Tag Archives: Influence

She Is Waiting For You

Fast Food Rush

One of the best feelings is forward momentum.

Another good feeling is being in control.

Not control-freak control, but a feeling of control over your life.

Of being at cause, instead of having to always respond.

When I was in high school I worked a lot of retail.

Mostly food.

It was fun, in that there were plenty of kids my own age.

And when there was a rush (lunchtime or dinner) it was pretty cool.

It was super busy, the time went by pretty quickly.

And it felt good to get through the rush.

One of the reasons it was so cool was it was temporary.

It would maybe last an hour or two.

The orders would come quick and relentlessly.

We’d be running around trying to keep up.

It was the kind of challenge that feels good.

The right combination of external pressure, internal focus, teamwork, and a genuine appreciation from management once we were done.

Underlying all of this was the sense it was out of our control.

Meaning once the crowd came, we were utterly dependent on forces outside of us.

“Reality” would demand a response from us, and we had to keep up.

Doing this once per shift for a couple hours is pretty cool.

But living your life like this is horrible.

Always feeling that you are “on call” to whatever is outside and more powerful than you.

And if you don’t perform “correctly” you’re going to get into trouble.

This is the kind of thing that makes one feel trapped and hopeless.

This is why people always figure out ways to carve out private time to work on private things.

It’s another reason why people practice partial arts.

Even if they NEVER intend to use them outside of the training room, it FEELS like they are building up the skills to fight back.

Even if it’s just a mental knowing of a certain level of skill, it makes one feel MUCH LESS like they are always an effect, rather than a cause.

Just knowing you have a certain level of skills will help you feel much more like a cause in more places.

And that feeling will inform your body language and non-verbal communication.

Which will invite a completely different response from others.

And if you ever DO need to use these defensive skills?

They’ll know what hit them.

Learn More:

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

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

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

They're Everywhere

What If Angels Were Watching You?

Once upon a time Jesus decided to come back to visit Earth.

So he strolls up to the Vatican and is standing in the courtyard, kind of looking around.

One of the Cardinals sees him, and runs to tell the Pope.

“Father!” he cries, rushing inside in a panic.

“Yes, my son, what is it?” The Pope asks.

“Jesus! He has returned!”

“What do you mean?” The puzzled pope asks.

“He’s outside! In the courtyard! What shall we do?” the cardinal desperately asks. The pope thinks about it, then looks up.

“Tell everybody to look busy!”

Yuckity yuck….

Everybody has the experience of sitting around when you’re supposed to be working.

And the boss shows up, and you suddenly pretend you were just finishing something, or were just about to do something REALLY important.

This is normal behavior, and it happens all the time.

But when it’s unhelpful is when we are tricking OURSELVES that we are busy.

Sometimes we do this to avoid doing unpleasant things.

Maybe you’d planned on doing your taxes, but suddenly your daughter needs help with her homework, and you’re than willing to help all day if that’s what she needs.

Sometimes we do things that we THINK is “progress,” but it’s really just busy work.

Perhaps you’ve been wanting to write a novel.

But instead of sitting down and actually writing, you’re doing “research.”

You may even tell people you’re a writer, but you are still in the “planning stages.”

Of course, planning is absolutely necessary.

But things like that are VERY EASY to stretch out.

Sometimes for YEARS.

Which means it’s very EASY to trick ourselves we are “on purpose,” that we’re living an extraordinary life.

But all too often, the things we do are really the same things we’ve always done.

We just somehow redefine them.

So instead of wasting time online, we’re doing “research.”

Or instead of dreaming about what it would be like to actually finish a degree, we’re “investigating online classes.”

Or instead of window shopping on Amazon, we’re “choosing the right equipment for our exercise plan.”

Redefining events is a very good skill.

Like all of our mental skills, we can use them to get ahead, for example reframing a “failure” as valuable experience that can help you do better next time.

Or we can use them to stay in our comfort zone, when we pretend we’re researching the best running shoes, but we’re really just browsing Amazon while watching TV.

How do you know the difference?

Figure out a way to keep score.

Objective score, that is observable from your behavior, not your thinking.

Imagine angels are watching you, and they can only see your behavior, not your thoughts.

And the more your behavior moves you forward, the more they’ll help you.

This metaphor can help you move forward, instead of just pretending.

