Tag Archives: Communication

Hallucinate Your Way Rich

Think Your Way Out Of Trouble

A long time ago, they used to think that negative numbers were evil.

This was back when math was still in its infancy.

Since the idea of a “negative thing” (how can you have negative six apples?) didn’t seem to exist, the idea was considered heretical.

Slowly but surely (and luckily) people started to accept the idea of negative numbers.

Same kind of thing happened when they invented “imaginary” numbers.

But ask any mathematician, and they’ll tell you that “imaginary” is not really accurate.

But the name stuck, and here we are.

These “imaginary” numbers are necessary to calculate anything that has to do with sinusoidal fluctuations (like electronic circuits).

One of the famous scenes from the Bible is when Jesus threw out the “money changers.”

Why were they called money “changers”?

Isn’t that like going down to the bank and exchanging dollars for Euros?

Why would those people be bad?

The reason is that way back in the day, lending money at interest was considered a sin.

So the clever money lenders changed their names to money changers.

They would lend money in one currency, and collect in another.

And they collected their “interest” in the form of a “currency exchange fee.”

This is how they got around the ban against charging interest.

This isn’t to say money lenders today (or back then) are good or bad.

But if you are clever enough, and you can think abstractly enough, you can work your way around any limitation.

If you can’t think very cleverly, abstractly, or laterally, when you come up against an obstacle, you’re stuck.

You look around for somebody to tell you what to do.

This is the way most people run their lives.

But if you can think differently, think abstractly, think creatively, any problem is really just another opportunity in disguise.

To all the other simple thinking folks, it’s just a problem.

But to you, it’s an opportunity.

Seeing the world this way requires practice.

Consistent mental practice.

It’s not based on any magic switch in your brain.

If you are, however, willing to put in the few minutes per day of mental practice, you’ll soon see a world FILLED with opportunities that others only recognize as obstacles.

Learn How:

NLP Mind Magic

Social Super Star

How To Pick Up Good Habits

Modeling is often thought of as an esoteric NLP technique.

If you’ve ever studied to become a teacher, then “modeling” is one teaching technique in your bag of tricks.

Consider that modeling is like communication.

Meaning you can’t “not” do it.

When you were a kid, your parents probably had an idea of “bad kids” they didn’t want you to hang around.

The reason was that they didn’t want you “picking up” any bad habits.

And if you’re a parent, you know that kids have an uncanny ability to copy the very things you DON’T want them to copy.

This is all done through modeling.

Imagine what it was like way back in the day.

When life was simple, but hard.

There was no such thing as “book learning,” since their weren’t any books.

All the learning came from younger, inexperienced kids, (or young adults) watching and copying the older experienced adults.

The idea of one person talking and another person listening to those words is a very recent idea in human history.

Just imagine how hard that would be.

You listen to a bunch of words.

Then you have come up with an idea of what those words mean.

Unless those words represented a very COMPELLING idea, you wouldn’t spend a lot of time focusing on them.

Our mind-body systems are MEANT to learn unconsciously.

But this does not mean passively.

This means a lot of watching, copying and practicing.

Up until that last couple hundred years, this is how humans learned EVERYTHING.

By watching and copying.

This is also why learning from books is VERY DIFFICULT.

Problem is today we don’t have a lot of “models” that are doing what we want to do.

But we tend to copy them anyway.

Even if don’t want to.

We talk and act like TV and movie characters, often without realizing it.

Does this mean we are doomed?

Not at all.

But it does mean you have to be a bit creative in choosing whom to model.

Luckily, in the laboratory of your mind, you can invent your own model.

Which means you can model ANYTHING you like.

Learn How:

NLP Mind Magic

What's He Looking At?

How To Think Like Einstein

One of the most troubling experiments from psychology is the Asch experiment.

They put a guy in a room, and showed him two images.

One was a single vertical line.

The other had several vertical lines.

The task was to choose which of the several vertical lines was the same length as the single vertical line.

Easy peasy, right?

It was, when he was alone.

But then they put him in a room with a bunch of other people.

And the other people PURPOSELY chose the WRONG line.

And the test subject also chose the wrong line.

Alone, choosing the right answer is easy.

But when humans are surrounded by people who are choosing the wrong answer, choosing the right answer is VERY DIFFICULT.

In over 70% of the tests, the test subject KNEW the right answer, but because of social pressure, they chose the WRONG answer.

One of the reasons we humans behave like this is we never learn HOW to think.

We only learn WHAT to think.

Or more accurately, are TOLD what to think.

And when we think what we are told correctly, we get rewarded.

