Tag Archives: Emotions

Movie Stars

How To Copy Movie Stars

A lot of our ideas come from the wrong places.

For example, we tend to confused real life and entertainment.

On one hand, movies, TV and books have to be “believable” (unless they are in the fantasy genre).

But on the other hand, they have to be interesting.

The BEST TV shows and movies do well on both counts. On the one hand, they are filled with normal people in normal situations.

Then something extra-ordinary happens to them, and they have to battle the monster (or whatever).

But one thing that is ALWAYS different is how people talk in the movies, vs. how people talk in real life.

In movies and TV, people are always super witty, always say the right thing, and are ALWAYS supremely confident (unless overcoming their lack of confidence is part of the story).

But in real life, most of us are, “um, well, like, um yea, so, uh, what?”

But you CAN use movie characters as a reference point, if you are specifically trying to IMPROVE in the areas of social confidence and “in-the-moment” speaking skills.

Based on the NLP technique of modeling.

First find somebody that behaves in a way that YOU would like to behave. Ideally, find it on YouTube so you can watch it over and over.

Then watch the clip while you are SUPER RELAXED. Release all tension and anxiety. Turn off all backgrounds sounds. Watch it a few times.

First, just as relaxed and open as possible. To absorb all of their micro-movements, behaviors and expressions.

Then watch it a few times, and imagine it’s YOU up there.

Then watch it a few times, but with your eyes closed, and imagine you see the scene FROM the characters eyes.

Try and actually move your lips along with whatever the character is saying.

Now, this does sound pretty goofy, so you probably shouldn’t tell your friends or family about this.

But it is a powerful and very safe way to increase your social skills, if you do this a few times a week.

And since there’s a kajillion different clips on YouTube to choose from, you can pretty much MODEL any situation you’d like to improve upon.

After all, social confidence, communication skills, interpersonal skills, these are things you can NEVER have enough of.

Click Here to learn how.

Are You A Sheep?

How To Spin The Other Direction

One time I went to a Vietnamese restaurant with a Vietnamese friend of mine.

We were both looking over the menu, and we had both decided on the same thing.

It was in Vietnamese, so he had to explain everything to me.

He ordered, and then I ordered.

The waitress looked at me, deadpan, and said, “copycat.”

My friend thought it was the funniest thing.

We kept going back to that restaurant because the food was delicious.

But he always referred to it as the “copycat” place.

Humans are, after all, primates.

And the expression, “Monkey see, monkey do,” is pretty applicable to us humans.

Once in high school my neighbor and I were discussing how much people were “sheep.”

They teacher had done teaching, we’d all finished out in-class assignment, and we were all just sitting around waiting for the bell to ring.

Like animals in a cage waiting for instructions at the zoo or something.

My buddy and I decided to be “rebels.” To stand up and leave a minute before the bell rang.

We felt like we were doing some kind of heroic act of disobedience or something. (high school idiots lol!)

But when we stood up in defiance, everybody copied us. Like it was no big deal.

As we shuffled out, the teacher looked at the clock, confused.

Bottom line is that humans copy each other MUCH MORE than we realize, or would like to admit.

But here’s a way that EVERYBODY is copying YOU that maybe you haven’t thought of yet.

How you see yourself.

If you think you’re an idiot, guess what?

You’ll act like an idiot, and everybody will COPY your own JUDGMENT of yourself.

If you REALLY THINK you’re an awesome person with a lot to offer, people will copy THAT judgment about yourself as well.

Most people think get it backwards.

They think OTHERS judge us FIRST, and then we RESPOND to that.

But that is impossible.

How can they possible judge you just by looking at you?

They need help. Hints. Clues. Evidence.

Where do they get that from?

Your own opinion of yourself.

Change THAT, and you’ll change everything else.

Naturally, this isn’t as easy as changing your shirt or your shoes.

There IS a pretty tight feedback loop.

You, them, you, them etc.

