Tag Archives: instincts

Are You Eating Social Sugar?

Imagine if you were in Mother Nature’s shoes way back when She made us.

Since we were going to be the “smartest” of the primates, She had to think long and hard.

She probably contemplated giving us TOTAL free will, and giving a list of “best practices.”

When she finished laughing, she decided it might be better to give us a combination of free will and these internal programs that would FORCE us to do the things we needed to survive.

Things that we would do without needing to think.

Like run away from tigers, eat stuff when we were hungry, and sleep when we were tired.

We’ve all had to battle these instincts.

Many of us are afraid of things we wish we weren’t afraid of.

Many of us eat things we wish we didn’t want to.

But consider how it would be otherwise.

How difficult it would be if we had to remember to be scared, or remember to eat, or drink, or sleep.

Just without getting tired, many of us would NEVER sleep.

But then we’d be dead in a few days or weeks.

Luckily, we DO have all of these instincts that keep us alive and safe and within our strict range of operating conditions.

However, many of these instincts aren’t working so well.

At least not as well as they used to.

Imagine if you could re-calibrate your hunger.

So carrots, broccoli and boiled chicken breasts tasted absolutely delicious.

And junk food or anything with sugar tasted like crap.

Losing weight would be easy.

Unfortunately, that’s not possible.

What IS possible is to recalibrate our social instincts.

Because what FEELS GOOD to our social instincts is actually WAY healthier than the social “signals” we seek today.

Most of these are very fake, and very shallow.

Kind of like sugar.

Feels good for a little bit, but then you feel like crap later on.

When you feed your social instincts HEALTHY food, it will feel much better.

So much it will naturally shun all that fake shallow stuff that runs people’s lives.

In that regard, it’s much EASIER to re-calibrate than hunger.

Once you do, you’ll notice a HUGE difference.

Learn More:

Ego Taming

What Business Are You In?

One of the biggest ideas in self development is the idea of a “secret.”

The concept that if we learn “one weird trick” we’ll be able to finally realize our dreams.

Guys that want to do better with girls want to know the one “secret pattern.”

People that want to lose weight want to learn the “one strange diet trick.”

One common story is what happens to lottery winners after they strike it rich.

Especially if they are the blue collar, paycheck-to-paycheck type.

Humans NEED to be motivated by two things.

Moving away from pain, and moving toward pleasure.

Everybody’s got their own unique mix, but without BOTH of these, it’s hard to feel “on purpose.”

And when lottery winners have all of their financial PAIN taken away, it feels great.

At first.

But once that new level of “happiness” feels “normal” they start to get into trouble.

A person without any real motivation AND a lot of money is a BAD combination.

This is why invariably, people who suddenly get a lot of money are almost always ruined.

Humans need incentives, both inside and outside.

Most people that get up at the crack of dawn don’t do so because they like it.

They do so because they feel they MUST.

Either because they’ve conditioned themselves that way, or they have an EXTERNAL set of incentives.

Their job or family requirements demand it, for example.

Most people that made their fortune didn’t have their sights set on money.

Or even the “thing” they were building.

They liked the deeper process.

Of being driven.

To get more, do more, be more, create more, build more.

Walter White, the fictional meth cook, famously said he wasn’t in the meth business, he was in the EMPIRE business.

A sudden bucket of money will DESTROY your drive to build your own empire.

How do you write a classic novel?

So far, nobody knows.

The process seems to be wait a hundred years, and see what books are still being read and enjoyed by various generations.

Consider the “secret” to your life the same.

You won’t really know until you’ve built it.

Then you can look back over your long and successful life and think:

“Oh yeah, now I get it…”

Life, empires, fortunes are not secrets to be “discovered” or “taught” or “revealed” on a mountain top.

They are the sum total of your thoughts, actions, and behaviors.

Once you’re on the right path, you’ll know.

You’ll feel driven, you’ll feel the need to keep moving forward no matter what.

And money will be a useful byproduct.

Learn More:

Wealth Tuning

Are You A One-Banana Monkey?

One thing we humans are good at is efficiency.

We do it naturally without thinking.

We have to.

We need to put in effort to get calories (energy).

Meaning we need to spend energy to get energy.

Long long ago, way before we were humans, those inefficient animals were slowly weeded out of the gene pool.

Imagine, for example, there existed a species of monkeys that liked climbing trees.

And let’s say each time they climbed a tree it cost them 500 calories of energy.

At the top of these trees were a bunch of bananas.

Each banana gave them 300 calories.