When we think we what are told incorrectly, we are punished.

This is more or less how modern society runs its school systems.

Is it any wonder that by the time we are finished with school, we’ve LOST most of our creativity, and originality?

Luckily, the brain is like a muscle.

(They’ll never tell you this in school, quite the opposite).

You can easily PRACTICE the way you think and strength of how you think.

This will make you much more resistant to the goofy ideas of others.

Goofy ideas that they likely accepted unquestionably from somebody else.

(and those from somebody else, etc…)

Want to know precisely WHY Einstein was such a genius?

Because he THOUGHT differently.

He IMAGINED differently.

He wasn’t even that good a math.

When it came time to mathematically explore his ORIGINAL ideas, he had to OUTSOURCE the math to his buddy.

That capacity of thinking differently, of imagining differently exists within you.

You’ve just got to find it and exercise it.

Once you think differently, (about whatever you want) you can live differently.

HOWEVER you want.

Learn How:

NLP Mind Magic

run Like Crazy

What Hidden Secrets Have You?

When I was a kid I went through a kite flying phase.

Every weekend a bunch of kids would gather at school and fly their kites.

A few of the kids who had “cool” kites would have “kite fights.”

Once I tried to build a HUGE kite.

Of course, not yet being schooled in physics or aerodynamics, my kite was too heavy for me to even lift.

But making was fun.

I took two long boards, nailed them together, got a bed sheet (my mom was PISSED) and made a huge kite.

I didn’t even bother trying to fly it.

Much later, in Junior High School wood shop, I actually learned how to measure and cut stuff.

So you could build something that actually was useful.

One time in college I found a discarded oscilloscope.

I took it home and ran my stereo through it.

Kind of like a mini laser show.

Once upon a time, we humans didn’t have much.

Now we have TONS of stuff.

And when it comes to inventing new things, we can get pretty creative.

On one hand, it’s amazing.

On the other hand, it’s very puzzling.

Some inventions seem so obvious in retrospect, but it took a LONG time for people to come up with them.

For example, guys fought each other on horseback a LONG TIME before somebody invented the stirrup.

That little loop at the bottom of the saddle, to keep you from falling off.

At the same time, this is both crazy and fantastic.

Crazy because it makes us humans seem silly.

But fantastic because it means there’s potentially TONS of new things just waiting to be invented.

Simple things that might change everything.

All it takes is thinking a little differently than most people.

Looking at things differently.

Instead of using your mind as an echo chamber, consider using it as an experimental lab.

To try out different thoughts, just to see what happens.

You may be surprised what you find in there.

Learn More:

NLP Mind Magic

Under The Bridge

Become A Treasure Hunter

One of the things we humans crave are secret short cuts.

Plenty of diets are based on “one weird trick.”

I have very old email address that gets tons of spam every day.

And all of them are more or less based on solving age old problems with one new secret idea.

But if you can imagine way back in the day, before humans populated Earth, they also had that desire.

Otherwise they wouldn’t have ended up populating the entire Earth.

Which might suggest that our common desire for that one weird trick is really a MOTIVATIONAL desire.

Something we are meant to always be pursuing.

In a world that is very dangerous, and we have to work HARD to get our needs met, and work HARD to avoid danger, that would be a useful desire.

To always believe that somewhere over the next set of hills is the secret to a happy life.

This provides the pull, and all our daily needs that require daily effort require the push.

Even hero’s journey movies have this desire.

That there HAS to be something OUT THERE better than THIS.

Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz, sang about Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

That mythical place that is NOT HERE.

Unfortunately, we humans seemed to have kind of boxed ourselves in.

We have SO MUCH STUFF that is easy to get.

And there is VERY LITTLE real danger.

We still have that same desire.

But without the necessary NEGATIVE incentives to keep us going, we only WISH.

That desire doesn’t motivate us like it used to.

So much today is easy, and instant, and effortless.

We think that desire should be easy and effortless as well.

Hence all the “one weird trick” solutions to ALL our problems.

However, if you are brutally honest with yourself, you must admit that there isn’t any secret trick.

Because people keep getting LARGER.

Obesity continues to INCREASE.

If you see health as a proxy for our desires (sex, relationships, careers, finance, etc.) we seem to be going in the OPPOSITE direction.

The more we WISH for an easy solution, the further away we get.

Consider switching how you think about things.

See that desire as not a magnet, that allegedly pulls things to you.

But rather a motivation engine that inspires YOU to move toward THEM.

You are, after all, a nomad.

Nomads are the ones that left Africa thousands of years ago and spread out across the globe.

There is still treasure.

Your job is to find it.

