Tag Archives: learning

Are You Waiting For One Weird Trick?

I used to know this kid in Junior High School. His dream was to become a professional dancer.

He spent a lot of his time working on his moves. Later he invited me to one of his shows. He was in a dance troupe, and they were pretty impressive.

This wasn’t a normal kid. Most JHS kids don’t know what they want.

Not only did this guy have a clear idea, but he spent a lot of time practicing.

If you saw some guy walking down the street with massive arms, what would you think?

He’s got some kind of lucky genetics, and he was born with huge arms?

How about seeing some guy at a party, who can juggle sixteen things at once?

Would you assume that he’s some kind of latent gift that the rest of us don’t?

Probably not.

You’d probably assume, at least on some level, that he’s spent a lot of time practicing.

And most of the time we see somebody with a finely honed set of skills, we just assume they had a lot of practice.

But some of the most important skills, we don’t see them as practice.

We, for some reason, see them as things some people can do, while others can’t.

Like talking to strangers with confidence, or being able to give a persuasive speech.

In reality, anything that somebody else can do, you can do.

Sure, some things are easier for some people, but so what?

Yes, some people are “lucky” in that the things they are naturally good at can make them a lot of money.

You can still do the same things they can, it just will take some practice.

Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.

Ideally, you’d find something you enjoy doing, so you’ll enjoy learning it. That way you won’t mind practicing for a few years before you get good enough to make a lot of money doing it.

But most people don’t like to hear this.

They’d rather take a magic pill or learn some ancient secret discovered in a cave in the Himalayas.

But consider this.

According to the laws of economics, something is worth a lot of money precisely BECAUSE so few people can do it.

Which means if you’re waiting for “one weird trick” to make it easy, it’s going to be the same “one weird trick” that everybody else knows.

And if everybody else can do it, it’s not going to be worth much, or be unique in any way.

The good news is that because most people are too lazy to learn, all you’ve got to do is spend some time learning.

So long as you are committed, you’ll get there.

And when you do, you’ll have a set of skills few people know about, let alone know how to practice.

Get Started:

Mind Persuasion Ebooks

Model The Millionaire Mind

I love the book “Freakonomics.”

I always like different ways of looking at things.

One very flexible mindset to have is “models of the world.”

Too often we get caught up in our own way of thinking, which is necessarily limited.

We all have unique experiences, beliefs, biases, etc.

One way to “think outside the box” either for fun, or to shake things loose in your life is to try on different “models of the world.”

If you’re a fan of the old TV show, “The X-Files,” they did this all the time.

Two FBI agents investigating paranormal stuff. One guy believed in aliens, the other believed science always had an explanation.

One of the reasons the show was so successful, and developed a HUGE cult following, was that BOTH angles (science and paranormal) were plausible. Either could be used to describe what had happened in that particular episode.

One of the presuppositions of NLP is that “all else equal, the person with the most flexibility will prevail.”

Meaning if you are looking at a problem, and you only have ONE way to solve it, once you get stuck, you’re done.

But if you can switch out different “models of the world” until you find a solution, even if it isn’t one that fits your favorite “model,” you’ll generally do better than the one-model-wonders of the world.

As I’m sure you know, life is nothing but problems to be solved along the way to your goals that will be achieved.

The more successfully you can overcome those INEVITABLE obstacles, the easier of a time you’ll have.

One of the things they looked at in “Freakonomics” was that people that made a lot of money tended to have a lot of books.

Even in the book, “The Millionaire Next Door,” one of the things that found out about your average run of the mill millionaire is that they got their money very SLOWLY.

Not by mumbling some magic words from the Law of Attraction. By getting into the world, every day, and getting it done.

And their preferred form of entertainment as not TV or movies, but books. And not just fiction, but non-fiction.

You can learn a lot of “models of the world” by reading Biographies of famous people. Or classic stories from literature.

People from different times, different political and economic systems, different religions and different ethnicity’s.

The more you learn how OTHER PEOPLE throughout time have successfully solved their problems, the more flexible you’ll be when you come up upon your own.

You can even be like Napoleon Hill, who created an IMAGINARY GROUP of people from history that he talked to on a regular basis.

Whatever works!

They say you should spend ten percent of your income, and ten percent of your time, on self-improvement.

Learning skills. Improving skills.

After all, this strategy made a lot of people a lot of money.

Why not you?

Get Started:

Mind Persuasion Ebooks

Get Them Thinking How You Want

Wayne Gretsky, the hockey player, famously said, “You’ll miss all the shots you don’t take.”

Meaning if you have an opportunity to take a shot, and you take it, you might score.

Or you might miss.

But if you don’t take the shot, you won’t score. Ever.

This is often used when motivating sales people and those who wish to collect phone numbers.

If you don’t ask, you’ll never get.

So you may as well ask, right?

Most people realize a shift in thinking when they understand that many endeavors can be seen as a “numbers game.”

This is certainly a helpful model.

After all, if you figured out after some experimentation that every seventeen phone calls you made, you would make a sale worth $50, then you’d simply see the total number of calls as worth about three bucks each. So long as you were consistent with your pitch, the more calls you made, the more money you’d make.

This goes with sending our resumes, grant proposals, business startups, even stocks you buy. If you follow the SAME strategy, and figure out what the “numbers” are, you’ll be in good shape.

However, we humans are good at something besides sorting through numbers.

And that is learning through experience.

Take some guy who’s talking to ladies hoping to get phone numbers. Sure, if he repeats the same robotic pick up line, he’ll get one number out of seventeen (or whatever).

But suppose he takes the time to LEARN from every encounter?

What if he not only IMPROVES his “routine” each time, but learns how to adjust it to whomever he’s talking to?

Think he’ll do MUCH BETTER than some goof who repeats the same lines over and over?

Of course he will!

The same goes for sales, job interviews, even talking to the SAME PERSON (like your kids, your spouse, your boss, that cute girl at Starbucks, etc.)

Dale Carnegie taught YEARS AGO that the best way to get somebody to do something is to get them to WANT to do it for THEIR OWN reasons.

What if there were a simple way to get other people, ANYBODY, to do things YOU want them to do but, for THEIR OWN reasons? Even agreeing that doing it (whatever it is) was a GREAT IDEA?

Think interacting with people would be easier? More enjoyable? More fun? More rewarding?

Of course it would!

Just remember the last time YOU did something for YOUR OWN REASONS that happened to be what somebody else wanted as well?

Like seeing the SAME MOVIE your friend wanted to see, or eating at the same restaurant.

That, “hey that’s a great idea, I was just thinking the same thing” type of feeling.

That is pretty easy to create in others.

All you’ve got to do is ask the right questions.

Easy to learn, easy to do.

Get Started:

Interpersonal Resonance

The Best Tools For Life

I’m a big fan of Clint Eastwood.

He’s made a lot of good movies, both as an actor and a director.

A fairly recent one was when he played some old guy that worked on cars.

And he developed a relationship with his neighbor, who he helped to become a “man.”

In one scene, the kid was looking in Clint’s garage.

And was AMAZED at the amount of tools he had.

One of the “becoming a man” things the “kid” had to do was to get his own tools.

The underlying theme was that “boys borrow tools, while men own tools.”

Of course, if you just go down to Home Depot and buy a bunch of tools so you can look cool, you’re missing the point.

The idea is not only owning tools, but tools that you use.

Use to build things.

Or fix things.

Movies, books and stories are great ways to convey eternal truths of the human condition.

I used to know this guy that worked in a machine shop.

This guy had an AWESOME set of tools. In this HUGE tool case. Bigger than most dressers.

He’d take his tools with him wherever he worked.

It was understood that if you had a machine shop, and you were hiring a well-trained machinist, he’d bring his own set of tools.

Same goes with skills.

When hiring managers want qualified people, they’d like the people to have a certain set of skills.

Rightly or wrongly, they don’t want spend lots of time and money training somebody, only to have them quiet a couple years later.

The bottom line is that the more responsibility you take acquiring whatever tools and skills you need, the better off you’ll be.

Most people don’t like to hear this.

They’d rather be told what to do. Trained how to do it. Be paid while it happens.

Those that are self-starters, that take at least SOME initiative, are generally going to do better.

Rightly or wrongly, that’s how it is.

Think about it from a hiring managers point of view. Who would you rather hire? Somebody that wants six months of on the job training, or somebody who’s ready to go, right then and there? Or somebody who will at least take an ACTIVE PART in the learning process?

The truth is that your life belongs to you. It’s your job to build it up, as much as you can, using whatever you can.

Nobody is going to do it for you.

Because everybody else is foremost worried about THEIR lives, not yours.

Luckily, there are plenty of tools that can help.

You can find them right here:

Subliminal Programming

The Danger Of Safety

When I was a kid one of my favorite commercials was for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

If you’ve never eaten them, it’s chocolate with peanut butter inside.

