Tag Archives: Influence

In You Is Money

What Have You Hidden From Yourself?

One time I was in Vegas with a couple of friends.

I had a sudden flash of insight, and hid $40 in my wallet.

In case I lost everything, I’d still have the $40 to buy gas with for the drive back.

Only I totally forgot about the hidden money.

(I suppose because I never lost everything).

I didn’t find that extra $40 until a few months later.

For a brief few seconds, I thought I’d been visited by the money fairy.

A lot of people do that.

Hide resources.

And then forget about them.

Sometimes for their entire lives.

They are always those stories of old people who lived extremely frugally.

Then when the authorities come to collect the body and clean up their apartment, they find stock certificates worth millions.

We always wonder if they knew they were worth millions and just chose to live an ascetic lifestyle.

Or maybe they just got into good habits, of investing wisely and consistently, and then forgot the REASON for the habit.

There’s a song from the musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” about “tradition.”

The theme is doing things just because you used to do them, without really knowing why.

The word “squirrel away” is obviously from squirrels. They collect and hide food, because they expect to USE IT later on.

But as humans, with our often confused minds, it’s easy to forget WHY we do certain things.

It becomes even MORE “mystical” when we consider that we may have made these decisions LONG before we came into this life.

If it was pretty easy for me to forget my hidden $40, imagine the kind of stuff our HIGHER SELVES might have hidden in our physical bodies!

This may be the REASON we are here.

To FIND that which we hid, long ago.

Or at the very least, to enjoy the search.

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Sex Transmutation

Quantum Love

Both Sides Of Metaphysics

In Quantum Physics they have a metaphor called “The Great Smoky Dragon.”

It refers to the idea that at its most basic, fundamental level, the nature of reality is not measurable.

Meaning any kind of system has a lot of components.

When talking about a particle, it’s got mass, spin, charge, direction, momentum (which is a function of mass and speed).

But the MORE you know any one of those, the LESS you can know the other.

This is different than taking the temperature of a pot of hot water.

When you do that, you lower the water by soaking some of the heat into the thermometer.

But matter, at it’s fundamental level can only exist as a probability wave in some parts, and a physical entity in other parts.

It CAN be pure probability wave, but it can NEVER be wholly physical.

The Great Smoky Dragon metaphor is the idea that you can see the dragon’s head, you can see the dragon’s tail, but the middle is a vague puff of smoke.

Most people are aware of the idea that we are “not physical beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a physical experience.”

But what if that’s not accurate?

What if that is only a metaphor, like the smoky dragon is a metaphor (which is a metaphor with a metaphor since dragons are metaphorical creatures).

What if the “other side,” we are really spiritual creatures having a physical experience, but on “this side” we are physical creatures having a spiritual experience?

One thing about metaphors if that if you start to think they are REAL, you can get into trouble.

What if your boss said that you’ve got to go and kill some dragons.

But he was metaphorically referring to taking market share from your competition.

Only you thought he was being literal, and you showed up with your dragon killing tools.

You’d look pretty silly!

They say that before you become enlightened, you have to chop wood and carry water.

And after enlightenment, you still gotta chop wood and carry water.

So what’s the point?

Maybe the point is that chopping wood and carrying water AFTER being “enlightened” is a lot better.

That’s why any kind of system should be accessible from both perspectives.

Both your “enlightened self” and your “unenlightened self” is going to need an ax and bucket.

And any other tools you use to help you succeed should address both sides.

Luckily, the energy (just like the wood and the water) that makes up both sides is the same.

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Sex Transmutation

Play The Long Game

How To Play The Long Game

Imagine if it were only possible to imagine two days into the future.

No matter what else was going on, whenever somebody started referencing more than two days out, their voice would sound like garbled nonsense.

If you read anything that referred to anything more than two days out, it would shift into unintelligible scribbles.

If your boss told you to about a meeting next week, it would seem like he was speaking Martian.

On the other hand, if he told you about a meeting tomorrow morning, it would make perfect sense.

Actually, you wouldn’t go to work unless you got paid every other day.

If boss said anything like, “work here for a week or two and then we’ll pay you,” it would sound like, “work here for blah blah blah blah….” and you wouldn’t take the job.

Imagine if all the food you had went bad after two days.

It just disappeared or something.

Obviously, life would be horrible. You’d have to be committed to a nuthouse, since taking care of yourself under those conditions while living in a modern world would be impossible.

