Category Archives: Intelligence

Learn To Say No

Freedom From Mental Prison

If you watch old Samurai movies, or old Chinese Kung Fu movies, you may notice that some of the dudes have interesting hair-do’s.

The tops of their heads are bald, but they’ve got these pony tails in back.

Turns out that one of the old emperors decreed that EVERYBODY has to cut their hair like that.

To show their allegiance or something.

All the men went, “Ok!”

But all the women said, “Um, no.”

I remember when I was a kid. In The U.S. they tried desperately to get everybody to start using the metric system.

But most people said, “Um, no.”

There’s a famous story that happened during WWI, between the Brits and the Germans.

It’s pretty complicated, involving theories of human altruism, “tit for tat” behavior, but the gist of it is pretty fascinating.

You had Brits on one side, Germans on the other. They had “learned” without speaking to each other to “pretend” to shoot at each other.

The Germans would blast some trees to the right of the Brits, and the Brits would reciprocate.

Everybody was happy, nobody was getting killed.

Basically the leaders of each country told the young men to go and kill each other.

And the young men figured out a way to say, “Um, no.”

Of course, once the dudes in charge found out, they put everybody on rotation, so they wouldn’t “learn” to “not kill” each other.

And shoot at each other like obedient soldiers!

Truth is that no matter who you are, where you are, what you’re doing, there’s always going to be some dude in charge who wants to tell you what to do.

And it’s up to YOU to accept it, and do it, or say, “Um, no.”

Of course, this can lead to serious trouble. It helps to understand WHY you are doing things, even if you’re being told to do them by other people.

Nobody wants “The Man” coming down on the for disobedience!

One way to not feel so “trapped” even when we HAVE TO do what we’re told, is to always have plenty of ways to look at things.

Plenty of people have died throughout history in POW camps. Most thought it was a horrible experience.

Others found a way to find freedom even there.

The more control you have over your mind, the more control you’ll have over your life.

If you control your mind, and your thoughts COMPLETELY, there’s not much others can do to rain on your parade.

Luckily, there’re plenty of practice exercises to help you strengthen your mind.

Giving you a MASSIVE advantage, one that only YOU know about.

Get Started:

Intelligence Accelerator

Know Where To Tighten

What Life Are You Building?

You’ve heard the joke about the plumber, right?

Guy calls a plumber about a leaky pipe in the basement.

Plumber comes, wanders around in the basement for an hour.

Just looking. Then finally he pulls out a wrench, and tightens in one spot.

The leak stops.

The bill was $100. The homeowner was shocked.

Why so much?

All you did was looking around for an hour, and then spend one second tightening something.

The plumber responds, “Five bucks for looking around, ninety five bucks for knowing where to tighten.”

Maybe you’re familiar with the straw that broke the camel’s back?

Now, is it really that ONE straw?

Meaning if the camel was happily walking down the street, with NO straw on it’s back, and that one super magical piece of straw landed on him, would it STILL break his back?

Of course not.

Every piece of straw was JUST as important.

Of course, there’s going to be ONE that puts it over the edge.

Like ONE snowflake is all it takes to start an avalanche, right?

Not really. You also need a crapload of snow piled up in the right configuration.

This is one of the problems with having a conscious mind.

We tend to miss out A LOT of what’s going on.

We see some waitress or waiter get “discovered” and become a famous actor overnight.

What we DON’T see is that same person has been visualizing, dreaming, and actually PRACTICING their whole adult lives.

So when an opportunity comes, they pounce on it.

They are READY.

If you don’t get this, you risk not doing ANY preparation, so when “opportunity” comes you get passed by.

And you wonder why OTHER people are lucky!

Part of “getting lucky” is making yourself READY for opportunities.

Figuring out what you want, and practicing.

At the VERY LEAST you should have three or four LIFE GOALS that you think about once or twice every day.

Hopefully spend some time journaling on.

And if you’re REALLY serious about getting them, you actually DO THINGS on a daily basis that will keep getting you closer.

Life is, after all, a journey.

Not a destination.

Journey’s take time.

Sometimes you get lost.

Sometimes you have to backtrack.

Sometimes you find wonderful things, people and experiences you’ve never heard of before.

But so long as you keep moving forward, you’ll keep getting closer.

