Once there were these two guys that were on this bicycle trip. They didn’t really cycle all that much, but they’d seen a documentary on TV about this particular scenic route through the country where they lived. It was an area that they were both familiar with, as they’d driven through there numerous times. But as I’m sure you know, driving through a place, especially when your mind is on your destination, and you ears are filled with music from your CD player, it can be difficult to really appreciate the scenery as you are traveling through.

I suppose that could be said for any area through which you pass on the way to someplace else. You never know what’s around unless you have a reason to take your eyes of the distant future, and pay attention to what is around at any particular instant.

Once I had a friend who was driving an old VW bus on the way through a particularly large city. He lived in the suburbs, and this particular route took him through some areas that he would never go to. But one day, his VW suddenly started having problems. He just barely pulled off the freeway, when he saw this old VW shop. Luckily, the guy had extended hours, and was able to help him.

This guy had been in business for several years, and was an expert on all things VW. My friend, not being the most astute mechanic, learned quite a bit from this guy, and returned to his shop several times in the future for repairs and fine tuning of his classic van. Had it not been for the engine trouble he had on that day, he likely would never have found that guys shop, and wouldn’t’ still be driving his VW bus to this day. That shop seemed to awaken an interest in engine mechanics in him, and he has been tinkering ever since.

So it was with our two characters of this story. Neither one of them had ever though much about the rolling countryside through which they drove on a regular basis, until they both coincidently saw the same documentary regarding the various farming and mining industries that had been developed over the past several hundred years in this area. The next time they met, they decided to go on a cycling tour through the area. They had discussed the best way to visit, and despite neither of them being avid cyclists, they figured that would be the way to go.

This took quite a bit of planning, as they reckoned it would take about a week to wind their way through all the back roads off the main highway on their bicycles. Since they both had full time jobs that only came with the minimum amount of vacation time, it took a few months to coordinate. But they finally did, and that’s how they came to discover what you’re about to find out.

The area was presently used as various orchard farms, and a couple vineyards. Nothing world famous, but enough for the local farmers to make a decent living. They did produce a really good merlot from time to time. Before being a vineyard, the area was a copper mine for a time. A developer from back east came in and decided to mine for copper, as copper back in those days was worth quite a bit, and technology at the time was heavily dependent on copper. So the developer figured that if he got lucky, and tapped into a large source of copper, then he might become a big player in the realm of precious metals. Who knows, he may even discover oil.

It’s not widely known that most of the early oil tycoons of previous years started out as miners. Gold, silver, copper, these were all extremely profitable metals back in those days. But with the advent of the railroad, and later the gasoline powered automobile, crude oil became huge. And still is, obviously.

However, this particular entrepreneur never quite made enough to break even. For a while, he was mining enough copper to make a tidy profit, and pay all the workers, and keep his family fed, but most of the time it was a struggle. So after a few years, he finally gave up, which left several untended mines in the area.

Later, of course, farmers moved in and found the soil particularly useful for growing citrus and grapes, as they do to this day.

So on their third day out, camping in some places and staying at cozy bed and breakfasts on other days, our two friends were cycling along, when they came across an abandoned copper mine. Naturally, being on vacation, they decided to take a look.

It was a relatively large opening, and easy enough to walk down into. They had a couple flashlights, as their guidebooks suggested for this very occasion. They had walked about a half a kilometer down into the mine when the earthquake hit.

At first they were terrified. Then the shaking stop, and the dust settled, they realize they were still safe. But they noticed a crack in the small excavated room they were standing in. It was a crack that seemed to open up to another natural pocket in the earth. One of them wriggled his head and his arm in, and shone the light around.

Despite the darkness, his friend could read the astonishment on his face.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Take a look.” He looked. What he saw made him gasp audibly. For inside the recently opened natural space deep under the earth, were mounds and mounds of raw gold.

“Yea, but, this isn’t ours, is it?” He asked. Unsure of the property laws and who owned what and whose farm they might be on.
“Check the guide book.” He checked. They were astonished that the copper mines, which had fallen into disrepair, had been passed from owner to owner, and since fifty years had passed since anyone had supported the property with any maintenance (which is required for mines due to some insurance law of antiquity) they had fallen into the public domain.

“So, we can keep all this?” he asked, incredulous.
“I guess so.” They looked at each other, and looked around for left over mining equipment, and got to work.

(advertisement)

To find and unleash hidden treasures that you may not be aware of, click on the link below:

Success with NLP

Share this:

If you are ever in situation where you feel out of control or at a loss on how respond to any particular situation, here’s a quick mental exercise that can give you a boost. When done in isolation, it can give you some perspective, and briefly shake off any anxiety caused by external situations. When done as habitually several times a day (don’t worry, it’s quick, easy and nobody will know that you are doing it) it can slowly give you incredible power, self-confidence, and charisma.

It’s called the “Feeling Exercise,” and was described by Arnold Patent in his book “You Can Have It All.” I hesitated to buy the book at first because it sounded like another of the seemingly millions of new agey, law of attraction type books that have a bunch of vague ideas that don’t really offer any specific advice. But this book, while it is based on some pretty “out there” metaphysical ideas, is worth it just for this one exercise.

It may be a bit difficult to really feel the power of this at first, so I recommend practicing it often. Once you get that “aha” feeling, you’ll never want to be without it. It will give you a great feeling of power and ownership over your feelings and emotions; despite whatever situation you happen to be in. Experts agree that the largest cause of stress is that feeling you are in some crappy situation that you can’t do much about. This will change all that.

The first step is to simply feel your feelings. Start with whatever physical sensations you are feeling. A need to go to the bathroom, or a soreness in your left food, or a weird tingling on your scalp, anything is fine. Just pick one to work with.

The next step is to feel the feeling without any judgments or labels, or desire for it to go away. To make it easy, use as a neutral feeling as you can. Try not to attempt this while having an orgasm or experiencing a compound fracture. Those might be a bit distracting until you master this. So pick something like a vague grumbling in your stomach, or a feeling of warmth on your leg or something.

So feel the feeling without labels, or judgments (good or bad) or any desire for the feeling to go away. Feel the feeling exactly as it is. To help you do this, try and describe the feeling itself, without labels. What color is it? What is the texture? What is the physical size of it? What are the edges, the outside areas of the feeling like? Do they end abruptly, or slowly transition into something else?

Next is to feel the energy and the power in the feeling. Feel this as the power of life, the power and energy that existed before there was any matter ever created in the universe. Pure, untapped power. Feel this energy and power as YOUR energy and power. Nobody else. Your energy. Your power.

Next, feel appreciation for your energy and your power. Feel gratitude for it.

After that, feel appreciation for yourself, feeling the feeling, and feeling the power and energy in the feeling, and feeling appreciation for the power and the energy of the feeling. Feel as much appreciation for yourself as you possibly can, feeling the feeling.

That’s it. This may seem strange at first, but pretty soon, you’ll be able to do this within a few seconds. And you’ll also be able to do this when you have those “bad” feelings that most people want to get rid of.

You’ll soon discover that the power and energy is the same in all your feelings. And when you start to learn to feel appreciation for the power in all your feelings, that powerlessness you used to feel in certain uncomfortable situations will be a thing of the past. Because no matter what your mind/body system’s automatic response is, you’ll be able to dig underneath it to find the gold that is always inside you waiting to be discovered.

So here’s a recap:

Feel the feeling.
Feel the feeling free from judgments or labels.
Feel the energy of the feeling.
Feel appreciation for the energy of the feeling.
Feel appreciation for yourself, feeling the power and energy of the feeling.

One final note, when feeling appreciation you may need to consciously choose to feel appreciation. It may not come naturally, so you may have to really work at it. But just like any other thing you practice, it will get easier and easier to the point that it’s automatic.

Have fun with this.

Share this:

I had this pretty cool revelation, or idea, this morning while I was out walking that I’d like to share with you. It’s one of those ideas that make perfect sense until you try to explain it to somebody else, and then it sounds like utter nonsense. Hopefully this won’t happen here.

It’s based on some basic ideas from biology as well as some concepts from metaphysics. It is also based on the underlying assumption that all of the interactions between matter and energy in the universe obey specific laws all of the time. There is zero room for randomness. Of course, often times we humans with our limited range of perceptual abilities and logical reasoning are ill equipped to deal with most of these laws, so many times they can appear like some kind of voodoo black magic or white magic or law of attraction or however you like to describe your favorite metaphysical laws.

It’s also based on the idea that smaller systems, which follow certain rules can collectively make up larger systems which may or may not appear to follow the same rules. For example, the laws of Newtonian physics are vastly different than Quantum physics. Of course, they are different sets of systems on two totally different scales. So the laws are the same, they are just scale dependent. Like a speed limit in a small town is vastly different than on the interstate, they are still laws enforced by the same entity.

Ok, where was I. Oh yea.

DNA. This is the building block of all life. The core of life on earth. Billions of years ago, there was no life on earth, and then something happened. Either by an intervention by a deity, or aliens, or a random strike of lightening, DNA was created. And it started to reproduce. Again and again. Every strand of DNA that exists today, in every living entity, is a combination of strands that came before it. Humans get half from mom, and half from dad. Some other organisms, like some simple plants reproduce themselves exactly. Nevertheless, all DNA is copied and pasted from one or more of its predecessors. All the way back to the original one.

How exactly does DNA work? It is this long strand of chemical, shaped like a twisted ladder. They call it a double helix. Then somehow, it untwists, so it looks like a normal ladder. The rungs of the ladder separate, and expose their raw ends to the inside of the cell soup. And within that cell soup are certain amino acids that come up and link together with the raw ends of the ladder. The amino acids link individually to the raw ends of the ladder, and then join to each other. Then they collectively uncouple or detach from the ladder. The ladder then re attaches to itself, and coils back up. The new protein, formed from the single amino acids that came down and joined together is now floating off to do whatever job it was made to do. DNA is incredibly long, and it has four different types of “rungs.” So whatever small stretch of the DNA decides to uncoil, will make a different protein. DNA is like blueprint for your body. Your brain.

DNA uncoils, and exposes its raw “blueprint” for the protein to be made. Then the protein is filled in by whatever is available in the surround cell fluid, or soup, or whatever you call it on that microscopic level.