Learn More:

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

Anchor On Your Desires

Why Now Always Beats Later

There are two reasons we human do anything.

Either to move toward pleasure, or to move away from pain.

Anything you want or don’t want can be broken down into those components.

However, it’s usually not so simple.

Take the ubiquitous goal of weight loss.

Most people would LOVE to be skinnier.

Otherwise the “lose weight” section on Amazon wouldn’t have zillions of best sellers.

But this simple and common idea involves a TON of confusing “good things” and “bad things.”

Eating feels good.

But having to strain to button your pants doesn’t feel good.

So we want make it easier to put on our pants.

In order to achieve that “good” we need to reduce another “good,” namely the pleasure we get from eating.

Problem is that eating pleasure happens right NOW.

While the pleasure of loose fitting pants is WAY out into the future.

And we’re supposed to “live in the moment,” right?

So it’s “good thing” to eat ice cream, NOW.

But then later the next morning, when we have to lie on the floor to zip up our pants, we are still “living in the moment.”

Only that particular “living in the moment” of squirming around trying to zip up our pants is a different “living in the moment” than when we ate a quart of ice cream the night before.

How the heck are we supposed to know what to do?

Even when we DO know what to do, how the heck we do it?

I doubt you’d find anybody that thinks eating a quart of ice cream is more than a “guilty pleasure.”

Yet somehow, that ice cream magically gets from the grocery store to our freezer.

And despite our promises to ourselves in the grocery store, it’s hard to ONLY eat a small bowl.

In case you hadn’t noticed, another theme in all of these confusing ideas is the idea of TIME.

When we choose to eat or not eat the ice cream, we are comparing NOW vs. the FUTURE.

When we buy the ice cream in the store, we are comparing NOW vs. THE FUTURE.

For most people, NOW wins over the FUTURE every time.

But you can “go meta.”

Most people try to battle on a surface level.

They focus on the content of the NOW vs. the content of the FUTURE.

Buying the ice cream (and promising to only eat a little bit) or NOT buying the ice cream.

Every time we choose, it’s always a matter of pleasure NOW vs. pleasure in the FUTURE.

The good news is you can ignore the content.

Meaning you can slowly build up your FUTURE thinking muscle, so that starts to win over the NOW.

It’s easier than you think.

Learn How:

Seven Disciplines

Who's Doing Your Thinking?

Whose Thoughts Are You Thinking?

Once I went to a bar with a friend.

As soon as I walked in, I noticed that the walls were covered with Corona flags.

We sat at our table, I ordered my drink, and he studied the menu.

After a little bit of thought, he ordered a Corona.

He acted like he’d decided on Corona ONLY after reading the menu.

I laughed, and he asked why.

I pointed out all the Corona signs and he looked stunned.

When I was a kid I saw this stage show at an amusement park.

The trick was that I was supposed to whisper something to a dog, and the dog would go and retrieve it.

I did, and the dog retrieved it.

Since I was a kid, I really thought the dog could understand me.

But my brother explained that the trainer had carefully slipped that idea into my mind, so I thought it was mine.

Every show, the dog would always get the same thing.

And every time, the kid thought it was HIS choice that he told the dog.

Just like my Corona ordering friend, the thought had been carefully implanted in there.

Had my brother not explained the trick to me, or had I not shown my friend all the Corona signs, we would have thought it really WAS our thought.

So here’s the uncomfortable question:

How do you know your thoughts are really yours?

Grocery stores are laid out to alter our buying choices.

TV ads are carefully designed to alter our thinking choices.

And since most people think the same thoughts every day, what does it mean if those same thoughts (that people think every day) are really put there by others?

Whose thoughts are we REALLY thinking all day long?

Our lives are built from our behaviors.

Our behaviors are a result of our thinking.

But if our thinking is secretly controlled by others, WHOSE lives are we living?

On a big scale, this sounds terrifying.

But on a much smaller scale, it’s not so bad.

If you’ve got a massive garden that is overrun by weeds, it’s not a very happy thought.

But if you just took out ONE weed per day, and replaced with a seed for a flower, pretty soon you’d transform your garden.

Your thoughts, and the behaviors that create, are the same way.

Even if ALL of your thoughts are really somebody else’s, you can start small.

And slowly replace them with YOUR thoughts that will build the life that YOU want.

Not anybody else.

Learn How:

Seven Disciplines