Tag Archives: feedback

Feel Cheated?

Do You Feel Cheated By Life?

I had this friend once that would come up with the craziest ideas.

These were business ideas, that he actually thought would make us money.

But they were based on some really nonsensical assumptions.

Kind of like in the movies, when criminals are planning a heist, and their biggest “escape plan” is, “Who’s going to know?”

Of course, once they plan a crime from that standpoint, they overlook tons of variables.

One of the common mistakes we make as people is to ASSUME that simply because we WANT something, we SHOULD get it.

Even if we feel like this just a little bit, it feels like we’ve been cheated if we DON’T get it.

This happens all the time with guys and dating.

They flirt with a girl from across the room. Then walk over, and start talking to her, and she goes cold.

They feel cheated. As if they DESERVED to get her number.

They don’t consider that she perceived him DIFFERENTLY before and after she talked to him.

Her opinion of him CHANGED once they started talking. She updated her idea of him with new information.

But from the guy’s standpoint, he feels like she purposely tricked him.

This is also very common in sales. Somebody is thinking about buying a product. They salesperson starts to ASSUME he or she is going to make a commission.

But then the customer changes their mind. Just like all humans ALWAYS do ALL THE TIME.

But the salesperson feels “cheated.”

Now, it is absolutely necessary to make assumptions. We humans NEVER will have enough information to accurately predict the future.

So we will always have to guess. If we’ve got any kind of experience, we can use that experience to predict, or make assumptions about what will happen.

Of course, if we OVERLY assume good things, and we don’t get it, we can feel cheated.

But if we OVERLY assume bad things, we get scared and we won’t take action.

The “trick” or SKILL is to develop a strong, ever-present sense of “let’s see what happens.”

We do this naturally when we play sports. ESPECIALLY if we suck.

If you’re shooting free throws, for example, you don’t feel like you’re going to die, or never be a success, or end up homeless if you miss a free throw.

You shoot, see what happens (get feedback) and try again.

If you keep shooting (practicing) you’ll eventually get better.

Pretty soon, you’ll KNOW that you shoot at a certain percentage.

How can you treat ALL ACTION like this?

Practice.

Practice keeping the “let’s see what happens” mindset whenever doing ANYTHING.

ESPECIALLY things that are moving you closer to your biggest goals in life.

There are MANY ways to do this.

Visualization exercises, journaling exercies, and reframes.

You can learn them here:

Fearless

Trying To Copy Everybody Else?

Afraid of Mistakes?

When I was a kid I loved popcorn.

Both making it, and eating it.

Once I tried to make some, but I couldn’t find any oil.

I found some other stuff that looked like oil, but wasn’t oil.

Only I didn’t find out until I’d mixed it with the popcorn and heated it on the fire.

Instead of getting a bowl of popcorn, I got a gooey inedible mess.

Now, at the time, I was pretty disappointed. Not only did I didn’t get what I wanted, but I had a huge mess to clean up.

But at the same time, it was kind of fun to experiment. To try and see.

Something else I used to love as a kid. Most of the time, the results were neutral, or good. Sometimes they backfired. Once I almost caught my room on fire.

Consider what your life would be like if were impossible to be curious. Impossible to wonder “what if.”

You’d only be able to do stuff that was “safe.”

Only stuff that others had tried and succeeded. Always be a follower, and not a leader.

Sure, you’d never catch stuff on fire and you wouldn’t have any expected messes, but it would be pretty boring.

Some people are happy to live a boring life.

Some people would RATHER live a boring life.

Think of the most magnificent thing you’d like in life, right now.

Are you willing to make tons of goofy mistakes in order to get there?

Because that is what it will take.

Nobody went from normal to king or queen without plenty of mishaps along the way.

Two steps forward and one step back. All the way to the top.

Accepting, owning, and learning from your mistakes is the singular most important thing you can do.

If you are afraid to do this, you’ll be stuck right where you are.