Ok, now here’s the part that seemed to be much more insightful on my morning walk while the sun was just peeking over the mountains. Suppose your personality behaves like your DNA. Whatever part you decide to open, or expose, will be filled by whatever is around you. If you expose fear and anxiety, you will create fear and anxiety. If you smile and wave at people, you will receive smiles and waves in return. If you are growing in the womb, and your DNA is continually unraveling a blueprint to create brown eyes, that is it is “attracting” specific amino acids to link up into proteins to build brown eyes, you will have brown eyes.
If you continually expose part of your personality that builds happiness, you’ll be surrounded by happiness. So how do you do this?

The things that link together to build the proteins for brown eyes are the amino acids that link together in a specific order. There is nothing mysterious or esoteric or metaphysical about it. You put the right amino acids in the right order, and you’ll get the same effect again and again and again.

What about happiness? If happiness is the end result, what are the building blocks? What are the smaller “bits” like amino acids that when linked together, will create the exact same happiness, again and again and again?

Behaviors and communication. A specific strand of DNA exposed in the microscopic soup will attract the right amino acids to make the right protein.

A specific collection of behaviors and communication, when exposed to the world around you, in the right order, will produce the same happiness again and again and again. When your DNA wants to grow some hair, it unravels that part of itself, attracts the right amino acids, and they hook up together to make some hair in your hair follicles.

When you expose the right behaviors and communication in the right order, you will attract the right responses from people that when linked together, will build the same result every time.

Now, of course, people aren’t robots who will respond automatically the same way every time, but you’d be surprised how repeatable most of our behavior is. If you scream “fire” in a crowded movie theater, nobody is going to come up and shake your hand. If you offer a genuine smile and say “hi” to a stranger, they aren’t likely to punch you in the face.

Most people will respond pretty much the same way to the behavior and communication you project. So if you want a different result than you’ve been getting, change up or experiment with your behavior and your communication a bit, and see how the results you create will differ.

Probably the biggest take away from all of this is that you are largely responsible for the world you live in. By changing your behavior, you can drastically improve the results you’ve been getting, whatever they are, or whatever they want them to be.

And just as DNA is so fricking long it has taken scientists years and tons of money just to list it’s sequence, your personality is much more complex and abundant. If one part doesn’t work, you can easily try on something else.

Share this:

I used to watch this TV show when I was a kid, I’m sure you’ve heard of it. “I Dream of Genie,” was the title. I watched it for two reasons, one because the girl that played the Genie was super hot, and was always wearing these sexy genie clothes. And two because I thought it would be awesome to just cross your arms and blink your eyes and make something come into existence. To have some sexy genie dressed in skimpy genie clothes doing that for you is pretty much a secret (or not so secret) dream of all men.

That is a pretty common theme in human history. Much has been written about metaphysics and alchemy. Alchemy is a specific category of metaphysics where you take any metal, and turn it into gold. This would be similar to today’s “law of attraction” and other metaphysical manifestation techniques. Most people would like to attract more money.

The whole concept of metaphysics is interesting to me. I see it as kind of a vague placeholder in our imagination to describe things that are just outside our realm of understanding. They aren’t really magical or mystical or beyond our capabilities, just outside of our normal every day realm of the cause and effect reality that we think we live in.

A couple of examples. Most of our physical laws make sense, but only because we see them happening on a daily basis. When we see something that “makes sense,” what we really mean is that it matches our experience, so it doesn’t require any extra thought to describe it.

The first time kids study gravity in school, it can be a little bit unfamiliar, kind of like a fish studying water currents. When you show a diagram of planets and the sun, it’s pretty easy to make the leap. Of course the math, which is pretty complicated, is another issue.

It can take an extraordinary imagine to figure out laws that aren’t so obvious. Maxwell was a physicist who came up with a bunch of very complicated equations that described electromagnetic radiation. These are both light waves and magnetic waves. These can’t be seen, so you have to have a very highly developed imagination to play around with pictures in your head and then describe them with complex mathematical equations that actually prove to be true when applied to everyday things like electricity and photo voltage measurements.

One of my favorites is when quantum physicists and solid state physicists were having a hard time describing these small spaces that had an extraordinary large number of particles bouncing around. They could pretty easily describer one or two particles, but after that, the math got exceedingly complex.

Then one guy thought of an idea. Instead of thinking of the system of a boatload of particles stuffed in there, each with it’s own mass and charge and spin and whatever else properties particles have, why not think of it as a system with a couple of holes, with all the properties associated with particles assigned a zero value? (To physicists, zero is as just a valid number as 43).

Well, it worked. It described the system perfectly and made the math a lot easier. All by pretending there was this hole there bouncing around, with zero mass, and zero charge, and zero spin, and zero whatever else particles have.

Ok, back to metaphysics.

My own personal belief about metaphysical laws is they are very similar to the holes in the above example. The “law of attraction” and other metaphysical laws of manifestation are simple placeholders to make our thinking about complex issues much simpler, much like the math was made simpler in the hole theory.

Example.

You are a salesperson. You’ve been around salespeople for a while. You’ve been around really good salespeople, and you’ve been around pretty cruddy salespeople. You are an average salesperson, but you’d like to improve your skills to become one of the best. You have two options.

Option One

You study sales book after sales book. You attend sales seminars. You take notes after every sales call, and analyze every sentence. You even ask some customers if you could bring in a video camera and tape yourself so you can later watch it and analyze your body language, your tone of voice, your inflection, the actual words that you use, etc etc etc. You buy some expensive statistical software and collect as much data as possible from every single sales call. From time of day, what color suit your wore, what color clothes your customer wore, where you sat with respect to North and South, the number of minutes that elapsed before you “asked for the sale,” every possible piece of data you collect, and plug into your software. Then on a weekly basis, you look at your sales, and tweak your performance to slowly and gradually improve your sales.

Option Two

You read a book on the law of attraction, and affirmations. Before going to sleep every night you tell yourself “I am the best salesperson at my company.” And just like all the books say, you put feeling and emotion into your affirmations. And just like the books say, when you go about your day, you release your affirmations to the superconscious, or whatever, and wait for the changes to take place.

So which do you think would work better? Believe it or not, method two would work much better. Not because of any mystical law or anything, but because of the massively powerful computational powers of your brain. When you tell your brain enough times that you want to be the best salesperson at your company, really program yourself to do that with powerful emotions, it will automatically do everything outlined in option one. But it will be doing it all unconsciously, so you won’t really notice. From a conscious mind point of view, you are only doing affirmations every night, and then magically in a couple months, you are the number one salesperson.

This requires a couple of things. First is a goal that is within your grasp based on your current situation. If you have sales experience, it’s pretty easy to go from average to excellent. Second, you are surrounded by some good salespeople, so you brain has something to model your behavior after.

This is the number one reason people fail when they “use” the law of attraction. They are either giving their brains some vague instructions, so it doesn’t really know what to go after, or they are giving specific instructions, but not exposing themselves to examples of how to get there.

When you make sure both of these are present, a clear objection, and sufficient examples of how to get there, with properly constructed affirmations, you can pretty much allow turn over any goals to your unconscious and let it soak up the behaviors from people around you.

Of course, this requires that you have the underlying beliefs that you are capable of actually performing the objective you claim you want, but that’s for another post.

For now, whenever you choose to do affirmations, remember the more clear you are the better, and the more examples you expose yourself to, in as many forms as possible, the better. That way you’ll have a much better chance of achieving your goals.

Share this:

A long time ago, a lot of ancient and primitive civilizations had some kind of “coming of age” ceremony. There are still remnants of that today in both the Jewish and The Catholic traditions, and likely a few others of which I’m not qualified to speak of.

But the ones from before, way before, were much more significant. Simply because the tribe depended on the full adulthood of all it’s members in order to survive. There needed to be a clear line between children and adults. The children were dependent on the providers, and the adults were the providers. If an adult still had some childish characteristics, and depended others more than he or she was able to provide for others, then he or she would be a detriment to the group. Perhaps even cast out.

So societies developed rituals, and traditions where boys became men, and girls became women. With women it was fairly easy. By giving birth a child, the girl would swiftly transform herself from a dependent to a provider. With a constant reminder of how close death was, this became fairly easy.

With men it wasn’t so easy, so they needed to develop a coming of age ceremony. Not like today, where they are mere echoes of those of the past, these were real and life changing events. Boys were dragged of and forced to spend days in the wilderness, alone. Given hallucinogenic drugs, forced to hunt and drink the blood of their prey.

When they left, their mothers wept. Because they knew that the boys would never return. They would come back forever changed into men. Men that were no longer dependent on their mothers or the tribe, but providers, hunters, and killers.

They went through this transformation by facing their deepest fears. The fear of isolation, separation and death. The ultimate rejection. By facing their fears and overcoming them, they became more powerful than they thought possible as boys.

By going through this fear facing life-changing transformation, they transformed themselves from receivers, to creators.

With modern society, this has all but vanished. There are a million ways to avoid your fears and remain dependent on others. It is relatively easy in today’s modern society to remain a child your whole life, expecting others to provide for you. Your girlfriend, husband, government, society in general. These can all be crutches that keep you from reaching your greatest potential.

Society is no longer dependent on every single person making the transformation from childhood to adulthood. In fact, arguments may be made that today’s society functions more efficiently if only a small number make the transition to be creators and providers for the vast majority who are content to remain dependent receivers their whole lives.

In ancient Rome, much is spoken about how powerful and innovative their government was, by few are aware of the vast majority of people, Roman citizens, were basically on welfare. Completely dependent on the state for their livelihood.

And so it has been for that last few thousand years. The only way to make the transition from childhood adulthood is to make the choice yourself. Nobody will do it for you; nobody will drag you to a cave and force you to face your fears. Nobody will allow your child to die if you can find enough food. No tigers will come and eat your baby if you don’t watch after it 24/7.

If you want to become and adult, and realize your true human potential you need to stop relying on free gifts from others. Free support, free dependence. Get rid of the notion that everybody deserves X.

That can be harsh idea to accept. But once you accept the idea that the only way you get X is to figure out a way to secure it for yourself. That may mean paying money for it, or entering into an agreement with somebody else, where they give you X and you give them Y, whatever they may be.

The fear is that if you give up expecting free X from somebody, (e.g. free parental love from a partner, free money from the government) that you will never get it. That you will be left out in the cold, rejected and abandoned.

The truth is that is exactly what you need to feel to make it to the other side. To face your fears, and realize what Rocky Balboa said to Clubber Lang in Rocky III holds much truth:

“You ain’t so bad! You ain’t nothing!”