Learn How:

Ego Taming

Get Out There And Play

Ditch The Map

I remember when I first went away to college.

It was only a couple hours away, and I lived in the dorms.

One of the things I did a lot in my senior year of high school was cycling.

Me and my buddy would go on these long rides a few days a week.

So when I got all unpacked, I was eager to explore my new world.

Way back in those days, we didn’t have GPS or anything.

So I had to look at an actual map, and then try and remember the names of streets.

Needless to say, I ended up getting pretty lost.

And I ended up going through some sketchy parts of town.

You can’t really tell that from a map.

When I finally found my way back (a few hours later), I decided on a different strategy.

I’d ditch the map, and just feel my way around.

I would start in small loops, and just keep slowly expanding the area that I would get familiar with.

About a month later, I had all kinds of cool rides.

That I discovered on my own, without needing any maps.

Loops that went up and down huge hills.

Long flat rides that went to the beach and back.

This is a good metaphor for how we behave, in the moment.

Looking at the map is like trying to consciously think everything out.

While just winging it and going by your gut is like acting without thinking too much.

Without getting in your own way.

One way seems easy at first, but it can end up being very limiting in the long run.

One way seems scary and difficult at first, but in the long run it is much, much better.

It’s very hard for us humans to do things that are unfamiliar.

Part of the reason we perceive a ton of risk when there’s none there.

Especially social risk.

Everybody is looking out into a crowd of strangers and thinking the same thing:

“I’d like to meet some nice people, but only if they go first.”

Luckily, there’s a way to recalibrate this thinking.

So you can feel just as comfortable around strangers as you do around lifelong friends.

Learn How:

Ego Taming

Yeah Baby!

Why Junk Food Tastes Good

If you were a highly skilled chemist, where would you work?

Assuming you weren’t going to break bad like Walter White.

I had a friend once in that situation, being a skilled chemist and looking for work, and he took a job at a major cosmetics company.

Another place where chemists work is in food companies.

The kind that are responsible for food that is nearly addictive.

That is specifically designed to trick our taste buds.

If you’ve ever tried to eat healthy, you know how hard it is.

It takes a LONG TIME to “acquire” a taste for healthy food.

Or “re-acquire” since that’s the stuff we are SUPPOSED to eat.

Even fruit is a Frankenstein creation.

If you took a time machine back a couple thousand years, you’d find “natural” fruit that was nowhere near as big and sugary as modern fruit.

In some respects, it’s GOOD that we can trick our instincts.

That’s precisely why we enjoy movies so much.

We get to feel “non-normal” emotions (fear of death, love, loss, etc.) without having to actually deal with the consequences those emotions would normally produce.

In other areas, our instincts, especially our social instincts, are purposely being jacked all over the place.

Look in any crowded area, and check how many people are STARING at their devices.

Chances are they aren’t reading an in depth article about the economic and social implications of modern life.

Chances are they ARE getting their “fast food hit” from social media.

That “likes” and attention that feel good for about a second, but really only want them crave more.

Very much like those advanced chemists to carefully synthesize supermarket food to make us want more with each and every bite.

Luckily, training (or rather re-training) your social instincts is much easier than re-training your hunger.

Because social health food FEELS much better than social junk food.

And once you re-calibrate your social instincts, you’ll feel much better as well.

Learn How:

Ego Taming

Sugar Can Be Too Sweet

Are You Eating Social Sugar?

Imagine if you were in Mother Nature’s shoes way back when She made us.

Since we were going to be the “smartest” of the primates, She had to think long and hard.

She probably contemplated giving us TOTAL free will, and giving a list of “best practices.”

When she finished laughing, she decided it might be better to give us a combination of free will and these internal programs that would FORCE us to do the things we needed to survive.

Things that we would do without needing to think.

Like run away from tigers, eat stuff when we were hungry, and sleep when we were tired.

We’ve all had to battle these instincts.

Many of us are afraid of things we wish we weren’t afraid of.

Many of us eat things we wish we didn’t want to.

But consider how it would be otherwise.

How difficult it would be if we had to remember to be scared, or remember to eat, or drink, or sleep.

Just without getting tired, many of us would NEVER sleep.

But then we’d be dead in a few days or weeks.

Luckily, we DO have all of these instincts that keep us alive and safe and within our strict range of operating conditions.

However, many of these instincts aren’t working so well.

At least not as well as they used to.

Imagine if you could re-calibrate your hunger.

So carrots, broccoli and boiled chicken breasts tasted absolutely delicious.

And junk food or anything with sugar tasted like crap.

Losing weight would be easy.