But once you get started, and KEEP WORKING ON YOURSELF, you’ll slowly tip that feedback loop in the other direction.

You’ll think genuinely positive things about yourself. That will change your behavior. That will change how others perceive you. Which will AMPLIFY your own positive opinion about yourself.

When you get into THAT rhythm, (and KEEP it going) life is pretty good.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

Zebra Crossing

The Biggest Risk Of All

I was driving somewhere the other day with an Australian friend.

We were going to some restaurant, she knew where it was, I didn’t, so she was giving me directions.

She said, “turn left up there after the zebra crossing.”

And I immediately thought, “What? I don’t see any zebras?”

See in the states, where I’m from, we call them “cross walks” or “pedestrian crossing.”

And if you’re driving in the mountains you might see a warning sign that says, “Deer crossing.”

So when she said “zebra crossing,” it sounded like a place where zebras cross the street.

Of course, a second later I realized that the “zebra” was a description of what it LOOKED LIKE, rather than a description of what it was USED FOR.

The old, “form” vs. “function” argument.

Some things are described by how they look, others are described by what they do.

In Japan, they say that “every meal is enjoyed twice.”

Once when you look at it, and once when you eat it. This means when they prepare meals, the PRESENTATION is just as important as the TASTE. Sometimes more so.

Now, personally, I’m the type of guy who’d rather pay ONLY for taste. I don’t really care what it looks like. But that’s just me.

I’m NOT the kind of guy who takes photos of his meal before he eats. In fact, I’m usually FINISHED before everyone else has started! (But I digress…)

The point is that if you spend TOO MUCH time worried about what you LOOK LIKE, you’ll impact what you are able to DO.

Form is fantastic, so long as it doesn’t impede function.

Now, what is the FUNCTION of your life, you may ask?

The truth is that YOU are the ONLY ONE who can answer that question.

Of course, since very few people take the time to determine the purpose of their own lives, it generally gets decided by others.

Bosses, spouses, kids, parents, TV commercials.

It seems that people are desperate to find meaning ANYWHERE but within themselves.

The problem is if you look OUTSIDE yourself for meaning, YOU, and YOUR LIFE will eventually be DEFINED by those outside sources.

Not yourself.

And since this happens very slowly, you run a HUGE RISK.

And that is you’ll get to the end of your life and wonder what the heck just happened!

And guess what? Why do people look OUTSIDE themselves for answers?

They are AFRAID of choosing on their own. And making a mistake. And having to “do over.”

So instead of living through several “short term” and “low consequence” risks, they leave ALL THE RISK to the end of their lives.

Hoping it will end up OK!

Well, I don’t know about you, but screw that noise!

Of course, living ON PURPOSE requires courageous introspection. You MUST be willing to question things about yourself most are too scared to.

But if you do, you’ll get things MOST NEVER KNOW.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

Hot Sauce

Salsa Means You’re Sexy

There’s all kinds of weird things that marketers know about human nature.

Especially the kind of marketers who do research on grocery store placement.

They have TONS of data, and they are constantly sorting through the data to find relationships.

For example, there’s a kind of salsa that is preferred by people who have cats, or are “cat people.”

There’s a competing brand of salsa preferred by “dog people.”

The job of the marketer is to find these relationships, and then somehow leverage them.

They show this to the various salsa companies, who know where to put the ads for the most effect.

Now, it’s easy to misunderstand these “relationships.”

It’s not like if you start eating one particular salsa, you’ll morph into a cat person.

Kind of like those goofy “relationships” they are finding in the news.

People who drink diet soda, for example, have a higher risk of certain obesity related diseases.

But the news media make it sound as if you will drop dead of you drink diet soda.

They KNOW that most people misunderstand, or don’t know, the difference between “linked” or “correlated” and “cause and effect.”

Correlation, as they say, does NOT mean causation.

In fact, it RARELY does.

But our monkey brains tend to have a hard time with this.