And then you will realize that on your other side of the fears you’ve created in your mind, there is a world of abundance waiting for you to readily give you anything that you properly ask for through your behavior and communication.

The choice is yours. You can be safe, or you can be free.

Share this:

There has been much written, spoken about, and talked about regarding the difference between a scarcity mindset and an abundance mindset. These two seemingly ubiquitous concepts can change your perception of reality itself. But do we really understand what they mean?

I can understand the mechanics and philosophy and process of baking a batch of chocolate chip cookies. I can even study material, research methods and techniques, and even publish books on how to make chocolate chip cookies, but until I smell and eat them, I really have no idea what I’m talking about.

The funny thing is that the language I use, the illustrations I use in my descriptions of making and eating cookies will be the same whether I have experienced the or not.

It’s easy to think you understand he concepts of scarcity and abundance, but until you experience them firsthand, they are two completely different worlds. One objective, looked at from the outside with only an academic understanding, and the other subjective, from the inside, from an experiential feeling of what it’s really like.

One quick test to see if you really have an abundance mindset or a scarcity mindset with regards to money. How do you feel about salespeople? Car salesmen, door-to-door salesmen, time share salesmen? Do you love them or hate them?

If you truly have an abundance mindset towards money, that is if you really feel deep in your bones that money is plentiful, and you will always have an avalanche of money, then you will never feel threatened or put off by salespeople. You will welcome them. You will enjoy talking with them and seeing what they have to offer.

What good is money if you never spend it? If you truly believe that there is an unlimited amount of money in the universe, then you will never feel a lack. And when the salesman comes knocking you will never fear that he or she will con you out of something. You will never feel as if you are getting a raw deal on anything.

Take air for example. Most everybody naturally has a deep, unconscious belief that there is plenty of air in the world. Enough for everybody. We don’t even thinking about worrying about getting enough air to breath when we wake up in the morning. We don’t get into fights with our loved ones over how we are going to be spending our precious air.

If somebody we don’t know walks into the coffee shop we are passing the time in, we don’t suddenly get worried that they will take our precious oxygen. (Of course if they are smoking that is something different altogether).

Likewise with money. Very few people have a true sense of abundance when it comes to money. Sure we all like to proclaim to each other that we have an abundance mindset. We believe in the Law of Attraction. We put down others when they exhibit what we judgingly call “scarcity thinking.”

But when the salesman comes knocking, or we walk into a car dealership, if we are the least bit nervous, or put off, or fearful of our pocketbook, then we are living, breathing and feeling scarcity.

Most people think that once they get plenty of money, then they will stop their scarcity thinking. That is backwards. That is like saying you want to go on a diet, but you are going to lose weight first, then you’ll start to diet and exercise.

That is the great paradox of human nature and how we perceive reality. We spend our childhoods learn the have-do-be mindset. We have something, then we are motivated by our possessions and then it shapes our personality. We are born completely blank, and we have to be given thoughts, ideas, and behaviors, as we grow older. We absorb who we are, how we behave, what we get from the adults around us.

But when we become adults, we must make a shift from the have-do-be mindset to the be-do-have mindset. When we are children we are because of what we have. As adults, we must learn that what we have is a result of what and who we are.

As we grow up, our personalities and behaviors reflect our environment. But as we grow older, we must learn that our environment becomes a reflection of who we are.

The simples test to who you really are on the inside, beneath all the posturing and affirmations and efforts and appearances is to simply look around you. What does your house or apartment look like? Your friends? Your relationships? Your bank account? They won’t change, unless you do.

Change yourself first and your environment will follow. It may take some time, but it will change. Don’t give up.

It’s easy to blame the world. But that is the reaction and thinking style of a child. Children blame the world. Adults take responsibility and change themselves, knowing the environment will change accordingly.

No, it’s not easy. And yes, it can take a lifetime. But what else are we here for except to shape our own reality?

Share this:

Should you not understand the power of asking the right questions, realize that the Socratic method, a several thousand-year-old logical process, does exactly that. And the new ideas that you can come up with in regards to this can only show you the range of new possibilities available to you.

And when you come to the conclusion that this is a powerful method of introspection, you can easily leave all doubt behind as you embrace this new way of thinking.

And what is as powerful as continuously enhancing your thinking process so that you overcome all kinds of new opportunities? Because again and again you can realize the power that comes with being able to do this.

And when you start to do this on a regular basis, you will even have more ideas that can do things you never thought possible. It can become virtually automatic.

It’s amazing how much this can literally transform what you think is possible. When you really allow these ideas to sink it, you can be sure that you will be head and shoulders above the rest of the people out there.

Before doing this, it might be a good idea to identify the things in life that you’d like to keep, because invariably it becomes something that will change many things, and you want to make sure you don’t forget and inadvertently get rid of some of the little things that give you so much pleasure.

Luckily, more and more people are starting to discover just how incredibly powerful this is, because the more you understand the nature of this, the easier it will become for you to understand how you can do this.

And what is most surprising about this method is how incredibly easy it is to do on a regular basis. The more you realize this, the easier it gets. Its is likely your unique personal history and specific applications of those memories that you have that will make this the most beneficial for you.

And how does knowing how much you have at your fingertips make you feel comfortable realizing that anything you do can really powerful enhance your life?

Because when you fully embrace this new mind technology, you might be surprised to learn that it was something you knew all along, but I’m sure that many of you already know this. Many find that the first thing they discover is how easy this becomes with practice, because most of it you already know anyways.

And people that have fully embraced know the truth: Once you accept these ideas, there is no going back to mediocrity.

Share this:

Anyways, he started complaining about a business problem he was having. And he started making the same complaints that he usually makes, bad market, bad economy, and the usual stuff that you hear nowadays. Since he was basically going over the same arguments again and again, it was fairly easy for me to get distracted and let my mind wander.

It’s interesting when that happens. I’ve often wondered if you could map out somebody’s brain, represent it graphically as some big three-dimension lattice, and have whatever the person was thinking about displayed as part of the grid that was sort of lit up. And then whatever stray neurons the lit up portion drifted to would be the next random thought the person was thinking. Only it’s not random at all. One set of neurons is connected to all other neurons by only three or four degrees of separation and those three or four degrees of separation can get fired off rather quickly, and rather subconsciously.

So you’ll be thinking about the current health care issue, and all of a sudden you’ll be remembering a tuna sandwich you ate in third grade.

So I suddenly recalled this lecture an old professor was giving in university. It was a political science class, and this guy was lecturing about the evils of the Soviet Union (yea, it was that long ago). He said people are classified into two different groups, those that see the world as an oppressive enemy, where there is no escape but to complain and wring your hands over the state of things, and those that see the world with a curiosity of interest. To see how it can be exploited to maximize their own benefit. I think he was trying to illustrate the difference between capitalism and communism, but I’m not certain. I only got a C in that class, so whatever I do remember, I’m pretty sure it was incorrect to begin with.

That’s when I realized that my friend, who was always complaining, seemed to always take a victim stance to the world. The world is a big evil thing that shouldn’t be doing whatever it is doing. And there should be some big authoritative entity to make sure “it” behaved according to what people think it “should” do.

Which reminded of a book I read on frame control. This guy said that all suffering comes from when you have as set of “shoulds” that the world doesn’t agree with. If you walk through life expecting people to behave according to what you think they “should” do, and they don’t, you will blame them for not behaving according to your expectations.

On the other hand, there are those that are always redefining their map of reality based on what they see on a daily basis, so they can take advantage of things and extract as much money and pleasure and sex from the world as they possibly can, without crossing or hurting anybody. Kind of like treasure hunters that are always looking for ways to exploit the system to their benefit, whatever the system may be.

I’ve read that during the gold rush to California back in the 1800′s, there was a huge amount of gold taken from the ground, in the billions of dollars in today’s money. And that gold was found by people that dug, and consistently re engineered their searching process until they became rich. The interesting thing is, is that most geological experts agree that only about twenty percent from the actual gold in the ground was ever discovered. The rest is still waiting.

There is treasure.

Are you looking for it, or waiting for somebody to give it to you?

Share this:

Every summer we would go on these weeklong backpacking trips through the Sierra Mountain range in California. If you’ve never been to or seen the Sierra’s, they are a fantastic, almost untapped natural resource. Because it is incredibly hard and strenuous to get in, once you get in past the first few sets of mountains, you can see incredibly beautiful scenery that is completely void of any signs of humanity. Of course it is heavily protected by the Parks and Rangers, but the main reason it is devoid of humans is because it is so hard to get there.

One of my favorite parts was the fishing. The entire Sierra’s are dotted with small lakes, most of which have an abundance of rainbow trout. This kind of fishing is different form ocean fishing, either on a pier of off a boat. If you are fishing on a pier, especially a crowded pier, you don’t have a lot of options other than to bait your hook, throw a line in the water, and wait. A boat is similar, although you can pull up anchor and go someplace else, but that takes a while, and you have to have an experienced captain that knows all the good spots.

Lake fishing in the Sierras is completely different. Because the lakes are relatively small, you can walk around the entire lake in 30 minutes or so. Which means if you cast a lure out a few times along the way, you can get an idea in as little as an hour if the fish are biting in that particular lake or not. And if that particular lake is not biting, you can go to the next one over, and so on. And as a bonus, while you are fishing, you are surrounded by the most beautiful nature you’ve ever seen. Even if you don’t catch any fish, you will still enjoy yourself. I’ve always had fairly good luck; even on that day I lost several lures before catching the biggest fish I’d ever seen.

Before joining the explorer scouts, I was a member of the regular Boy Scout troop. And as a Boy Scout troop, we had to do several different kinds of fundraisers. Mostly selling stuff, sometimes magazine subscriptions, or services. Sometimes we would have a carwash, or get together with other organizations and sponsor walk-a-thons and other things. This would require going door to door to solicit donations, or sales, or get people to put their name down on a list.

The interesting thing about this is that we could always tell, within a few houses, which street was going to be good, and which street was going to be bad. After a while, we would choose a different street if the first five doors turned out to be a bust. Before we learned that trick, it was not so much fun to go up and down the street and get rejected time after time. Some people even seemed to get angry with us for trying to sell them something, or get them to participate in a community service fundraiser. This one lady was particularly troublesome.

