Tag Archives: learning

Secret Ninja Skills

How To Radiate Black Belt Linguistic Energy

Most people hit the snooze button at least once.

Sometimes a few times.

If you absolutely NEED to get out of bed at seven, for example, most people would set their alarms at six thirty.

It’s not a very pleasant thing to pop right awake and have to jump right out of bed.

Sleeping is nice. Dreaming is nice. Your bed is a safe place to be.

Getting and up and walking to the shower while imagining dealing with all the goofs at work, on the other hand, generally sucks.

So we like to ease into it.

Looking at the clock and seeing we’ve got twenty minutes before we need to get out of bed is a good feeling.

We love that extra feeling of “time insulation.”

We tend to do that whenever possible.

We like to have a few extra dollars saved in a secret stash.

We tell the boss we’ll have the report done by Friday, when we could probably finish by Thursday.

It doesn’t feel good to go down to the wire, and have NOTHING left.

Even on Star Trek, Scotty frequently said that it’s never a good idea to tell the Captain how fast the ship can REALLY go.

Building up a set of “defensive linguistic tools” can be thought of as the same way.

That extra bit of secret power.

Even if you never really need them, knowing they are there will make you feel much more confident.

If somebody says something hurtful to you, out of the blue, it can really sting.

Especially if they are somebody close.

But if you’ve got a secret stash of linguistic weapons, you can look at them and just IMAGINE saying them.

Just knowing you have them will take away that sting.

And paradoxically, just knowing you have them will keep those insults from ever happening in the first place.

It’s like you’re radiating a different kind of energy.

Kind of like a quiet guy with a black belt in martial arts.

Nobody knows exactly why, but they suspect it would be a very BAD idea to mess with him.

Luckily, learning these linguistic skills isn’t nearly as difficult as getting a black belt.

All you need is a few minutes a day, and before you know it, your energy will shift.

Get Started:

Stop Manipulation

Bam! Pow!

Ninja Language Patterns

We humans use a lot of vagueness.

Both in our thinking, and our language.

We have to.

There is just TOO much stuff going on inside and outside to communicate otherwise.

There’s a movie called “The Usual Suspects.”

It’s considered a classic, or even a cult favorite.

But the MEANING of the movie is VERY vague.

So much so that when the writer and the director finished making the movie, and were ready to go on the press tour, they had a HUGE fight.

One guy had the impression that most of the movie was TRUE, (meaning the events in the movie actually happened) and only a little bit was imaginary.

On the other hand, the other guy thought most of the movie was a HALLUCINATION of one of the characters, and very little was actually true.

If you’ve seen the movie, you can get this.

You can see BOTH interpretations when you see it.

Either mostly real, or mostly a hallucination.

This is one of the problems with vague language and vague thinking.

It’s also one of our BIGGEST weak points.

Because when something is wrong, we tend to IMAGINE the worst.

That’s how we managed to survive in our very ancient and very harsh environment.

If our ancestors had always assumed the BEST, we would have died out a long time ago.

So we’re kind of stuck with that “imagine the worst” response to vague and unknown things.

Which can make us vulnerable, if somebody KNOWS how to push our buttons.

All they have to do is LOOK at us funny, and we’ll imagine all kinds of horrible things.

Even worse if they say something that’s even a little mean, but still kind of vague.

They might let out a sigh, roll their eyes and say, “I KNEW you were doing to do that.”

Even if we’ve done NOTHING, that simple and VERY VAGUE statement can make us feel horrible.

Luckily, there is a VERY POWERFUL way to defend against any kind of VAGUE statement.

So simple it will make people that toss insults quake in their boots.

It’s easy to learn, and simple to use.

And once you TEACH the world HOW to respond to you, they will

Learn How:

Stop Manipulation

Defend Your Boundaries

How To Really Really Like Yourself

Energy is a strange concept.

Even when talking about energy from a pure physics standpoint, it’s hard to wrap our minds around.

We can’t really EVER experience PURE energy.

Even though energy and matter are the same.

That’s what Einstein’s famous equation (E=mc^2) says.

Energy EQUALS Matter (times a pure number, the speed of light squared).

But every single experience we have of “energy” is really “energy” AND matter.

Even electricity is the movement of electrons, which are particles.

And those particles have mass.

But when talking about us humans, with respect to energy, what do we really mean?

If you say somebody has “positive energy” what does that mean?

It generally means the sum total of all their subconscious body language movements.

How they walk, how they talk, the tone of their voice. How slowly or quickly they speak, etc.

You could also say the same about somebody who has “negative” energy.

Maybe they are angry, frustrated, fists clenched, teeth gritted, looking around for a fight.

Sociologists who study criminals tell us that when criminals are out looking for victims, they look for people who radiate “victim energy.”

People that look down when they walk, have their shoulders slumped over, rarely make eye contact with anybody.

They KNOW that if they rob these “victim energy” people, they will get away pretty easily.

Unfortunately, a LOT of people operate this way.

Not just pick-pockets and purse snatchers.

It’s believed that one out of every twenty five people is a clinical SOCIOPATH.

And these people have a sixth sense for those of us who are EASY to take advantage off.

It gets worse.

Even people that wouldn’t be considered sociopaths tend to know WHEN they can take advantage of others.

Even those close to us.

They get to know our buttons, and they learn how to push them.

It makes us emotionally weak, and allows them to get what THEY want a lot easier.

Even if you weren’t being taken advantage of, radiating this kind of energy (the easy to be manipulated kind) is NOT attractive in the least.

What IS the most attractive kind of “energy?”