The commercial has two people, a guy and a girl, walking down two sidewalks.

The girl is eating chocolate as she walks.

The guy is eating peanut butter. From the jar. As he’s walking down the street.

Seriously.

Then they both come around the corner, and crash into each other.

You got chocolate in my peanut butter!

You got peanut butter in my chocolate!

BOOM! A new candy was discovered.

Funny commercial, but many inventions and discoveries are created this way.

You’re trying something, you make a mistake, but then you learn something new that you NEVER would have thought of before.

Maybe you make a wrong turn, go into a strange neighborhood, go into a 7-11 to get a slurpee, and meet your dream lover.

All kinds of inventions, simple ones, that we take for granted, were invented by accident.

During the space race to the moon, all kinds of things were invented, because there was a NEED that wasn’t there before.

One of the drawbacks of having a conscious mind is that we think we need to plan and predict everything.

If we don’t know all the steps, we’re afraid to move forward.

Sure, it’s good to look before you leap, but you’ve still got to leap!

The saying isn’t “look before you take safe baby steps!”

Your brain is an incredible tool. Once you’re moving forward, UNSURE of what’s going on, that’s when your brain starts humming.

Like a chainsaw running at HIGH RPMs. That’s when your most efficient.

Not when you’re carefully moving forward and making ultra sure that everything works out according to plan.

Think of all the people that moved from the East Coast to the West Coast during the California gold rush.

Think they would have made the trip if they KNEW exactly what was going to happen?

The entire planet was populated by people who just kept moving forward, UNSURE of what they were going to find over the next hill.

Only that they’d figure it out when they got there.

Imagine if humans NEVER developed that ability!

We’d still be chasing after zebras for dinner!

Luckily, your brain is ALREADY pre-wired for you to be an explorer. An adventurer. A discoverer of new ideas and inventions.

Fire up your most valuable asset, and get out there!

Learn More:

Intelligence Accelerator

Accept Cluelessness

One movie I particularly like is, “Shooter,” with Mark Walhberg.

It is about an ex-sniper who is hired to reverse engineer what they say is an attempt on the president.

But it turns out to be some big conspiracy, with all kinds of cool plot twists.

There’s one scene that’s one my movie favorites.

The main character and his sidekick go and visit this old guy. He’s the archetype of the old wise character who’s been around, knows all about everybody’s dirty laundry, etc.

One line he says has ALWAYS stuck with me, after he goes on and on about how deep government conspiracies run.

“Just when you think you know, you’re wrong!”

Meaning we humans are good at convincing ourselves we know things. When we are really pretty clueless.

If you want to do an experiment, ask a bunch of people a difficult questions. One that HAS an answer, but one that most people don’t really know.

You’ll find that most people will have a hard time looking you dead in the eye and saying, “I really don’t know.”

What many people do is try to come up with an answer that “sounds” good. So we look like we know what we’re talking about.

But the secret is accepting that you DON’T know, or you COULD be wrong is the best thing ever.

Because it will OPEN your mind to NEW ideas, thoughts, models of the world, ways of looking at things.

One of the maxims from NLP is that whoever is most flexible will prevail.

If you have a flexible mindset, and can look at things in many different ways, you’ll generally be much more resourceful than people who need to be “right” all the time.

The natural way of learning (not sitting in school) is frustration, then curiosity, then exploration, then testing, then knowledge.

You are frustrated because you want something or you can’t do something. This leads to becoming curious about how you can get it. Then you start to take action, trying different things. Then you get feedback, and pretty soon you can get what you want.

Until this process starts all over again. The more you go through this, the more you’ll learn. The more you’ll learn, the more you’ll be able to get.

If you need to KNOW the TRUTH all the time, you’re stuck. Since you KNOW, there’s no reason to EXPLORE. To find out. To grow. To improve.

Knowledge in and of itself can be pretty boring.

Continuously searching for NEW knowledge is what life is all about.

Get Started:

Intelligence Accelerator

How Long Do These Take To Learn?

When you were a little kid, learning was easy.

Since it happened automatically, you didn’t have to think about it.

You just kept trying to do something until you could do it.

This is how all humans learned, until very recently.

When we try this as adults, it’s called “modeling.”

Meaning we see somebody doing something we’d like to do, and then try and copy them.

Unfortunately, it’s not always so easy.

Because not only do you have to DO what they do, you also have to NOT DO what they DON’T do.

This is the missing ingredient if you’ve been trying to “learn” from gurus who promise to “show you step by step to get what I’ve done.”

Now sometimes, this is easy. If you’re copying somebody’s cake-baking technique, for example.

Because when YOU operate on the ingredients, they will respond the same way they do when THEY operate on the ingredients.

It doesn’t matter WHO puts the batter in the oven. So long a the batter is prepared the same way, and the oven is the right temperature, you’ll get the same cake.

But often times we’re copying people who have been INTERACTING with a certain environment. And unless YOU are interacting in the same environment in the same way, you’ll get a different result.

Let’s say you wanted to study acting. And you copied the precise movements speech patterns of the most famous stage actors around.

So much so you were EXACTLY the same.

But unless you could reproduce the same audience, with the same expectations, you’ll get a different result.

It’s sort like that old saying, “You can’t step in the same river twice.”

Only it’s WAY more complicated. No matter how much you model somebody, you’ll ALWAYS be operating within a slightly different environment.

Does this mean modeling is useless? Not at all.

It just means that you need to model a meta-skill, rather than surface skill.

What does this mean?

Let’s say you memorized a boxing match from Mike Tyson. You copied his EXACT punches, at the EXACT time.

Obviously, this would NEVER work. Because all the punches and blocks would be based SOLELY on what the other guy was doing.

Paying attention to feedback is the missing ingredient.

No matter HOW WELL you copy some “step by step” procedure, if you don’t pay attention to feedback, AND adjust accordingly, you’re doomed.

But paying attention to feedback is easy. It’s natural. It’s how you learned to walk. If you leaned forward too much, you’d fall on your face. And your inherent feedback-response mechanism told you to not lean forward so much next time.

So long as you are ALWAYS open to feedback, and you are willing to adjust, you’ll always get better.

And then you’ll learn the secret about things like learning Covert Hypnosis.

You’ll NEVER FINISH learning. Because you can always get better based on the feedback you get.

Compared to others, who sit in a seminar and listen, or read a book and think they are DONE.

YOU will always be improving, learning and getting better.

Get Started:

Covert Hypnosis

The Uber Skill

I’ve done a lot of moving in my life.

Various places in college, various jobs, cities, countries, etc.

And there’s always one question that needs to be addressed every single time I move.

What to keep, and what to throw out.

Now, some moves are close enough so I just hire a couple guys to come by in a truck.

They take everything out of the old place, throw it in the back of the truck, and then unload it in the new place.

Not a lot of thinking required.

Other times, when I’ve got to do the moving myself, I have to think long and hard about some of my stuff.

Do I really need it, or is it junk?

One time I found myself living in an apartment that didn’t have a big dumpster outside.

So I had to carry my junk at night, down the street, and pitch it in the dumpster behind the supermarket.

If you do this enough, you find that you can really streamline your life.

There’re even experts that will help you do this, even if you’re not moving.

Ideas in your head can act the same way.

Some of it’s junk, and some of it’s gold.

Of course, you can’t tell if you don’t take a good look. Which most people are afraid to do.

Skills, however are always pure gold.

Sure, you may waste TIME learning a skill, but once you’ve got the skill, you never know when it will come in handy.

There’s a theory that since all of us are tied into to the super-conscious, (via the subconscious) no matter WHAT skill we are learning, there’s always a reason.

You might not understand why now, but in five years, you’ll be in a situation and you’ll suddenly remember you’ve got THAT skill (that you didn’t really know WHY you learned in the first place) and you’ll be golden.

So there’s really never a good argument to NOT learn new skills. Sure, some particular skills like juggling chainsaws might not be a good idea.

But other skills will DEFINITELY help you.

One of these is how well you communicate. Your ability to not only get those ideas out of your head clearly and succinctly, but to persuade others of their value, is absolutely crucial.

Well, not really CRUCIAL. But without them you’ll always be dependent on others.

But when you take the time to develop communication skills, you will have a lot more options, a lot more resources, and will be much less likely to ever get “stuck.”

Most people spend their time wondering “if.” Or they spend their time “hoping.”

I hope she likes me. I hope they hire me. I hope I don’t get fired.

But when you learn POWERFUL communication skills, you will not need to rely on OTHERS.

Instead of “hoping” for situations to go your way, you can carefully ENGINEER them to go your way.

How?

Here’s How:

Covert Hypnosis

The Recipe For Success

If you wanted to make a cake, you’d need certain ingredients.

Sure, it depends on the cake.

Once I made a chocolate cheesecake. Pretty simple. Cream cheese, sugar, and some chocolate sauce. Mix it up and Bob’s your Uncle.

Other cakes require a lot of preparation, and often times a lot of practice. Since there aren’t that many steps in making a chocolate cheesecake, and the steps are so simple even a goof like me can do it, you don’t need to practice.

Just read the recipe, and you’re good.

But if you were going to make some super complicated upside down strawberry souffle (whatever THAT is, lol) you’d need a LOT of skills.

Basically the more variables are involved, the more skills you need, and the more practice you need.

Think about something as simple as balancing a plate or spinning a basketball on your finger.

Not a lot of variables, so you could learn how in a few minutes.

Now think of something much more complicated like juggling chainsaws.

MANY variables, so you’d need a LOT more practice.

And not just practice doing the WHOLE thing, (juggling the chainsaws) but every individual component would need work.

Juggling itself. Handling a chainsaw. Spinning ONE chainsaw around, etc.

Life is THE MOST complicated thing you’ll ever do.

Sure, you can sit around and hope for good things to happen.

Many people do that. And many people don’t get much.

Or you can TAKE CONTROL of your own life. Decide what you want, and make THAT your life’s purpose.

Naturally, you’ll need a lot of skills.

You will NEVER get to the point where you have ENOUGH skills.

You will ALWAYS need to keep learning.

Most people don’t like hearing this. They’d rather be TOLD what to do, only have to do it ONCE, and then somehow sit back while the money keeps rolling in.

People that continue to create greatness know that’s just a fairy tale.

What skills do you need?

One is being able to bounce back from setbacks.

Because they will ALWAYS happen. If you aren’t getting setbacks, you are doing something wrong.

Because embedded in EVERY SINGLE SETBACK is a valuable lesson.

What lesson?

That’s up for you to decide, based on where you’re going, and based on what the setback is.

NOBODY is going to tell you.

Again, most people don’t hearing this.

They want to be led by the hand to riches, prosperity, six pack abs, and great sex with beautiful people.

One thing that will make bouncing back from setbacks MUCH easier is how you DEFINE them.

If each setback “means” that you suck, it will be hard to keep going.

But if you REFRAME setbacks to mean “I just learned something valuable,” then you’ll keep charging ahead.

Whether the setbacks come conversationally, or in complicated life situations.

The setbacks don’t control you, you control the setbacks.

To learn how, check this out:

Frame Control

Are You Copying The Right Things?

Little kids are cute. Very cute.

Especially when they copy adults. Now, a lot of us grownups think we’re all that.

And when we see a little kid copying, we imagine all kinds of wonderful things about ourselves.

Like that little kid is somehow seeing us for our “real self” or they have some kind of “special” connection to us.

Unfortunately, biology tells us something different. Little kids of all animals (humans, birds, etc) learn by modeling.

They are hard wired to copy those around them. Especially if the person that they are copying from is confident and enjoying themselves.

If you’ve ever wondered why it was hard to get your kids to eat that gross baby food while you were eating a burrito, now you know.

They CANNOT turn off their “copy mode,” it’s always on.

Which is why parents know they need to be very careful how they behave around their kids.

But for some reason, when we grow up, we seem to forget our natural learning mode.

Simply watching somebody doing what we want, and then copying them.

Of course, the more complicated the “thing” is, the harder it is to “copy.” Like if you wanted to copy a concert pianist, it would be hard if all you did was dress in a tuxedo and bang around on the keys.

You would have to copy how they read music. You would have to effectively copy how they reference their own memories of learning.

No matter WHAT you are learning, part of it should be imagining yourself performing it as if you were an expert.

To give your subconscious some kind of direction when you ARE doing the necessary boring stuff. Like playing the scales, or learning the more simple songs. Or building in the lighting quick response from seeing a note written on a page, and making that same sound come out of the piano.

No matter WHAT skill you are learning, there is one META-SKILL that will always be required:

A belief that it is possible.

Even if you practiced piano for three hours a day for the next ten years, if you BELIEVED that you’d always suck at the piano, you would always suck.

But if you BELIEVED you were destined for greatness, you’d get there a lot quicker.

Sure, you’d still have to do the work to get there, but the path would be a lot smoother, and a lot more enjoyable.

One of the biggest elements of a negative believe is fear. If you are afraid of success or failure, that will manifest as a belief that you CANNOT do what you want to do.

Which means if you get rid of that fear, you’ll also get rid of your negative beliefs.

Get Started:

Fearless