Tag Archives: skills

You Become What You Practice

Do You Practice Procrastinating?

They say that knowledge is power.

That’s sometimes true, but sometimes not.

A lot of knowledge is useless unless you know how to apply it.

Like if you watched some guy on YouTube doing a demo of how to play a certain song on the piano.

You might be able to watch enough to know the chords, keys, etc.

But you wouldn’t be able to play it to save your life.

That’s the difference between “knowledge” and “working knowledge.”

One sounds kind of cool at parties if you want to talk yourself up.

But the second is fantastic for actually creating things that you can enjoy.

Many people fall prey to the “shiny new object” disorder when it comes to self development.

They read book after book, and wonder why they are never spinning their wheels.

Imagine if you went to a friend’s house and they had tons of books on martial arts.

And you asked them how often they practiced.

And they said, “Practice? I only read about it…”

You’d think they were pretty silly.

Yet that’s how most people approach self development. They read all the books, but rarely do the exercises more than once or twice.

But just like anything else, the more you practice, they better you’ll get.

At anything.

If you want to practice procrastination, all you would have to do is do it at least once a day.

And pretty soon you’d be a world champ!

Once a patient came to Milton Erickson, and said she had a problem controlling her weight.

Dr. Erickson said he didn’t believe her. And to prove he was right, he wanted her to go out and gain ten pounds, which she did pretty easily.

This set the belief that she did indeed control her weight perfectly fine. Which made it easier for her to change her habits to move it in the direction she wanted.

Bottom line is you’ll get better at whatever you practice.

If you practice doing nothing then you’ll be a world champ.

If you practice communicating with elegance you’ll be a world champ.

If you practice sales, persuasion, seduction, whatever, you’ll be a world champ.

If you practice dealing with your inner demons, so you can express yourself openly, confidently and charismatically, wherever you are and whoever you’re talking, you’ll get pretty good at that.

This guide will show you how. It’s FILLED with exercises that will turn you into a persuasion ninja.

Get Started:

Interpersonal Resonance

How To Program Successful Habits

How To Program Successful Behaviors

They say that our lives are the sum total of our behaviors.

And our behaviors are the result of the thoughts we think, most of the time.

One of thing that you find when you study successful people is that often times it was not on purpose.

But an accident.

The book about how Facebook was “invented” and all the drama that went on behind the scenes is called “The Accidental Billionaires.”

I did some studying about the character in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Turns out this guy was a natural salesman, and he was in the right place at the right time.

When he was doing all his “cold calling,” he had a lot of help.

It was when the stock market was soaring, and every night there was something on the news about how well the stock market was doing.

So the people he was calling were ALREADY worried about “missing out” on one of the greatest bull runs in history.

In fact, the guy was so driven to make money, he enrolled in dental school. But on the first day, his professor said, “you’ll never get rich being a dentist.” So he quit.

The reason most people are successful is that they just do what’s natural. For them, that’s good.

They just show up, do what they are driven to do, and they’ll get rich.

Some are “luckier” than others. For example, Zuckerberg, the facebook guy, probably wouldn’t have made so much if he’d been born in the thirties.

On the other hand, take a guy like Bill Gates. I saw his mugshot on this website that had “celebrities that were arrested.”

Gates was REALLY young. He almost looked like a kid. But he didn’t look worried. Because WAY BACK THEN he’d already made millions.

In fact, he started hustling when he was still a teenager. Just like the Wolf of Wall street guy.

They already had the THINKING that led to the DAILY HABITS that would make them rich.

So no matter what the markets did, or the economy did, they still figured out a way to get paid.

The good news is that changing your habitual thinking patterns, that lead to your habitual behavioral patterns is EASY.

It takes time, sure. But you don’t have to discover the secrets of alchemy or nuclear fusion.

You just need to PRACTICE the right thinking patterns. Until they become AUTOMATIC.

And when they become AUTOMATIC, your behaviors will naturally change.

They’ll change into a lifetime of behaviors that add up to MASSIVE success.

All it takes is a few minutes a day, and you’re on your way.

Get Started:

Subliminal Programming

The Best Tools For The Job

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

Know Where To Tighten

What Life Are You Building?

You’ve heard the joke about the plumber, right?

Guy calls a plumber about a leaky pipe in the basement.

Plumber comes, wanders around in the basement for an hour.

Just looking. Then finally he pulls out a wrench, and tightens in one spot.

The leak stops.

The bill was $100. The homeowner was shocked.

