Tag Archives: Emotions

They're Everywhere

Protect Your Most Precious Resource

When you get into trouble, you call the police.

When the police get into trouble, they call SWAT!

At least that’s how the TV show (from the 70’s) started.

They’ve made a few movies, about SWAT in particular.

But there are endless cop shows.

One of the best TV shows of all time (The Wire) is about cops.

Another one of the best TV shows of all time (The Sopranos) is about criminals.

Seems we are easily entertained by TV shows and movies about cops and robbers.

Or good guys and bad guys.

In fact, all movies and stories need both.

You CAN get away with a movie that only has good guys, and good things, and happy endings, but that’s like eating a bowl of sugar.

It might be a fun thing to do once in a great while, but it’s not something you do every day.

Even music is surrounded by the idea of tension and relief. Chord and discord.

We like those structures for two main reasons.

One, they resonate with us. Every day we have “good parts” and “bad parts.”

If we were to separate the people we deal with, or potentially deal with, we could easily separate them into “good guys” and “bad guys.”

The second reason is that most of the time, the good guys win.

And we like that feeling, even if we know it’s fake.

Because in real life, the good guys don’t always win.

In fact, even if you DID get into trouble, and you DID call the cops, they best they might do is give you paperwork to file with your insurance company.

One of the great promises of an organized society based on laws is that we are protected from the bad guys.

Yet bad guys are everywhere.

And when they come at you with their badness, how do you respond?

If it’s a physical attack, there are plenty of options.

Dial 911.

Run.

Stand your ground and fight.

But what if it’s a verbal attack?

A carefully crafted emotional attack?

In front of others?

These are the hardest to defend against.

At least, they are for most people.

But when you learn the skills of verbal self defense, you can stop them dead in their tracks.

Faster than a spin kick to the head of an attacker.

BAM!

Learn How:

Weaponized Hypnosis

Mutual Benefits Are Everywhere

Mechanics Of Relationships

One of our biggest human issues is an instinct mismatch.

The easiest to see is hunger.

Way back in the day, we had to hunt for food.

And hunting for food was dangerous.

So only those that were ALWAYS hungry were the most motivated to get out and hunt every day.

Or spend all day foraging.

Today, that never ending hunger instinct gets in the way.

Which is why most people (70%) are overweight.

Unfortunately, this is only ONE of the instincts that can get us into trouble.

There are plenty of others.

However, once you understand that hunger will never go away, you can learn to manage it.

It’s not easy by any means.

But through consistent effort, you CAN get into decent physical shape if that’s important to you.

Luckily, all of our other goals can be made much easier by managing all of our various instincts.

The first step is understanding what those instincts are.

Think of when you fell in love with somebody.

In the very beginning.

When you had “one-itis” for them.

You liked them, but you weren’t sure if they liked you.

In that situation, it’s very hard to NOT contact them.

But if you know anything about relationship building, contacting somebody TOO OFTEN in the early stages is the last thing you want to do.

Making yourself TOO available will kill attraction.

Fortunately, this desire to contact them is JUST LIKE our hunger instinct.

If we are OBEDIENT to our instincts, they won’t help us much.

Imagine if you ate all you could, whenever you were hungry.

If you learn about all your other instincts, and how to manage them, you can CREATE a wonderful relationship JUST LIKE you can create a healthy body.

Sure, it’s not easy and automatic.

But nothing worth doing is.

But just as sure as you can create a healthy body, you can create a healthy relationship.

All you need to do is understand the mechanics, the underlying instincts that you need to manage, and get busy.

Learn How:

Love Hypnosis

She Wants You

Mastering Greed, Fear and Love

I love reading about and learning about the stock market.

Not just because it’s a way to make money (and also a way to lose everything).

But because it’s based on human psychology.

Sure, there are all kinds of technical and fundamental indicators.

GDP growth or not, job growth or not.

Technical indicators, MACD, slow and fast moving averages, etc.

Some of the indicators like the VIX (which measures volatility) is EXTREMELY complicated.

You need a couple semesters of calculus just to understand how the VIX is calculated.

But hidden inside all those indicators and equations is the human brain.

All of it is so we talking monkeys can have an idea of what to do.

And despite HOW we make our choices (buy, sell or hold) they are HUMAN choices.

Subjective choices.

I suppose of Spock decided to trade stocks for a living, he’d do pretty well.

But we humans cannot escape our emotions.

Experienced stock traders say that even after the BEST trade, they STILL have regrets.

I should have held on a little longer.

I should have bought more in the beginning.

I could have made MORE money.

Greed and fear are ALWAYS present.

Traders can’t get rid of them any more than we can get rid of hunger.

Jesse Livermore, a famous trader from back in the 1920’s, wrote a book about the stock market.

One that is JUST as valid today as back then, nearly 100 years ago.

Why?

Because human emotions haven’t changed.

Even back then, Livermore remarked that the psychology behind the stock market is as “old as the hills.”

Humans want the same things today as we did 1000 years ago.

More money, less work, better relationships, better sex, more love, more affection, less frustration.

Despite the MASSIVE complexity of daily live, the human condition is the same as it ever was.

Which means if you understand the human condition, it doesn’t matter what else you know or don’t know.

Because you’ll have a huge advantage.

Learn More:

Love Hypnosis

Blast Off Butterfly!

Are You Jumping Without A Parachute?

There are a lot of “law of attraction” type sayings that sound pretty good.

And like a lot of things, if we repeat them enough, we feel like we “know” them.

But there’s a difference between being familiar with the words (and examples) and actually discovering them on your own.

If you’ve experienced this, it presents a strange problem.

For example, many people have heard the expression, “Fake it till you make it.”

And most people can give a couple examples of why this is true.

All without ever having actually faked it until you made it.

But then something happens, and you actually have to fake something, and then you make “it” (whatever “it” is) and it hits you.

It’s true in an experiential way, whereas before it was true in an intellectual way.

But when you say it, while recalling your own true life experience, it sounds EXACTLY the same.

It’s somewhat similar (but only somewhat) to the famous Bruce Lee quote.

(Paraphrased)

“Before Jeet Kun Do, a punch is just a punch. During Jeet Kun Do, a punch is a careful combination of energy, focus, balance, concentration, and intention. After Jeet Kun Do, a punch is just a punch.”

It’s the same thing, but very, very different.

One of the often said truisms (much like faking it till you make it) is that you need to have belief before you have results.

Most people say this, but few people have the experience of believing something BEFORE they believe it.

It’s also easy to rewrite your beliefs so that you can pretend you believed it before you saw it, when in reality, you had your doubts.

The human brain is very clever at always making us the heroes of our own stories.

But one area where you MUST believe in what you’re creating is when you are purposely creating relationships with others.

This is when what you WANT to do is usually the direct opposite of what you SHOULD do.

But if you believe in what you are doing, and you can NOT do what most people do, you will GET what most people don’t get.

One way to make it much easier is to get an intellectual understanding of what you are doing.

Kind of like having an intellectual understanding of the physics of parachuting before jumping out of a plane.

Still pretty terrifying, but not nearly as terrifying as jumping out of a plane WITHOUT a parachute and hoping for a miracle.

The “hoping for a miracle” strategy is what most people use.

But when you understand the structure of relationships, you can create them with as much scientific precision as the air that lets you and your parachute drift gently to the ground.

Learn More:

Love Hypnosis

Dreamland is Loveland

Plant Emotional Seeds

When I was very young my sister and I tried to make a pizza.

We threw a bunch of stuff haphazardly on top of some bread.

No idea what we were doing.

As expected, it tasted like crap.

I’ve been on a lot of backpacking trips.

Some of the coolest parts are the meadows that are way up there.

No humans around, gorgeous streams and flowers.

A single trail going through a huge valley.

Some people get pretty intense with their gardens.

They spend a lot of time planting and pruning and weeding.

The result is very nice.

Even though they know exactly what it’s going to look like, it’s still beautiful.

Compared to the naturally occurring wildflowers up around eight or nine thousand feet, which is more beautiful?

They are both beautiful in their own way.

One is because of the setting, the backdrop.

The other is because it’s a creation of the mind, and of the soil.

Which is doing more work?

The mind or the soil?

The mind can understand what seeds to plant, how much work to put into the weeding, how much space to allow, etc.

But the seeds do everything else.

Sure we can describe what’s happening.

At least, up to a certain point.

It’s nice to think of ourselves as creators of the garden.

But in reality, we’re just putting the right ingredients together in the right proportion.

Then we only stand back and wait for nature to do what nature does.

How or why THAT happens is anybody’s guess.

But you don’t need to understand it to create a beautiful garden.

You just need to appreciate it.

Many things are that way.

At the same time they are mysterious, but also simple.

Food is simple to cook, but the emotional gratification we can get from eating is indescribable.

Human relationship are the same way.

At least they CAN be.

You don’t need to understand how or why they work, only enough to mix everything together in the right proportions.

And give it the space to happen.

And just like a garden, if you create it correctly, it will grow.

Learn How:

Love Hypnosis

Alchemy Of Love

Scientific Emotions

There’s a pretty cool video on YouTube on chord progressions.

It shows a ton of different pop songs that all have the same chords.

This is one of those things you’d never notice unless you learned enough about music.

Then after you notice it, it’s hard to not notice it.

Same with story structure.

Most modern movies and books have the same basic structure.

The “Hero’s Journey.”

Usually starts out with the hero as an orphan of some kind.

Then he or she is more or less forced to go on some kind of journey.

Could be a metaphorical journey, or a real one.

Along the way they meet friends, learn skills and eventually have to fight the bad guy.

Or overcome their internal demons.

But even if you study music, or story structure, we can still enjoy movies and music.

Sometimes even more so.

In order to become a world class chef, you’d have to know what tastes good and what doesn’t.

While they are making pizza and burger robots, they’ll never make a robot that can invent new dishes and tastes.

Because a robot will never have the purely emotional experience of tasting something for the first time.

In order to “test” a new recipe, a robot would HAVE to have some kind of pre-programmed ranges or parameters.

Human senses, on the other hand, have an infinite amount of range.

An infinite amount of capability to somehow “transfer” between purely chemical combinations, and emotional descriptions of flavor.

Robots will likely be able to create things with absolute precision.

But they’ll never be able to enjoy things from a human experience.

Only we humans get to do that.

But just like chefs can produce delicious dishes and musicians can produce emotionally moving pieces, we can both create and enjoy a wide range of emotions.

All it takes is being able to shift outside, as the creator, and then shift inside, as the enjoyer.

Learn How:

Love Hypnosis

Yeah Baby!

Be Their Spark Of Life

When I was in elementary school, we experimented with bacteria.

This pretty much amounted to spitting in a petri dish, and then watching the mold grow.

Same stuff that grows on bread if you let it sit too long.

On the one hand, it’s a pretty basic process.

You mix a bunch of ingredients and watch the stuff grow.

If you buy a hundred loaves of bread and let them sit in your kitchen too long, they’ll grow the same kind of mold every single time.

Yet at the same time, WHAT that mold really is has baffled scientists since forever.

Sure, they can describe it, predict how and where it grows, but WHAT exactly is “life?”

How did it start?

Their best guess was that lightening somehow gave the primordial ingredients the energy they needed to transform from inorganic matter to organic matter.

Or God intervened.

Or maybe aliens.

Who knows?

On the one hand, it’s very, very predictable.

On the other hand, it’s almost magical.

Our emotions are the same way.

From inside our own minds, from our own subjective experiences, emotions can be wonderful, horrible, confusing, inspiring and everything in between.

Yet at the same time, certain chord progressions, which can be mathematically described and explained, tend to evoke the same emotions in many people.

On the outside, it’s purely scientific and rational.

But on the inside, simple songs can evoke very deep and powerful emotions.

Same with movies.

Produced with rational thinking creators, who know what type of story structures work, and which ones don’t.

Even cookie cutter Disney movies make people feel deep emotions.

At the same time, our emotions are indescribable, but easy to “manipulate.”

Not the best word.

But every time you specifically choose to see an action movie, or a horror movie, or a romantic tearjerker, you are HOPING your emotions will be manipulated in the right way.

The more effective a movie manipulates your emotions, the BETTER the movie is.

If the movie DOESN’T manipulate your emotions, it’s not believable.

What about one on one?

Can we use the same process?

Absolutely.

And if you create the RIGHT emotions, it doesn’t matter if you are creating them as rationally as the directors and actors and writers to get paid gobs of cash.

Because your target will feel WONDERFUL.

Learn How:

Love Hypnosis

Pull Your Future Forward

Human Condition On Steroids

Monty Hall, the famous game show host, passed away recently.

I read an interview he gave a while ago.

He described how he tried to “con” the contestants.

He actually used the word, “con.”

Without his input, the contestants would have to use brain skills to choose which choice was the most appropriate.

Which is interesting in itself.

That’s the whole premise behind the popular game shows like, “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire,” and “Jeopardy.”

There’s a difficult question, the contestant has to answer, and we can play along at home.

But on “Let’s Make a Deal,” (the show Monty Hall hosted), it was a lot more emotional.

While the contestant was trying to decide which was better, Monty was messing with them.

He’d start offering more money if they made a certain choice.

And since he KNEW which was the right choice, he knew which direction to push them to make it more interesting.

Remember, he used the word, “con,” to describe this behavior.

And while this was happening, everybody in the audience was screaming at the poor guy or gal up on stage desperately trying to think.

This is the human condition on steroids.

You’ve got a decision, that in itself is not so easy.

But there’s also money at stake.

And there’s your social reference group.

And while they do sort of have your interests in mind, they won’t pay the price if you make the wrong decision.

In fact, it may even make them feel better if you make a mistake.

How do us poor humans ever do anything right?

Luckily, there is a simple way.

All those people on Let’s Make a Deal never knew what was at stake until they were up on stage.

Which means they don’t have much time to come up with a strategy.

They see the choice the same time everybody else does.

And there’s a huge amount of time pressure.

But in real life, you can easily avoid that.

Choose what you want ahead of time.

Before anybody else knows.

That way, choosing what to do will be a lot easier.

Because the right choices will take you closer, or teach you skills that will get you closer.

The wrong choices won’t.

The stronger you choose, the easier it will to move toward that choice.

So choose carefully, and start moving.

Learn How:

Seven Disciplines

Don't Make This Guy Angry

When Will The Piper Come Knocking?

Economics is frequently referred to as the “dismal science.”

This makes sense when you look at all the other sciences.

Even if you don’t understand science, it’s extremely useful.

To kids and primitive cultures, science is like magic.

And not just magic, but the good kind of magic.

The kind of magic where you can take a clump of frozen stuff out of your freezer, pop it in the microwave, and a couple minutes later have a delicious burrito.

Or that allows you to walk down the stairs in one part of the city, scarcely take your eyes off your twitter feed, and walk up the stairs in a completely different part of the city.

Or even better, get onto a plane, fall asleep, and wake up on a different continent.

Only a hundred years ago, when somebody was traveling to another continent, goodbye’s were sad because you wouldn’t see or hear from the person in months or years.

Now, because of science, we can go to another continent, and face to face talk to our loved ones back home when we get there.

But why is economics “dismal?”

Because it forces us to ask a very important question.

One that few people ever ask.

One that politicians hope we NEVER ask.

What’s the question?

“At What Cost?”

Every single action we do has ramifications.

Most of the time, we can ignore them.

But as the story of the pied piper tells us, eventually we’ve got to pay.

The story of the pied piper of course is about a guy who got rid of all the rats in a city.

Then the people decided they didn’t want to pay him.

So he got rid of all the children, just like he did the rats.

Every action we take will need to be accounted for.

It’s very easy in the short term to ignore that.

The biggest risk is not taking any action at all.

It’s easy to put it off to tomorrow.

Humans are afraid of risk.

So we don’t take any.

But the biggest risk of all is avoiding risk altogether.

Because one day, you might need to be able to do something, or know how to do something, but you don’t, or can’t.

This isn’t a very comfortable thought.

But you don’t EVER have to do anything scary.

AND you can still watch all your favorite TV shows.

In fact, the BEST thing you could do is take very tiny actions, and make those actions a habit.

Until doing what NEEDS to be cone is comfortable and familiar.

Everybody’s situation is different.

But EVERYBODY has something in the back of their mind they know they SHOULD be doing, but aren’t.

All you need to do is find the tiniest, easiest way to get started.

And just do that one TINY thing every day.

Until that “seed” starts to grow on it’s own.

Get Started:

Seven Disciplines

The Meaning Of The Pictures

How To Play The Long Game

I read this interesting article about how corporations take over governments.

It’s a highly complex process that involves a lot of parts.

And a lot of entities that are controlled by the corporations.

For example, they’ll have a research subsidiary, and a public relations subsidiary.

Both appear to be independent companies, but if you do some digging you’ll see the connections.

Over the course of 7-10 years, they do research (where they know ahead of time what the results will be) and then use their public relations subsidiary to carefully publicize the “shocking” results.

Once the general public see it as a problem, then they’ll have their contacts quietly contact members of congress.

A year or so later, congress creates a law that “solves” the problem.

A law that coincidentally benefits the corporation, who started the process.

The reason they can do this is they can think in long term time-lines.

Long game.

Politicians, on the other hand, must think in terms of short game.

Since they always need to worry about their approval levels.

Media are also worried about the short game.

Very short game.

Since they have to worry about eyeballs and ad clicks.

In any given system, whoever can make and maintain the longest game plan usually wins out in the end.

This goes for us as individuals as well.

Imagine if you could only see two feet in front of you as you walked.

You had some bubble around you keeping you from seeing further out.

If you got to a wall, you would have to just keep walking along the wall, hoping for an opening.

Sadly, this is how most people live.

They can only “see” a few days ahead.

When asked questions about one year or five year plans, they kind of shrug their shoulders.

On the other hand, image being able to see miles all around.

Walls would never be a problem.

You would see them far enough ahead of time so you would just make one small shift.

The further out you are from the wall, the smaller the shift you need to make to avoid it.

But with only two-foot vision, you might not EVER get around it.

How do you develop long range vision, so you can overcome huge obstacles with small shifts?

There are plenty of easy things that done daily, will slowly open your vision FAR into the future.

So all you’ll ever need to do is make small shifts.

Life is easy when you play the long game.

The short game, not so much.

Learn More:

Seven Disciplines