Since these monkeys LOVED climbing trees, they only grabbed one banana each time.

So each trip they LOST 200 calories.

They SPENT 500 calories climbing the tree, but they RECEIVED only 300 calories.

That had a negative monkey ROI (return on investment).

These monkeys, needless to say, wouldn’t last very long.

On the other hand, monkeys with a built in efficiency instinct did.

They would spend the same 500 calories to climb the tree, but they would grab as many bananas as they could.

This is the same instinct that we use when clearing the table after dinner.

We don’t even think about it.

We just stack up as many dishes as we can, so we don’t have to make a hundred trips from the dining room to the kitchen.

(If you want to have some fun, have a dinner party and then clear the table by taking only ONE item to the kitchen on each trip. People will think you’re crazy!)

Many, many of our human functions are based on efficiency.

Especially our thinking patterns.

Our big brains take a TON of energy.

So anywhere we can find shortcuts, we’ll take them.

Sometimes, though, this works against us.

And it does in VERY insidious ways.

We humans think a bit differently about spending energy and getting energy.

We think in terms of money.

The money we make, and the money we spend.

And unfortunately, our thoughts on money are about as helpful as those goofy “one-banana” monkeys.

Why?

Because our money beliefs kill two birds with one stone.

Our leaders (political, religious, etc.) tell us money is “bad.”

But they don’t really believe it, since they have tons of money.

It’s just a clever idea so they can STAY “elite.”

Those that don’t have money tell us it’s “bad” as well.

Because if WE get money, and they don’t, they’ll feel bad.

WE believe money is “bad” because we don’t like thinking about.

So we’ve got TONS of people (including us) that think money is “bad.”

But before we humans invented money, life sucked.

No doctors, no air conditioning, no air travel, and no “anything else.”

But AFTER money was invented, BOOM!

All the cool stuff came.

And it’s still coming.

Money isn’t bad, money is FANTASTIC.

Get Some:

Wealth Tuning

Eliminate Mind Mismatches

The other night I watched that Facebook movie on Netflix.

They had those guys that were on the rowing teams.

Most sports are a combination of skills, strengths, endurance, strategy and teamwork.

But in that kind of competition, teamwork can make or break you.

You can be weaker physically, but if you are “in sync” much more than everybody else, you’ll win.

When I was in high school I had this girlfriend. After the initial excitement wore off, our dates were pretty similar.

“Where do you want to go?”

“I dunno, where do you want to go?”

And we’d end up driving around in circles. Not really circles, but we wouldn’t ever do anything interesting, since we never had much of a plan.

One of the secrets of a good relationship is compatibility. Sure, there’s got to be physical and emotional attraction, but if you aren’t mostly compatible, it’s not going to work.

One thing that can mess up us humans is the idea of a “mismatch.”

We can be mismatched in our jobs, wrong skills at the wrong company. In a relationship. In a major in college. Even choosing a movie to watch. You get about ten minutes in and think, “Hmm. This isn’t for me.”

One of the most common mismatches is our instincts.

They were designed to help us during hunter gatherer times, but they mess us up now.

Like eating.

Back then, it made sense to eat everything in sight whenever you could.

Not so much now.

Back then, everybody was egalitarian. Meaning they all shared the wealth, which in those days was food.

But now, you see some ultra rich person in front of you at the supermarket, on some level it FEELS like they’re “cheating” because they are not sharing with you.

But unless you know HOW they got all their money, you can’t really judge them.

Assuming “cause-effect” relationships were none exist is also a holdover.

Back then, even if you were wrong nine times out of ten, but that one time out of ten kept you alive, assuming cause effect relationships where none existed (loud noises equals danger, for example) kept you alive.

The ancient dudes who wanted to investigate everything in meticulous detail eventually got eaten.

However, there are WAY more variables today than back then.

Not only that, but it’s WAY less dangerous.

So those “cause-effect” relationships we assume are true are FALSE probably 99.99% of the time.

And when they ARE true, we wont’ die. Not even close. Maybe feel some social discomfort.

But our ancient brains haven’t been updated.

Or at least not very much.

The good news is with some consistent and creative imagination, journaling, and VERY SMALL risks on a daily basis, you can retrain your brain to see the world much more accurately, and much more in your favor.

So taking those actions to get you what you want (money, companionship, sex, fame, social status, income, wealth, whatever) will be natural and easy.

Learn How:

Fearless

Satisfy Your Inner Caveman

I saw this weird competition once on TV.