This goofy metaphor DOES, however, point out a very necessary ingredient in being able to live a successful life.

The more you can FEEL the results of your actions today FAR out into the future, the more likely you’ll succeed.

Imagine something as simple as weight loss.

If ALL you could tell was how the food tasted RIGHT NOW, it would be tough to eat healthy.

On the other hand, what if every bite of junk food you took came with a VERY REAL image of the results in two, three, five or even ten years.

For example, imagine each time you took a bite of a Big Mac you had a vision of having a heart attack, along with the actual chest pains.

And each time you took a bit of something healthy, you got a vision of yourself with a chiseled body in mirror, along with actually hearing the voice of sexy people whispering, “Nice body, baby!” in your ear.

You might even say that when it comes to building a successful life, the ability to weigh the impact of your actions you consider today ON your distant future is the most important.

They say that this was the shift that made ancient humans shift from hunting to gathering.

After all, hunting is very dangerous. Farming not so much.

But if you’re a hunter, you can kill and eat something TODAY.

If you’re a farmer, it takes a LONG TIME to get going.

Luckily, building in this skill, of developing a LONG VISION, to help you choose the best actions to take, is easy.

And like any other skill, the more you practice, the better you’ll get.

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Entrepreneurial Mind

Who Ordered The Brains?

The Structure Of Success

When I was a kid I love science.

Still do.

So when it came time to choose a major, I chose physics.

For a while, everything was pretty cool.

Until I hit those upper division classes.

With really difficult math.

At first I freaked.

I didn’t know if I could handle it.

I almost changed my major.

But I finally decided to stick with it.

And by going really slowly, and spending a lot of time studying, I finally managed to escape with a degree.

And once I figured out the “trick” to learning difficult math, it was easy.

Not easy, easy, but easier than I thought.

Before, I would listen to lectures, do the homework, and that was it.

And them cram for a couple hours before the exams.

But with those upper division classed, I had to change my strategy.

I found myself spending a few hours each weekend.

I needed to in order to keep up.

But once I got the “rhythm” it was normal again.

Meaning I didn’t worry, I just had to “re-calibrate” my studying frequency and duration.

And every other class after that was the same.

Since I’d learned the “study structure” of one class, I could apply it to all classes.

I’ve found the same thing is true in a lot of areas.

Once you step back and look at the “structure” you can apply the same “structure” to other things.

Kind of how you learn to ride one bike, you can pretty much ride all other bikes, so long as they have the same structure.

This is how our brains are wired. This is why we can live anywhere on Earth, even back before electricity and even agriculture.

Finding food, shelter, and staying away from dangerous animals has a similar structure.

Do it near the equator, you can do it at the north pole.

Sure, the content is different (predators, food, shelter) but the structure is the same.

Learning anything, skills, subjects, communication strategies, once you get the structure down, you can repeat it as often as you like.

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End Self Sabotage

Mountain Climbing Metaphor

Circles or Straight Lines?

They say you can’t step in the same river twice.

Meaning every second that passes by, the river is changing.

The fish, the rocks and sand on the bottom, the amount of water is always in flux.

So too are us humans.

Once in chemistry class, the professor told us to close our eyes and think of a deceased person we admire.

I thought of my grandfather.

Then he told us to take a slow breath, and then open our eyes.

He told us that we’d just inhaled at least one molecule, (the very same one) that the person we’d just thought of had inhaled in their lives.

Then he explained all about the volume of our atmosphere, how many breaths we take, etc, and why what he’d just told us was statistically likely.

Scientists tell us that every seven years or so, all the atoms and molecules in our body are replaced.

Kind of like on Star Trek, when they beam themselves around, only in slow motion.

All the thoughts in your mind that make up your personality are continuously being updated.

So even who you ARE (when you think of “I”) is always changing.

Life, and every part of it, is a never ending process.

Always changing.

If you could take all those endless changes, and line them up, what would you produce?

Something magnificent.

On the other hand, if you took all those changes, and arranged them in a circle, you might find yourselves in the same place a few years or even a decade from now.

Either way, it’s up to you.

But it takes courage, and dedication.

You have to take small actions on a daily basis that are just a hair outside of your comfort zone.

But if you take your time to plan those actions, you’ll be surprised how quickly things add up.

