Category Archives: modeling

Model The Millionaire Mind

I love the book “Freakonomics.”

I always like different ways of looking at things.

One very flexible mindset to have is “models of the world.”

Too often we get caught up in our own way of thinking, which is necessarily limited.

We all have unique experiences, beliefs, biases, etc.

One way to “think outside the box” either for fun, or to shake things loose in your life is to try on different “models of the world.”

If you’re a fan of the old TV show, “The X-Files,” they did this all the time.

Two FBI agents investigating paranormal stuff. One guy believed in aliens, the other believed science always had an explanation.

One of the reasons the show was so successful, and developed a HUGE cult following, was that BOTH angles (science and paranormal) were plausible. Either could be used to describe what had happened in that particular episode.

One of the presuppositions of NLP is that “all else equal, the person with the most flexibility will prevail.”

Meaning if you are looking at a problem, and you only have ONE way to solve it, once you get stuck, you’re done.

But if you can switch out different “models of the world” until you find a solution, even if it isn’t one that fits your favorite “model,” you’ll generally do better than the one-model-wonders of the world.

As I’m sure you know, life is nothing but problems to be solved along the way to your goals that will be achieved.

The more successfully you can overcome those INEVITABLE obstacles, the easier of a time you’ll have.

One of the things they looked at in “Freakonomics” was that people that made a lot of money tended to have a lot of books.

Even in the book, “The Millionaire Next Door,” one of the things that found out about your average run of the mill millionaire is that they got their money very SLOWLY.

Not by mumbling some magic words from the Law of Attraction. By getting into the world, every day, and getting it done.

And their preferred form of entertainment as not TV or movies, but books. And not just fiction, but non-fiction.

You can learn a lot of “models of the world” by reading Biographies of famous people. Or classic stories from literature.

People from different times, different political and economic systems, different religions and different ethnicity’s.

The more you learn how OTHER PEOPLE throughout time have successfully solved their problems, the more flexible you’ll be when you come up upon your own.

You can even be like Napoleon Hill, who created an IMAGINARY GROUP of people from history that he talked to on a regular basis.

Whatever works!

They say you should spend ten percent of your income, and ten percent of your time, on self-improvement.

Learning skills. Improving skills.

After all, this strategy made a lot of people a lot of money.

Why not you?

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Achieve Mastery In Anything

A have a friend who is an engineer for a company that makes industrial equipment.

Recently he took a trip to South Korea, as a big company there was one of his clients.

Before they let him in the facility, they made him surrender all his pens, phones, and papers.

They were extremely worried about trade secrets, and didn’t want him copying anything.

One of the unknown drivers of the industrial revolution was copyright infringement.

Everybody was copying the crap out of everybody else.

Even entire books were pirated and sold for a nickel.

All kinds of industrial espionage was taking place.

Ever since the first caveman decided it might be easier to throw a rock at a zebra instead of wrestle it to the ground and beat it to death, humans have been copying each other.

This is the heart of progress. Somebody gets an idea and turns it into a business.

Somebody else improves on it. And on and on.

Pretty soon we go from running to riding bicycles to riding on trains to flying in planes.

The process of modeling is the heart of NLP.

The whole set of language patterns was modeled from the some of the greatest therapists.

And then later the modeling process itself became part of the process.

When you were a kid, and you wanted to learn how to walk, you didn’t invent the process on your own.

You copied everybody around you until you could reproduce what they did.

Unconsciously, this is natural. Automatic.

When we get older, and we want to consciously learn things, it’s a bit more involved.

If you wanted to copy somebody playing the piano, you’d have to do more than sit and move your fingers around.

You’d have to copy their understanding of music. What all the notes mean.

One thing that is very helpful in any learning endeavor is to measure your progress.

Try something, see what happens, then step back and take a look.

A great way to do this is journaling. Write down the things you did, what you learned, and what you can do next to do even better next time.

It helps if you have some kind of reference material to help.

A set of ideas of principles to go by. You study them, then go out into the world and apply them.

Then later at home, write down what happened. Then study them some more, think of a different way to apply them based on your experience, and go out and try them again.

And keep repeating the process.

Do this every day, and pretty soon you’ll be an expert.

Of whatever it is you want to do.

Making money. Persuasion. Sales. Relationships. Anything.

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Are You Copying The Right Things?

Little kids are cute. Very cute.

Especially when they copy adults. Now, a lot of us grownups think we’re all that.

And when we see a little kid copying, we imagine all kinds of wonderful things about ourselves.

Like that little kid is somehow seeing us for our “real self” or they have some kind of “special” connection to us.

Unfortunately, biology tells us something different. Little kids of all animals (humans, birds, etc) learn by modeling.

They are hard wired to copy those around them. Especially if the person that they are copying from is confident and enjoying themselves.

If you’ve ever wondered why it was hard to get your kids to eat that gross baby food while you were eating a burrito, now you know.

They CANNOT turn off their “copy mode,” it’s always on.

Which is why parents know they need to be very careful how they behave around their kids.

But for some reason, when we grow up, we seem to forget our natural learning mode.

Simply watching somebody doing what we want, and then copying them.

Of course, the more complicated the “thing” is, the harder it is to “copy.” Like if you wanted to copy a concert pianist, it would be hard if all you did was dress in a tuxedo and bang around on the keys.

You would have to copy how they read music. You would have to effectively copy how they reference their own memories of learning.

No matter WHAT you are learning, part of it should be imagining yourself performing it as if you were an expert.

To give your subconscious some kind of direction when you ARE doing the necessary boring stuff. Like playing the scales, or learning the more simple songs. Or building in the lighting quick response from seeing a note written on a page, and making that same sound come out of the piano.

No matter WHAT skill you are learning, there is one META-SKILL that will always be required:

A belief that it is possible.

Even if you practiced piano for three hours a day for the next ten years, if you BELIEVED that you’d always suck at the piano, you would always suck.

But if you BELIEVED you were destined for greatness, you’d get there a lot quicker.

Sure, you’d still have to do the work to get there, but the path would be a lot smoother, and a lot more enjoyable.

One of the biggest elements of a negative believe is fear. If you are afraid of success or failure, that will manifest as a belief that you CANNOT do what you want to do.

Which means if you get rid of that fear, you’ll also get rid of your negative beliefs.

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