Unfortunately, that’s not possible.

What IS possible is to recalibrate our social instincts.

Because what FEELS GOOD to our social instincts is actually WAY healthier than the social “signals” we seek today.

Most of these are very fake, and very shallow.

Kind of like sugar.

Feels good for a little bit, but then you feel like crap later on.

When you feed your social instincts HEALTHY food, it will feel much better.

So much it will naturally shun all that fake shallow stuff that runs people’s lives.

In that regard, it’s much EASIER to re-calibrate than hunger.

Once you do, you’ll notice a HUGE difference.

Learn More:

Ego Taming

Brains

How To Train Your Inner Self

Money and body fat are the same thing.

When bears gear up to hibernate, they store as much energy as they can.

Way back in the days when governments and bankers messed up our financial system, people kind of did the same thing.

The saying of “Go out and make your fortune” was create during that time.

Back then it was actually possible for a normal human to leave home at the age of 18 or so, work their ass for ten or twenty years, and have enough saved to live the rest of their lives in relative comfort.

Structurally speaking, a human saving up money is the same as a bear building up body fat.

Today, both are misunderstood.

Human body fat is a very necessary part of our biology.

Without the ability to turn consumed energy into stored energy, we never would have survived.

And without our ability to turn work into stored money-energy, our societies never would have gotten very large.

Today if we look in the mirror and see some body fat, we get angry at ourselves.

Sure, if you have a couple hundred extra pounds, you might want to live a little healthier.

But the process of turning consumed calories into fat is a life-enhancing process on a personal level.

This might sound a bit silly, but consider the message you are giving to your inner self when you get angry at your hips or your belly.

Even sillier, consider pinching a couple of inches of fat and thanking your body for always looking out for your interests.

Money is the same way.

We get angry at ourselves for NOT having enough money.

Or we get angry at the world, or at others.

Consider that your inner self is like a dumb caveman, only capable of following his or her instincts.

Getting angry at your fat or your lack of money could be similar to getting angry at a dog who hasn’t been trained.

How can you train your inner caveman?

If you know anything about training animals, positive reinforcement works MUCH BETTER than negative reinforcement.

If you thank and genuinely appreciate your body’s ability to turn consumed energy into fat (so you don’t die later on) it might be easier to go the other direction.

To convert some of that body fat back into energy (if you want).

Similarly, consider giving your inner caveman or woman some positive reinforcement when it comes to money.

Physically take out some money, hold it in your hand, and appreciate it.

What does the word “appreciate” mean?

To make larger.

When YOU appreciate money, you’ll be directing your inner self to “appreciate” money as well.

Learn How:

Wealth Tuning

Build Whatever You Want

The Human Ant Hill

Imagine the life of a highly gifted athlete.

Usually at a very young age, he or she knows they are different.

In PE class, they excel when the other kids struggle.

As soon as they get involved in team sports, their coaches realize how lucky they are.

By the time they’re in high school, they’d got big name colleges coming to their homes and promising them everything.

And if they make it to the pros, they live the life of kings.

All kinds of money, everything taken care of for them.

So long as they don’t make any stupid mistakes, they’re life is set.

These people NEVER have to worry about much.

They just show up here on Earth, do what comes naturally, and get all kinds of admiration and recognition and money.

Generally speaking, this is the same structure of people who build fortunes.

They just do what comes naturally, and it works out.

Sure, they struggle for years, sometimes decades.

But they have a collection of qualities where they KNOW they are doing what they are “supposed” to be doing.

What do they have that most people don’t?

It might not be based on what they HAVE, but what they DON’T have.

Once upon a time, there was nothing on Earth but a bunch of dirt.

And some cave people and some animals.

Now we’ve got all kinds of stuff.

AND all kinds of money.

If you were an alien studying humans, you’d conclude that we humans are pretty good at a few things.

One of them is making more humans.

Another is making more stuff.

If we study an anthill, you might conclude that we are similar.

Humans are busily running around all day.

Ants are busily running (or whatever ants do) around all day.

But ants are genetically programmed. They don’t have much of a choice.

Upon closer inspection, these aliens would see that humans have a bit more going on.

Human do stuff, and get paid.

Then they take that money, and do whatever they want.

Spend it, save it, invest it, give it to the poor.

People have been doing this since the dawn of civilization.

Do what they can, to make as much as they could.

The MORE people did this, the MORE stuff was invented.

Those metaphorical aliens might conclude that ants are genetically programmed to build anthills.

But humans are genetically programmed to make money.

All you’ve got to do is re-calibrate your brain, and get in the game.

Learn How:

Wealth Tuning