One thing one of our Boy Scout leaders told us was the value of qualifying. He said that you always need to qualify your market before you invest yourself too much. He had a high level sales position, I’m not sure where, but he was always putting things in terms of sales and sales strategy. He said every market is a potential gold mind or a potential heartbreaker, so it pays to learn how to qualify your market before you invest too much time or energy. Some markets you can come back to later, and they will somehow have transformed from a stinker to a real winner, so it’s important never to write them off completely. Always throw out a line, so to speak, and see how they respond. As soon as they turn cold, pick up your stuff and move on.

After we applied his rules into our five houses only strategy, we were able to sell a lot more subscriptions. And that one lady, before would have been a real ego-deflating heart breaker, but because of our attitude, she was really just pretty funny. She started screaming at us as soon as she answered the door, and started saying that the government was after her and that we were spies for them and that we had better not leave any listening devices in her mailbox. We were thirteen years old at the time. As I recall, she was number four on that block, but we needed to stick to our rule, so we went on to the next house.

So after I had lost two lures, I decided to try my last one. I had a three lure per lake policy, as the weeds at the bottom of the shallow lakes liked to eat your lures. My friend would always tease me because sometimes Iost more lures than the fish I caught. One the last lure for that particular lake, I caught these huge brown trout. When you catch a fish like that surrounded by all the people free mountains and flower filled meadows, it really makes you feel good. And you like to feel good, don’t you?

Share this:

They three guys watched with great interest as they observed different people doing different things. Some people would walk in and order, and sit down and the food was brought to them, others stood and waited, and still others walked in straight away and sat down. Once they even saw somebody walk in, and linger around near the front, and then some woman came out and led him to a table.

The three guys that were watching tried to formulate a theory about how the restaurant operated. At first, they thought that the difference was due to the socio-economic level of the people that came walking to the shop. They assumed that rich, upper class people got served better and with more respect that poor lower class people. But then they saw a few guys in expensive suits walk in, place their order, wait at the front for the order to put placed own in front of them, and then carry it themselves to a table, that sometimes they had to even bus themselves a little bit before sitting down.

And they saw a couple guys walk in that seemed to be wearing very old, very inexpensive clothing, and even smelling as though they hadn’t showered in a while. They saw a few of these guys treated with ultra first class treatment.

Then they decided that maybe it was due to the level of attractiveness of the people that came in. They figured that really attractive and sexy men and women that came in would receive first class treatment, while normal guys and gals might get the brown bag treatment. Then they saw some average guys receive first class treatment, and some people that looked as though they could be models of movie stars waiting at the front for their orders, which they had to carry themselves back to the table.

After weeks and weeks sitting outside, and formulating theory and theory, only to see it disproved, they finally they decided to experiment. They drew straws to see who would go in first. They the guy that was chosen to go in first, was very nervous. He wasn’t sure how to act, or what to say. He walked in, and stood around the front, waiting to see if somebody would lead him to a table. Nobody did. Then he went up slowly, and noticed there were no menu boards above the registers. Why didn’t they notice this before? He slowly walked up to the counter. The girl behind the register smiled at waited. Nervous, frustrated, anxious, he turned and ran.

The next guy went in two days later, after much discussion, they looked through the windows, watching what people were eating. Finally they decided that he would walk in, and order a cheeseburger, french fries, and a coke. Then he would wait and see what would happen.

Finally, it was his turn to walk in. He was even more nervous that the first guy. He timidly walked up to the register, and ordered a cheeseburger, fries, and a coke. The girl behind the register smiled, tapped a few buttons on the mysterious looking object, which they assumed had been a cash register, but now the second guy wasn’t so sure. Why hadn’t they noticed this before?

“For here or to go?” she asked helpfully.

He looked around, trying to get an idea of what to do. He saw beautiful waitresses taking orders from plain looking sitting patrons, he saw rich businessmen reading the newspaper waiting for their take out order.

“um, to go.” He managed, wanting to leave as quickly as possible. Before he knew it, his food was placed down in front of him in a non-descript paper bag. He grabbed it and left as quickly as he could

Now the three were more dumbfounded that ever. This something strange happened. The third guy saw his next door neighbor walk in, pause and two stunning waitresses came out and led him to a large booth next to a huge window with a view of a beautiful waterfall. Why hadn’t they noticed that before? They were shocked. They watched as the third guys next-door neighbor made his way through a seemingly exquisite fourteen-course meal, complete with some kind of French appetizer they thought was only an urban legend. Frustrated beyond belief, because the third guy new what an absolute dweeb his next door neighbor was, walked in, his frustration overpowering his anxiety and fears.

“I’d like the best table you have. And four of the most gorgeous waitresses that have ever walked the earth!” he proclaimed in a loud and confident voice.

Before he could even inhale after his outburst, four of the most gorgeous waitresses came walking out, wearing brilliant evening gowns.

“I want the largest booth in the place, with a view of the ocean.” He didn’t know why he asked for an ocean view, that’s just what came out.

“Certainly,” said the apparent head waitress. They led him to a booth, and he was amazed to see the most gorgeous beach view he could ever imagine.

Filled with confidence, he ordered every possible luxury item he could possibly think of. The waitresses merely scribbled furiously on their pads, and nodded their heads in agreement. After they left, he noticed his neighbor smiling, looking at him.

“This place is great, isn’t it? I don’t know how it works, but they will give you whatever you ask for. I don’t know why they don’t advertise this place; I guess they don’t want it to get too busy. You kind of have to figure it out on your own. But not matter what you want, all you have to do is ask for it, and they will be happy to give it to you. They funny thing is, is that if you are unsure of what you want, they will be unsure of what to give you, and then you’ll usually end up getting something that isn’t worth much of anything. But the more you know what you want, the more eager they will be to give it to you.”

For some reason, the third guy felt a little reluctant to tell his friends about his discovery. Some things, he reckoned, are much much more rewarding when you discover them on your own.

Share this:

The article was about elephant trainers in India. It was talking about how when they take an elephant at a certain age, they tie a long rope around it’s leg, and the other end to a large post in the middle of the elephant training camp. The interesting thing about this is that they have to tie the rope to the elephant’s leg at just the right time, or else it won’t have the right effect.

Timing is very important in cases like this. People can realize how important timing is because life itself is a long succession of events, which are dependent upon events that transpired before them. When you think of how events are really based largely on what happens before them, you can appreciate the value of proper timing. I’m sure many comedians have made the mistake of telling a punch line at the wrong time, to unhappy professional consequence.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried stand up comedy, but it’s an interesting study in communication, there is a unique style of communication that makes doing stand up particularly humorous. And when you can combine the skills of stand up with other acting skills such as improv, then you can be really influential with your communication. There are lots of different books on this subject, if you are interested in improving your communication skills. Most people can realize the importance of being able to improve your communication skills.

So when they tie the elephant’s leg to the middle of the camp, they only need to keep him tied up for a few months before he learns of the limitation. Even when they remove the rope later on, the elephant still thinks he is constrained by a physical limitation that is no longer there. Some elephants can go their whole lives and be tied by an imaginary rope that was taken away a long time ago.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been constrained by something in the past that no longer applies, but it can be useful to look through the list of limitations in that you keep in your head and go through them. You might be surprised to find that many of them are no longer applicable. And when you can take any list of things where most of the items on the list don’t apply any more, most people just go ahead and crumple up the whole list and throw it in the garbage.

When you can remove all your limitations just like that, you are free to do pretty much anything. Have sex with beautiful men and women, make lots of money, run for president, whatever you can think of is how way more possible than when you had that old list of outdated ideas in your head. Something to think about next time it feels as though something is tugging at your leg.

Share this:

When this happens, the best thing to do is just to take a step back, and laugh. Yea, I know sometimes that seems the least popular idea in your mind at the time. The automatic response for some is to pick up whatever is bothering you and fling it across the room, or out the window. I’m reminded of that scene from “It’s a Wonderful Life,” when the hero is having all kinds of problems, and coming down the stairs he puts his hand on the banister, which promptly falls apart. He picks up a section of it, and is about to throw it across the room when he grabs hold of himself, calms himself, and gently places it back down where it belongs.

While it usually does one more harm than good to hurl a piece of broken furniture across the room, keeping your anger bottled up can have deadly effects. High stress is the major cause of many illnesses today in western society, in some form of another. Your doctor may tell you your hypertension is from your smoking or your overeating, but those two are almost always caused by stress.

So if you can’t launch a nearby inanimate object into a low orbit every time you feel some friction or anxiety? What can you do? Planned expression of anger is one way. I’ve heard different takes on this, with different philosophies underneath this, but they all seem to share on thing in common. Find a place where you can be alone (so nobody calls the cops when they see what you are doing!) and find a way that is appropriate for you to let out your anger.

Screaming, banging on your steering wheel, hitting a heavy bag a few nights a week all can help to reduce the stress and anger that has been building up. I tried one method a few years ago that worked fantastic. You get an old tennis racket, and kneel in front of your bed (while nobody is home, of course) and then pound on your bed with the tennis racket while screaming at the top of your lungs a the person or situation that is giving you the most grief. It has a great calming effect. If you have nosy neighbors, this might be troublesome, as they might think you are murdering somebody. You can also go to a park, and bang a tennis racket in to the grass (but be careful about screaming at the top of your lungs, you might scare some kids).

The best way is to get into the habit of laughing at yourself whenever you encounter those situations that might have caused you stress before. Laughter has a proven medical benefit to release stress an anxiety. From a structural standpoint, when you let out a good extended belly laugh, the tightening of the muscles has a calming effect. When you finish laughing, all the muscles of your body move to a relaxed state, loosening the walls of your blood vessels, and effectively lowering your blood pressure in the short term. The more you laugh, the lower you will consistently lower your short-term blood pressure.

Of course, lifestyle habits like smoking and drinking and eating french fries cause a serious long term increase in blood pressure, but by training yourself to find the humor in situations, you will lower your overall stress which may lead to some of these lifestyle behaviors.

Another great exercise is called the rubber band. Whenever you feel yourself getting angry, imagine your body as one giant rubber band, and just go limp. But loosening and relaxing all your muscles, you are sending a message to your brain that all is well, and there is no reason to get upset. The great thing about this exercise is you can practice it by remembering things from your past that caused you anxiety. Just sit in a comfortable chair, or lie back on your bed, and start to bring to mind some situation that really raised your hackles (whatever a hackle is). When you feel yourself getting upset, just switch to imagining yourself as a giant rubber band, and release all thought. The more you practice, the easier this gets, and sooner or later you will be able to do this real time, even when somebody is in your face yelling about some thing that used to concern you. Just rubber band yourself, and you’ll be able to relax and enjoy the situation.