If you’re willing to mess up BIG, and keep on rolling, you’ll be fine.

After all, you’re only a “failure” when you stop moving forward.

What do YOU want to learn?

Get Started:

Mind Persuasion Ebooks

The Island Of Uncertainty

Conquer The Vast Unknown

When I was a kid I loved science.

Still do.

However, once I started to study science for real, it quickly became clear that the more we humans know, the more we realize we don’t know.

Human understanding has been described as a shoreline around an island. The more we expand the shoreline, the more of a huge ocean we see that we can’t fathom.

As big as our island of knowledge gets, it’s still an island that will always be surrounded by uncharted waters.

Now, there are a lot of ways to respond to this.

One is to shrug your shoulders and figure “well, since we’ll never know, I’ll just leave it up to the gods.”

Another way is to make up scientific “laws” that can’t be disproved, and make us feel really good.

If we’re not careful, this can lead to a trap. Where we don’t really DO anything except try and find some “secret” law of manifesting or creation. Some epic “short cut” that will get us the goods without needing to take a risk.

However, if you’re honest, the ONLY way to measure your progress is through your results.

And this is only possible if you have a well-defined outcome that you’re going after.

That way, you’ll have something to measure your progress against.

Because us humans are SO GOOD at deceiving ourselves, it’s pretty easy to convince ourselves we’re doing better when we’re really just spinning our wheels.

So, ask yourself. What do you want?

How will you know when you get it?

Once you get this out of the way, you can start trying things.

If it gets you closer, do more.

If if doesn’t get you closer, do something different.

There IS one thing that can get in your way.

And that is when you KNOW what you need to do, but you simply can’t bring yourself to do it.

Like presenting your idea in a meeting at work, or taking what feels like a HUGE risk and starting your own business, or anything else that’s REQUIRED but certainly not EASY.

That’s ok.

So long as you break it down into small chunks, you’ll do fine.

These books are filled with tools and mental exercises that will help.

Making whatever you want easier than ever.

Mind Persuasion Ebooks

Do You Keep Falling Down?

Do You Keep Falling Over?

I was watching a friend of mine with her kid the other day.

They were having a conversation. Sort of.

My friend was talking, but the kid was only sort of talking.

Half sounds, half words. It was clear the mom didn’t really understand the words themselves, but she just kind of rolled with it.

Now, I don’t remember being that young, but I doubt the kid was too worried about making any mistakes.

If you’ve ever seen kids running on the grass, and they trip over their feet, most of the time they think it’s pretty funny.

Once I had this mountain bike. I rode it quite often, on the street, and decided to get those special pedals with special shoes so they can clip in.

First ride was going fine until I forgot I’d switched my pedals. It seems that getting out of them requires some practice.

I rode up to the top of this hill, during heavy traffic, to a big intersection. The light was red, and I coasted to a stop.

Only as I started to fall over did I realize my feet were stuck in the pedals.

And right next to me, was a car filled with cute girls.

Boy oh boy was that embarrassing!

On the other hand, it was valuable feedback. I spent the next ten minutes or so practicing how to get in and out of those pedals, in a parking lot without many cars.

I could have just as easily gone home and never ridden again.

This is the difference between how we “label” events that happen to us.

They can be valuable feedback, which can help us. (I ended up riding about 200 miles a week for a year or so after that.)

Or we can give up, thinking that “event” MEANS “failure.”

But nothing really means anything.

Sure, we have some instinctive, “go-to” meanings.

But if we depended on our instincts ALL THE TIME, we’d weigh a million pounds and we’d start bashing people in the head with rocks whenever we got into an argument.

How we label events plays a large part in how “scary” the events are, either as they happen, or as we imagine them BEFORE they happen.

If we imagine them the wrong way, we’ll IMAGINE something we call “fear” and that will keep us stuck.

But with some practice, you can learn how to imagine future events differently. So they’ll seem less scary.

You’ll be more likely to take action, which means you’ll get more good stuff.

Get Started:

Fearless