You certainly WON’T get closer if you’re waiting for somebody else to tell you what to do, or “discover” you, or “make it easy” for you.

What you DO on a daily basis will slowly ADD UP to your life.

What kind of life are you building?

Your brain is your most precious asset. No matter how smart, insightful, creative you are, you can ALWAYS get better.

Which means you’ll ALWAYS increase your ability to prepare, find and capitalize on opportunities.

Learn More:

Intelligence Accelerator

Trial and Error Is Necessary

The Positive Feedback Life Loop

When I was a kid I loved science.

I even had a subscription to Science Digest when I was in junior high school.

I read all kinds of books on Quantum Physics.

Of course, they had all the math stripped out, and only had the easy to understand concepts.

When I got to college, and had to start studying REAL science, it was pretty difficult.

Once you put the math in, it gets less “entertaining” and more work.

But without the “work” it really IS only entertainment.

But once you “do” the “work,” and you start to understand how things REALLY work, then you can USE science, rather than merely appreciate it.

If nobody ever took the time, the MASSIVE amount of trial and error that goes into scientific research and discovery, we wouldn’t have much stuff. No medicine, worldwide instant communication, air travel, microwaveable cheeseburgers.

This happens on a global scale, and this happens on a personal scale.

The more you understand, the easier it is to interact with the world and get what you want.

Most people are too scared, too worried, and want to be told what to do.

Since there are a LOT of people waiting around to be told what to do, and few people who not only KNOW what to do, and are willing to tell others, most people end up not getting much.

However, the good news is that it’s really easy to get out there and start figuring it out.

In fact, built into your brain is a super learner. Now, most people misunderstand this to be a “super undertander. Meaning if you say the magic words or listen to the right mix of sounds you’ll suddenly be blessed with universal understanding.

Doesn’t really work that way.

If it did, we really wouldn’t need our bodies. We’d just be this big brained creatures that sit around all day and understand stuff.

Because you have BOTH a brain AND a body, you need to use them both.

Use your body to get out and interact with others. Enjoy the world through your senses.

Use your brain to keep getting better each and every time.

That’s what learning is. Action, review, understanding, more action.

But if you don’t take action, and you aren’t OPEN to the feedback, you won’t learn.

Once you kick off this feedback loop, and see how easy it is to get better and better, you’ll wonder why you didn’t get started much earlier.

If you want to learn TONS of easy exercises to accelerate the process, check this out:

Intelligence Accelerator

Think Outside The Box

Think Outside Your Head

I saw this funny video the other day.

The kind where you want to use as few brain cells as possible.

It was this dog, who had this box. The way he was holding the box, was all he could see was the inside of the box.

So he kept walking around in circles, bumping into things.

Because he was a dog, and not an astrophysicist, he didn’t think to put the box down, take a look around, and then choose another strategy.

There are lots of videos like that. Cats, dogs, all acting goofy.

But we humans, who often times fancy ourselves as superheroes of logic and scientific thinking, don’t often do much better.

Sure, we convince ourselves that we’re giving it our best shot, but most of the time, we’re like that poor dog.

Crashing into things, but we just back up a bit, and then crash into them again.

Naturally, it can be tough to tell if you’re really doing the same thing or not.

Because humans, we’re doing things a little bit more complicated than walking with a box in our mouths.

We’re interacting with other humans, or other complicated systems.

And as the saying goes, “you can’t step in the same river twice,” every time we interact with the system, even if we ARE blinding doing the same thing over and over, the SYSTEM is changing, so it actually is possible to get a different result.

In the short term, this is pretty good. Just back up, try again and keep going until you get it right.

But every time you succeed with this strategy, it actually reinforces the idea of doing the same thing over and over.

Short term, pretty good. Long term, not so good.

A lot of times it’s better to simply try something different. Sometimes a little different, sometimes a LOT different.

This can be frustrating. Because once you change something, you’ll feel a little uncomfortable.

And when you feel uncomfortable, you’ll be much more sensitive to things that “seem” like failure, but are really feedback.

Or you’ll more likely to “interpret” feedback AS failure, rather than feedback.

One way make this a LOT easier is to simply expand your thinking.

Learn to think in different ways, so you’ll see things differently.

Then taking different action will seem a lot easier.

Kind of like discovering a new route to work that’s quicker and easier.

You aren’t driving around blindly hoping to find a new way, you’re using your enhanced thinking skills to FIND a new way so you don’t have to stumble around.

The more you work on your mental skills, the easier it will be to “try on” different behavioral skills, you’ll be able to get a lot more cool stuff.

(Or meet more people or make more money or whatever you want.)

Learn How:
Intelligence Accelerator

Are You Stuck In A Rut?

Maximize Your Greatest Gift

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut.

Sure, it’s pretty safe, which is why they happen.

In fact, the “rut” itself is a metaphor for the grooves that build up in a road where carts go over the same path over and over.

If you are a big civilization, these are very, very helpful.

If you tried to take your cart through a bunch of bushes every day, you wouldn’t get very far.

Societies in general are built on the idea of trade and exchange.

Everybody builds, makes or grows whatever they can, meet in a central place to trade.

Around these central areas cities grow.

And two and from these cities are roads, many of which are made solely by many people going back and forth over them again and again.

Building those “ruts” which make pulling your cart easy.

But it also keeps you from going other places.

Off the “beaten path.”

Now, just doing things differently for the sake of doings different is pretty silly.

But if you have an inkling that maybe there’s something BETTER out there, then you HAVE to try something different.

If life were exactly the same, every single day, it would be REALLY boring.

Imagine if you watched the very same episodes of the very same TV shows every day.

Which brings up another point.

Most of us “outsource” our “doing things differently.”

We go to the same job, come home to the same house, eat the same food. Talk about the same things. The only thing different (for a LOT of people) is what’s on TV that night.

Since TV entertainment is meant to dull your senses, it’s not the best brain food.

What IS the best brain food?

Actually DOING things differently.

Go to the same restaurant, but order something different.

Take a different route to work. Cook something completely different for dinner.

Take up a new hobby.

ANYTHING.

If you make a habit of actually DOING something different a few times a week, you’ll develop incredible flexibility of mind.

You’ll think more outside the box, look at things differently (and much more resourcefully) and feel a lot less “stuck” in many situations.

There are plenty of EASY exercises you can do on a daily basis, without ever leaving your house, that will get the same effect.

When you start to go exploring inside your brain, you’ll discover the VASTNESS that most people take for granted, and therefore NEVER use.

What about you?

Are you willing to put in a few minutes a day to MAXIMIZE your greatest gift?

Get Started:

Intelligence Accelerator

How To Jump Over A Tree

Jump Over A Tree

When I was a kid I was insanely curious.

As most kids are.

I broke a lot of stuff, just trying to figure out how it worked.

Being curious is a good trait to have.

But, you may say, “curiosity killed the cat!”

Sure, you can be TOO curious. Meaning you don’t know when to quit.

I ran into a morbid website the other day. Pictures of people just before they died.

How did they die?

By taking selfies.

In really messed up places.

It’s important to take risks. But if you take the WRONG risks, or too many risks, then you will end up dead sooner than you should be.

However, many people tend to take TOO FEW risks.

And that is the worst risk of all. Because if you are too risk averse, you’ll end up being USED by other people, or at least by circumstances.

Because if you NEVER take a risk, and ALWAYS play it safe, you’ll largely be dependent on others, or society, or the government, or the gods, or luck.

But the good news is that it’s pretty IMPOSSIBLE to take action, without a little bit of risk.

Nothing you do is certain. If anything WERE certain, that would mean you could predict the future.

And nobody can do that.

The trick (or skill if you prefer) is to always look for BALANCE.

The right amount of risk, balanced with the right amount of caution.

The right amount of curiosity, with the right amount of awareness.

It’s easy to get “stuck” in extreme view points.

But the magic is in the middle. Where the balance is.

Where you’re on the edge of your current level of skill. When you’re just straddling the outside edges of your comfort zone.

Not hiding in the middle, nor blasting away without a second thought. But slowly, carefully and courageously expanding it.

Once upon a time there was a kid, who wanted to become the best jumper in the world.

So he asked his local martial arts guru what to do. The guru planted a little sapling.

And said, “Every day, jump over this.” And left.

He came back ten years later, and that “kid” was now leaping over a huge oak tree.

All you’ve got to do is choose SOMETHING. Something small. Half risky, half safe. Half curiosity, half knowing.

And SLOWLY push out the limits of what you can do.

If you did that with your brain, imagine the life you could be building.

Instead of waiting around hoping for something to “happen,” like most people do.

Get Started:

Intelligence Accelerator

Admit Your Cluelessness

Accept Cluelessness

One movie I particularly like is, “Shooter,” with Mark Walhberg.

It is about an ex-sniper who is hired to reverse engineer what they say is an attempt on the president.

But it turns out to be some big conspiracy, with all kinds of cool plot twists.

There’s one scene that’s one my movie favorites.

The main character and his sidekick go and visit this old guy. He’s the archetype of the old wise character who’s been around, knows all about everybody’s dirty laundry, etc.

One line he says has ALWAYS stuck with me, after he goes on and on about how deep government conspiracies run.

“Just when you think you know, you’re wrong!”

Meaning we humans are good at convincing ourselves we know things. When we are really pretty clueless.

If you want to do an experiment, ask a bunch of people a difficult questions. One that HAS an answer, but one that most people don’t really know.

You’ll find that most people will have a hard time looking you dead in the eye and saying, “I really don’t know.”

What many people do is try to come up with an answer that “sounds” good. So we look like we know what we’re talking about.

But the secret is accepting that you DON’T know, or you COULD be wrong is the best thing ever.

Because it will OPEN your mind to NEW ideas, thoughts, models of the world, ways of looking at things.

One of the maxims from NLP is that whoever is most flexible will prevail.

If you have a flexible mindset, and can look at things in many different ways, you’ll generally be much more resourceful than people who need to be “right” all the time.

The natural way of learning (not sitting in school) is frustration, then curiosity, then exploration, then testing, then knowledge.

You are frustrated because you want something or you can’t do something. This leads to becoming curious about how you can get it. Then you start to take action, trying different things. Then you get feedback, and pretty soon you can get what you want.

Until this process starts all over again. The more you go through this, the more you’ll learn. The more you’ll learn, the more you’ll be able to get.

If you need to KNOW the TRUTH all the time, you’re stuck. Since you KNOW, there’s no reason to EXPLORE. To find out. To grow. To improve.

Knowledge in and of itself can be pretty boring.

Continuously searching for NEW knowledge is what life is all about.

Get Started:

Intelligence Accelerator

Whole Brain Myth

Do You Want To Use Your Whole Brain?

When I was in High School, I loved reading the Far Side.

It was still published every day, and it was before those books became popular.

If you aren’t familiar, it was usually one goofy picture with a small caption.

Like a scientist who invented a device to understand what dogs were really saying.

And it had a picture with a dog, saying, “Hey! Hey! Hey!…”

Or one where a guy standing in front of an elevator that just opened. And in the elevator was a mama bear, and her cub. Only the only spot the guy could walk into was between them.

There was another one of two scientists in this laboratory, looking at another scientist, who was writing all kinds of complicated equations on the board. One scientist says to the other,

“I wish I could be more like him, he uses 50% of his brain!”

Of course, the idea that we only use 10% of our brain is not really true.

Sure, we never use all it at the same time. But that’s like our body. Sometimes we’re walking. Sometimes we’re sitting. Sometimes we’re using only our fingers. But we don’t say “humans only use 10% of our bodies” because that’s clearly ridiculous.

In fact, if you want to get a REAL workout, try doing some four-count-burpies. This is an exercise that uses a LOT of your muscles, and chances are you won’t last more than a couple minutes.

But here’s the thing. You CAN strengthen different parts of your bodies. You CAN become a world class juggler for example, and still ONLY USE 10 percent of your body at any given time.

You CAN train to do 1000 pushups in a few months. But you’ll still ONLY be using 10% of your body at any given time.

But so will some super lazy potato chip eater. If they NEVER exercise, they are also using 10% of their body at any given time.

So the question isn’t really, “how can I use more of my brain?” The question is, “How can I identify the parts of my brain that I want to use better, and how can I exercise them so I WILL use them better?”

The first question is, what do you want to do?

Become more creative?

Improve your memory?

Be able to solve problems more quickly?

Boost your general IQ?

You can do all of these, simply by doing the appropriate exercises.