Comfortable in your own skin.

Somebody that ENJOYS who they are.

If YOU like YOU the world will too.

But if you DON’T like YOU, the world can be a dangerous place.

Luckily it’s MUCH EASIER than most people realize to switch into the “I like me” energy, which radiates confidence and attractiveness.

Learn How:

Stop Manipulation

Hot Buttered Popcorn

Hot Buttered Popcorn!

The first job I had selling anything was in elementary school.

Me and my buddy volunteered to sell popsicles at lunch.

It was a lot easier than I’d expected.

Selling stuff people want to buy is pretty fun.

Everybody’s generally in a good mood.

When I was in HS I worked at a movie theater.

That was also fun.

Especially when they tried and “experimental” sales method.

I was eager to try it out.

Instead of sitting there passively behind the snack counter waiting for customers, they wanted me to load up a cart of stuff and walk into the theaters.

The girl doing it hated it.

Nobody would buy anything.

But she was just standing there, waiting for people to come up.

I tried a different method.

I would push the cart up and down the aisles, yelling out whatever goofy sales pitches I could think of.

At first it was pretty embarrassing.

But pretty soon people started buying stuff.

Soon, I was sold out.

It happened over and over.

Even the people that didn’t buy stuff were entertained. Some high school kid making up lame sales pitches, yelling them out as he walked up and down the aisles.

Of course, there are many ways to sell things.

And few things are as enjoyable to purchase as popcorn on movie night.

At least, that’s now how they seem at first.

Some things we buy because we have to.

But even those purchases can be turned into something exciting.

How?

All sales (and all decisions for that matter) happen when we WANT to do something more than we WANT to NOT do something.

It’s really a matter of “either-or” at the end.

But the cool thing is there are many ways to attach things they are already excited about to whatever you want them to do.

Buy something, or give you their phone number or go somewhere with you.

All you need to do is build their general desire, and then attach that general desire to whatever you’re suggesting.

A few simple language patterns, and some spatial anchoring, you can connect any feeling to any decision.

Not only will they love doing what you suggest, but it will be a lot of fun.

Learn How:

Hypnotic Sales

Brains Brains Brains

Hallucinating Holes In Boxes

There’s a cool hallucination in physics.

It’s used in both solid state physics and quantum physics.

It’s a purposely created hallucination because it makes the math a lot easier.

For example, when studying solid state physics, they need to understand a crap ton of particles in a very small space.

But since each particle has a few variables (mass, spin, charge, etc.) the math is way too complicated.

One guy came up with the idea of instead of thinking of a box of particles (which there are a lot) to think of a box of holes.

There’s a lot fewer holes. And the holes each have zero everything (mass, spin, charge).

Turns out that describing a box filled with a few holes is a lot easier than describing a box filled with a lot more actual particles.

It works because they all know it’s a hallucination.

A purposely created hallucination just to understand the math easier.

Trouble comes when we come up with metaphors to describe underlying complex phenomenon, but we forget about it.

And we start to treat the metaphors as actual descriptions of reality.

For example, a common metaphor is “The Road is Better Than The Inn.”

But you don’t have to be on an actual road going to an actual inn to understand it to mean the process of getting somewhere (even if that somewhere is at a certain skill level) is often times better than the destination.

Sometimes we do the opposite.

Instead of coming up with metaphors to describe something, we ignore that something altogether.

We’re terrified of finding out what it REALLY is.

Kind of like when you get your bank statement in the mail.

So we ignore it.

Most of us hope that so long as nothing “bad” happens, then ignoring it is a good strategy.

It seems to be working.

But what if that which we ignore is our source of our greatest power?

Power can certainly be intimidating.

There are lot of metaphorical stories about us dumb humans biting off more than we can chew.

But what if those stories themselves are really tricks?

To KEEP us from looking?

After all, if YOU discovered your greatest power, would you tell everybody, or keep it secret?

Find Out:

Sex Transmutation

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.

Get Started:

Sex Transmutation

Jam Your Brain

Are You Close To A Breakthrough?

Some skills are highly specialized.

Others are very general.

Since our mind-body systems have to follow the laws of economics, we have to maximize our efficiency.

The most “expensive” part of our body is our brain.

By weight, it burns more calories than every other part.

So there a lot of “efficiencies” built in.

Thinking patterns that save on energy.

Sometimes these help, sometimes they don’t.

They help when we learn something enough so that we can do it without thinking.

Unconscious competence.

Other things, like leftover instincts, can get in the way.

Irrational fears, memories that don’t help is any more.

Just like on your computer, it can help to periodically go in and clean up the junk cluttering up your “hard drive.”

One of the weird things about human creativity is that things seem super easy in retrospect, but looking forward they can seem impossible.

Inventions, for example, seem totally blatant AFTER they are invented.

But for some reason, it took a LONG TIME for people to invent them.

For example, something like a stirrup seems totally obvious.

Little straps attached to the saddle of a horse, so you could keep your balance.

But people fought on horseback for over a thousand years before somebody thought to invent the stirrup.

But once they did, it changed everything.

Plenty of inventions are like that.

Dead simple, yet out of reach at the same time.

Those who “stumble” across these inventions can sometimes make billions.

But even if you don’t want to be an inventor, or even a business person, being able to train your brain to see things others can’t will be very helpful.

It can also make your life a lot easier.

There may be HUGE opportunities right in front of your nose that you can’t see.

Find Them:

Entrepreneurial Mind

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.

Get Started:

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.

Learn How:

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.

Learn How:

Stop Self Sabotage