A group of high school kids, about fifty of them, side by side, with their legs tied together.

So wherever you were in the line, your legs were tied to the guys on either side of you.

They were all on one side of a big field.

And they had a run a 100 yards.

Each school had a team, and they saw how fast it was.

Clearly, these kids practiced, because they were VERY tight.

If you’ve ever been in a “three legged race” where there’s only TWO people like this, it’s pretty tough.

Especially if you haven’t practiced.

Whenever you have two opposing forces, you can create A LOT if they are in sync, but you can be held back just as much if they are going in different directions.

Humans are goal seeking machines.

We can’t exist for more than a couple seconds without acting. Just shifting in your seat is an example.

And all action is for a purpose. None of it is random. It may not seem that way, but consider what happens when you shift in your seat.

Certain muscles get tired, and they need a rest. Muscles that are more rested decide to take on more weight, and take off weight of the muscles (or muscle angles). The shift has a PURPOSE of increasing comfort, and decreasing discomfort.

Every single goal you have, whether conscious or unconscious has this INTENTION.

Sure, if you completely misunderstand the situation, you may do something that makes everything worse.

But this INTENTION (increase comfort and decrease discomfort) is always there.

Now sometimes we realize that to increase comfort in the LONG TERM, we have to experience intermediate periods of DISCOMFORT.

Like when a caveman sees a tiger. Running away screaming with huge amounts of fear is not exactly more comfortable than just standing there.

But your brain is also MASSIVELY quick. So it CALCULATES all the possible outcomes in the near and medium term future.

In microseconds.

It chooses what will give you the BEST possible outcome given all your options.

Humans have a lot of PRE-PROGRAMMED desires.

Food, companionship, safety, sex, esteem, social status, recognition and validation.

If you try and ignore these, meaning if you try and OVERRULE your caveman instincts with your conscious mind, you won’t usually get very far.

That’s precisely why willpower based diets NEVER work very long.

But when you carefully CHOOSE YOUR GOALS that are congruent with your caveman goals, or at the very least, figure out a way to take your CHOSEN GOALS and put them in the context so your CAVEMAN will ALSO be happy, you’ll have a much better chance.

You can learn and do anything you want, so long the skills you are building are CONGRUENT with your deepest instincts.

Get Started:
Mind Persuasion Ebooks

Stop Getting Sucker Punched

One of the biggest causes of human suffering is an instinct mismatch.

Take hunger for example.

In a hunter-gatherer environment, if you didn’t the tendency to eat as much as you could whenever there was food, you didn’t have much of a chance of surviving.

Since food was limited. When you had some, you had to get as many calories in you (and ON YOU in terms of energy storage) as possible.

But nowadays, that’s a very dangerous strategy. For obvious reasons.

A lot of our instincts were GREAT for primitive times, not so much today.

A couple of these are authority and social proof.

Countless nations have gone nuts because they had a crazy leader (authority) that everybody rallied behind (social proof).

Even today, it’s VERY HARD to admit that we ourselves are influenced by these.

We LIKE to think we are rational, consciously driven, awake, etc.

But next time you’re considering doing something, ask yourself these questions:

Would you still do it if NOBODY else was doing it?

Would you still do it if there were ZERO authority figures behind it?

This is hard. Most of us don’t like to think of ourselves as pack animals.

But as I’m sure you know, many of the greatest inventors, scientists, researchers and explorers of all time didn’t wait around for social or authority approval.

Often times they did so despite not having ANY of that.

Another thing that can in the way of living a fulfilled life is emotional blind spots.

Things that suddenly pop up out of nowhere, and feel like a sucker punch.

Consciously, you have no idea why these things bother you.

They SUBCONSCIOUSLY remind you of some pretty scary things that happened as a kid.

When you were young, inexperienced, and were TOTALLY DEPENDENT on those around you.

The only problem is your lightning fast brain makes such fast associations, that something that is even SIMILAR today to something that happened long ago is going to FEEL just as scary.

Often times without having a rational explanation why.

Kind of like when you KNOW you just ate an hour ago, but you can’t help opening another box of cookies.

The way to “handle” your instincts is to manage them.

The way to “handle” those emotional blind spots is to RE-PROGRAM them.

This is much, much easier. You won’t have to manage them, since they’ll disappear.

Not like your HUNGER will ALWAYS be there.

Those emotional blind spots can be ERASED.

For Good.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

How To Program Your Subconscious

I saw this pretty lame movie the other night.

About this soccer team that crash landed on an island.

And then descended into “Lord of the Flies” style anarchy.

It was rated less than 5 out of 10.

But it started out with the coach giving the team a warm up pep talk.

It was supposed to be a “foreshadowing” event.

He was saying that humans were designed to be hunters and killers.

That is our true nature.

Of course, he was trying to get them fired up to play their soccer game, not go crazy when they crash landed on the island.

But there IS that dichotomy.

We are at odds with our primal instincts quite a lot.

We eat more than we should. We are afraid of things we shouldn’t be. Many people are unfaithful in their relationships.

We have these super egos that are easy to wound.

All because of our instincts.

You might say that the measure of how “Human” you are, or how “enlightened” you are is how well you not ignore your instincts (since that’s pretty impossible) but how you MANAGE them.

No matter what you do, you’re going to get hungry if you stop eating.

How you manage that hunger will be the difference between a six pack or a spare tire.

You can CHOOSE to eat something healthy, that will satisfy that primitive craving, or you can CHOOSE to eat a couple bags of potato chips.

Naturally, some people are in situations where it’s easier to choose “enlightened” choices.

That won’t change. It’s always been that way. It will always BE that way.

Your job, as a human intending to achieve actualization, is to be able to let your conscious mind work more harmoniously with your unconscious.

Because if your conscious mind is trying to do something, but your unconscious is trying to do something else, guess who’s going to win?

The idea is to MANAGE your subconscious. Be FRIENDS with it. Don’t get angry when your conscious mind is frustrated.

Think of your unconscious as a VERY POWERFUL friend.

If you try to keep them on a leash, THEY will be the ones leading you around.

But when you take the time to TALK TO THEM, in a language they understand, THEY will pull you to where YOU want to go, rather than your inner caveman.

What language do they understand?

Pictures. Images. Feelings.

Create a vivid picture of what you want. Focus on it with intensity and strong emotional power.

Think of that process as programming your ship’s computer with the coordinates to your next destination.

Once you’ve got them programmed it, you just need to put it on auto pilot.

However, many people make the mistake that programming your subconscious happens quickly. Like it’s some kind of Alladin’s Lamp, and all you need to do is mumble a few wishes, and you’re good.

It takes time. It takes dedication. It takes effort. Mental effort.

But it is well worth it.

These will help:

Subliminal Programming

Going Swimming With Snakes?

Imagine going on a diet.

You read a couple of books and came up with a plan.

You went shopping and carefully bought the right foods.

So you knew that when you ate the right things, in the right amounts, it would be physically impossible to not lose weight.

Only when you ate your food, you didn’t do it at home.

You ate it at the food court in the mall. Or at your favorite restaurant.

Surrounded by friends who were chowing down like no tomorrow.

Could you do it?

I know I couldn’t!

This is the problem with a lot of our instincts. When they are fired up, it’s pretty impossible to ignore them.

That’s why humans have survived all these years.

If our instincts were super easy to ignore (meaning that losing weight was super easy and didn’t require a lot of willpower) then we would have died out a long time ago.

There’s even a few disease that somehow “turn off” the eating instinct.

They don’t feel compelled to eat, so they don’t. And they starve to death. Or they would without medical intervention.

Quickly pulling back from pain is another instinct. Yet there are a few unlucky people who don’t feel pain. Which means they can get an infection, and die before they know something’s wrong.

One of the drawbacks to our instincts is that societies evolve MUCH FASTER than our instincts do.

It’s like we’ve got this caveman brain that still thinks we need to chase after food, and eat as much as we can whenever we see some.

This is one of the primary causes of “self sabotage,” the mis-match between our conscious desires, chosen by living rationally in a modern society, and our primitive instincts.

Social fear is a prime example of this.

You want to walk over there and start a conversation, but your caveman brain thinks you’re about to go wrestle a dinosaur or something.

You’d like to give a speech, but you feel like you’re about to jump into a pit of piranhas.

You want to pitch an idea to your boss, one you’re sure will make you a lot of money, but you feel like you’re sticking your head in a tiger’s mouth.

Now, some say you should “feel the fear and do it anyway.”

Some say the only way is to FORCE yourself through those situations.

Sure, that will work. But it takes a LOT of willpower, and some very uncomfortable feelings.

Or you could use some mental techniques.

Practice doing it while FORCING your brain to think good thoughts.

Re-Training that ancient part of you that thinks there’s danger behind every shadow.

When you do that, you’ll notice how much easier life becomes.

Get Started:

Fearless