Tag Archives: Trial and Error

Can You Set and Forget Your Life?

A little of something is good, but a lot can be disastrous.

Once when I was a kid I’d make cinnamon toast. Butter, sugar, cinnamon, and put it in a toaster over.

Only I thought I’d try and experiment, and put TONS of cinnamon.

I figured a little was good, a lot would be better, right?

Nope.

Past a certain threshold (in this case the cinnamon to sugar ratio) you go from sweet with a hint of flavor to a bunch of gross buttery goo.

Salt on popcorn, crushed red peppers on pizza, vermouth in a martini, all are similar.

You want JUST the right amount. Not enough or too much. Neither work.

AND everybody has their own unique “levels” they like.

If you made your friends eat pizza with YOUR amount of crushed red peppers, for example, they may never want to eat pizza with you again!

With food, this is pretty easy. Try some, taste it, and you only need a couple tries to dial in your own perfect levels.

But some things are a LOT more complicated.

Take obstacles, for example. If you try something, and have ZERO resistance, it’s a good feeling, but it can also be pretty boring.

If you had a sales job, for example, and EVERYBODY bought from you, it would be great at first. But pretty soon it would be pretty boring. Like sitting at a counter and waiting for people to give you their order, like at a fast food place.

But if you have TOO MUCH resistance, you’ll give up. Not many salespeople will last long if they ALWAYS get rejected, and NEVER get a sale.

You want a balance, enough resistance to keep you own your toes, and paying enough attention to keep improving. But not so much you don’t get a good result every so often.

And like Tabasco sauce on pizza, everybody’s got their own “level.”

But here’s the thing. Unlike hot sauce on pizza, where your “ratios” will be pretty consistent, in life issues, they will always be changing.

Take a beginning sales person. When they start out, they’ll have little confidence. In order to keep going, they need a LOT of positive feedback. But the more experience they get, the more confident they’ll feel, they’ll be able to withstand MORE rejection over time.

Which of course, will push them to INCREASE their skills, thereby LOWERING their rejection.

Not only is those “levels” always changing, but they are always in flux.

If you can embrace this concept, and realize you’ll ALWAYS be fine-tuning your own unique “levels” you can look forward to a life that is CONSISTENTLY getting better.

This isn’t easy, as it’s not “set and forget.”

But it WILL make life much more REWARDING.

Get Started:

Mind Persuasion Ebooks

Are You Trapped By Social Pressure?

When I was in Junior High School I played a lot of golf.

No, I wasn’t rich, but next to my school was a public course, and it only cost $5 to play nine holes.

I had a set of hand-me-down clubs, as did many of my friends.

One thing I always did was slice. That’s when the ball starts to fade to the right after you hit it.

For a while, I tried to correct my changing my grip.

Because it caused more problems, and I wasn’t patient being a JHS goof, I just compensated.

Meaning I would just aim left. My friends thought I was nuts, until they saw how consistent my error was.

I suppose that if I’d taken the time to build in the muscle memory of the new grip, I wouldn’t have fixed it.

But since I was never really concerned with my score, only that had I had fun, it didn’t seem to be worth it.

They say that learning from your mistakes is one of the most important skills you can have.

Sure, we all do it naturally when we’re really young. Things like walking and eating and riding a bicycle.

It’s kind of hard to just “compensate.” If you just decided to wear a lot of padding instead of trying to ride a bike without falling over, that would be pretty silly.

But a lot of us do that without really knowing.

We try something once, we can’t do it, or we do it with difficulty and frustration, and just decide that “I guess I can’t do that.”

Instead of just getting and trying again, and again and again until we get it right.

This is easy when everybody around us is walking or riding bikes or playing catch. We feel left out if we don’t suck it up and learn how.

But other things, where most people suck, it’s EASY to try ONCE and give up.

Public speaking, starting a business, walking up and talking to attractive strangers.

But the SAME strategy works. Try, fail, try again, fail, keep trying, WIN!

It’s the learning strategy that is built in your brain.

Only sometimes we’re “forced” by social pressure to keep trying (we want to walk since everybody else is walking).

But other times we’re “forced” by social pressure to try ONCE and give up.

But you don’t HAVE to ALWAYS obey social pressure.

You can actually CHOOSE to ignore it.

Sure, it’s not easy. It takes consistent mental effort.

You may say this is one of the META SKILLS that support a lot of other skills.

Like learning how to talk to strangers, learn to be covertly persuasive, get rid of emotional issues, etc.

The good news is there are a lot mental exercises that make it easy.

So you can pretty much learn to learn anything.

Learn How:

Mind Persuasion Ebooks

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

The Positive Feedback Life Loop

When I was a kid I loved science.

I even had a subscription to Science Digest when I was in junior high school.

I read all kinds of books on Quantum Physics.

Of course, they had all the math stripped out, and only had the easy to understand concepts.

When I got to college, and had to start studying REAL science, it was pretty difficult.

Once you put the math in, it gets less “entertaining” and more work.

But without the “work” it really IS only entertainment.

But once you “do” the “work,” and you start to understand how things REALLY work, then you can USE science, rather than merely appreciate it.

If nobody ever took the time, the MASSIVE amount of trial and error that goes into scientific research and discovery, we wouldn’t have much stuff. No medicine, worldwide instant communication, air travel, microwaveable cheeseburgers.

This happens on a global scale, and this happens on a personal scale.

The more you understand, the easier it is to interact with the world and get what you want.

Most people are too scared, too worried, and want to be told what to do.

Since there are a LOT of people waiting around to be told what to do, and few people who not only KNOW what to do, and are willing to tell others, most people end up not getting much.

However, the good news is that it’s really easy to get out there and start figuring it out.

In fact, built into your brain is a super learner. Now, most people misunderstand this to be a “super undertander. Meaning if you say the magic words or listen to the right mix of sounds you’ll suddenly be blessed with universal understanding.

Doesn’t really work that way.

If it did, we really wouldn’t need our bodies. We’d just be this big brained creatures that sit around all day and understand stuff.

Because you have BOTH a brain AND a body, you need to use them both.

Use your body to get out and interact with others. Enjoy the world through your senses.

Use your brain to keep getting better each and every time.

That’s what learning is. Action, review, understanding, more action.

But if you don’t take action, and you aren’t OPEN to the feedback, you won’t learn.

Once you kick off this feedback loop, and see how easy it is to get better and better, you’ll wonder why you didn’t get started much earlier.

If you want to learn TONS of easy exercises to accelerate the process, check this out:

Intelligence Accelerator