These are just a few tips to help you to release anger, and reduce stress. Nothing saps your ability to really enjoy life more than stress, anxiety, and anger. The more you practice these techniques, the smoother your life will become.

Share this:

Well, it happened to me recently. It was incredible. I didn’t have my phone with me, and the only person I could think of to share it with lived in a different country, so I had to rush home to email them, and send them the pictures I’d taken of this incredible event. So I was rushing home, and then I bumped into another friend.

Now this suddenly turned into an awkward situation. Because the guy I bumped into wasn’t quite a close enough friend to share my experience with, but he was close enough to not just say “hi” quickly to and then go on my way. And he was close enough that he could tell I was excited about something, I could to tell that he could tell, you know? So we chatted for a while, and one thing led to another, and we were having lunch at this restaurant. It was one of those restaurants where you can tell them at the front it’s our birthday, and they’ll come over and sing this goofy happy birthday song, which they’ve kind of morphed into a singing pitch for their restaurant. I guess because the restaurant is on a busy pedestrian sidewalk, they are kind of hoping to make people feel really excited about the atmosphere and want to come inside to find out more. But after the birthday singing stopped, my friend started telling me about his dilemma.

A competitor from back was heavily recruiting him east. It would give him a huge pay raise, and lots of increased authority, and he would actually have several people reporting directly to him. It sounded like a no brainer, until he told me that he was in love. And you know how much love throws a monkey wrench into life. It’s almost as if Cupid waits around until your life is almost perfect, and then shoots one of those magic arrows right up your you know what, and suddenly everything is confusing. I believe Michael Corleone described it as a thunderbolt.

Its like money suddenly loses its value, the house you live in suddenly loses its value, your job, and your clothes suddenly lose their value. All you care about is this person who you feel these feelings for. Those wonderful feelings that swirl through your head and make all the colors around you brighter, and all the sounds more pleasant, and all the people suddenly having goofy smiles on their faces.

As my friend was explaining his dilemma, the obvious solution was to simply take his girl with him to his new job.

“It’s not that simple,” he said.
“Why not?” I asked.

He said that they were at “that stage.” You know what I’m talking about. That beginning stage where you know that you really like each other, but you don’t know exactly when and how and how much, your heads are both swirling in a cloud. You are kind of afraid to put a label on it, or limitations for fear that it might get scared and run away. So you just hope that it grows on its own, hope that it flourishes and becomes strong enough to swoop you both into the bliss of an unknown future.

I asked him when he was going to make his decisions. He just shook his head, smiled and said that he’d already made it.

Oh well, I thought. Good for him. I had to hurry up and get home and email my friend before I lost my excitement.

Share this:

The “imaginary mastermind group” that Hill was describing was a modified version of his Mastermind Group idea. I don’t think the idea was his, most likely several people over the centuries have discovered the concept of synergy in a group. The basic idea is to get a group of people together, and collectively solve a problem. Business problems, social problems, political problems have all been solved in the past with the application of a mastermind group. The original framers of the United States Constitution is a particular good example of an effective and powerful mastermind group. Their efforts have proved to be valuable to many people over the years.

Sometimes, though, you don’t have a group of powerful individuals at your disposal to collect together and figure out how you are going to pay your rent, or write that report at work. Sometimes, you have to go it alone. Which is how the imaginary mastermind group comes in. You look through history, and get a collection of real, historical figures that you admire. It’s good to have a wide variety of disciplines. Doctors, scientists, orators, mystics, magicians, politicians, whatever. Come up with as many different specific fields as you can, and then choose on person from each one. I think Napoleon Hill had Darwin, Lincoln, Henry Ford, and Emerson, among others, in his group. Just choose anybody who exists, either currently, or historically that you’d like giving you advice and counsel.

Then at night, just as drifting off into sleep, gather your imaginary mastermind group together and have a meeting regarding the day’s issues. Make sure you are in charge, and each can only speak when you give them the floor. If you want, you can ask them questions regarding different problems you are having in your life, and the best way to solve it. You’ll be amazed at the insight they will offer. It’s important to release any weird feelings that you have about doing this, and allow your imagination to speak through them. It kind of gives your brain permission to look at things from a different perspective, and think of ideas you wouldn’t normally think of.

You can also imagine key members of your mastermind group going with you into certain situations. For example, if you have a big meeting with your boss, you can have a meeting with your mastermind group the night before. Whoever seems to give you the best advice, take them with you, and imagine they are standing behind you, whispering into your ear. (Just make sure not to turn around and say “Huh? What was that?” to them during the meeting.)

Hill even went on to say that after a few months of regular meetings with his mastermind group, they began to take on distinct personalities, and he had to stop because he feared they were becoming too real, even for him. So be careful, and don’t let your imagination run away with you. You don’t want to end up like that mathematician in “Beautiful Mind.”

Your brain is a fantastically wonderful and barely understood part of you that can offer up many different ways to get what you want out of life. The imaginary mastermind group is but one way to tap this fantastic source for whatever pleasure you want to easily achieve in life.

Permalink

Share this:

So I was on this bus ride, and I was sitting next to this guy who was reading this book on esoteric philosophy. Just judging by the way he was reading the book, it seemed to be a deep subject. He would read for a few moments, and then look out the window, as if in deep thought. Then he would get his look of recognition on his face, and then turn back to the book. He did this several times, until I finally got up the courage to ask him about the book. I could only see the partial title, and I’m not even sure then if I could make out the title correctly.

He said it was a philosophical book about human emotions. The particular section that he was reading, and kept looking out the window to digest, was based on some writings of some ancient Indian scholar. He said the name a few times, but for the life of me I can’t remember even how many syllables it contained, let alone how it was pronounced. But he said that humans are basically transmitters of our emotions. That when humans come into contact, we communicate long before the first words are spoken.

If you are in a particularly high vibrational state, that is if you are holding “good” emotions predominantly in your body, like confidence, acceptance, appreciation, you will be primarily attract the emotional energy of others, as it matches your emotional energy. The converse is also true. If you hold more “negative” emotions, like fear, anger, jealousy, and judgment, you will attract those emotions as well.

He also said that if you have a mix of the two, negative and positive, like most people do, whenever you come in contact with another person or a group the “average” emotional energy will generally win out. He said that the transfer and commingling of emotions among people could be treated almost as a science. The secret to attracting people in your life that you want to support and help you, is to first become that which you want to attract.

He said that many people fool themselves into thinking they are emitting positive emotions, when in reality they are emitting emotions of need and lack, and they have convinced themselves otherwise. That is why this is such a hard concept to understand, because of our strong ability at self-deception.

He said that the real secret is to first understand yourself, and your emotions before trying to worry about those of others. Once you get a hold on your own emotions, the rest is easy. Because once you dig deep enough, and hold your emotions positive, that is all you will attract, and the rest will disappear. I asked him exactly how to do that, and he said that he hadn’t gotten that far in the book.

I told him that you should keep reading, until you can discover the secret here. Then find me and tell me about it. He just laughed and went back to his book, as if he knew something that the rest of us don’t, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see. If you have any secrets, please share them, so we can figure his out.

Permalink

Share this:

Sometimes, though, I like to go places alone, knowing that I will always be able to meet new people wherever I go. Nothing can be more invigorating than meeting up with new and interesting people, especially if they are completely different from you. There are so many different people with so many different backgrounds; you are almost always bound to find treasure wherever you look for it.

So I was sitting in this café/bar/restaurant downtown, when I started talking to these two guys. One was a local guy, who had never left this region in his entire life. The furthest away he’d ever been was to University, which was about an hour away by car or bus. The other guy had a strange profession. He was originally from Britain, but had been traveling the world for the past ten years. He had two licenses, or skills, that on their own would be enough to build a career on, but he had figured a way to combine them so that he could live in almost any country in the world and make a decent living. One was a professional Chef. He got his chef license, or certificate, or whatever you call it from a school in London. With this he could work in many top restaurants in the world. His second skill was a certified Scuba Diving Instructor. He explained that with this, he could teach scuba diving, or organize scuba diving parties, in any country where scuba diving is popular.

It would seem that he would be a fairly interesting person, given his skills and experience, but he seemed a bit bored with life. He said that everywhere he went; he found that people were the same. He cooked the same food; he encountered the same scuba problems and hang-ups. He didn’t seem like the globetrotting carefree Brit that you’d expect.

The other guy was a different story. This guy was one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met. He was a type of biologist that deals with farming. He spends his days looking into microscopes to try and figure out what kinds of microbes are best for growing rice. When he does go outside, it is always to nearby rice farms, which are participating in some government funded university study on some bacteriological effect on rice crops. Something that would normally put me to sleep in a hurry. But something about this was really fascinating; the way the guy explained it. It was like he was able to find fascination in any aspect of life. He was so engaged with his work, and he was able feel large amounts of appreciation, that you couldn’t help but to feel appreciation as well as he described it.

He was one of those rare individuals that just by being near this person, you can really feel and experience the wonder of life that is all around you, all the time. Wherever you go, there it is. And it’s not like its shrouded in some kind of secret mystery or something. All you have to do is look, really look. And you’ll see it.

Permalink

Share this:

When the old man suddenly realized that the sun had been up for several minutes, he quickly rolled out of bed. He noticed that his alarm hadn’t gone off as he’d hoped. That was ok. He still had plenty of time. He noticed that the fish he’d caught the day before were still where he’d left them. That wasn’t particularly surprising, as it was getting late in the season, and most of the bears had probably found a place to hibernate already. He checked his tackle and set out for another day of fishing.

As he was walking to the lake, he came across a rather large beaver dam. He didn’t recall seeing it yesterday, so he stopped to take a look. He noticed that the beavers were acting particularly strange, but how he knew this he couldn’t really put his finger on it. He decided to stop and watch. He’d been walking for about an hour when he came across the new dam, so he decided it would be as good a place as any to enjoy a quiet break. Something about these beavers was not quite right. The more he watched them, the more he became determined to find out exactly what it was about them that was so intriguing.

He set his bags down, and found a nice spot on the ground to sit. He leaned up against the hard bark of a sycamore tree, and began what was to be the most interesting afternoon of his life.