Just like Jack Lalanne became super famous by doing a kajillion pushups, you can become famous by becoming a super genius.

Just start training, and never stop.

Get Started:
Intelligence Accelerator

Change Your Filters

Disprove The Elites

Once upon a time there was a family moving to a new town.

They passed some guy sitting on the side of the road on the way in.

They asked him, “How are the people in this town?”

He replied, “How were they in the last town?”

To which they answered, “Pretty nice.”

And he said, “Well, in this town they’re pretty nice too.”

Another family came by an hour later.

Asked the same question, to which he responded with the same answer.

“How were they in the last town?”

But this new family said, “Mean, dishonest, and shifty.”

And the guy said, “Well, I’m afraid they’re the same in this town.”

Of course, the moral of the story is your perceptions shape your world more than the world shapes your perceptions.

Most people won’t believe it until they see it.

But the secret is to believe it first, and then take action to FIND IT.

It’s not like saying some magic words will change reality.

But changing your filters will change how you view the world, which will HELP YOU so long as you’re willing to get out there and interact with the world to find what you want.

Rarely will somebody plop it into your lap without any effort. Sure, it happens sometimes, but it’s not the best strategy.

Another way to describe this is a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” As you think, so shall you see.

One of the many, many ways this manifests is the idea of intelligence.

“Scientists” for years have been telling us that its “genetic.” So what do they do? They LOOK for genetic proof to verify their theories.

One of the reasons this “meme” continues to exist is that generally speaking, scientists are pretty smart.

So if they PROVE that their “intelligence” is genetic, it’s like they are genetically programmed to be some elite intellectual that can tell us “how it is.”

But what happens if you look for evidence that you can BUILD INTELLIGENCE just like you can build muscles?

If you’re looking for red cars, you’ll find red cars.

If you’re looking for evidence that intelligence can be increased, you’ll find that as well.

Not just intelligence, but creativity. Problem solving. Memory.

All of these are SKILLS. Not gifts only given to the few “elites.”

And just like any other skill, the more you practice, the better you’ll get.

(Just don’t tell the scientists).

Get Started:

Intelligence Accelerator

How To Read Situations

How To Read Situations

I watched this interesting movie the other night.

About this kid that wanted to be a chess superhero.

He idolized Bobby Fisher. It was based on a true story.

He had two teachers. One guy who was a pure academic. Pure theory. Rigorous.

Another teacher played speed chess in the park.

Now, both had their merits. But there was a telling scene.

They were watching the kid playing in some tournament, in the championship match.

They had to watch on closed circuit TV so they wouldn’t be able to give them any advice.

The “street” player knew he won before anybody else did.

Thirteen moves before he actually won.

Being a “street” player, he could “read” the board a lot easier.

Being able to read situations is a HUGE skill to have. One that most people DON’T have.

Most people hang around, something HUGE happens, and they stand their scratching their head.

“Wow. Didn’t see THAT coming!”

One of the biggest coups in modern history came when somebody was able to “read” a situation FASTER than everybody else.

The Battle of Waterloo.

One of the Rothchild’s knew the outcome before everybody else. And leveraged it to the hilt.

Buying all the debt of the Bank of England for PENNIES.

Regardless of whether you care to notice or not, there’s always TONS more going on that most people will EVER realize.

Just below the surface of every conversation. Every interaction.

If you take the time to get out of your head, and simply OBSERVE what’s going on around you, you’ll be able to see a TON of information.

Who’s mad at whom. Who’s interested in whom. Who’s going to go home with whom.

This works in a boardroom as well as in a bar.

Even watching history unfold.

Most people are WILLFULLY ignorant. Too worried to know what’s really going on.

But you don’t HAVE to be.

You can increase your skills of understanding. Of perception. Of awareness.

Be able to read situations like a book. See moves WAY ahead of time.

You’ll be able to fix your relationship before it blows up in your face. You’ll see a problem, and then a second later come up with five or ten different ways to solve it.

You’ll spend your time wondering, rather than worrying. Dreaming rather than fretting.

You’ll look out into your future and see a MASSIVE collection of opportunities, just waiting to happen.

REGARDLESS of what the economy is like.

This is a skill. One that few people have. And it will take time to develop.

Are you willing?

Learn More:

Intelligence Accelerator