Why so much?

All you did was looking around for an hour, and then spend one second tightening something.

The plumber responds, “Five bucks for looking around, ninety five bucks for knowing where to tighten.”

Maybe you’re familiar with the straw that broke the camel’s back?

Now, is it really that ONE straw?

Meaning if the camel was happily walking down the street, with NO straw on it’s back, and that one super magical piece of straw landed on him, would it STILL break his back?

Of course not.

Every piece of straw was JUST as important.

Of course, there’s going to be ONE that puts it over the edge.

Like ONE snowflake is all it takes to start an avalanche, right?

Not really. You also need a crapload of snow piled up in the right configuration.

This is one of the problems with having a conscious mind.

We tend to miss out A LOT of what’s going on.

We see some waitress or waiter get “discovered” and become a famous actor overnight.

What we DON’T see is that same person has been visualizing, dreaming, and actually PRACTICING their whole adult lives.

So when an opportunity comes, they pounce on it.

They are READY.

If you don’t get this, you risk not doing ANY preparation, so when “opportunity” comes you get passed by.

And you wonder why OTHER people are lucky!

Part of “getting lucky” is making yourself READY for opportunities.

Figuring out what you want, and practicing.

At the VERY LEAST you should have three or four LIFE GOALS that you think about once or twice every day.

Hopefully spend some time journaling on.

And if you’re REALLY serious about getting them, you actually DO THINGS on a daily basis that will keep getting you closer.

Life is, after all, a journey.

Not a destination.

Journey’s take time.

Sometimes you get lost.

Sometimes you have to backtrack.

Sometimes you find wonderful things, people and experiences you’ve never heard of before.

But so long as you keep moving forward, you’ll keep getting closer.

You certainly WON’T get closer if you’re waiting for somebody else to tell you what to do, or “discover” you, or “make it easy” for you.

What you DO on a daily basis will slowly ADD UP to your life.

What kind of life are you building?

Your brain is your most precious asset. No matter how smart, insightful, creative you are, you can ALWAYS get better.

Which means you’ll ALWAYS increase your ability to prepare, find and capitalize on opportunities.

Learn More:

Intelligence Accelerator

How To Jump Over A Tree

Jump Over A Tree

When I was a kid I was insanely curious.

As most kids are.

I broke a lot of stuff, just trying to figure out how it worked.

Being curious is a good trait to have.

But, you may say, “curiosity killed the cat!”

Sure, you can be TOO curious. Meaning you don’t know when to quit.

I ran into a morbid website the other day. Pictures of people just before they died.

How did they die?

By taking selfies.

In really messed up places.

It’s important to take risks. But if you take the WRONG risks, or too many risks, then you will end up dead sooner than you should be.

However, many people tend to take TOO FEW risks.

And that is the worst risk of all. Because if you are too risk averse, you’ll end up being USED by other people, or at least by circumstances.

Because if you NEVER take a risk, and ALWAYS play it safe, you’ll largely be dependent on others, or society, or the government, or the gods, or luck.

But the good news is that it’s pretty IMPOSSIBLE to take action, without a little bit of risk.

Nothing you do is certain. If anything WERE certain, that would mean you could predict the future.

And nobody can do that.

The trick (or skill if you prefer) is to always look for BALANCE.

The right amount of risk, balanced with the right amount of caution.

The right amount of curiosity, with the right amount of awareness.

It’s easy to get “stuck” in extreme view points.

But the magic is in the middle. Where the balance is.

Where you’re on the edge of your current level of skill. When you’re just straddling the outside edges of your comfort zone.

Not hiding in the middle, nor blasting away without a second thought. But slowly, carefully and courageously expanding it.

Once upon a time there was a kid, who wanted to become the best jumper in the world.

So he asked his local martial arts guru what to do. The guru planted a little sapling.

And said, “Every day, jump over this.” And left.

He came back ten years later, and that “kid” was now leaping over a huge oak tree.

All you’ve got to do is choose SOMETHING. Something small. Half risky, half safe. Half curiosity, half knowing.

And SLOWLY push out the limits of what you can do.

If you did that with your brain, imagine the life you could be building.

Instead of waiting around hoping for something to “happen,” like most people do.

Get Started:

Intelligence Accelerator

Can't Step In The Same River Twice

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

Trash Can Man In Your Brain

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

Mother Nature Always Wins - She Is Persistent

Become A Social Super Hero

I had this friend that was into making jewelry.

She would buy these rocks, and put them in this tumbler.

(not the blog, and actual tumbler).

And had a really rough surface on the inside. The rock would go in, tumble around for a couple days, and come out smooth.

Kind of like how ocean waves relentlessly pound rocks into sand, only a lot quicker.

It’s also why rocks at the bottom of streams are smooth, while rocks out in the wind are rough.

The thing about Nature is she is relentless. She never gives up. She always wins.

There’s an ancient Chinese Proverb that says, “If you wait by the river long enough, you can see the bodies of your enemies floating by.”

Which means patience, above all, will win. If you are rash, and take action, you may win, but you may end up biting off more than you can chew.

I know, we only have one life, right? We don’t have eons of time to slowly wear down our rough spots into smooth edges.

But think about this. What if you started FIVE YEARS ago, doing some kind of skill improvement, for ONLY ten minutes a day.

What kind of skills would you have now?

What if you start now, what will you be like a year from now?

One of the paradoxes of human life is we don’t want to do things unless we are GUARANTEED to see an IMMEDIATE result.

Nobody buys books on how to get rich slowly, or lose one pound a week for two years.

We keep trying these goofy plans time after time, and NEVER get anywhere.

Meanwhile, those slow and steady tortoises are kicking our ass!

Here’s one way you can DRAMATICALLY improve yourself over the next year.

There’s a whole section in the Covert Hypnosis book on practice drills.

Where you take each pattern, and write out a bunch of examples.

A fantastic way to do that, while boosting your own self confidence and social skills at the same time, is take those exercises and write to yourself.

Instead of some imaginary person sitting in front of you that you are selling to or trying to seduce, write the patterns to yourself.

And use the patterns to persuade yourself that you are ultra confident. Super intelligent. Powerfully attractive. Socially outgoing. Massive self esteem.

If you do that, not only will you become a ninja with the patterns, but you’ll also SLOWLY transform yourself into a social skills super hero.

Able to sell anything to anybody, and sweep anybody off their feet.

Get Started:

Covert Hypnosis

The Biggest Skill of All

Here’s a quick and easy exercise that will help you maintain a strong frame.

Holding a frame is a skill like any other skill.

However, the way people talk about it, it can sound like there some “technique,” like how do I make a cherry cheesecake.

Once you’ve got the recipe down for a cherry cheesecake, it’s pretty easy.

But something like holding a frame, a skill, takes a lot of practice.

Like hitting a curveball or being able to juggle.

These aren’t impossible things, but you wouldn’t be able to learn them by reading a “how to” guide.

So, how do you practice holding a frame?

Simple. Choose a frame, and hold it!

Just like juggling, or hitting a curveball, the more you do it, the easier it gets.

But unless you are VERY specific and consistent, your “frame” that you are “holding” will be all over the place, which means you won’t exactly be practicing “holding” a frame. You’ll be practicing watching your frame be yanked all over the place!

What is a frame? It’s the meaning of an interaction, or a situation.

So, you can practice by going through similar situations, and HOLDING the same intention.

Like every time you walk into a store, you can set the “meaning” of that situation as you buying what you want.

Sounds simple. Sounds obvious.

But if you’ve EVER walked into a store to buy something, and had your thoughts PULLED AWAY by something you DIDN’T plan, then you lost the frame.

Maybe you saw something you wanted instead.

Maybe you saw a cute guy or girl, and tried to think of something to say.

These are all EXAMPLES of the situation REFRAMING you.

So, how can you PRACTICE holding the frame?

Before you go into the store, choose what your intention is. Buying a sandwich. Buying a case of beer. Whatever.

When you are IN the store, for the entire time, DO NOT THINK OF ANYTHING ELSE.

Do not look at other stuff. Do not wander around. Do not smile at cute girls.

ONLY keep your mind focused on what you are there for. Get in, buy the thing, and get out.

Let NO OTHER THOUGHTS come into your mind.

This may seem simple. This may seem goofy. This may seem like something that you “already know.”

But when you can hold ANY FRAME YOU CHOOSE, regardless of what other people say or do, or whatever “happens,” you will be able to rule the world.

Who rules the world?

The dude with the strongest frame. Not the smartest guy. Not the richest guy. The guy who can HOLD HIS INTENTION regardless of what happens.

OK, maybe you don’t want to rule the world.

Maybe you just want to make a ton of cash, and build some AWESOME relationships.

The stronger your ability to SET and HOLD any frame, the easier that will be.

Get Started:
Frame Control