The beavers seemed to notice him watching, although they didn’t change the procedures, at least as far as he could tell. He was almost mesmerized by their methodical efficiency, scurrying off into the forest and coming back with pieces of tree that were the exact same size that they needed. They would carefully place the piece in just the exact place. Everything in order. It was amazing, the old man thought.

Trees would grow, taking different elements from the ground and the soil and the air and the rain. They would grow over the years, then these animals would come and chew down the trees to dam up the water to build their house. Did the trees mind that they were being taken to build a house? Did the water mind that its course was being changed? Were the beavers aware of all that they were doing?

The man remarked at the impressive way in which things so naturally fit together. So peacefully. So perfectly. Did he belong? Did he really? It was as if the earth itself was giving of one part of itself to help out the other part. As if it were taking resources from one area, that were becoming almost superfluous, and somehow using itself to move those resources to another more helpful self. Like it was constantly rearranging itself to rebuild itself, so it would more easily sustain itself.

The old man wondered why he never had the ability to see things from such a clear perspective. He realized then that everything was cyclical. From the earth to the tree to the water to the ocean back to the sky to the earth. He wondered how this cycle ever began, and how it knew how to sustain itself. Surely there must be some underlying pattern that lies beneath that which is seen?

The old man awoke, after having dozed off while watching the beavers. Their dam was complete. The sun had begun to set off in the west. The old man realized that he’s missed his opportunity to catch more fish. That was all right, he had enough to last him through a couple of weeks, and a couple of weeks would be enough to allow him to catch enough to keep for the winter.

As he walked back to his cabin, which would soon be warmed by the fire he would build, he wondered vaguely how the bears were doing. It will be good to see them again in the spring, he thought.

Permalink

Share this:

The two friends lived high up in the mountains. They lived near the tree line, which is the border between where trees grow, and where they can’t grow. Being on the border is convenient, most of the time. You can enjoy both worlds, because you really live in both. You can enjoy the openness and fresh air of the side where trees don’t grow, and you can enjoy the companionship of other trees and animals and squirrels where the trees grow. The rock of course, doesn’t care, because he is a rock. All he needs is a piece of ground to anchor himself to.

Of course, there are other rocks, that aren’t fixed. They have a whole different set of circumstances. They can roll around, finding themselves sometimes on land, sometimes under water. The funny thing is that rocks that are stuck in the ground sometimes feel envious of the rocks that can roll around, and vice versa. The truth is that you can really enjoy who you are, regardless of your situation.

So one day the tree and the rock were talking. The tree seemed worried. Because he was an evergreen tree, he needed a fairly consistent source of water. The rock, of course, being a rock, didn’t really need that. However, he was kind, and because they were good friends, he would listen to his friend the tree when he had difficulties.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do!” said the tree. “It hasn’t rained in a long time!” The rock could understand the problem, as the trees hadn’t been looking to well lately. It seemed that there had been some kind of change recently, and the water hadn’t been flowing as much as it used to.

“What do you think I should do?” The tree asked.
“Hmm. Let me think about it, and I’ll get back to you.”

A few weeks went by, (of course without any rain) and the tree was getting more and more desperate.

“I think I have something,” The rock said one day.
“Maybe you should try something different?” The rock suggested.

“But I don’t know what to do. I’m only a tree,” he replied. Now the rock was very smart, because he was very old. The tree was only several hundred years old, but the rock had been born in the time of volcanoes, and so he had a lot of experience in these matters. He had watched many things come and go, and many different friends he had made over the years had died.

“All of my old friends, they died, because they all had the same excuse. The dinosaurs said they are only dinosaurs. And look what happened to them. You must be innovative. You must do something different. How else can you find a flow of life sustaining water?”

“But isn’t the rain the only way?”

“No, It is not. Look, over there,” the rock said. The tree wasn’t sure which way he was pointing, because the rock, being a rock, didn’t have any arms to point with. Finally, the trees saw. The lake. The pristine lake off just above the tree line, surrounded by nothing but rocks. Rocks that don’t need water.

“Can you grow your roots over towards that lake?” the rock suggested.

“I’ll try.”

Several weeks past. One by one, the other trees of the forest succumbed to the dryness. One day, the rock woke up, and noticed the tree looked a bit more greener than usual.

“You look like you are feeling better today, old friend!”

“Yes!” the tree happily replied.

“I finally got some water to the lake. Look at all that water! I can drink from the lake for hundreds of years without rain now!”

The rock smiled inwardly.

“You see, my friend? Because you were able to reach out for what you needed, instead of waiting for it to come to you, you have lived, while your friends have died. “

The tree smiled, and nodded his thanks.

Permalink

Share this:

It was just like when I was driving down the freeway. I had just bought a new Toyota. And I was amazed that there were so many Toyota’s around before. And so many just like my car. But then a car, just like mine, began to tailgate behind me. They were driving really close. I was getting nervous, but not too nervous. I kept driving, still amazed that there were so many cars just like mine. Maybe the person behind wanted to make friends because we had the same car. Maybe she wanted to exchange emails or something. I looked back and she had no license plates, which meant that she had purchased her car recently as well.

It’s weird the way that works. You do the same thing day after day, and you don’t really stop and notice what is around you. It’s easy to not realize that there is something wonderful right in front of you. Some wonderful opportunity. And once you see this opportunity, you can’t help but to imagine now, what wonderful things will happen when you take this opportunity. And opportunities can come in many shapes and sizes too. They can be something that you never would have expected before. All you have to do is relax, open your eyes, and appreciate what is right in front of you.

So I finally realized the car behind me was a friend that I worked with about five years ago. When I finally recognized her, we exchanged hand signals and pulled of the freeway. We went to a fabulous Indian restaurant and caught up on old times. That’s another strange thing. I’d driven down that street literally hundreds of times and wasn’t aware of that particular restaurant.

And as soon as I glanced over at my classmate, something about her shirt reminded me of the new method we learned to solve three dimensional integrals. After I realized that, the test was a snap. Because I did sit there with a frozen brain for a few moments, I didn’t finish the test, and only got an 82, but that is a lot better had I not distracted myself so I could look around and see what was there. Wonderful things happen when you do that.

Permalink

Share this:

Earlier in the day I had listened to a CD I bought several years ago. On the CD this guy was lecturing on the principle of synchronicity. Synchronicity is a concept made popular by the a contemporary of Sigmund Freud, Dr. Jung. He believed in some kind of superconscious, which has been described in several different kinds of areas of study, from religion to esoteric spirituality, to financial success. Basically the idea is that when you charge your brain with an intention, and “put it out there,” so to speak, the universe will respond. According to this theory, there is a kind of connection between people and things on some mystical level. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “what you want wants you,” or have had the experience of thinking of calling your friend, only to hear the phone ring as you turn to call them. I had the experience once where I picked up the phone to call my friend the moment he finished dialing my number. I picked it up before it had a chance to ring. I was expecting a dial tone, and didn’t hear one. He was expecting to hear the ring, and he didn’t hear it. So we both sat there for a minute going “huh?” before we realized what had happened.

I read a book called “Fooled by Randomness,” by Taleb, which basically said that all these synchronistic events are nothing more than random chance, and it’s our mistaken belief systems that delude us into thinking there is some magical connection between everything. While I don’t believe that our lives are nothing than a bunch of random pieces of matter clumped together wandering around, I’m not sure to what extent I believe in some superconscious brain that is connecting.  Whenever I develop a model for the world, I usually try to make it fit both basic scientific models and as esoteric as I can get away with.

So I was walking down this one covered shopping arcade, a big long covered street only open to pedestrians. I had walked down this street probably twenty times since I’ve moved here. The shop that I had written down was supposedly just south of this street, but I had no clue. I started thinking about another store I went to in another city I lived in to buy the same thing. Just as I was thinking about all the different colored rolls of material I was able to choose from, I looked immediately to my right, and there was a kimono store. Not just any kimono store, but the kind that had different rolls of material so you could make your own kimono’s. And cheap. One meter for between 2 and 5 dollars. So I bought a couple meters, it worked out pretty good (if you want you can go watch my youtube videos) so I’m sure I’ll be shopping there in the future. And while I was in there having a look around, a Spanish priest came in and said something to the owner, and then left. I’m not exactly sure how the Spanish priest fits into all this, but it seemed interesting. Perhaps foreshadowing for the future. Stay tuned.

Permalink

Share this:

It’s a fairly simple procedure that I’ve recently discovered, part by studying various improvement techniques, and part by accident. The accidental part came from a course I recently went through on how to set solid goals and how to easily  make them happen. One of the techniques in the course is to review your goals, review the things you’ve done recently to achieve them, and then map out the next baby steps to take in the direction of their completion.

Normally, before I go to bed, I waste time surfing the internet. When I say waste time, I mean I don’t spend time reading informative articles, or watching inspirational videos on YouTube. I usually read the news sites, and sometimes check into a few forums that I participate in. I’ve found that some forums, no matter how positive the discussion starts out, it can sometimes turn negative rather quickly. And on top of that, I find myself sometimes agreeing with the negativity. I’ve noticed that nights I spend reading and agreeing with negativity, I not only have a hard time falling asleep,but I usually wake up in a crappy mood.

Then one night recently, instead of reading those internet forums with the same arguments made by the same people, I decided to journal on my goals. I just started free noting about what I’d done that day towards my desired accomplishments. Little things that I’d done to push myself forward. If you haven’t free noted, it’s not a really difficult thing to do. It just means to type without worrying about grammar or spelling. Something happens when you convert thoughts into words that you can read while you write. It’s like the solidify the thoughts in the brain, and when you do if for a while, you learn to not censor yourself, so you pretty much write whatever’s on your mind.

That night that I free noted I went to sleep in a lot better mood, I slept better, and I woke up really happy the next morning. To make sure it wasn’t a fluke, I tried it on a couple nights. The big test was on a Sunday night, to see how it would effect me on Monday. Sure enough, it worked. The technique is simple.
Just take something that you are working towards. Any goal will do. Weight loss, cutting back on smoking, anything. Then just write down any little thing that you did that day that was in the direction of your goal. It will train your mind to appreciate the effort you are making to improve yourself, and you’ll naturally start seeing more opportunities everywhere. And it only takes five or ten minutes a night.

Permalink

Share this:

Are you rich? Do you have so much money you need to hire people to take care of it for you? Are you so incredibly charismatic that you attract the opposite sex as if you had hundred dollar bills falling out of your pockets? Do you eat bucket after bucket of ice cream and still manage to show off your six pack abs? Do you wish Larry King and Barbara Walters would just leave you alone for once and find somebody else to interview on TV?

Ok, me neither.

I am, however, going to give you three tips, so when you practice these on a regular basis, not only will they will slowly (but surely) transform your life into what you want to create, (rather than end up with,) but they will give you incredibly self esteem and confidence. One of the fantastic side effects of these techniques is that they will skyrocket your confidence and self esteem to levels unheard of in common people.

Ready? Lets go.

Step Number One: Set a Clear Goal.

Ok, you’ve heard this one a bazillion times before. But what does it really mean? If you don’t spend at least several hours journaling and thinking and rejournaling your goal, you aren’t putting in enough effort. And I don’t mean some small goal, like “I want to lose give pounds,” or “I want to get a 5% raise at work.” Dream big. Think big. Live big. Think of your dream career, or what your dream life would be, and describe it in as much detail as follows. What do you see?  What do you feel, What do you taste and smell? Describe in as much sensory detail as possible, and describe it in the present tense. Some examples:

I enjoy my career as a film editor, working from my spacious and paid for home and enjoying free time to spend with loved ones.
I enjoy my ideal weight of one hundred and forty pounds, and easily run a 10K in less than forty minutes, every weekend.
I enjoy a fantastic mutually supportive relationship based on trust, communication, and sexual and emotional intimacy.

Get the idea? Keep going through this until when you read your statement, you get “that” feeling that tells you that this is what you really want.

Step Number Two: Visualize Your Goal Every Morning

Sit somewhere quiet, and say your goal out loud, and while you do so, close your eyes and visualize everything that you described. Anything that must require your goal to already be achieved is what you want to see. And see as many different pictures as possible. Hear as many different sounds as possible, taste and feel as many tastes and feelings as possible. The more you see, feel, hear, taste, smell, the more powerful you will program your brain with this. Be sure to visualize pictures that require your goal being already true to exist. For the film editor, see yourself in your house, doing film editing stuff. Hear people telling you over the phone what a great job you did on that last project. See your name up in lights if that’s what you want. Do this every morning for at least five minutes per clearly stated goal.

Step Number Three: Feel Gratitude for the Steps You’ve Taken

Before bed every night, say your goal again. Scan your memory of that particular day, and feel gratitude FOR YOURSELF for taking any action you took day in the direction of your goal. If you haven’t done anything, feel gratitude that you meditated on your goal that morning. Even if you did something accidentally (that is if you still believe in accidents) that moved you toward your goal, give yourself thanks for that.  The key here is to feel genuine and honest gratitude FOR YOURSELF for every small thing you did. Do this every night for at least five minutes per clearly stated goal.

When you do these steps consistently you will notice that your life will magically change, as you do things that you used to not do, but now seem normal that are pushing and pulling you toward your dream life. And the cool thing is, the only work you really have to do is in step one, where you spend a few hours hammering out a really clearly defined goal. Once that is out of the way, it’s pretty much an exercise in putting your brain on auto pilot.

I would recommend only starting out with one big solid goal. Once you’ve got that ironed out, and you are spending your ten daily minutes (five at night and five in the morning) you can add more goals. I wouldn’t recommend having any more than five or six major goals at once, so be sure to spread them out over different areas of life. Money, Love, Work, Spirituality, Health. Once you’ve got a goal in each of these areas that you are meditating on twice a day, you’ll be amazed how much incredible purpose your life will take on. And others will notice as well.
Permalink

Share this:

Imagine what you felt like when you had a friend that brought something to you. They were happy and excited, and wanted to share a new toy or idea with you. How did that make you feel? If you are like most people. you were moved to excitement more by your friends enthusiasm than the actual toy or comic book he wanted to show you.

That’s one of great things that you naturally are skilled at. Being able to share an emotion with somebody and have them reflect that emotion back to you without any conscious thought. If you present and share that emotion congruently, they almost can’t help to reflect it back to you. This holds true for all emotions. Imagine a time when somebody shared a sad emotion with you. Did you feel sad as well, at a little bit? I’m not talking about those people that are always complaining, looking for fake sympathy from others. I’m talking about somebody who is suffering from real emotional pain. When you hear them describe their experience, you can’t help being moved as well.

That is one of the reasons we like movies and stories so much. There is nothing like a good tear jerker or inspirational drama to capture and lead your emotions around. This idea has been around for a long time. The Greeks realized this with their many plays, and their word for it, catharsis, is still used today to describe an emotional experience achieved by hearing or watching somebody else’s, usually through drama or sometimes music.

What emotions are you sharing with others, and what emotions are you picking up from others? Sadness? Happiness? Gratitude. When you keep in mind that others can reflect your own emotions back to you, a good idea is to reflect an appreciation. But not just your garden variety appreciation for the birds and the wind and the money in your pocket. That will get you a reflection for more appreciation for the birds and the wind and the money in your pocket, which is great, but what happens if you, as Emeril Lagasse says “kick it up a notch?”

What if you walk through life radiating a deep and honest appreciation for yourself? What if you could share a love for yourself like you shared that new toy when you were a kid? What if you had an honest gratitude for who you are, and ran around saying “Hey everybody, look at this! Isn’t this cool?” Just like everybody wanted to run over and play with your new toy, what if everybody came running today, and wanted to experience with the new you that you find so cool?

This is not a overfilled ego demanding attention. This is the expression of the deep, honest, appreciation that you will undoubtedly feel for yourself when you really examine the miracle that is you. You owe the world that much.

Permalink

Share this:

What is this quality that they possess? Perhaps more importantly, how can you not only develop this quality, but realize that you already have it? How can you tap this power to make your life a bold statement of the eternal gift that lives in all of us? What steps can you take to easily realize and appreciate this latent power?

First, let’s explore exactly what it is. The one thing that these leaders and kings have is a solid belief that they are the ultimate creators of their life. They are responsible for everything that they achieve, or don’t achieve. Perhaps due to some quirk of their upbringing, perhaps due to a strong conscious choice followed through by strong action, these men and women have decided at some point that their lives were completely up to them. They didn’t wait for permission. They didn’t wait for their parents or teachers to tell them it was ok. They didn’t hear a booming voice through parted clouds that gave them a detailed plan to follow to ensure their success.

No, these powerful men and women learned that everything they wanted, they would have to create. They were able to release the need for approval, guaranteed safety, or the generous opinions of others. They made a choice, and followed through. Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead.

How about you? What is holding you back? What are you afraid to release? Are you too concerned with the opinions of others? This can be a difficult thing to let go of.  A kind word from an authoritative figure an make you feel wonderful. A not so kind word can have the opposite effect. The secret to overcoming this is to view yourself as the ultimate authority on your life. You must give yourself the appreciation that you hope to receive from others. It can help to realize that no other person can fully know you as well as you know yourself. Any appreciation or kind opinions they express about your are really filtered through their own experiences and biases, so both good and bad can only have a limited amount of relevance.

When you learn to approve of yourself, your desires, your intentions, above all others, you will realize your power. You will be able to see the world as your playground, where you can enjoy life and create what you want at the same time. You will then learn the wonderful truth about reality that the quickest and easiest way to get what you want is to truly serve others. And not serve others in hopes of a quick, shallow, reciprocation. To truly serve others is to do so in secret, because it allows them to fully appreciate your gift, and it is a powerful message to yourself that you have all you need, and don’t need to rely on the opinions of others any more.

Permalink

Share this:

What you experienced was somebody with their charisma turned on. Charisma is the seemingly mystical energy that you can really see it or feel it or taste it, but when somebody is radiating it, you know it. It’s something that come’s across much more powerful in person than through only video or audio. Several psychologists suspect it’s a massive collection of micro movements, facial expressions, and voice tonality, even specific kinds of eye contact.

Others esoteric practices believe that it is a cumulative effect of progressive meditation to increase your particular chi energy. It can attract money, attraction from the opposite sex, even affinity from animals. These practices are generally centered around the concept of chakras. Beginning with the base chakra, you practice a successive set of meditations that will lead to something called Kundalini awakening, which can help you to realize your latent charisma.

What most people don’t realize, and what you are about to, is that you have all the charisma you need. You don’t need to develop it, you need only to unleash it. You need to uncover it from the fears you been piling on top of it. One of the great things about realizing how easy it is to release your charisma is how incredibly attractive to the opposite sex you find yourself becoming. Strangers come up to you, girls or guys, depending on your taste, will let their eyes linger on you longer than normal. Checkers at the supermarket will look for excuses to make skin to skin contact with you.

It’s not only about creating automatic desire for you from other people. You will start to notice that your thoughts are clearer, and you begin to think in different directions that you’re used to.  Should you not believe that you are capable of this, now, simply look back through your life to when you can find those times that show you those moments of realization that show you the truth.

And one of the really fantastic things that will happen as you accept this truth about yourself, is that you will never be able to go back to your old way of looking at things, when you used to think that life had to be a struggle, and you couldn’t naturally and easily achieve what you were after.

Be careful though. Before you fully accept this power that is your birthright, make sure you have enough space for the love, happiness, friends and appreciation that your life will automatically create.

Permalink

Share this:

While it is important to set clear goals and know what it is you want in life, it’s also important to detach from results at the same time. If that sounds a little bit too esoteric, let me explain. When I say detach from results, I mean be excessively needy. Think about somebody that you know is needy, or clingy. Are they a pleasure to be around? Do you enjoy their company? Have you ever been on a date with somebody, and their whole world seemed to depend on your approval, so much that they even became a little bit angry when you didn’t constantly tell them how much you cared for them? If you have, then you know what I’m talking about. 

The same goes true for money. Imagine you are the hiring manager. Somebody comes in for an interview. Instead of giving you their qualifications, they spend the whole interview telling you how much they really need the job. Their car is in danger of being repossessed, they are behind on their mortgage payments, their world is in shambles. Would you rather hire this person, or hire the other guy who has several other companies that are interested in hiring him?

While it is extremely helpful to cultivate a burning desire, if you focus that desire on one specific thing, it can lead to trouble, and will shun people and opportunities rather than attract them. The secret is to create a general burning desire, but with a sort of vague hole for the specific thing itself. Allow me to explain.

Let’s say you have a burning desire to start a business. You really want it. You visualize it every night. You meditate on it every morning. You think, live and breath business. You read business ideas. Then an opportunity comes along. If you shift all of your desire on to this particular opportunity too quickly, you will lose sight of your overall objective. You need to have a clear objective, so that you can measure each opportunity against your objective to see if it matches up. Instead of thinking “this is it! This is my dream!” it might be better to be thinking “Let’s see if this matches up, if not, I’ll move on.” It is essential to develop a belief that you will succeed no matter what, so that you can objectively evaluate each opportunity.

The same goes for creating a new relationship. If you have a fairly good idea of the kind of person you’d like to get together with, combined with a solid belief of being successful in the long run, you’ll be unstoppable. Instead of having the “I hope she’s the one” attitude that so many people unfortunately have, you can have the “Let’s see if she is the one” attitude, knowing full well that if she isn’t you can easily move on to somebody else.

The key is to have a burning desire for the condition that you want, be it a solid business, a healthy relationship, or anything else you’d like to create in your life. Then you combine that with a laid back, let’s see approach to each individual “candidate” for the position, and you will easily achieve what you want in life.

Permalink

Share this:

One of my friends that I used to go bike riding with used to have the same experience. We used to go riding up these really long and windy hills where I used to live. The kind of hills where when you look up, you think you can see the top, but you’re not sure. Then when you get to where you think the top is, you go around the bend just a little bit and BAM there is another hill waiting for you. Unless you’ve ridden those course several times, it’s really easy to forget where you are and hope that you have enough energy to keep on going, hoping you won’t pass out before you get to the top.

Which is cool because on top is this really big park, next to one of these new age churches. And there is this pastor at the church who sometimes sits in the park when he is not busy counseling people. The park has a fantastic view of the city. It’s amazing what you can see from a different perspective. Sometimes this pastor talks to us and tells us these crazy stories. Once he gave us a lecture about the meaning of life. He said when you are a child, and think in childish ways, you expect other people to give you things, to provide for you. He said that the true measure of an adult is someone who has decided to make the transition from being a receiver from others to become a giver to others. He said the middle part is what is difficult for most people, because it can sometimes take a few years to get through, if at all. Many people get stuck in the middle part, and never get out. It’s so confusing because you are a grown adult with a job and maybe a family, but you still have a little bit of “what’s in it for me” kind of mentality. He said the amazing thing about life is that when you fully release dependency, you will become aware of the abundance of resources that you can gather with your the energy you’ve freed up by becoming fully human. He said that is what St. Paul was talking about when he said that stuff about putting away childish things, and how love is really a verb rather than a feeling. The guy also had some other stories which I hope I can remember this later.

But the other good thing about this hill is on the other side, is a fantastic, long road that looks as though it was built for cyclists. Even though this park is about twenty miles from the nearest body of water, you can see the ocean. And the road kind of curves to the left as it goes down, and there are no intersections for about two miles. So all you have to do is wait at the top until all the cars go by, and you can pretty much ride down the middle of the big, wide road without worrying about cars. And the bottom is long and flat, so you have plenty of time to slow down. The fastest I ever went down that hill was just a fraction over fifty MPH. That was an incredibly exhilarating experience that I’ll always remember.

The funny thing is, once I get past the one hundred page mark, I usually can’t put a Ludlum book down to save my life. All the characters and the story just springs to life. It’s really weird that way. All those feelings of doubt and worry that I had before about wasting my time or whatever just seem to mysteriously vanish. Which is one of the reasons I love to read. Reading gives you a great perspective on things.

Permalink

Share this:

It’s not about intelligence, or the right background, or the right ethnicity. It’s not about whether you went to college or not. It doesn’t even matter if you’ve ever been successful before. This book will show you that the key is to pay attention to your feelings. When you learn how to manage your feelings correctly, you will begin to really change your life in so many positive ways that you will be completely amazed.

Feelings are incredibly powerful, but for some reason, most of  us are taught to ignore or suppress our feelings. Anger, fear, nervousness, desire. We are told early in life that it’s not ok to show anger. You shouldn’t ever let them see you sweat. You shouldn’t try to get things that you don’t deserve. Be a good little boy or girl, and good things will happen to you.

Unfortunately, or fortunately if your are beginning to smell a rat, that’s not how it works. Ignoring your feelings is the opposite of what you want to do. You want to embrace, accept, and appreciate your feelings. When you do this, you will really understand how easy it is to apply and benefit from the law of attraction.

Some have called Grabhorn’s’ work similar to Abraham Hicks. They are similar in some ways.  Lynn Grabhorn takes ancient ideas and expresses them in a way that you will not only logically understand how and why they work, but will easily be able to apply them in your life right away.

What is it that you want in life? Imagine one thing right now. What will it be like when you have it? What will you see? What will you hear? What will it look like? Most importantly, what will you feel like? This simple procedure may seem strange at first, because so many of us are uncomfortable tapping into our feelings like that. But the more you practice, the easier it gets. And Grabhorn’s book will show you the way to do it naturally and easily.

Can you imagine now, what it will be like when you apply the easy to understand and simple to apply principles in this book? Can you imagine yourself being able to join the thousands and thousands of others around the world who’ve made the decision to buy this book and begin to benefit now? It’s as easy as a feeling.

Permalink

Share this:

So what’s the point? It’s been said that when you begin to realize you can never really create something completely new unlike anything that has ever existed, it’s kind of comforting. It takes the pressure of. You can easily relax, because you know that building on previous accomplishments can give you a leg up. Many scientists admit they only have gotten where they are by standing on the shoulders of giants that came before them.

And this brings to light an interesting point about human nature. It can be comforting when you realize that all people have similar needs and desires. When you understand that most people really want the same thing underneath, it can make it easy to discover common ground when dealing with others. That is pretty much the basis of all contract negotiation. Discussing what both parties want, and figuring out to satisfy everybody. And in the end, more often than not, you may realize your needs, which you might have thought were far apart, are actually a lot more similar than expected.

On the flip side, of course, is the simple fact that everybody is different. Everybody has their own unique views and experience. You take several people and have them look at an abstract painting, and they all come up with a different interpretation, based on their own history, experience, and emotions. This can make meeting and getting to know new people one of the most wonderful experiences available. The more you expand yourself to seek and experience new ideas, the broader our perspectives grow to encompass things we never dreamed possible.

I was in a strange city once, talking to a friend over the phone. He was giving me directions on how to meet him the next day for lunch. They were fairly complex instructions, involving navigating a strange subway system, going in and out of multiple exits. The fact that all the signs were written in Japanese (a language I didn’t speak at the time) didn’t help. He ended the conversation by saying something surprising. He told me that because there were several subway lines and exits and landmarks to recognize and navigate, it was likely that I’d become lost and confused. He said “And that’s really awesome, because you can realize the opportunity, AND the excuse to talk to and get to know many people along the way.” Before then, I’d never thought that getting lost could be considered an opportunity.

It’s our differences, and out unique perspectives on the same things that everybody shares that gives us such a wonderful opportunity to experience life in new and exciting ways, even if we do the same things and see the same people every day.

How many ways can you find ways to experience something or someone new, today?

Permalink

Share this:

Other, more lofty goals, may require a different tact. These might be better left secret. There is an ancient law of magic that goes as follows:

To Know

To Will

To Dare

To Be Silent

Let’s break them down, shall we?

To Know.

Sounds simple enough. You want to do something. It helps if you know what you are doing. Skills. Techniques. Where to get resources. Many places can help you in this regard. Library. Friends. Mentors. Websites. Humans are by nature, very curious creatures, so finding information can be the easiest part of creating a reality that you desire.

To Will

This is where the fun begins. You have a vague idea of what you want. Happiness, wealth, sexual and emotional intimacy. To will you need to create a plan and make a decision to bring it into being. This is different from a wish, or a hope,  or a longing. This is a strong decision to create what you want, by hook or by crook. Or as the character in Apollo Thirteen put it so succinctly, you must decide that “Failure is Not an Option!”

To Dare

This is the scary part. You’ve decided you want to create a relationship. You’ve studied material on how to be socially adept, how to flirt, how to ask the right questions. You’ve made the decision to make this happen. Now there he or she is. You must walk over and introduce yourself. What separates the Bill Gates and the Tiger Woods and the Oprah Winfreys from the rest of the wanna be hacks is your ability to try and try and try again and again until you get it right. To be able to take action, over and over again, until there world is exactly how you want it. When you realize that life affords you as many chances as you are willing to take, this can be easier. The opportunity of a lifetime comes along just as often as you are prepared to take it.

To Be Silent.

This is where the metaphysical cool stuff starts. Some say that by keeping your goal silent, you build up psychic energy that will increase the your will and your ability to take action over and over again. Some say that you shouldn’t tell others about important goals, because they might give you reasons that you hadn’t thought of as to why you can’t achieve it. Sometimes this can be a blessing. When I was in high school I had decided to run a marathon. I told my best friend, and he told me, with as much good intentions as possible, that he didn’t think I could finish, and I might injure myself. I took this as a challenge, and allowed his disbelief in my ability to spur me on to finish. And hobble around in pain for a few weeks, but that’s another story. 

This is a rare case. Many times when you share your goal with somebody, unless you are a hundred percent decided that you will succeed, even the best intentions can derail you.  Another theory is that if you have a huge goal, even support can derail you. It works like this. Say you want to start your own company. You have this fantastic image in your mind with yourself being successful, with people giving you all kinds of props because of your great business. You use this visualization to pull you through rough patches of doubt. If you tell others, and they believe you and support you, their support and well wishes might take away the attractive pull of your visualization. If people in the present are giving you props for your dreams, the props you imagine receiving in the future might have less effect, and give you less incentive in those times of doubt.

So it boils down to the type of goal you want. If you want to lose weight, or give up a habit, it can help to enlist the support of others. If you want to create something fantastic in your life, be careful who you tell. Perhaps it’s better not to tell anybody until after you’ve already achieved success. If you are lucky enough to have a special relationship with somebody that will support you as much as you support yourself, teamwork can be a great asset. 

Otherwise, be silent. An powerful goal, unspoken to others, can grow to enormous proportions, giving you more power than you’ve ever dreamed. And you may be surprised how being able to tap this power will automatically give you an incredible mastery over reality unknown to most, and envied by many.

Permalink

Share this: