.

Then some crazy entrepreneur shows up and opens a bacon-cheeseburger-avocado restaurant and the town goes nuts!

No matter what you’d like to do, there’s probably plenty of people who are already doing it.

To take this reverse engineering skill to a completely new level, you can take certain aspects of what people are doing, and combine them into your own, unique super skill.

This is what happened when societies reached a “tipping point.” There were so many ideas swirling around that they finally started to take on a mind of their own, and innovation and technology took off.

But this skill is very powerful on a personal level. For example, let’s say you see somebody giving a speech about the importance of flossing after every meal. Now, you might think the content is boring, but they could be a really charismatic speaker. You could copy their delivery method, and come up with your own content.

Or in the cheeseburger examples above, you could copy the structure, ordering system, even layout of the place, but sell pies instead.

One powerful way to do this is when you are around somebody who is behaving the way you’d like to behave.

And as you’re watching them, simply copy their movements and gestures, in your mind. Imagine you are mirroring them exactly. This is easy if you are seated and they are standing. Really easy if you’re watching somebody give a speech, even on TV.

Then you imagine that you’re watching yourself up there, talking about something different, but using their same delivery style.

Many people do this unconsciously when watching movies or TV. It gives us that catharsis the Greeks talked about so much way back when.

By taking it up to the conscious level, you’ll go beyond mere entertainment, and start to use movies as learning tools.

What’s even better is that no matter WHAT you want to learn, you can find somebody doing it on YouTube. Watch them, copy them in your mind, or in person if you’re alone, and then watch them while imagining it’s you instead of them.

This technique works not only in learning new skills, but changing your own history as well.

For example, what would happen if you could rewrite your own history so you’ve ALWAYS been a natural speaker, or you’ve ALWAYS believed making money was easy?

The possibilities are endless.

Learn More:

Emotional Freedom

Are You Being Held Back?

Remove Internal Obstacles

One cool concept in sales and marketing is something called a “split test.”

Like if you have some kind of company, and you are running ads that you can measure the results of, you change something.

Then you see which of the two variations does better.

So long as you keep doing this, you’ll keep improving how well your ads are performing.

Salespeople are fond of saying, “Always be closing,” or “Always be prospecting.” Meaning you should always be looking for new customers, or always trying to “close” or convert shoppers into buyers.

Savvy marketers, on the other hand, say things like, “Always be testing.”

Meaning you’ll never know how something will work unless you try.

Even if you’ve never sold anything, and never want to sell anything, this mindset can help.

One TED Talk I saw recently was about a woman who’d decided enough was enough, and she was going to find herself a partner.

So she “reverse engineered” all of the online dating sites, and did tons of testing. She put up a bunch of different profiles, just to see which would attract the most responses.

Then she matched the ones that did best, with the ones that were true about herself.

Then she came up with some rock solid criteria of the kind of guy she was looking for, and went to work.

Just like clockwork, she found a guy, they were perfect for each other, and they got married.

While this kinds of kills the idea of a magical romance “just happening” like it does in the movies, she’s happily married to a guy who’s happily married to her.

This is what happens when you choose your goal, and make the decision to get it no matter what.

A lot of things in life can be looked at this way.

There’s billions of people, millions of places to live and work for, clubs to belong to, spiritual methods of digging deeper into your soul.

Your job is to sort through them all until you find something, that’s perfect, for you.

Sure it may take a while. A lifetime even. But that’s half the fun!

Most people have at least three or four careers their entire lives. Learning new skills and seeing where all those opportunities will lead.

With an open mind and the ability to trust yourself, there’s not much you can’t do.

One thing that CAN stand in the way is emotional baggage.

For example, if you were offered the PERFECT job, great money, great hours, great location, great office, great support staff, but you had to give a one hour speech every week, to a room full of strangers, would you take it?

Many people wouldn’t.

This is the trouble with emotional baggage. The more you’ve got, the less options you have.

Of course, the flip side is when you ditch your baggage, everything opens up.

EVERYTHING.

Get started:

Emotional Freedom

Lean Forward With Perfect Balance

Stable or Unstable?

When I was a kid me and my buddies went to a local amusement park.

We were on this one roller coaster, and just as we were about to be “launched,” the operator gave us some advice.

“If you lean forward, you’ll go faster!”

We all dutifully leaned forward.

Then we debated over the next several weeks if that really worked, or if he was just messing with us. In our third grade minds, we could easily see both sides of the argument.

Leaning forward is a pretty good metaphor.

Sometimes you’ll be jamming along, and everything is going perfectly. Green lights, parking spaces, everybody’s laughing at your jokes. Everybody you smile at smiles back like you’re a movie star or something.

But as soon as you realize what’s going on, you can mess things up. Kind of like leaning forward in your mind. Just enough to get you that momentum, but too much and you fall over.

In physics, there’s this thing called “unstable equilibrium.” Something is at rest, and all the opposing forces are in balance (the equilibrium part) but one small push can mess everything up,

Then there’s “stable equilibrium” where no matter how hard you push, the system will go back to the way it was.

Like a marble at the bottom of a big glass bowl with huge sides. No matter how much you push the marble up one of the sides, it will slide down to where it started.

On the other hand, if you flip the bowl over, and balance the marble on top, it can stay there. But even a small breeze will knock it off.

It seems there’s a perfect balance of “positive expectation” as it rests between our conscious and unconscious minds.

Too much in the conscious mind, and there’s not enough deep belief, or “knowing” that is required.

It’s like having a slight suspicion that everything’s going to work out when it does. Like you’re surprised, but not really.

Too much expectation and you fall on you face. Pride goes before a fall, as they say.

One thing that can throw a monkey wrench into the whole process is any kind of nervousness, anxiety or fear.

Being an overly cautious driver, for example, will almost ensure you get all the red lights.

You see a signal way up ahead, and you start slowing down because you’re afraid you’ll get caught in the intersection, so you almost hope the light turns red before you get there.

Sure, certain things SHOULD cause us fear, as they keep us physically safe. But most of the things we are afraid of, will never happen.

Most of the things we are worried about exist only in our imagination, and are based on false memories and assumptions about ourselves.

Get rid of those, and it will be MUCH EASIER to lean forward through life.

Get Started:

Emotional Freedom

Do You Keep Getting Stuck?

Know Where Your Soft Spots Are

A while back me and a couple buddies went on a backpacking trip across Scotland.

Saw some cool castles, visited some nice distilleries, and learned a lot of history.

There was this one field where a famous battle took place.

Up until that point, the only Scottish battle scenes I knew about were from Braveheart.

A whole slew of dudes running at each other screaming their lungs out. Perfect for Hollywood, but not so accurate.

In reality, the bad guys were approaching slowly across this huge marshy field. The good guys (The Scots) were slowly retreating.

Why so slow?

It was a magnificent trick by the Scots. See, they KNEW where the solid ground was, and where the super soft ground was. But the bad guys didn’t.

The Scots led them to that field, and drew them in. Then one by one, they got stuck. This allowed one or two Scots to get close enough, kill the guy with a couple arrows, and then retreat back.

Took a while, but the bad guys didn’t stand a chance, even though they were much stronger in numbers.

A very similar battle took place in ancient Greece. A small group of ships were retreating from a large larger navy. Only the retreating ships were in familiar waters. They KNEW where all the sand bars were, but the bad guys didn’t. Again, one by one, the bad guys got stuck, a one ship got close enough to shoot some flaming arrows, and it was all over.

Most of us have plenty of those hidden spots. We could be walking along and then suddenly we feel stuck. Stuck but an unexpected and powerful surge of unwanted emotions that keeps us frozen. We suddenly feel put on the spot, or suddenly feel like we’re in danger, or suddenly feel like we’re being left out or ignored.

A good way to deal with these would be to take some to figure out where they come from. Look at the structure of the situations that keep eliciting them.

Then like the Greeks or the Scots, you’d know where they were, and you’d know how to avoid them.

Or you could go one step further.

You could eliminate them altogether.

Then it really WOULD be like a movie. Only you wouldn’t be running and screaming into battle (with your face painted blue), you’d just be running and laughing through life.

Like a bunch of little kids let loose on the playground.

Open waters, clear sailing, and no obstacles in sight.

Get Started:

Emotional Freedom

The Magic Alchemy Machine

Imagination Is Everything

Most people have zero idea how powerful their imagination is.

Many believe that at best, it’s something to use to kill time when you’re bored. Fantasize about your future, that guy or girl you like, or that you’re the star in the TV show you’re watching.

Others see it as some horrible enemy that screws things up. Just when they get ready to try something new, their imagination takes over and shows them all the awful things that will happen if things go wrong.

Let’s say you had some kind of mystery tool. Maybe one day you were cleaning out your garage and you found this cool shiny thing with a bunch of buttons.

You started hammering on the buttons, in random order, and it made some cool noises and flashing lights. But some buttons made it spit out some stinky gas. So you figured it’d be some kind of fun thing to play with if you ever got bored.

Maybe when you and your buddies were sitting around, you’d take turns pushing the buttons in random order just to see what would happen.

Maybe cool, maybe not.

But what if you found this cool machine, as well as a detailed owners manual?

And there were TONS of “recipes” in there, to push the buttons in a specific order, and instead of sounds or smells, you got actual things out of this magic machine. Actual physical objects like books, computers, food, or stacks of money.

There was even a detailed section on how to program this machine, not only to make more complicated things, but to make more machines.

What would you think then?

The truth is we’ve all got a machine just like that.

Your imagination.

Only most of us think it’s something to play around with when we’re bored, and even then it may backfire on us.

The select few of you who take the time to learn how to use this “machine” can create magnificent things.

All you need is an instruction manual, some time, and an idea of what you’d like to create.

Can it really be that simple?

Check it out, and see:

Mind Persuasion

Are You Wandering Through Life?

Make A Plan

Imagine if you decided to build a birdhouse.

So you went down to the dumpster behind the do it yourself shop, and grabbed some boards.

You thought maybe you had some tools at home, so you didn’t worry too much.

You got home, and kind of nailed the boards together. Then you got bored, and went to do something else.

Is this a good strategy for building a bird house?

How about this. You’re hungry, so you decide to cook something.

You fire up the stove, and put on your favorite frying pan. You aren’t sure what you want, so you start chucking things into your pan haphazardly. Pretty soon it’s smokey, and pretty stinky. You give up, and head down to the local convenience store.

OK, one more example.

You feel like going somewhere. So you go down to the bus station. You put down a handful of bills and coins on the counter.

The guy behind the counter looks at you and says, “OK, where to?”

And you say, “Uhh…I dunno…anywhere.”

And he says, “Well, how much do you got?” while he looks at your pile of cash.

“Beats me,” you say.

Are any of these good strategies?

Of course not. Silly. Ridiculous.

But that’s how most of us live our lives. We put in half baked plans, without knowing what we really want.

Sure, we all want more money, better relationships, a better place to live.

But beyond that, we just kind of wander through life and hope for the best.

Sure you might get lucky. You might bump into dream lover in the produce section.

You might accidentally sit next to your next boss for your ideal job on the bus.

But if you’re plans are based on luck, they’re kind of out of your control.

The truth is you really can create any life you want.

But you not only need a specific goal, but you need a specific plan.

Once you’ve got these set up, it’s pretty simple, really.

With the right set of plans and tools, anybody can build a birdhouse, cook a decent meal and plan a vacation anywhere.

It may take some time, but planning is half the fun.

If you want to get more out of life, you aren’t alone.

EVERYBODY wants more out of life. Few people do anything about it.

Luckily, there’s a step by step method.

Tons of videos, worksheets, even a hypnosis session.

Get Started:

Goal Setting