No matter where you are or who you are or what you have or haven’t accomplished, the best time to start is now.

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Stop Self Sabotage

Nothing Is Real Keep Going Forward

The Illusion of Perfection

They say that practice makes perfect.

And like most “truisms” that we all tend to agree are more or less correct, this one, while well intentioned, is not entirely accurate.

As a motivational statement, it does just fine.

In that regard, it IS true. Whatever you want to get better at, the more you practice, the better you’ll get.

And all else equal, practicing something MORE is better than practicing something LESS.

If they had a violin playing competition, for example, whoever practiced the MOST would end up winning.

You’ll find this is true in all people with world class skills.

They are the ones who have practiced the most.

They say you can “master” anything, and be “world class” with 10,000 hours of practice.

At an hour day, that is a little over 27 YEARS.

Which, in a world of instant gratification, seems like an eternity.

But it’s well within a normal life span.

Meaning if you start in your mid twenties, you’ll be WORLD CLASS in your chosen skill by the time you’re fifty or so.

Or, if you don’t want to wait that long, you can be world class in 14 years (two hours of practice a day) or seven years (four hours of practice a day) or three or four years (eight hours of practice a day).

Of course, you’ll NEVER get to a point where you say, “OK, I’m done, now I can rest!”

Because the idea of being “perfect” doesn’t really apply in many areas.

Sure, you can make a “perfect” circle, but how the heck are you supposed to bake a “perfect” cake? Or paint the “perfect” picture?

Paradoxically, “mastering” something is not synonymous with perfecting any skill.

No matter WHAT you are practicing, so long as you are drawing breath, you can get better.

Whether you are the world master, or you’re just starting out.

So, what would YOU like to get better at?

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End Self Sabotage

Look Into The Future

Discover Your Inner Vastness

In mathematics, there are two kinds of progressions.

Linear and geometric.

Linear (or arithmetic) progressions are series of numbers that increase in the same interval.

If you graphed them, they would go up in a straight line.

On the other hand, geometric progressions increase in the same proportion.

They go up a lot quicker.

The MORE they go up, the MORE they go up.

Your muscles can be thought of as arithmetically increasing in size and strength, up to a certain limit.

Meaning if you started doing pushups, the amount of pushups that you could do each day would go up in more or less a straight line.

Maybe you’d do ten, then twenty, then thirty, etc.

And once you got to an upper limit (maybe a couple hundred or even a thousand if you were a professional pushup athlete) the increases would level off.

Your brain, on the other hand, or rather the information IN your brain, can go up without any limits.

Sure, there ARE limits, but they are not based on the configuration of your brain.

You’ve only got so much time in the day, you need to do other things, (sleep, eat, take showers, etc), AND your life (at least this one) has a finite number of days.

But even if you were rich, you could afford a massive and continuously updating library of information (as well as professional tutors) your brain would NEVER get full.

This means no matter HOW MUCH you learn through the course of your life, you will always UNDER-UTILIZE your brain.

Most people don’t learn ANYTHING after school, except how to use the latest app, or the bare minimum to do at work and still get paid.

This is like having the world’s most powerful super computer ALL TO YOURSELF and using it to watch cat videos on YouTube.

Just like doing more pushups will help you do more pushups, learning will help you learn.

Especially when you step back and learn HOW to learn more effectively.

Even if you’re totally happy with your life, and see learning new things as a HOBBY, it will make life FEEL much more rewarding.

Because once you REALLY understand just how VAST your mind is, you will ALWAYS feel like you’re on the edge of a great discovery.

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Boom

Is Your Compass Broken?

When I was in Boy Scouts, we had to do a lot of merit badges.

One of the cool ones was compass reading.

Me and a buddy did it when we were camping in the desert.

For part of the exercise, we had to follow a long set of instructions, each of which involved going a certain distance in a certain direction.

It had been set up before, and if we followed the instructions correctly, we would get to the right point eventually.

After five or six turns, and walking carefully, we eventually found the “prize” and got our badge.

Many things that seem mysterious can be explained by science.

The disappearance of Amelia Earhart may be one of these.

A seasoned flier, (first woman to fly across the pacific) one day she just vanished.

One theory is that if her directional compass was only off by a small percent, that would mean missing a crucial refueling point.

Maybe believe she ran out of gas and crashed into the ocean.

An unfortunate example of what happens if you go off course just a little bit.

Most people, though, don’t really have a course.

Imagine if you got on a plane, and all the pilot did was look out the window and hope he recognized certain mountains to find his way.

This may work if you were flying small planes of familiar territory, but if you were flying across the ocean, it would be very foolish.

Sadly, most people live their lives like this.

Not only do they NOT have direction, but they don’t really have a system in place to measure their progress.

It would be like me and my buddy trying to get our merit badge by walking in random directions for random lengths and hoping we’d get something at the end.

Even during the gold rush, people knew they had to keep going west, toward the rising sun.

What about you?

Do you know which direction your life is going?

Do you have a feedback system in place, to measure your progress, and to tell if you are off course or on course?

Even if you don’t, all you’ve got to do is get started.

As you make forward progress, you’ll learn valuable information that will let you know.

And you’ll also learn what skills you might need to keep going forward a lot faster.

The more skills you pick up along the way, the more directions you’ll find that will help you become successful.

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Castles In Their Mind

Thought Extraction Technique

Once I was at a movie theater, I went there on the spur of the moment.

I had no idea what any of the movies were about, so I asked the guy selling tickets.

He gave me a quick rundown, and made a suggestion.

I took it and was satisfied.

Asked-for advice, when given genuinely, is usually very helpful.

On the other hand, few of us like unasked for advice.

The reason has to do with the presuppositions that go along with the advice.

The main presupposition is that the person giving the advice knows more about the situation than the person receiving the advice.

Imagine you were standing in front of a movie theater, trying to decide which movie to see.

Only you had plenty of information on all the different movies.

You were just debating which of them you wanted to see the most.

Then some voice comes out of nowhere and says, “Don’t see X, it sucks.”

Now, depending on WHO said that, and what they looked like, how the behaved, etc, you might take their advice, you might not.

But YOU would still want to choose whether to take their advice or not.

Which means now you’re choice is MORE complicated, especially if the person giving the advice is not your “type.”

Whenever two people talk, it’s like there’s a battle of ideas. A contest of thoughts.

The ideas in your head, and the ideas in their head.

Asking for their ideas and comparing them to your ideas is one thing.

But having them try and FORCE their ideas into your brain (which is essentially what we do when we give unasked for advice) is not so friendly.

Doing the opposite, however, is a LOT of fun.

Instead of putting YOUR ideas into their mind, take THEIR ideas and expand them.

Most people have vague desires, wants, wishes, etc.

But instead of trying to match your specific advice to their vague desires, do the opposite.

Take their vague desires, pull them out of their head, and make them bigger, brighter, more specific.

IF you use ONLY their words and ideas (to make their ideas bigger and more specific) it will have a pretty cool effect.

They’ll feel REALLY GOOD, and they’ll associate those really good feelings with you.

You can use this with pretty much ANYBODY.

Friends, bosses, children, clients. Even people you’ve just met.

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Be The Guy She Chases

Stand Out From Every Other Guy

Whenever we want something, but aren’t sure we can get it, we get mixed feelings.

What’s worse is when we KNOW we have to do something, but are pretty sure it’s going to suck.

Studying for a test, doing your taxes, cleaning out your garage.

Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between things we HAVE to do, and things we WANT to do.

Interacting with attractive ladies is like that for a lot of guys.

Obviously, having a decent relationship with a hottie feels pretty good.

But it can also feel like something you “should do.”

Society says so, your genes say so.

Compared to something like exercise, or getting ripped, which is much more of a personal choice.

If you were to announce to all your friends and family that you just decided to stop pursuing relationships with women, they would maybe think something was wrong with you.

Unless you have something MORE IMPORTANT that you are chasing.

If you say, “I don’t date because it’s too difficult,” it doesn’t sound so good.

But if you say, “I don’t have time to chase girls, I’m busy focusing on X,” (whatever X is) it sounds a LOT better. Admirable even.

And paradoxically, this will make you MUCH MORE attractive to most girls.

Why?

Because girls are used to guys chasing them. They are used to guys “cold approaching” them all day long.

But you?

You are chasing something MORE IMPORTANT than them.

When you choose what that is, and start chasing it, something pretty cool will happen.

Girls will start chasing you.

Well, they won’t literally be running after you down the street, but they will be looking at you much differently than every other drooling guy.

And you will have a feeling of choice that most guys don’t even know exist.

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