Evolutionary biologists suspect assuming causation where none exist was to cut down on thinking time.

Instead of our ancient ancestors having to do a regression analysis every time they saw a tiger, or an apple tree, they just used the cause effect generator in their brains to assume what they saw MEANT something.

And the more “good” or the more “bad” that something was, the stronger the cause-effect linkage was.

Of course, today, that gets in the way of a happy life.

You apply for the job, don’t get it, and assume it MEANS you’re going to end up homeless.

You talk to that cute guy or girl and they reject you, and you assume it MEANS you’re going to be lonely.

You try and fail at your business and it MEANS you are going to be working minimum wage your whole life.

The truth is that anything can MEAN anything.

Especially when you are talking about the massively shifting variables that are always present in human relationships.

Of course, if you rely on your brain’s “go-to” meanings, they’ll be pretty scary.

Because your brain’s “go-to” meanings are necessarily survival based.

But your daily interactions are not.

Luckily, you can RE-PROGRAM your automatic cause-effect generator.

So those events can MEAN whatever you want them to mean.

That means everywhere you go, you’ll find PROOF that you are getting more of what you want.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

Grocery Store Manipulation

Auto Pilot Grocery Stores

There’s a common question when you start learning things like covert hypnosis and all the powerful language patterns of NLP.

And that is, “Is it possible to persuade somebody against their will?”

This is common question from both sides, the user and receiver of the language patterns.

There are those that would very much like to take advantage of others.

So when they come across something like “Covert Hypnosis,” the first they do is start rubbing their hands together like a cartoon super villain. The world belongs to me!

Then there are those who are terrified of salespeople, because they imagine salespeople use some super powerful NLP they won’t be able to resist.

Like they’ll walk into some store only to kill some time, and then suddenly find themselves at home two hours later with a $200 blender wondering what happened.

The truth is that neither of these are very likely.

BUT, there is something that is almost worse.

It is absolutely true that you CANNOT persuade somebody against their will.

But the SAD truth is that most people DON’T HAVE a will.

They don’t have a plan. They don’t have any idea of what they want. They just bounce around hoping something “good” happens to them.

Most of us are like this at least some of the time.

If you’ve ever been grocery shopping, and bought WAY more stuff than you intended, that’s EXACTLY what happened.

You walked in their WITHOUT a plan, and the GROCERY STORE (not some salesperson or anything) took advantage of you.

Think about that. It’s SO EASY to take advantage of people that “they” just need to set up the displays in the grocery store correctly, and they’ll run on their own AUTOPILOT INFLUENCE.

Pretty scary!

Of course, if you don’t want this to happen, you simply make a list.

(Just yesterday I saw some old guy in the store trying to read a list, while talking to his wife on the phone asking her WTF she’d written!)

This is true of EVERY SITUATION.

The problem is when you have a “wishy-washy” set of intentions.

AND you have an AUTOMATIC way of responding to certain situations.

Not only is THE WORLD going to pull your emotions all over the place, but sometimes you’ll feel pretty LOUSY!

Sure, it’s feels pretty good to get a smile from an attractive stranger, but if you are depending on chance, it’s going to be a two-way street.

Luckily, there are some POWERFUL exercises to help you plan for ANY contingency, AND be to handle ANYTHING the world throws at you like a tenth degree black belt ninja.

And you’ll NEVER feel “taken advantage of” again.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

She Knows The Secret

How To Become Irresistibly Attractive

I was at this seminar a long time ago where we did this weird exercise.

The instructor had us look around the room, and choose two people, based only on first impressions BEFORE we had a conversation with anybody.

We did it twice.

Once to choose two people we would want to have our backs.

A second time to choose two people we didn’t want ANYTHING to do with.

Both times, we were to raise our hands when we were finished.

It was a VERY difficult exercise!

Most people had no problems choosing people they wanted to have their backs.

And at the same time, it felt good thinking that maybe somebody else was choosing us.

The second time around was much harder. Most people couldn’t do it.

The reason was to elevate to conscious thinking what we do subconsciously, all the time.

A LOT of that isn’t stuff we like to think about. So we pretend it doesn’t exist.

But it’s there. It’s human nature. It’s a survival instinct.

You can either ignore it, and hope it isn’t important.

Or accept it. And work it in your advantage.

How?

One is to be as congruent as possible.

One thing that spends out a “weird” or “creepy” vibe is if you are incongruent.

Like if somebody is sitting next to you on the train, and they are sort of trying to start a conversation with you, but they’re super nervous. Part of them wants to, part of them doesn’t. They are incongruent.

If YOU are the one that’s incongruent, THAT’S the vibe you’re sending out.

But if you understand this, you can fix it. Become more congruent.

What happens when you become more congruent?

You’ll become naturally attractive. Charismatic. Magnetic.

Know which “class” of people are SUPER congruent? That don’t have any lying in them? That aren’t half in and half out?

KIDS!

That’s why they are so frikking adorable. When they’re happy, they let everybody know.

When they’re sad or angry, they don’t hide it.

They sit right there in the middle of a busy mall on a Saturday afternoon and ball their eyes out!

They don’t care who sees them!

Same when they’re happy. And you KNOW when you see a happy kid running around, few things are cuter.

Once upon a time, YOU were that kid.

YOU were that ultra charismatic person.

Imagine if you could be THAT charismatic, but as an adult!

What could you do?

Who would you talk to?

What kind of life would you lead?

You can. All of that.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

How To Be Open

How To Turn Everybody On

I just read this interesting piece of “news” about some famous psychologist.

I put “news” in quotes because it’s one of those self-evident things we all know anyway, but because it’s in some new book by a famous person the news goofs act like its a new discovery.

Anyhow, the shocking news is that when people meet us, there are two things they sort for within the first couple seconds.

One is whether or not they can trust us, and another is whether or not they can respect us.

Meaning we can’t be shifty, and we can’t walk around drooling on ourselves.

I know, shocking insight, right?

But here’s the thing. Just knowing what to do isn’t enough. It’s not even “half the battle” as G.I. Joe famously said.

For example if you were struggling with your weight, and some goof told you to, “eat less,” that really wouldn’t help.

Since every person that struggles with their weight REALLY struggles with how to manage hunger.

If all we had to do was to just “eat less” as if were as easy as wearing purple, we’d all be skinny.

The problem comes in HOW to do those “simple” things.

Like just HOW do you project the INSTANT idea that people can trust you?

Wear a T-Shirt that says, “Don’t worry, I won’t kill you!”

That probably wouldn’t help.

One way would be to be emotionally open. People who are SCARED often put up a protective vibe. This unfortunately comes across as you not trusting others.

And if YOU don’t trust OTHERS, how the heck are they supposed to trust you?

This is one of those catch-22’s. You don’t to become vulnerable unless THEY prove to YOU that you can trust them.

But THEY won’t trust YOU unless you are vulnerable. Since they don’t know you.

It’s like we’ve all got the same plan. Which is to wait for the OTHER PERSON to let their guard down FIRST.

How can you avoid this never ending trap?

Go to the source.

That time, way back in your history, when you trusted EVERYBODY.

Only after a while did you LEARN that sometimes it was difficult and even SCARY to openly express yourself.

Parents, school, other adults that don’t want to be bothered with a little kid.

They didn’t mean it, but they sure did a number on you!

It happened to ALL OF US.

You were once a super out-spoken, emotionally open, pure expression MACHINE.

Until somebody turned you off.

Sure it was an accident. But it still happened.

Luckily, YOU have access to the switch.

And when you turn yourself back ON, you’ll also be turning everybody else ON.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

You Don't Need Permission For Anything

Why Most People Will Never Self Actualize

When I was in high school I liked the band, “The Sex Pistols.”

They did a cover of the Who song, “Substitute.”

But apparently they didn’t bother getting the proper approvals from the proper authorities.

Right before the song starts, you can hear Johnny Rotten say, “You don’t need permission for anything!”

As an anti-authority, non-conformist high school student, that statement has always stayed with me.

Of course, few people can always act without “permission.”

Because when we get permission from somebody, especially a recognized authority figure, it kind of takes away the risk.

If something goes wrong, it’s not really our fault.

“But they said it was OK!” We innocently cry.

Even if it’s trying to something on your own, people still need as if they need “permission.”

Many people are hesitant about trying something new unless they see many others go first.

This is part of our DNA. It kept us safe when the world was much more dangerous.

When we actually might get KILLED if we strike out on our own.

But the measure of an ENLIGHTENED human, as compared to a instinctive one, is the ability to manage our instincts.

Our instincts that tell us to eat everything in sight, even when we aren’t hungry.

Our instincts that tell us it’s safer to move with the crowd.

Our instincts that tell us it’s not OK to call attention to ourselves.

If you are going to achieve fulfillment, if you are going to become self-actualized, you have to leave those helpful and comforting instincts behind.

One way to do that is to CHOOSE the meanings you give to events.

Instead of relying on your natural instincts to give the meanings, or the “general public” to help you give them meaning, you’ll have to come up with the meaning on your own.

A meaning that best helps YOU to achieve your life goals.

Not just the meanings that happen to you on a daily basis, but the meanings you gave to events that happened YEARS ago.

When you were still a child.

Because it is the MEANING you give to those events, rather than the events themselves, that gives you the emotions you have today.

It is YOUR JOB, your responsibility, to find those events, and RE-DEFINE them.

This isn’t easy, and it is sometimes unpleasant.

But it is necessary to live a self-actualized life.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

Robot Love

How To Master Your Emotions

I’m a big fan of science fiction shows.

Especially well-written, futuristic ones.

There’s usually a character that is some kind of android, or advanced human, or Vulcan-like person.

Pure logic, zero emotions.

This sets up plenty of interesting scenes where some human is explaining emotions to the robot.

It’s like we admire those who are free from emotions, but at the same time we enjoy seeing somebody explain human emotions.

To be sure, they are the BEST and the WORST part about being human.

When you’re hitting on all cylinders, and you feel like the whole world has your back, nothing feels better.

On the other hand, when nothing works and everybody looks at you like you’ve just crawled out of a dumpster, nothing feels worse.

From a society perspective, our emotions are “glue” that keep us operating smoothly.

Guilt, fear, pleasure, desire. They ostensibly push us towards things that are good for us, and push us away from things that are bad for us.

It doesn’t help that the our emotions were created for a world FAR simpler than the one we’re living in.

This gives rise to situations that on the surface look fine, but underneath we feel like we are on an emotional roller coaster.

Most people know intellectually what to do to get ahead, for example. It’s the DOING that’s difficult.

Sure, if you talk to enough people, you’ll find the ideal business partner, or girlfriend or boyfriend.

It’s the TALKING that’s the tough part.

So we respond by telling ourselves all kinds of stories to make us feel better.

Usually on a subconscious level, so we aren’t really aware of what’s happening.

Then we’re no longer interacting with the REAL word, but one that’s partially based on our on interpretation.

But like anything else, being able to handle your emotions is a SKILL.

The more you practice, the better you’ll get.

Luckily, there are a LOT of ways to do this.

One is to just simply DO IT enough and desensitize yourself.

This takes massive courage, commitment, and time.

Luckily, there are TONS of mental exercises that can help.

Not only to build up your emotions BEFORE going into sketchy situations, but to help you respond much more resourcefully to unknown events.

There’s nothing worse than walking down the street, in a good mood, and then BAM!

Something happens and everything’s suddenly crap.

You can learn to BULLET PROOF yourself from those situations, no matter WHAT they are.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom