The other day I was talking to a friend of mine from high school about this problem that she’s been having with her next-door neighbor and her daughter. She thinks that because they are not as quiet as they used to be, then that means that something has happened, and she is taking it personally.

I remember reading something about that, when somebody has certain issues, and there is some kind of unfavorable change in the environment, people can sometimes take it personally, and assume it was something they did, or worse, assume it is another example of them always getting the short end of the stick.

Like once I had this friend, and we were waiting in line to get our food at this fast food place. She had number seventeen, and they called numbers fifteen, sixteen, and then eighteen. She looked discouragingly at her number and mumbled something about things like this always happening to her.

Of course, if you were to do an engineering analysis of the restaurant, the restaurant staff, and the time and resources required to produce each order, and then compared that to orders number fifteen through eighteen, you very well may draw the conclusion that order number seventeen was the most labor and resource intensive (e.g. double bacon cheeseburger, extra pickles with well done fries, no salt). It would then be completely logical (especially if you were waiting in line with Mr. Spock) to expect order number seventeen to take longer than the rest.

This extremely common situation is made worse by the idea that people have about what the world “should” be like. Restaurants “should” always give out the food in the order that it was ordered.

Then you open up a whole can of worms from the restaurants perspective. Should they always give out the order numbers sequentially, no matter how long each individual order takes? What about somebody like my friend who ordered a pretty specific order, and somebody right after her that ordered something simple, like a cheeseburger and fries combo? Do you hold up the line in order to make sure your orders are in order in order to not offend those orders behind her? Or do you try the best you can, and take a broader approach, and work as efficiently and quickly as you can in order to please as many customers as possible?

Sometimes when I’m at the supermarket, and there is a bunch of people waiting in line, and the next checker over opens up. Sometimes he or she will shout out “I can help whoever is next,” which of course leads to a brief period of social anarchy of biblical proportions, where the first will become last and the last will become first. Especially if the last isn’t shy about throwing some elbows in order to secure a first in line position in the newly opened check stand.

Then there are other, (usually older) more experienced checkers who make an effort to actually walk over to the next person in line, and single them out to be first in the next line. This usually results in a much more calm transition, as people are prone to accept the new checker’s authority on the situation, and follow suit. It’s not uncommon to see strangers checking with each other to see who is going to go over to the next checker, and who is going to stay in the current line.

I’ve never worked at a supermarket, and I don’t know if they have a policy for how to handle such a situation, but it just seems that for everybody involved, ensuring an orderly transition from one long line to two shorter ones is much better than eliciting some social anarchy.

I remember reading a study done a number of years ago regarding line psychology. People were presented with two options, at a hypothetical fast food restaurant. Option one is you walk into the place, and choose between four open registers. Whatever line you choose, you’ve got to stick with it no matter how slow it moves. (Of course, Murphy’s Law dictates that no matter which line you choose, it will be the slowest.)

Option two is one gigantic queue, where you line up like for an amusement park ride, or at the bank. Then whoever is next, can just say “next!” and since there is only one line, whoever is next, is next. This seems to be the most preferred by businesses, as it takes away the problem of dealing with line jumpers and how to handle the situation of a newly opened register.

But it is least favored among customers, as it completely takes away any choice they may have when they walk into the place. It gives the impression of being herded like cattle, something people don’t particularly enjoy on their lunch break. It also makes it seem that you will be waiting longer, despite numerous studies that show you actually will have less of a wait in a general queue than when you have to choose your own line.

Push may come to shove when you are forced to decide which is important, personal choice and freedom, or efficiency, even if the efficiency is customer oriented, as it gets them in and out quicker.

Often times, we prefer the illusion of choice even when, in the long run, having a choice means waiting longer, despite the length of the wait being the number one criterion for making the choice in the first place.

Quite a paradox, that.

(Advertisement)

To learn some cool tricks to sneak into the secret world of money and love, click the link below:

Success with NLP

Share this:

Once there was a group of kids that had been sent on a mission. They were not to come back unless their mission was successfully accomplished. To do so you not only mean obvious failure, but also would indicate their lack of ability to take on further missions. They had been charged by the elders of their tribe, and had been on the road for some time. After they had set out, it had been quite for a while. None dared to speak, lest they violate the silent tension that clung relentlessly about the group.

At first the silent tension was troublesome. It gave rise to thoughts and anxieties of failure and rejection. But then the tension became accepted, then comfortable, and finally like an unseen security blanket that bound the group together. They would all fail or succeed together. To speak would snap the tension, and likely destroy any chance of success. Or so they thought.

Pain is an interesting thing. Biologists tell us the body evolved an inability to grow resistant to pain, as to do so would certainly not lead to reproductive success. Any creature from any species that had the ability to grow accustomed to pain may become injured, and not take reconstructive efforts. A bleeding animal wouldn’t lick it’s wounds and give it self the anti-bacterial effects of it’s own saliva. It would slowly remove itself from its own gene pool, and after only a few generations, any individual within the group with this “ability” would be extremely rare.

Other sensory input, on the other hand, that doesn’t require immediate attention can easily be temporarily ignored. Hunger, thirst, smell, slight discomfort due to outside ranges in temperature.

But emotional pain is a completely different ballgame. Neuroscientists are only just beginning to understand the role that emotions play in everyday human life. And even then the input they have is still a mystery. From a scientific perspective, emotions are nearly impossible to measure. You can’t very well hook somebody up to an emote-o-meter (unless you are a scientologist) and see what effects the different emotions have on physiological and biological functions of the mind/body/nervous system.

Until very recently, most scientists believed that emotions played on part in decision-making. Emotions were viewed from the Vulcan standpoint of getting in the way of logical thinking. It was believed that without emotions, we could always make the best choices, and never make mistakes.

Then a couple of surgeons had the opportunity to test this theory out during a particularly interesting brain surgery. The portion of the patient’s brain that was thought responsible for emotional feelings was temporarily “disconnected,” and since brain surgeries can be performed with an awake patient, they figured they ask him a couple difficult questions (like the kind you find in a high school ethics book). They were stunned to find out that he couldn’t even make the most basic decisions without the input of his emotions.

If you break everything down into either a pain or pleasure emotional response, and assume those are the drivers behind every decision, it makes sense. Your brain has this amazing capability of imagining several future outcomes of every single decision, usually unconscious, and checking to see what would produce the most pleasure, and the least amount of pain.

Luckily, through millions of years of evolution, things that keep us alive and safe, as well as propagate the species generally give us the most pleasure. Like good food, good sex, and a nice safe place to sleep at night. Things that put us in danger tend to give us emotional pain, like high places, loud noises, and tigers.

It can get complicated when our rational minds know that one particular choice is a good one, but it goes against our hard-wired programming from millions of years of evolution. No matter how scientifically sure you are that it’s probably not a good idea to have one more bowl of ice cream, it can be near impossible to squash your desire through willpower alone.

Of course, if you successfully avoid the ice cream enough times, you’ll build up a resistance to that evolutionary drive to continually eat whenever there’s food available. And pretty soon you’ll get used to expending emotional energy to suppress your million years old biological urge. So much so that when you do have an occasional bowl of ice cream, the “guilt” associated with it, which is really a temporary release of that emotional discomfort that you’ve grown accustomed to, is enough to mess up your pleasure of eating.

Of course, if you are trying to lose weight, this isn’t so bad. For many, to lose their craving and taste for something rich and calorie dense like ice cream would come as a blessing.

But what about more complicated things? What if you make a decision, one that requires some conscious willpower and faith in the face of unconscious resistance, but you aren’t nearly as scientifically sure as you were when you avoided the ice cream? When you put up with the emotional discomfort long enough, it’s easy to start to question your decision that you made earlier; no matter how sure you were when you made it.

It can be extremely helpful to set up some good anchors and targets to stay focused on, if you expect those tough times to come. Figure out exactly why you are embarking on your mission, and what the specific pay off will be when you get there. So when you do come across those rough patches, you’ll have something to focus on to pull you through. If you make a decision that isn’t really in your best interests, either because it’s not really your goal to begin with, or you aren’t sure what outcome you’re after, it’s extremely difficult to stay on track.

Make sure you take enough time to build your target, and make it as compelling as possible before starting on your operation.

When the group boys finally returned after a successful mission, they were given generous accolades from their tribe. They hadn’t known it, but this was a ritual performed on young boys to ease them into manhood. This had been passed down for generations immemorial, and in previous generations had been used to prepare young boys for the life and death struggle of the daily hunt. In recent times however, the ritual had gradually taken on a symbolic meaning, as the tribe had slowly evolved into a successful agricultural community, and hadn’t needed to hunt animals for many years. Nevertheless, they found it useful to send the boys on a quest, to give them a taste of setting their sights on something far off in the distance, going after it, getting it, and bringing it home.

To make your own life the most successful mission possible, click below:

Success with NLP

Share this:

I remember when I was a kid I played little league basketball. I pretty much sucked at it, which is why I only played once. We played on these courts with short baskets, or low baskets. I think maybe they were eight feet, but I’m not sure. I’m much better at playing horse. One of my problems was that I was too easy to fake out. Some guy would come dribbling down the court, and fake left, and I could immediately commit, and put all my weight on my right foot as I shifted to where I thought he was going.

After his quick fake left (my right) he would then go right, opposite to where I had committed my body weight, easily going around me. I would be left standing there, looking foolish. No matter how good an offensive player, a defender never looks good getting faked out like that.

Much later I remember playing a game of flag football, as an adult. It wasn’t a big game, just a bunch of weekend warriors out to have a good time. I think we had a case of beer on the game or something. I was on defense, on the line. We were playing some kind of zone defense in front, and man to man in back, I think. I’m not sure how to describe it in football technical terms.

I think I was supposed to count two alligators or something, and then rush in to the QB and try to grab his flags. But on this particular play, something felt odd. For some reason, and to this day I have no idea why, I didn’t rush in. I was about to step in but something stopped me. The offense pulled this double reverse, and the guy who ended up with the ball came running right at me. Had I rushed in like I was supposed to, I would have gotten faked out, and he would have made quite a substantial gain. But when he did come running at me, I was still dazed, trying to figure out why I was still standing there. I grabbed his flag, and they ended up losing a yard or two.

After the play, a teammate come up and congratulated me.
“You read that pretty good!” He said, clapping me on the back.

I had no idea what he was talking about. Read what? Read how? Later that night, it finally hit me what he was talking about. It was if I was some kind of experienced lineman, and could instinctively read the intentions of the offense, and react accordingly. But football is another sport I only played once or twice as a kid. I had no idea what was going on. So why did I just stand there?

I remember reading some article on some website regarding commitment in relationships. It was written by a guy, and he was saying that men are actually more prone to commit than women. I think maybe his girlfriend just dumped him, so perhaps he was a bit biased. Obviously, if you are a guy, and you are after a girl, and you are into her much more than she is into you, it’s easy to see that you could think that guys commit more readily than girls.

Likewise, if you are a girl, and you are into a guy much more than he is into you, it could be easy to convince yourself that guys just can’t commit.

The harsh truth may be that guys, and girls are both perfectly capable of commitment, just not to you (whoever you are), at least right now.

But what is commitment? What is it really?

When you go to the grocery store, and you want to buy one apple, (say you only have a dollar) you have to choose on above all the rest. So when you choose one, you are at the same time forever saying no to all the rest. If you are really really hungry, then it wouldn’t really matter that much. You’d grab any old apple that wasn’t bruised up and didn’t appear to be half eaten by worms.

But if you were using the apple in a special recipe, later that night say, you’d be much more picky. You wouldn’t be overwhelmed by hunger and in a hurry to choose. You’d take your time, and find the best one out of all of them. You’d likely pick up a few, inspect them, and then put them back. (In case you’re a fan of Murphy’s Law, when you go to the store to buy one apple, it will always be the one on the bottom).

Whenever you commit to one thing, you are saying “no” to everything else. It’s kind of hard to say “no” to something unless you know what you are saying “no” to.

I remember once I was at traffic school. One of those places you have to go to in order to avoid an increase in insurance. The teacher was an ex cop, and was telling us stories about pulling people over. He said once he flashed his sirens, and one guy pulled over. When he walked up to the guy’s window, he asked the cop why he chose him. There were plenty of other people speeding, so why did he have to choose him.

“I just flashed my lights, and you were the only one that stopped.” Was the cop’s response. Kind of funny, but that is most people’s strategy for making decisions. Make a little bit of an effort, usually the minimum amount required, and they take whatever comes to them.

Guy walks into a bar (what is this, a joke?) and he falls in love with the first girl that smiles at him. Girl graduates from college, sends out twenty résumés, and takes the first job offer she gets.

What’s you’re strategy? Do you take the first offer that comes? Or do you wait, and take your time to decide? Turning down an offer, any offer that seems decent can be extremely difficult. I’ve taken jobs before, because they were the only one I thought I could get at the time. Then later when people asked me why I chose that job, it felt embarrassing to say, “It was the only choice I had.”

If we could look into the future, and see all the opportunities that come our way on a daily basis, maybe we won’t be so prone to commit to soon, and get faked out like I did on the basketball court. Maybe it’s best to just trust our guts, hang back and see what develops.

(Advertisement)

To develop the skills to propel you success in any area of life, click on the link below:

Success with NLP

Share this:

Once, many many years ago, I took a road trip with a bunch of friends from college. Not really friends, although we referred to each other as friends at the time. More like contextual friends. Dorm friends. As soon as we moved out of he dormitory (at my particular school, they only let you stay in the dorms one or two years) we kind of drifted apart.

Groups are kind of funny like that. They can form for a specific purpose, and so long as that purpose exists, everybody can get along great, hang out during off times (off times from whatever the group was formed for), and even meet up with each other’s families on occasion. But once the purpose for the group goes away, so does the group.

I saw this once in action when I got a book signed by a famous author of a cooking show on TV. In order to get his signature, you had to wait in this long line, twice. Once in the morning to get your particular number, and then later in the afternoon, when you came back to get in line based on your number.

So the people you stood in line in the morning were the same people you stood in line in the evening. And both times the waiting was quite lengthy, giving everybody ample time to start conversations beyond mere politeness. And having everybody leave and then come back in the afternoon was another factor that added to the feeling of “closeness.”

The people I was standing next to in line had formed this small “group” of about six or eight people. In the two hours or so we spent together, we became like best friends. Exchanged emails, showed each other family pictures, the whole deal. But as soon as the purpose for our group vanished, (we got our books signed) the closeness and feelings of camaraderie vanished as well. Boom. See ya.

That was kind of like the group I went on this road trip with. The purpose for our group lasted much longer, two full semesters, but it vanished just as quickly as the book-signing group once the reason for the group’s existence.

But while we hung out together, it was fun. We shared common enough interests (music, alcohol, girls) and disinterests (school, studying) that it was enough.

So it seemed like a great idea to take a road trip when there was a holiday on a Monday, giving us three days to goof off. One of the guys had recently bought this big van, and we talked him into driving somewhere. We didn’t know where, only that we wanted to go on road trip.

Since we were all pretty broke, we figured we’d have to sleep on the ground, instead of staying indoors, so our only requirement was that we would end up at some open place or campground where we wouldn’t get into too much trouble with our music other loud noise. The problem was that none of us were quite sure where that was.

We knew that in three out of the four possible directions we could go in would lead us to pretty large areas with no houses, but beyond that we didn’t have a clue. So we started driving, not knowing where we were going. Only that we had three days to kill before we got there and back, wherever there turned out to be.

One of the guys was majoring in Jazz, and he was telling us about this period in Jazz history where it was all the rage to play completely extemporaneous music. No notes, no predetermined set of beats or melody (I’m not sure if that is even the right terminology). Just four or five guys playing whatever they felt like playing. Sometimes it would coalesce into something that sounded pretty cool, but most of the time it would sound like utter nonsense, according to this guy.

He said that period in Jazz didn’t last long, as least they didn’t produce a lot of records, because nobody bought them. A few people that were really into the scene thought it was cool, but he explained that it never caught on big enough for that to be any musician’s main playing style.

He did bring a tape for us to listen to, and I have to agree it sounded pretty awful. Not really awful, but like completely nonsensical. Nothing you listen to music for, to relax, to be inspired, to pump up your emotions, would be satisfied by listening to a bunch of guys completely out of sync. It sounded like that brief second or two they sometimes leave on the record when an orchestra is warming up, just before the conductor takes over and leads everyone to play some masterpiece together.

It’s kind of cool, as it adds a sense of so many different people with so many different instruments out there, that suddenly come together and play as one entity. But a whole album of that stuff? No thanks.

We found out that without a specific destination, the novelty quickly wore off. Pretty soon finding a destination became our destination. Our requirements became less and less restricted, and any place that was flat. At first we wanted a place with a nice fire ring, so we could have a fire, but as it got later and later, we just wanted to get out of this guys van. It was one of those vans that didn’t have any chairs or windows in the back, so we were all sitting on the floor.

Pretty soon we just pulled off to the side of the road, sat on the ground, drank our alcohol, and fell asleep.

When they say that the road is better than the inn, I think it’s a given you have to have a pretty decent inn that you are going to. Otherwise the road can be a pretty boring and pointless journey.

The funny thing is, is that you really never even have to get to the inn. So long as you have a solid idea of where you’re going, that’s good enough. But without a known destination, it can get pretty boring, pretty quickly.

(Advertisement)

To set the course of your own life and virtually guarantee your success, click the link below to get started:

Success with NLP

Share this:

That’s what she wanted. She had been waiting for me for almost two hours, when I came wandering up. Where was I? Why didn’t I call? How could I do this to her, didn’t I know that she felt like a fool standing there all alone like that for so long? What must people think about her?

Calm down, I told her. We’ll get to the bottom of this. I showed her the text she’d sent me last night, and showed her my watch. Not an “in your face” kind of thing, but a gentle “here’s is the evidence that you may be incorrect” kind of thing.

Maybe that wasn’t the right course of action. Now she was angry that I was late, had been stewing about it for two hours, and just found out that it was he fault. Still needing somebody to blame, she tried to ask me why I didn’t call to confirm, to send a text back reminding her of the time.

Seeing as how I was totally innocent, it took a lot of willpower not to throw some snappy zingers in her face. I waited until she was finished.

“Well, it’s three O’clock, and we’re here. What do you want to do?” I asked, more than half hoping she’d stomp off in anger. This didn’t have the makings of a pleasant afternoon together.

“Whatever. I don’t care.” She said coolly. I had learned a long time ago, (albeit through several slow and painful lessons) that hoping somebody would change their attitude by telling you didn’t like it was useless at best.

I figured I’d give her one more shot, and a chance to save some face.

“Well, the movie starts in thirty minutes. Should I buy one ticket, or two?” I asked as calmly as possible, keeping myself completely open for either answer.

I was reading this book once that was talking about emotions. The guy was saying that humans have this strange way of thinking. We have thoughts, and then thoughts about those thoughts. And thoughts about those thoughts. And every step of the way, we have an emotional reaction to the thoughts.

They used to think that emotions get in the way of thinking, and decision-making. That emotions are completely separate from logic. It used to be generally accepted that if you were more like Spock, you’d be able to make much better choices and decisions, and wouldn’t be swayed by powerful emotions like anger, embarrassment, guilt, or lust.

By some brain surgeons decided to do an experiment. They were doing surgery on this guy. They were removing a tumor, and in order to get to it, they had to cut through several areas of his brain they thought were responsible for emotional thinking. This was only a temporary part of the surgery. They figured as long as they were in there tinkering around, they would test this logic-emotional theory.

Since brain surgery only requires general anesthetic (there aren’t any pain sensors in the brain) the guy could be awake, and responsive to questions. They figured they’d ask him some logic-based questions, starting with easy ones, and then getting to more and more complicated ones. Ones that most people have a hard time answering because of their moral and ethical considerations, like if you are in a boat and you only have on life preserver, who do you save, the President (who is opposite of your political party) or your favorite pet (or some other emotionally convoluted question).

These doctors had theorized that since this guy’s emotional circuitry would be temporarily disconnected, he’d be like Spock, and spit out purely logical answers.
But what they found was the opposite. Without emotional input, he couldn’t even make the most basic decisions. Without the emotional juice fueling the options, they seemed to him like a question of preference between a banana, and six. Later he said he couldn’t even begin to know how to answer the questions given him.

This, of course, sent neuroscientists into a tizzy, as it gave some great insight into the human decision making process. Of course, this was only one single case, and they can’t very well go off messing with peoples heads and disconnecting their emotions just to see what would happen.

But it does make sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Humans evolved to make decisions for a reason, not to pass the time through idle philosophical discussions. Pain or pleasure, safety or danger, simplicity or complexity, these are all emotionally fueled ideas that power all of our decisions.

But according to that book I mentioned before (Mind Lines by Dr. Hall) we get into trouble when our emotions are based on judgments not on reality, but on our interpretation of reality. Someone cuts you off in traffic, and you make a judgment about that. You assume they are a jerk. Then you have a reaction to your judgment of them being jerk. Then you feel a certain way about that. Within a few seconds, you get angry at feeling guilty for being judgmental about some guy you assumed was a jerk that cut you off in traffic.

So when she had been standing there for two hours, getting angrier and angrier at me for being late, it didn’t matter one bit to her that it was her mistake. Of course, when I posed my question to her, it invoked the power of commitment and consistency. (See Cialdini, Influence, Science and Practice). She’d been waiting for two hours, she wasn’t likely to just up and leave five minutes after I finally showed up. (Finally according to her frame.)

I suppose the moral of the story is that whenever you come up to someone that has been building layer upon layer of emotions, it may be a good idea to simply give them an either/or option, take a step back and see what happens.

At the very least, it can be fun to watch.

To find out other secrets of the mind to easily maximize your success, click on the link below:

Success with NLP

Share this:

It’s funny the way things work out sometimes. There are all kinds of stories about how some character spends their whole life running away from something only to find it was what they needed all along. They just needed to see it in a fresh light. Or the familiar story of somebody running away from something, where that thing turns out to be their destiny. They weren’t able to face it unless they went through whole journey to escape, which in reality was a journey to give them the experience of understanding what it truly was.

There’s that familiar one about the guy form Egypt who sees a fortuneteller, who tells him me will meet death in exactly on week. So the guy jumps on the next ship to the furthest possible port away from Egypt. Exactly one week later he is wandering through a marketplace, completely confused but happy. Confuse because he has no local currency and can’t understand the local language at all. Happy because he has escaped death. Then he turns the corner, and is shaken out of his daydreams by death himself. Death stares at him in disbelief. The guy finally decides to confront death, and ask him why he is so confused. Death responds that he is surprised to see him, because he has an appointment with him in Egypt in one hour. But unforeseen events took him to this faraway land. He is glad he ran into him, and promptly takes him on the spot.

I was reading this interesting book on biology the other day. (The Meme Machine, by Susan Blackmore) .Not really biology, it was all about meme’s and how meme’s spread. The particular chapter, however, was talking about recent discoveries in brain chemistry and activity. They have figured out a way to light up different areas of the brain, to see which areas are active during which thinking processes. In many cases, people make choices before we are consciously aware of them.

They’ll hook somebody up to one of these machines, and tell them to press a button when they see a ping-pong ball coming at them. They have identified the area of the brain that “lights up” when we are consciously aware of things going on around us. At least consciously aware of people throwing ping pong balls at us. They have also identified the brain areas that light up when our automatic muscles respond to the approaching ping-pong ball. Certain bits of adrenalin is sent to certain muscles that would move in case the ping pong ball needed to be deflected. They’ve tried it with several different angles, and from a biomechanical analysis, can determine before hand, which muscles would be primed with energy for motion, and sure enough, these are the muscles that primed by the brain when the ping-pong ball is thrown.

The interesting thing is that our conscious minds are the last to find out what is going on. The ping-pong ball gets thrown, our reality detection system (eyes, ears, etc) register the ping-pong ball as coming, and the brain automatically primes our muscles to respond. Only after our mind/body system has been prepared for the “intruder” into our personal space, is our consciousness pulled into the loop. Only then do we start to give meaning to events. After the fact.

They’ve even done more complicated studies, where it’s not a simple ping-pong ball. Where there is a range of choices to make, based on the physical incident. And many times, our conscious minds don’t get to take part in the decision making process. Our conscious minds are only made aware of the fact after the quick decision has been made, and then we come up with a bunch of stories and rationalizations about what is going on.

The purpose of this particular chapter was to question the whole idea of choice, and free will. Every choice we make is based on choices we made before, and those are based on choices we made before that. If at the most fundamental level, our conscious minds are only made aware of certain events after the fact, how in the world are we to believe that we are cruising through life as conscious, sentient beings making rational choices about how to live our lives?

It’s like our conscious brains are the captains of gigantic ocean liners whose course has been set long ago by unknown agents, and we find ourselves at the wheel, and delude ourselves into thinking we are actually steering the boat.

There is a fairly popular idea among Christians to “Let go, Let God.” Meaning that the good Lord knows what He’s doing, and when we try and force the issue, we just make it more complicated. When we simply “Let go,” and let God chart our course, life will be much easier, or at least we will fulfill God’s plan with much less resistance.

This works great if you are a devout Christian, but what about the Atheists among us? What happens if you take that same argument, to “Let Go,” who is doing the steering then? Is our mind/body system really smart enough, knowledgeable enough, and experienced enough to get us to where we want to go, assuming we really know where we’re going?

There’s the analogy that we really do steer the ship, it’s just that it takes a long time to change course. And when you do set your course, you’d better make certain that it’s really where you want to go. If you are trying to steer a giant ship around the ocean willy nilly, you’ll only frustrate yourself, and make the passengers sea sick.

One of the things that can happen when growing up in modern society is our course gets pretty much set for us, and it can be terribly hard to change it halfway through. It seems like a good enough idea to go through school, get a decent degree, get a job, find a mate and start a family. Those of you that have made drastic career changes halfway through adulthood know that it can be met with resistance by those around you, and even by yourself. Many are essentially dissuaded from making drastic changes, some for better, some for worse.

But if you are heading for a crash, I think it is better to change course much sooner than later. I’m pretty sure the captain of the Titanic wish he would have seen those icebergs much sooner than they did.

The beauty of having a mind/body system that works so well on auto pilot, once you choose a decent course, and make sure it’s the right path, you just have to input the coordinates, figure out the actions, and get to work. Everything after that is automatic. Just keep plugging away, knowing that you’ll get there eventually. So long as you double-check every once in a while to make sure you’re heading in the right direction, you can be fairly certain you’ll arrive.

To choose your own goals and pursue them with relentless determination, click below:

Success with NLP

Share this:

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine over a cup of coffee. We had met while we were out shopping, not really met, more like bumped into each other. We both had a few minutes to spare, and there happened to be a coffee shop nearby, and so we decided to have a cup of joe and a chat.

We started talking about mistakes, and big mistakes that we’ve made in our lives. I don’t know how we got on that subject; I think she was concerned with her current relationship, that it may not be the right one for her. She is getting close to 30, and some girls feel some pressure, both internal and external to find somebody serious by then. I think she is wondering if she chose him because he was “Mr. Right Now,” instead of “Mr. Right.” I didn’t really want to get into some prolonged discussion about her boyfriend, but since she was veiling her conversation about him through general life mistakes, I was game.

Sometimes you can solve problems by addressing them structurally rather than specifically. If you get too involved in the particulars of a problem, you can lose the forest for the trees. That’s how therapeutic metaphors work. You hear some story that has the same structure to your problem, and by vicariously going through the metaphor, you can figure out a solution to your problem, oftentimes unconsciously.

That’s how Milton Erickson was able to heal people. He was a therapist that invented a strange kind of conversational hypnosis. People would come in and give him their problem, like bed-wetting or fear of elevators. He would them tell them a story that was completely different in content, but similar in structure, that had a happy ending. The people would leave, and discover a couple weeks later that their problem had been solved.

For example, if somebody was afraid of elevators, the traditional approach would be to talk about elevators, how they became scared of elevators, or to try and convince them of how safe they were using statistics. But a metaphorical approach would ignore elevators altogether, and focus on somebody who was afraid of doing something, and then by changing his focus on the positive outcome, rather than the thing he feared, he was able to overcome his fear. And after he overcame his fear of whatever it was, he realized how insignificant his fear really was.

Which is kind of what I suspect my friend was getting at. She wanted to discuss the possibility that she was making a mistake with her current boyfriend, without actually talking about her relationship. Talking about mistakes in general, I got the impression she was trying to find out if there was a general way to tell going into a potentially troublesome situation if you stick it out, and hope everything works out, or eject as soon as possible.

Sometimes you don’t need to make that decision, as certain actions are short lived. If you are playing on a particular golf course for the first time, and you choose a pitching wedge instead of an eight iron, you might come up short. You could consider this to be a mistake, but it is one you can learn from and do better next time. If you ever play this course again, and have the same lie, you’ll know to use your eight iron.

Those that study learning and brain development suspect this is how all learning takes places anyways. We make all kinds of small mistakes, and automatically correct them as we go along. A baby’s way to learn how to speak is to move their tongues around and make a bunch of random sounds until they figure out which ones get the right responses. Same with walking and learning all other motor skills.

However, some choices have much more impact than choosing a club. Like choosing a job or a marriage partner can have horrible results if you don’t choose wisely. And since most of us don’t get married a bunch of times or go through ten or twenty jobs in our lives, it can be tough to “learn” how to get married or choose the right career the same we “learn” how to walk or talk or approach the green.

The question is, and this is what I think my friend was getting at, is how do you know if your intuition is telling you that you’re making a bad decision, and how do you know when you are just nervous? If it were easy, nobody would ever get divorced or find themselves in a job they hate. But many people get divorced, or are stuck in terrible jobs or terrible relationships.

So the topic of the conversation was mistakes we’d made, and how we knew they were mistakes, and how we rectified the situation. One thing I learned, or one concept I was exposed to, was to future pace. If you are in a situation, and you think it may be a mistake, project yourself out into the future a few years, and see how it comes out. Imagine the best possible scenario, and the worst possible scenario, and the likelihood of both coming to pass. This is where intuition can be very powerful. Sometimes it’s impossible to make an accurate prediction of the future, but your intuition can usually do a pretty good job.

Project yourself out in the future and do a “gut check.” Is it an overwhelmingly good feeling a bad, feeling, or a “blech” feeling? If you’re make a decent decision and are just nervous, you’ll usually get a good feeling if you’re honest with yourself. But if you immediately think to feel repulsed at a possible future, the chances are you’re making a huge error in judgment.

This can be difficult, as many times we are afraid to look into the future, and only pay attention to the immediate pleasures of the present. My friend didn’t particularly like the idea of facing 30 and being single, so that was keeping her from facing the future at 35 or 40 having lived with this guy for that many years. But when she did take a peek into the future, her gut told her that it didn’t look good. So she was faced with making a tough decision.
Break up with her boyfriend, and accept an unpleasant present, or get engaged to him, as she suspected this was where her relationship was leading, and face an even worse future.

As emotionally uncomfortable as it is, many times the lesser of two evils is the obvious choice. But sometimes something pretty cool happens. By making a strong choice in the present, however uncomfortable, the future suddenly looks a lot brighter, giving you more resources and peace of mind in the present than you thought you had.

(Advertisement)

To expand your resources in the present and make the best possible choices for the future, click on the link below:

Powerful Metaphysics

Share this:

Once there were these two crows. They were just hanging out, minding their own business, waiting for some free food. They had recently noticed that a new set of vending machines had opened up next to the entrance to a mall, and next to the vending machines was a set of trashcans. The crows had noticed that this was a potential good source of free food, as the trashcans next to the vending machines aren’t emptied nearly as often as other trashcans.

Of course, the crows had no idea of the trash-emptying schedule, they just knew that those colorful boxes sometimes were a good place to hang out and find some decent scraps of food. So when they saw a couple of these new shiny boxes, they figured they’d better hang out and get some good stuff. Usually when crows find a source of food, the first crow to get there generally has dibs. He or she can lose their place in line, should another crow come in and challenge their dominance. If the food is plentiful, like a giant cornfield, they usually don’t worry about things like that.

But when it’s a couple of vending machines in the middle of an otherwise barren (from a crows persepctive) parking lot, then it’s important to get there and establish yourself.

Of course, this strategy can backfire. Once a couple of crows thought they were being clever, and stuck out a claim next do a single vending machine next to a bowling ally, only to discover (after about a weeks worth of closely guarding their new source) that it was only a drinking vending machine, and didn’t produce anything to eat whatsoever. So there’s a fine line between waiting to see if there really is going to be some food, and showing up too late only to find somebody has already made a claim.

Commitment is an interesting thing, even from a human perspective. Everybody wants to get the best they can, but when you make a commitment to anything, a job, a person, a route to work, you are effectively cutting of all other options. If you choose too hastily, you will probably won’t make the best choice. If you take too long to decide, then you might miss out on a lot of good choices.

If you’ve ever played any kind of contact, or semi contact sport, like hockey, basketball, football, a great skill to have is to be able to fake out your opponent, getting them to commit to a particular course of action, and then change course yourself, effectively evading them. On the flip side, being able to read your pursuer, and not be taken in by their sleights a great skill to have as well.

Much has been written from a military strategy standpoint, all the way back to Sun Tzu’s “The Art Of War” detailing many strategies of how to get your enemy to commit to a particular course of action, (chosen of course by you) so you can more easily strike and destroy them.

A classic example is the Allied invasion of Normandy. Several “fake” landing craft were sent out, in order to fool the Nazis into thinking the invasion was happening someplace, else, so they would incorrectly commit their resources, effectively leaving them open to where the actual invasion was going to take place. It was a successful plot that was instrumental (not the only one by a long shot) in the defeat of the Nazis.

Committing to a decision can sometimes have unintended effects, especially when making personal choices about how we choose to live our lives. Many times, people commit to something, thinking they will get a certain result, but when the results don’t show up, people can tend to “change” their original intent, so as not to “waste” their efforts. Even when it is obvious that aren’t going to succeed in a particular endeavor (according to your original intention) many of us plod along anyways, not willing to admit that we’ve wasted all that time and effort.

In “The Peter Principle,” Laurence J. Peter asks why people continue to put effort into something that is obviously unsuccessful. Most people will give the argument “I’ve been doing this for ten years, I’m not about to quit now.” Peter asks “why continue to do something when you have ample evidence that it doesn’t work?”

Of course, this is tough to do. As pointed out by Cialdini in “Influence, Science and Practice,” commitment and consistency is a powerful motivating force in human decision-making. We tend to do things the way we’ve always done them, so long as they haven’t killed us. This tendency has been shown time and time again in various social experiments and studies. It can be extremely tough to change course after doing the same thing day in and day out year after year.

One alternative is to take a step up on the logical ladder. You can still stay committed to the underlying intent without being committed to the actions that you initially thought you would get you to that underlying intent.

Somebody may choose to change diets, if one particular diet isn’t working out, provided that they are still committed and focused on losing weight. In NLP, it’s taught that it’s usually a good idea to have less investment in any particular method, while having a solid understanding of your underlying goals. More flexibility is always preferred when deciding how you want to achieve whatever it is you want to achieve. If whatever you thought was going to get you there isn’t working out, you can always change strategies midway, while keeping your focus on your original goals. That way you’ll never fall into the “I’ve been doing this for X years, I’m not about to change now,” trap.

So the crows decided that they’d wait three days, and if they didn’t see any good food being thrown in the garbage, they’d go someplace else. They had enlisted the help of a couple buddies, so there were six of them in all. They figured two of them would stand guard at any given time, to establish their claim. The other two would go to other food sources in the meantime.

What the crows discovered was a virtual food goldmine, although it was completely unexpected. The vending machines happened to be set up just around the corner from the big dumpsters that all the restaurants in the mall were supposed to throw their food out into. When the crows noticed how much food was being thrown out, their small group swelled in numbers immediately, and they never went hungry again.

Share this:

Once there was this pumpkin. He was a normal pumpkin, and went to a normal pumpkin school, like the rest of the kids in his neighborhood. His parents had tried to get him into one of those special schools for gifted pumpkins, but he didn’t think he passed the final entrance examination. They didn’t feel bad, neither did the pumpkin, as almost every pumpkin tries to get into one of those special schools, but very few make it. So his parents as well as he were in good company. Many parents teach their kids early on that the trying and failing is ok, so long as they try. That way, when the vast majority of the kids don’t get into the pumpkin school, they can feel proud of themselves for putting forth valiant effort.

The way the schools are set up, in case you aren’t familiar with them is that they are government run schools, and are completely paid for. There is a whole section of the pumpkin government devoted to the enrichment of its citizens. To that end they’ve created a panel of experts that teach the most cutting edge subjects. The school is a state of the art facility where most scientific and technological advances are made.

Many kids secretly don’t want to get into the advanced placement school. That would mean leaving their friends and family, as the school is located near the central government. Once they finish the school, they are required to spend no less than 5 years teaching at the school and further developing the curriculum. For a young pumpkin just entering into adolescence, this is an awfully large commitment.

Of course, the kids enjoy bragging about their scores, and comparing them to one another. Because they are completely meaningless if they aren’t accepted into the special school, the teasing and posturing of the young pumpkins is accepted as a normal part of every day school life.

Most pumpkins finish their primary education without moving on to higher levels. The pumpkin economy is sufficient to provide many well paying jobs to blue-collar pumpkin workers. Because these jobs are so plentiful, most pumpkins can easily find a way to make a living very near where they grew up.

It’s not uncommon to find neighborhoods with two and sometimes three generations of families spread throughout. Which is why the pumpkin of this particular story was overwhelmingly upset when he learned he was accepted, just barely, into the special pumpkin school. That meant ten years away from his friends and family. Five for the school itself, and five for the teaching commitment that came with it.

Of course, he knew very well that after finishing his teaching commitment, he was pretty much set for life. While many pumpkins stayed and taught at the special school after their commitment was fulfilled, it was by no means expected or even depended on. Virtually all the pumpkins that fulfilled their teaching requirements found extremely lucrative jobs in the technological fields, some even sitting on boards of directors of several large international conglomerations.

However, that didn’t appeal to our young pumpkin hero at all. He didn’t want a prestigious job in ten years. He didn’t want to start teaching at a prestigious university in five. He didn’t want to study there next fall. He wanted to stay right where he was.

He was in love.

They had begun hanging out together at lunchtime last spring. They had started sitting together at lunch, the way kids do. As time went on, they started sitting closer together, some days even exchanging a few words. Then one day, for some reason that neither of the cared about, when they showed up to their normal lunch table, it was only the two of them.

Of course they were both very nervous. But once they started talking, their nervousness was quickly replaced by the excitement of discovering new feelings and emotions that you never knew existed. Soon they started meeting when they knew it would only be just the two of them, if for only a few minutes. Sometimes they would talk about their math homework; sometimes they wouldn’t talk at all.

But now this young pumpkin had a decision to make. His acceptance letter, as a matter of law, would be reported to his school administrator. It is quite an honor for any school to have one of its students accepted to the government school of higher learning. Of course, attendance wasn’t compulsory, but no pumpkin had ever turned down such an opportunity. To attend a school, at no charge, with a virtual guarantee of economic success in only a few years. To do so would be unthinkable.

But that was just what the young pumpkin intended. The feelings he experienced when he was with his new girlfriend were far more wonderful than any ideas of economic success on the other end of a long, boring, ten-year separation from his friends and family.

But how in the world would he tell them?

One day he was moping about down at the park, when one of the elder pumpkins spotted him.

“What’s wrong?”

The young pumpkin explained everything, feeling a strange sense of relief at unloading his problems to a complete stranger. This was the first he’d told anyone of his predicament.

“That is a tough one.” Said the elder.

He paused, and the young pumpkin waited. After a deep breath, the elder turned to him and started.

“Many folks would tell you that young love is fleeting, that it doesn’t last. That you should focus on long term success, rather than short term feelings. That it is an honor and a privilege to be accepted to that school. That you have a duty to your family, to your school, to society to fulfill your destiny, as they’d say. To fulfill your talents. To use your creative gift to give to others what they may not be able to get for themselves.”

This is exactly what the young pumpkin was afraid of, and precisely what he didn’t want to hear.

The elder continued.

“Many will tell you tales of opportunities missed, of dreams that went unfulfilled. And they will tell you that if you do not take this opportunity, you will regret it for the rest of your life.”

The young pumpkin, although depressed beyond measure, was ready to accept his fate. His young mind was no match for such rhetoric from such an old and learned pumpkin.

“But here is one thing they will most assuredly not tell you. Their motives are selfish. They care not for you, but only for their own memories of their own lost opportunities. They see you on the cusp of success, and recall all of their failures. All of the times they could become great, but failed. In you they see their only chance of redemption, if only vicariously.”

The young pumpkin wasn’t sure he understood.

“It is a self perpetuating myth. An idea that isn’t true. They made a choice, and it didn’t turn out very well. So they see you, and by urging you to make the same choice and follow the same, expected path, they are hoping you will heal their wounds. Society is filled with people like that. Telling you what is right. Telling you what should be done. People seek comfort in the conformity of others. It helps them to believe that even if the choices they made didn’t bring them the happiness they expected, they are the common choices, and therefore the right choices.”

“Here is wisdom, young pumpkin. Many will tell you to make your choice based on what you want, and not what others want. But they forget to mention that that can only be done when you accept full responsibility for the outcome of your choice. And never expect others to undo what you’ve done. Ever. Ask yourself one question:

Can I live with it?”

The young pumpkin thought. Thought about ten years of doing things other people wanted him to, followed by who knows how many years doing who knows what. Could he live with that?

Then he thought of his friends, his family, his girlfriend, and the life he would likely lead should he turn down the opportunity of a lifetime.

The decision became lucidly clear. He smiled, and walked home.

Share this:

I remember once me and a friend of mine decided to go hitchhiking. Neither of us had ever hitchhiked before, and we thought it would be fun to go camping that way. We both lived in the dorms, and our college was about fifteen miles away from the coast. Between the college and the coast were several businesses, industrial and residential areas. But on the other side, it quickly turned into pretty much nothing. A few rolling hills here and there, and small pockets of residential neighborhoods, and then desert.

Our plan was to hitch hike east until we found a place that didn’t have very many houses, and then camp out. Of course we prepared ourselves with plenty of water, food that didn’t require cooking. And beer. Lots of beer. After about three hours of hitchhiking, we finally found a suitable place to camp. Or drink until we passed out. Our only requirement was that it was relatively flat, and that it was far enough away from any houses so nobody could see our campfire and call the cops.

I took this seminar once on a weird type of speed-reading. It was called photoreading, and it taught you how to read an entire book in about 3 or 4 minutes. You slowly flipped through all the pages, and let the information soak into your brain without consciously reading it. Of course, you weren’t reading it consciously; you were reading it with your unconscious mind. Then later you could dig into your unconscious memory and pull out any required information that you needed. This was particularly useful for studying, or reading a bunch of books to do a report on something.

One of the things we needed to learn was to state a clear purpose for reading a book.

“I want to read this book to learn specific skills to improve my public speaking.”

“I want to learn specific techniques to nineteenth century Spanish architecture into my building designs.”

“I want to improve my fluency with daily use of French verbs.”

That way when you photoread the book, the elements that addressed your particular needs would stick better, and be easier to retrieve later when you needed them.

A particularly useful skill that we learned was photoreading a bunch of books on one subject, and then allow your unconscious alone to figure out how to incorporate those skills into your daily life. You never had to go back and try to “activate” some of the information if you were going to take a test or write a report. The new skills and behaviors would kind of just “show up” wherever you needed them.

There were a few people at the seminar that were repeat participants, and had used this technique with wild success. One lady photoread a bunch of books on painting techniques, as she was a beginning painter. After that her friends started commenting that her paintings were looking much better, and assumed she was taking lessons, or learning some advanced technique from some master or something.

In reality, all she was doing was photoreading a bunch of books on painting techniques, and the new techniques were just showing up in her paintings. She merely continued to paint as she felt, and the results spoke for themselves.

But before we learned how to do any of this stuff the instructor told us the importance of setting your intention before reading a book. What most people do is they read a book with only a vague hope that it can help them some way. It’s no wonder they have trouble applying what they read. They don’t really know what they were after in the first place.

He told us a funny story to emphasize this point.

There used to be this airline that was really cheap. You didn’t need reservations, and the planes always had seats available. They had several flights a day, so you could pretty much hop on a flight whenever you wanted. They were more than willing to sell you a ticket. The only problem was you never knew where they were going. The reason the tickets were so cheap was that the airplanes navigation systems were messed up. The pilots didn’t know how to program the destination. They sort of fiddled around with the buttons, and hoped they ended up somewhere decent. Sometimes they did, but other times they ended up in the middle of nowhere, and the passengers were left stranded on some frozen cornfield.

Of course, the airplane is you, and the pilot is your goals and choices. If you sort only know where you are going, with some vague hope that it will turn out ok, then maybe you’ll be ok, or maybe you’ll end up stranded on some frozen cornfield. Which we can all agree would pretty much suck.

I learned a lot from that seminar. They do have a book you can get at Amazon, called “Photoreading,” or you can get the home study course from Learning Strategies Corporation. Or you can take the whole seminar, like I did. It cost about three or four hundred bucks, but it was well worth it. Once you take it, you can take it as many times as you want after that, for free. If you Google “Photoreading,” you’ll find lots of pages to help you.

And probably the coolest thing about my hitchhiking camping trip is that after we finally got to our spot, and camped out without any problems from the cops, we started hiking back towards the highway to see if we could hitch a ride home. And this guy in limo picked us up. No joke. He had just dropped off a client, and was driving his limo back to his shop, and picked us up along the way. That was a fun trip. You never know how you’re going to end up with you start out like this.

Share this:

So this morning I was out on my morning walk, like normal. And I came across this guy that was building this model airplane. Not just a regular model airplane that you build and put it up on your shelf. This was the kind that had an engine, and a propeller, and a remote control to fly it. It wasn’t quite like most remote controlled airplanes that you buy straight out of the box and send flying. This was the kind you have to build from the ground up.

I asked him now long he’d been working on it, and he said for a few weeks. He mentioned that he had flown other planes, the out of the box kind, but they didn’t quite give him the pleasure of actually building something from scratch, and then seeing it take off. He said the possibility of making a mistake is enough motivation to get him to focus on his project so he makes sure to put it together correctly.

I remember once I had this kid when I was a kid. It was a 75 in 1 electronics kit from Radio Shack, which is a chain of small electronics shops. You could build lots of things, from a simple light with a push button switch, to a lie detector, where you could actually hook up the electrodes to people and question them regarding there whereabouts on the night of August 17th, or whatever.

I seem to remember that at first, when I built simple things like the push button light bulb, it gave me a pretty quick sense of accomplishment, but it was short lived. After all, it only required hooking up three wires. Anybody could do that. The lie detector was a bit more complicated, and took almost an hour to set up the first time. After a couple of times, though, that became pretty easy as well, and didn’t quite give the initial satisfaction that it did the first time.

So of course, I moved on to bigger things. I tried taking my regular bedside lamp, cutting the plug that went into the wall socket, and running it through the switch. When I realized that it worked, I was amazed. I actually had built an additional switch into my bedside lamp. I tried it again with the strobe light circuit. And it worked. Now I had a strobe light in my bedroom. My mind spun with the possibilities.

Here I was looking at this kit, inside this wooden box with a built in circuit board that was supposed to be used only with the self-contained things in that kit. Nowhere in the instructions did it say it was ok to take normal, everyday object like a light and run it through these small circuits, but I did it anyway.

And it worked.

Thinking of this story reminds me of this book about evolution I was reading the other day. One of the many books by Richard Dawkins. Be careful of reading him if you are of any kind of a religious mind, because he makes it quite clear where he stands on that particular set of beliefs.

But what he was talking about in this book is the problem that keeps coming up among evolutionary biologists. Why did man become the predominant species on the planet? What was it about homo sapiens sapiens that made us be able to build cars and houses and waffle makers?

Many argue that one that humans have developed, that no others animals have developed is adaptability. We can (and have) survive; even thrive, in pretty much any environment. If you take a bunch of penguins or polar bears, and stick them in the Sahara desert, they won’t last long. If you take a sidewinder snake and put him on the North Pole, he’ll be dead in a few hours.

But humans are different. We have learned to adapt, to change, and to expand to match the size of our containers, until we break the container and expand even further. How else would some societies be able to dig holes and live in the sides of cliffs?

When you realize that your human potential comes pre programmed with the capacity to learn from, use and overcome your environment, you can gain massive amounts of clarity when it comes to facing the challenges of everyday life. The history of humanity is filled with examples of people meeting the challenges of their environment or situation, and overcoming them with incredibly innovate solutions, many of which eventually make it into mainstream consciousness.

If you look at a shark from a million years ago, they still swam around hunting in exactly the same way they do today. Prehistoric bees still made honey the same way they make it today. Humankind, on the other hand, seems to make huge progress with every generation, the current generation being no exception.

Even if you look at your own life, I’m sure you can find plenty of examples of things that you are more than capable of excelling at today, that you had no clue how to do only a short time ago. When you compare the skills you have today to only a couple of years ago, just imagine what you’ll be like five years from now?

After I had success with my bedside lamp, I tried to run it through the handheld speed control on my electric race care set. It was this track with cars that ran around it through this slot, which were connected to a hand held speed control. I wondered what would happen if I ran the hand held speed control through my Radio Shack electronics kit. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out so well. The first time I tried it, it literally burst into flames in my hand. I was dejected, but vowed to continue.

And the guy I saw on my walk this morning got pretty excited when he started telling me about this model airplane convention he is going to in a couple weeks. They’ll be a lot of like-minded people there to share new ideas and tips, as well as many vendors with the latest gadgets and accessories. It should be interesting to see what happens.

Share this:

The other day I was walking down the street, minding my own business. I had forgotten my iPod, so I was just lazily listening to the everyday sounds drifting around as I slowly made my way towards wherever it was that I was going to end up. I wanted to take the train downtown, but since it was Saturday, they only run every hour. I had just missed the last one, so I had an hour to kill.

Eventually, I knew I was going to end up back at the strain station, but between now (which was really then) and then I had an hour to kill, and a couple of internally accepted restrictions.

A word about restrictions. OK, maybe a couple words about restrictions. Basically there are two kinds of restrictions. Internally imposed, and externally imposed. Most of the restrictions are internally imposed. Now, before you click off to another blog describing something easier to stomach, allow me to explain myself.

If somebody points a gun at your head, and says “you’re money or your life,” (Henny Young man jokes notwithstanding) you’d likely see this as an externally imposed restriction. Not entirely. You still have the choice to give the other person your money (which in this day and age may not buy you much), or go simply give him the finger (which would most certainly not lead to a happy ending).

Yea, but that’s stupid. Who would choose death over life? What good is a choice if one of the choices is so incomparably stupid that it doesn’t even count as a choice?

Well, believe it or not, this is an extreme case of a decision, or choice that we make on a daily basis. Most of the time we make our decisions unconsciously, and mostly in line with decisions we’ve made before. We like what’s comfortable, so what we chose yesterday, is most likely what we chose today.

Think of the structure of the gunpoint choice. Choice number one is to remain hold on to your possessions at all cost, hold on to your ego of giving into a mad man, and accept the consequences. Because the consequences are so immediate, and so obvious, it is hard to not feel their weight. So most people would choose (hopefully you’ll never have to make this choice) choice number two, which is go give up your possessions, swallow your pride in hopes of holding that which has suddenly become more important, in the moment at least, than either of them.

Your life.

But what if the choice isn’t so cut and dried? What if the negative implications of a choice aren’t so obvious, and aren’t so immediate? Everybody knows that smoking causes lung cancer, which in turn causes death, but still millions of people still make the choice to smoke a cigarette several times a day.

Why?

The short-term benefits outweigh the potential long-term detriments. For the smoker, the pleasure they get is more than the pain they will experience in the present when considering the long-term downsides.

Now, most people who don’t smoke can’t imagine how anybody could come to this conclusion. It is obvious that smoking causes lung cancer. It is obvious that smoking causes poor health. It is obvious that smoking causes bad breath. So why in the world would anybody choose to smoke?

What about other choices, like to eat ice cream instead of a bowl of oatmeal? Surely we are aware that ice cream is not as healthy as oatmeal, right? Here is where it gets interesting. The way we trick ourselves around this is by saying that “it’s only just this once.” Surely we aren’t planning one eating a bowl of ice cream every single night, right? By telling ourselves that “it’s only this once,” we allow ourselves to significantly minimize any negative feelings we might experience in the moment when considering any long-term downsides.

How many times have you heard a smoker say the say thing?

I’ll quit tomorrow.
This is my last one.
This is the last pack I’m ever going to buy.
After next week I’ll never smoke again.

What about the flip side. We can that by tricking ourselves, we can minimize any future negative consequences of our actions, and making the present moment more enjoyable, regardless of any objective evidence to the contrary.

What about doing something that we know will benefit us in the future, but we don’t do it because it causes negative emotions in the present?

Did you exercise today? Why not? Surely you are aware of the long-term benefits of exercise right? Well, the same mental trickery works here as well. Either in the form of excuses, (to minimize the present negative emotions) and in from of promises about the future.

I’m too busy today.
I have too much to do.
I have a bad hip/shoulder/leg.

I’ll start after the holidays.
I’m going to start next week.

The human brain is a fantastic machine that can use many forms of lightening speed shell games to hide reality from us. We minimize the potential negative outcome to better feel good now. We minimize the future benefits to better feel good now. When we have a gun pointed at our heads, when there is only NOW, all the mental trickery collapse into single choice.

Life, or death.

So what do you choose, life or death? When you decide to smoke, or yell at your husband, or eat a bowl of ice cream, or go to or avoid the gym, how are you tricking yourself? What are you doing to convince yourself that the future won’t be so bad if you keep doing what your doing? How can you convince yourself that you’ll start doing whatever it is you know you should be doing today, tomorrow?

Your life, all of it, is the cumulative result of all the choices you’ve made. If you are completely happy with your life, or completely disgusted, it’s all on you. People that are generally successful and happy realize this, and make changes along the way to improve their lot. Those that are generally unhappy refuse to accept this, and try their whole lives to find blame in somebody else, somebody outside themselves.

Kind of a heavy post to make, but one thing that you will always have and you should always use, is your choice. You can choose. No matter if you have a gun to your head, or a choice between the gym and the TV, you can choose.

So back to my story. My self-imposed restriction was that I wasn’t allowed to buy anything. Because then I’d have to carry it around with me all day after I made my way back to the station. And since it was only ten in the morning, that was too long to be carrying something that I bought on whim.

Unless I see something really cool, then all bets are off.

Share this:

I was listening to this lady on a talk show the other day. Apparently she is well known best selling author of several books. I was doing other stuff, so I wasn’t really watching, more like listening in the background. Every time they said something interesting, I would pause momentarily to check this out, as this sounded like something that might be of immediate benefit.

She was talking about setting goals, and other stuff. She had written a book that, at least in my opinion, puts a kind of a new spin on an old idea. That old idea being that while you aren’t in control of much of reality, you are, whether you realize it or not, in complete control of how you respond to your reality.

The one thing she mentioned that grabbed my attention and made me focus on this was that you should claim ownership of all your emotions, and emotional responses. The biggest thing we say to ourselves is “he makes me so … whatever.” As soon as you imagine that somebody else has some kind of magical power over your emotions, you lose. Your emotions suddenly become out of your control and at the whim of every passing stranger you see.

See some guy that reminds you of somebody that broke your heart in high school?

BAM!

You just voluntarily gave up control over your emotions to some stranger on the street. Somebody says something in a tone of voice that reminds you of the way your second grade teacher used to embarrass you in front of the rest of the class?

WHAM!

You just served up your hot button of emotional pain to somebody that wasn’t even thinking about you all that much when they were speaking.

You hand in a report you worked on all week to your boss, and he makes some comment that indicates he is not as appreciative of your efforts as you’d like him to be, causing you to feel resentment, anger, and dangerously close to giving him an attitude that may negatively influence your next review?

SMACK!

You just grabbed the metaphorical loaded gun he was holding out of his hands and shot yourself in the foot with it.

So how do you assume ownership of your emotions? Just like any other response, you need to practice. It helps if you think of things like this not in touch-feely terms that are usually vague and not much help, but more like a sport.

If you’ve never played catch before, you would likely need to practice before you can play catch with somebody, listen to your mp3 player, and watch girls walk by all at the same time. You need to consciously focus on the ball as it is coming at you, and focus on moving your glove to just the right angle, and closing it at just the right time, with the precise amount of force.

It might be a little clumsy at first, but the more you practice, the more automatic it gets.

The same goes with responding to the world. The first step is to simply practice stopping and thinking how to respond in certain situations. Instead of standing there waiting for your emotions to kick in, you can make a choice to quickly observe the situation objectively, and think of the best response. Any emotional response comes only after you brain realizes you don’t have one already prepared, and it looks for the nearest one that may work. Usually this doesn’t work out so well.

Just by getting into the habit of stopping everything, and choosing the best response before you emotions come up, you will generate enormous choice and emotional freedom.

For the boss example. You hand in your report, and he dismisses it as not being good enough. It would be nice to always be given warm fuzzy pats on the back for our efforts, but at work we only get paid for the results. (And truth be told, this is true of most relationships as well.) So instead of getting upset that you didn’t get any props for you hard work, think of it objectively.

Boss asked for report, employee turns in report, report is insufficient. What would be the best course of action? Find out exactly in what areas the report is insufficient, and exactly what would be required to remedy that. And remember that next time your boss asks for a report, be sure to find out exactly, as specifically as possible, what is the intention for the report, what information needs to be in it, what he is actually going to use the report for, how is he going to use it, etc. This can help misunderstandings.

For the guy on the street, well, he’s just on the street. If you see somebody and are getting a funny feeling, stop and ask yourself, “Do I know him? Does he know me?” If the answers are both “no,” then any communication between the two of you is based on a completely random set of circumstances of which you never fully understand. That way you can place no meaning on any interaction at all, and quickly be on your way.

One powerful trick to ask yourself if it’s too late, and you are already angry or hurt at something somebody does, is to ask yourself “Why did I choose to feel hurt, (or angry, or whatever.)” That will give you immense power over your situation.

And if you are interested in reading more about this woman that was on the talk show, her name is Byron Katie, and she’s the author of a book called “The Work,” and lots of other stuff. You can check out here website at:

http://www.thework.com

There’s all kinds of free information, and videos to watch, and worksheets to download to help you get more control and take back ownership of your emotions.

Have fun.

Share this:

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, and she was unloading some of her problems on me. I guess that’s what friends are for. They weren’t really any life threatening problems, just the kind that build up, and if you keep them that way they can explode in an unhealthy way, so it helps to find someone to complain to. Which is pretty much what she was doing. Boyfriend problems, boss problems, parent problems. It seems like the entire universe was conspiring against this poor girl.

It got me thinking of a seminar I went to once. (One great way to allow people to vent without getting too emotionally involved is to let your mind drift to other things while they are venting.) This guy was talking about the value of negative thinking. Up until that point, I had always assumed that negative thinking was bad, and should be avoided at all costs. But this guy had a different take.

He said that everything we do naturally has a purpose. Some believe that purpose was put there by God, others (like myself) believe that purpose slowly evolved over time through natural selection, still others (like the guy teaching this seminar) believe in a metaphysical combination of the two. There is some life force that was present right at the big bang that inhabits all of us, and there is a purpose to all the crap we have to go through.

Anyway, he was explaining that negative thinking is a natural outcome of human’s special ability to think and plan for the future. Some biologists think this all started when humans started using tools to hunt animals. We had to kind of plan ahead when we threw a spear at our dinner as it was running away. The brain had to develop a way to accurately predict where the animal would be in a few seconds, and throw our spears accordingly.

This grew into our ability to plan for the future based on current events around. The way it works is the brain will sort through all of our possible choices, and then extrapolate all those choices out into the future, and create several likely scenarios and present them to our imagination. Based on what we imagine, we choose our behaviors accordingly. This happens pretty quickly and unconsciously. When we make a decision that has the potential for a negative outcome, we get nervous an anxious about the future. When we choose behavior that has an almost guaranteed positive outcome, then we get really excited about the future.

This guy at he seminar was saying that our negative thinking about the future can be a powerful warning sign to indicate some problems that may come up. Since we can never be really sure of anything, he was saying to give yourself the luxury of following your imagination for a while, and see what terrible things might happen, and plan accordingly to minimize any bad outcome.

He kept referring to the famous quote by Mark Twain, (which I’m paraphrasing here) “I’ve experienced many terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” Which means that rarely do our worst fears come true.

By allowing yourself to slip into negative thinking can be helpful if you consciously think and plan to avoid the negative outcome. It can be a bad thing if you allow your fears of the future to keep you from taking any action at all. That would be the often referred to condition of “paralysis by analysis.”

People that suffer from this need to plan everything in great detail, so they will be virtually guaranteed of a positive outcome. Of course, we all know that doesn’t always work that way. No matter how much you plan, stuff can happen to disrupt he best-laid plans.

The guy was saying that the people that are the most successful take a balanced approach. They respect their negative thinking enough to make good decisions, but they also respect the randomness of life to have a “Damn the Torpedoes, full speed ahead,” attitude when it comes to taking action.

People that rush in without too much thinking, with a “shoot first, aim later” attitude can be very successful, but they also have to be able to put up with a lot of setbacks and readjustments.

People that won’t even take the first baby step without being completely assured of safe and automatic success leave the starting blocks.

It’s that magical place in the middle where you can tune in just long enough to your negative thinking to put in a few safeguards, and then plow right on through life, confident you can handle and deal with anything that comes up along the way.

And by the time my friend stopped venting, she seemed to be feeling much better. She even had a couple of ideas on how to fix a few of her problems. She thanked me profusely for being such a good listener, and even paid for lunch. She seemed to be in a pretty good mood when we parted ways.

Share this:

Which would you rather have, a big juicy hamburger, or a cracker with some peanut butter slapped on top? How about a nice two-week relaxing vacation on the beaches of Hawaii versus a free coupon worth on rental from your local video store? Or how about a date with Megan Fox compared to that homeless woman you saw the other day?

These may seem like obviously easy choices. But what about these:

You are standing next to the train tracks. There is a split right where you are standing. There is a train coming. As it stands, the strain is going to veer left. You have access to a switch that can make the train veer right if you flip the switch.
You notice there is a stranded bus filled with school kids on the tracks to the left. If the train continues on its course, it will hit the bus and kill the kids. But to the right, there is one fat guy working on the tracks. If you throw the switch to change tracks, the train will avoid the kids, but it will kill he fat guy.

What do you do?

If you do nothing, a busload of kids will die. If you throw the switch, you will save the kids, but you will be directly responsible for killing some fat guy.

Or how about this:

There is a boatload of kids drifting down a river, about to plunge off a waterfall. You are standing on a bridge. There is the same fat guy walking across the bridge. If you run up and push the fat guy off the bridge, he will hit the boat and diverge it from the waterfall, and save the kids.

What do you do?

Many people polled in various studies would pull the switch in the first scenario, as they see it as an act of saving the kids. But few people would actually run up and push the fat guy off the bridge.

Why?

They (those they people again) did a study where they took some students and had them stick their hands in a bucket of water, and then guess the temperature. Then they had the same students stick their same hands in the same water, but at the same time, they had them stick their other hands in another bucket of water, that was either really hot or really cold. When the other bucket was really hot, they underestimated the temperature of the test bucket. When the water was really cold, they overestimated the temperature of the test bucket.

Or how about this. It is not uncommon for real estate agents to show a potential client a really crappy house in a really crappy neighborhood that is within their stated price range. Then they show them another much better house, in a much better neighborhood that is priced slightly higher than their stated price range.

They’ve found that this works really well to convince them to increase their price limits. By showing them the first house (which is owned and maintained by the real estate company) they effectively make the second house look like a bargain.

Restaurants have also found this trick works really well when selling wine. If they have a bottle (or several bottles) they are trying to unload at, say, fifty dollars a bottle, the wine won’t sell very well if it is the most expensive bottle they have. But they’ve found by adding another bottle, priced at seventy five to a hundred dollars, they increase sales of the fifty dollar bottle significantly. It looks better in comparison.

Our brains don’t’ like to choose in a vacuum. We need to have something to compare our choices to. If the choice is only to buy a bottle of wine or not, we usually will choose not. But if it’s an expensive bottle or a cheaper bottle, we’ll choose the cheaper bottle.

This is a known psychological trick that has been used in sales for many years. We like to feel like we have a choice, like we are smart enough to evaluate those choices and make the best decision that we can. But our short hand thinking process can easily be hijacked by marketers who want to sell us something that we really don’t need.

There is one simple rule to avoid being duped. Simply know going in, before being presented with choices, what is important to you, what price you are willing to spend, and what options you want. And compare everything you see only to your list of options and your acceptable price.

Of course, if you are a marketer, and you are trying to sell something, say online, it would help dramatically to include something similar that is priced significantly higher. That way people will think the real item you have for sale is a bargain and they will be much more likely to buy it.

For example, if you run a product review page, and you are selling item “X” for fifty bucks, try and find a similar item, with only slightly better features, for two hundred bucks. Item “X” will seem like steal in comparison.

Another trick that has been proven very useful in this regard is to include only a little bit of information about the first, more expensive item, and then very detailed information about item “X.” That way, item “X” will not only seem cheaper by comparison, but your potential buyers will feel much more informed, and feel they are making a wise buying decision.

Happy marketing, and don’t push any fat guys off any bridges.

Share this:

If you ask most girls, you’ll find that most guys are afraid of commitment. If you ask most guys, you’ll find that we are a misunderstood bunch, and that commitment to us means something entirely different than it does to girls. We are committed to our careers, our friends, our dreams and our goals. Maybe when girls get together and complain about their guy’s failure to commit, perhaps they need to reexamine what they are expecting their guy to commit to.

They did a study a while back. When I say “they,” I’m referring to a group of social psychologists. They went up and down neighborhood streets, and asked if people would mind putting a small sign either in their front window, or on their lawn. The sign was a fairly generic sign, like “be careful of children,” or “please don’t litter in neighborhood,” or something along those lines. They did this to random households, not to every household. That is, one each street, they only choose a small percentage of houses to make the request.

They found that about 30-40 percent accepted the small sign. Keep in mind they asked houses at random. Then about three weeks later, they came through the same neighborhoods again. Now they asked to put up bigger, more controversial signs. Based on earlier data, 30 or 40 percent would agree to a small, generic sign. They suspected a smaller percentage would accept a bigger, more controversial sign, like “vote for Joe Blow,” or whatever.

What they found was interesting. In households that weren’t asked to put up the small signs, there were only a tiny percentage of people that agreed to put up big sign. Something around three percent. But on the houses that had already agreed to put a small sign, over 70 percent agreed to put up a bigger sign.

It appeared that once they got people to commit to a small amount, asking for a much larger amount was much easier than they suspected. This same phenomenon has been shown again and again in various different areas.
For example, studies show that during jury trials, often they will conduct a quick “straw vote” before beginning deliberations. Sometimes everybody says guilty or not guilty out loud, that is publicly committing to one position or another. Other times they anonymously write “G” or “NG” on a slip of paper.

On average, the trials where people publicly commit to one position or the other last over twice as long. It seems that once people make a public commitment, it is much harder to change their minds.

It is also a well-taught fact about setting goals, specifically quitting a bad habit like smoking, or losing weight, you’ll have much more success if you tell somebody, or make your position public.

Some psychologists feel this is one of many “shortcuts” the brain has evolved over time to save computing time. If we choose something, we tend to stick with it. Our brain doesn’t to reinvent the wheel with every decision.

What about you? What brand of shoe do you wear? Have you always worn that brand, or do you switch every time? What about cars? What make of car do you drive? Do you buy a different model every time?

How about when you go on vacations? Do you always stay in the same hotels, or do you change it up every now and then?

While it can be helpful, and time saving to make the same choices again and again, it can also cause problems. Have you ever gotten into an argument, and argued much longer than you should have, simply because you didn’t want to budge from your position, rather than changing your mind based on new information?

The whole “in for a penny, in for a pound” mindset shows up in many different areas of life. It served us well when we were hunter/gatherers, foraging for food. It helped keep us safe and out of harms way. But is it so unreasonable to reevaluate your position every now and then? Is it wrong to change your mind halfway through a project or discussion in light of new information?

It can help to realize what is important, and why. If you are arguing with somebody simply for the sake of arguing, maybe it could help to step back and take an objective look at things. And maybe wonder why it’s so important to be right all the time. But if you are truly seeking information, it can help to try and see the other person’s point of view.

At any rate, it helps to be aware of our minds tendency to use shorthand thinking. Many times it does help us, and make life easier, but it often times it doesn’t

The trick is to know the difference.

Share this:

The lady that runs the shop is particularly interesting. I think this was her fourth or fifth business that she has set up. All of her previous businesses were very profitable. What she does is she has an interesting way of identifying food-based niches in small neighborhoods. She figures out what kind of restaurant or food shop would likely be successful based on what other shops are already in the neighborhood, and have already been successful. Then she sets up a shop, generates a lot of loyal customers, and the turns the shop over to one of her assistants in kind of a franchise deal. Her assistant makes half the profits, and she takes half the profits.

She then goes to another neighborhood, and does the same thing. Other that go around and set up businesses based on what they like don’t do as well. For example if somebody only wanted to open up a hamburger shop, sometimes they’d be successful, other times they wouldn’t. Some neighborhoods have a real need for a hamburger shop, while others don’t. Because she is very flexible in her approach, and provides what the market demands, she always seems to make a lot of money.

I remember when I first moved into the dorms in college. We had a party, and snuck a keg of beer into the room. While we were drinking, a friend of mine started telling me about his philosophy professor. He was saying that those that are the most successful in life are the ones that figure out what they want, and then figure out how to mold reality around t heir desires. He said the most important thing is to look underneath want you want to find the underlying desires. Most things that people think they want are really based on an underlying desire, which can be applied to most anything. The mistake many make is trying to fit their surface wants into society, without focusing on their underlying desire.

If you can figure out what your base desire is, you’ll be surprised when you find that almost anything can satisfy it. Which is why we had the party in the first place. And as it turned out, my friend actually did have some left over bread that he could share with me, until we finally go to our destination.

I even remembered what that song was, so I could down load it from iTunes when I got home. I like it when stuff like that happens, don’t you?

Share this:

It’s interesting when something like that happens. You’ll be sitting there, flipping through the channels, and something suddenly catches your attention. And suddenly when you find this really interesting, all the plans you’ve had for the afternoon (or evening) suddenly fade away.

That’s the kind of movie this was. Something about this was just kind of intriguing, I don’t know if it was the dialogue or the content, but once I started watching, I couldn’t help waiting to find out how it turned out.

It was basically about two kids that grew up in a not so affluent neighborhood. And it pretty much spanned their whole lives. As they grew up, they slowly drifted in and out of each other’s lives. One of the boys ended up being a police detective, and the other one slowly went further and further into corruption. He ended up being a prominent politician, with strong ties to organized crime, but the only person that could really prove anything was his old friend from childhood.

The interesting part was how the movie moved so believably through each of their lives, every time one of the two characters had a “decision point,” so to speak, whether or not to choose good or evil, you could easily sympathize with them and understand why they would choose either way.

I was eating lunch at a deli the other day, sitting at the counter. Usually I sit at a big booth, and bring a newspaper with me. I like to spread out, and take my time to eat so I can relax. I usually have to go in at odd hours; otherwise there won’t be any booths available. Sometimes when you want something that everybody else wants you have to go at odd times or places to get it. But the other day I was sitting at the counter for a change. I started chatting with a local priest that was sitting next to me. He was telling me the biggest type of question people come to him with are big decisions they are facing, and how they aren’t really sure how to make it.

He said that the best way to decide is to think five years in the future and pretend you are looking back on your decision. Then you can really judge if it is a good decision or not. Many people don’t take the time to do this, and consequently they make a series of poor decisions, which can lead up to a pretty unhappy life.
And he said surprisingly enough, when you go into your future and look back on the decision that you are about to make, many times you choose something that you hadn’t thought of before.

The best part of the movie was the end. They worked the plot so the good guy could confront the bad guy and give him one last chance to do the right thing. They had it set up so it was pretty much a do or die situation. If the bad guy chose bad, then the good guy would kill him, and it would be a justified killing based on police procedures. If the bad guy chose good, then the good guy was prepared to let him walk away. They were childhood friends after all.

I’m not going to ruin the ending, but it was a well-scripted conflict that really highlighted the difficulties most people face every day with making decisions. Sometimes you make much harder decisions than you give yourself credit for.

Share this:

The plusses to using concentrate is that it’s cheaper, you can buy several at once and store them in your freezer, so you don’t have to go to the store as often. Interestingly, the benefits of fresh squeezed, although seemingly numerous are almost impossible to pin down. The drawbacks are obvious. You have to go to the store more often, it’s more expensive, it doesn’t stay fresh as long (you can keep cans of concentrate in the freezer for up to a year) and it really doesn’t have any more vitamins that the frozen stuff.

I suppose when asked, most people who prefer fresh squeezed would say it tastes more “natural,” its healthier, its got some special magic from the sun inside each bottle. None of these are things that you can actually measure. So what exactly are you paying for? Of course the most obvious answer is that it tastes better. That is probably the best reason of all if you are buying food, that it tastes better, but is that how the marketing strategies of these orange juice companies make it out to be? Based only on flavor?

“Buy fresh squeezed, it tastes better.”

I never really thought about it. I remember when I was a kid, Pepsi had their famous “Take the Pepsi Challenge” campaign where they set up stands in front of supermarkets across the country, in an effort to “prove” using scientific studies that Pepsi does indeed “taste better” than coke. They had frequent updates in their commercials of how people overwhelmingly chose Pepsi over coke in a blind taste test. But for some reason, Coke remained, and still remains the soft drink leader. (The whole “New Coke” fiasco notwithstanding.)

I’m sure know somebody, or may be one of these soft drink zealots yourself, who will refuse to drink soda in a restaurant if they don’t have “your” brand. I have a friend who is adamantly against Pepsi. If we go out to lunch, and he orders a Coke, and is told they only have Pepsi, he’ll act as if he’s been personally insulted. It’s kind funny to watch. Personally, I can’t really tell the difference one-way or the other.

Brand loyalty is a strange phenomenon, one that I’ve never understood, although I am an avid driver of Toyota’s, and proud wearer of New Balance. Every car I’ve ever bought is a Toyota, and every pair of athletic shoes, of any sort, has been New Balance.

So as we talked in line about the differences between fresh squeezed orange juice and juice from concentrate, a funny thing happened. The checker in the line opened up her register. And even though both of us could have gotten much closer in line had we moved over one row, we decided to stay where we were. Like once you make a decision on something, you stay with that decision despite all the logic that dictates otherwise. I guess people really are creatures of habit.

Share this:

A drop what? I asked? He explained that I would need to cover the carpet, and put tape up over all the electrical fixtures, and put tape over all the door jams. And probably tape the drop cloth on the floor, as being a first time painter; I would have a lot of splatter to contend with.

I quickly realized that getting the place ready to be painted was going to take nearly as much time as the painting itself. When the guy started talking about primer, and spackle and all kinds of other home improvement language that I didn’t understand, I left before things got out of control.

There was a guy I was talking to in a seminar who was telling about this book he had read on goal setting. The guy in there said there were two different kinds of goals. One kind was milestone goals, or goals you could measure once you got there, like losing weight, or a certain score on the golf course.

The other kind of goal he referred to as horizon goals, or goals that are specific. They are more like a direction that you want to go to in life. Like the horizon, the more you walk towards them, the more they will stay off in the distance and give you a direction. As long as you can see the horizon, you know which way to go.

And if you are wondering about what to do when you are surrounded by horizons on all sides, it helps to align your horizon goals with your milestone goals.

For example, if a horizon goal was to live a healthy lifestyle, then milestone goals could be a specific weight or dress size, a specific time in a 10K, or a certain amount of pounds to bench press. Your horizon goal would always keep you thinking about eating healthy and getting enough exercise, while your milestone goals will give you something specific to shoot for, and measure and celebrate once you achieve them. The beauty of this is that if you have a solid horizon goal, then every time you achieve a milestone goal, you can simply choose another one off in the distance a few months and keep on truckin.

A great way to motivate yourself is to place the milestone goals in the future, and then drift up into the future and look back on the goals you will have achieved when you get there to give yourself some ideas of how you did that. Then when you come back into the present, you can bring the information from your future self of how you achieved the goals that you want to accomplish. Kind of like having twenty twenty hindsight for something that hasn’t happened yet.

So when I finally finished painting, and took down all the tarps and mats and tape and whatever else I had put up, it looked pretty good. One of the best feelings you can experience is when you stop, stand back and look at something you’ve accomplished. It’s one thing to receive unexpected gifts from others, but it is quite another to admire something you’ve created through your own efforts and inspiration.

Share this:

As I was looking at all the articles on the walls, I couldn’t help but wonder about all the important things that most people over look. Up until then, all I really cared about when I bought shoes was that they “looked cool,” and they didn’t hurt very much when I wore them. I didn’t realize that an improper fitting pair of shoes could cause so many health problems, including all kinds of back pain. It’s amazing the amount of effects we have on our future by the decisions that we make today. Just sitting there thinking how much health problems can interfere with an otherwise happy life made me a believer in really taking the time to buy the right pair of shoes.

I was listening to a friend tell me about this new diet program that she had started recently. She had learned it at a seminar that used self-hypnosis for the method to lose weight. I guess that is as good a method as any, and I asked her how they specifically taught her to eat healthier. She said the key was to train yourself to imagine three different futures when looking at food. Most people, when they look at that food only rely on their automatic response, which of course is to eat, and eat and eat. That was a fantastic strategy when we were cavemen and finding a donut was a once in a year occurrence, but when we are surrounded by donut shops, it doesn’t work so well. She said the trick is to imagine the future one hour, one week, and one year to help overpower that urge to eat eat eat. If you are looking at a piece of fruit, for example, you will imagine yourself light and energetic in an hour, perhaps having a deep sense of self control in a week, and in a year, feeling fantastic because you have a healthy diet that supports a nice body. You then take those three feelings into the present, which makes you really want to eat that piece of fruit. When you compare that to the jelly donut that is beckoning you with its Jedi skills of persuasion, you will imagine all kinds of “blech” feelings from the future, which will hopefully cause you to pass on the donut. The trainer said that takes time, but when you do this on a regular basis, you will be amazed at the results

It’s interesting when you really stop and think how your decisions will affect you in the future. Many people are unhappy today, and I think one of the reasons is that when we make our choices, sometimes we are only thinking of the short term. Not that the short term isn’t unimportant, but the long term needs to be considered just as much. One of the biggest regrets people have when they look a back and examine their lives is some of the bad choices they made earlier. You can easily avoid them if you imagine your future, as well, when you make choices. It only takes a couple minutes and can potentially have powerful life long results.

And I finally did find a fantastic pair of shoes. The shop I found them had to order them from another shop (It’s hard to find my size here) so I had to wait a week, but so far, they are really supportive and look really cool. And when you can find something that makes you feel really good, and look really cool, you’ve got a winner.

Share this:

It got me thinking about the way people argue their point. When you really dig below the surface of most arguments, they aren’t really arguments at all. An argument, of course coming from the mathematical or logical term, where a set of facts is presented, and an argument is how you illustrate that one set of facts logically leads to another set of facts. All cats speak Spanish, here is a cat, therefore, this cat speaks Spanish. All people are smart, you are a person, therefore, you are smart.

But if you listen to most arguments, they are really just a collection of synonyms and examples of their beliefs, and not why their method is better for a certain application. And not only that, they are contests to see who can most forcefully present their set of beliefs and collection of synonyms. Who ever forcefully and relentlessly puts forth their opinions the strongest is usually the winner. Even in political debates, where you expect a high level of logical skills, they just present their opinions over and over again.

There have been many extended studies of primates, and you’d be surprised how similar they behave to humans. There was one famous book called “Chimpanzee politics” written by Frans de Waal, where he studied a group of chimps for two years. They exhibited intricate and detailed political maneuvering, social rules and etiquette, different strategies that they used to interact with each other based on the individuals social status and standing. It was really extraordinary how we are much more similar to our primate cousins than we think Sure we dress up in suits and use eloquent words, but are the intentions below our actions any different?

Some say they aren’t. Some will point out that there is only a two percent difference in our DNA. Others will point to the book “The Naked Ape,” by Morris. Some will use complex social theories to describe how we really are no different than monkeys, and that the whole of our culture, religion, art, music is nothing more than a complicated expression of our natural desires. Others even go so far as to say that we are completely bound by our primitive urges, that we cannot escape the need to beat our chests and proclaim ourselves better than the next guy.

I don’t think so. I think that despite the huge proclivity for humans to behave, in many ways, identical to apes and monkeys, we don’t have to. Sure we come pre-programmed with desire for food, safety, sex that manifests itself in the form of housing developments, insurance companies, and a plethora of sex related marketing tools, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Mother nature only wants us to live long enough to produce more people. And she, in her infinite wisdom, put in us the drives and desires necessary to be able to do that without ever having an original though or plan of action. We can go through life being a complete slave to our drives and desires and still do pretty good.

But the great part about being human is that we have choice. We can choose to obey our desires as if they are our gods, and that will be that. Or we can merely acknowledge and accept them as only a motivating factor to drive us towards the life that we want. We can choose the outcome we desire, and organize our lives around them, so that we are not slaves to our desires, but we can turn them around and allow our desires to power us and motivate us to achieve any result that we want. Of course, it’s not easy. Just look around you and you will see many examples of this. Fast food for out bodies and minds are in absolute abundance in our society. Resisting can be difficult, but not impossible. Any true reward can be a long time coming, but when it comes, it makes it all worthwhile.

The big difference between us and our monkey cousins, it that we can choose, and despite the ease with which we can forget that, we know this to be true. We know that the fully human life we deserve is only a choice away. A thought away.

The biggest promise of humanity is the simple ability to choose our thoughts. This has been known, written about, and passed down orally since the ancient times. But it’s not easy. Especially today with a bazillion things to snatch your attention from where you want it to be. Like everything, with practice it becomes easier. Those that know this secret, and practice it are the engineers of the society we live in. The rulers, the captains of industry and the politicians that presume to tell the rest of us how to live our lives. You don’t have to listen. Choose your own thoughts. Choose your own destiny. Start today. Now.

Share this:

I was listening to a lecture once about this subject. The professor who was speaking was exploring how we code and store events have a large effect on how we remember them. She went on to explain that when some people say they have a “memory problem,” that is not entirely accurate. What they really lack is a storage problem. And because most people don’t consciously choose to store their memories in a certain way, when they go and try to recall them, they not only can’t remember where they put them, but they don’t remember what kind of box they put them in. Which makes looking for old memories a problem when you don’t know what color the box is.

So anyways, I was sitting there, drinking my coffee, waiting for the movie to start. It was one of those international blockbusters that has been heavily marketed, with signs everywhere, and trailers before every movie. I was looking forward to it, because I read the book, and I enjoyed it. I actually read the book twice, by accident. And when I say by accident, I don’t mean that I fell down a flight of stairs and read the book on the way down. I read it, and forgot that I read it. Then a couple years later I read another book by the same author, which I really enjoyed. Then I went to the bookstore to find other books by the same author. That’s how I generally read books, by the way. I’ll read one author, and if I like them, I’ll go to the bookstore or the library and read all their other books. So I went to the bookstore, found another book by the same author of the second book, and picked out the first book, which I’d read before and didn’t remember. Then about halfway through it, I realized, “Hey! This seems familiar, I think I read this before!” Of course I kept on reading, because I wanted to see if it turned out differently than before. Because I didn’t remember how it turned out from before, I wasn’t sure if it was the same ending. Which of course, made sense when I saw the movie, because then, everything fell into place, even though they changed some parts from the book.

So my friend walks in this coffee shop, and has this really confused look on his face. Like he was just finished reading this really confusing article on the Internet or something. I asked him what happened, and he told me that he just got back form a lecture. It turns out some really cute girl gave him a flyer for a lecture that some metaphysicist was giving. He doesn’t normally go into metaphysical lectures, but because this girl was really cute he decided to go. I asked him what the lecture was about, and he tried his best to describe it to me. There were several different lectures, and they kept finishing up where each other started. There was one guy that had this really long beard, and another guy that had some really strange sandals.

He said that most people are walking around in a cloud of ambiguity. Because we are so conditioned to get other people to think for us, when there is nobody there to make a decision, you just kind of walk around with a vague sense of waiting to be told what to do. Which normally isn’t a problem. It makes sense to be this way at work for example. It wouldn’t really be very productive to have a bunch of people at work just doing their own thing, or arguing with the boss whenever she gave you an instruction. I don’t know if this is a leftover from evolution, or if it is something that is just hardwired into us, but the brain will always look for shortcuts in thinking. Kind of like when you are driving on the freeway, and you get a traffic report of an accident up ahead, you can imagine ways to go around the problem, so you don’t be late for your appointment. The brain will always find the easiest path to get to a decision. Which worked pretty good when we were cavemen running around chasing our food, or running away from dinosaurs that thought we were food. But in today’s society, when there are about a billion things coming at you at once, it’s hard sometimes for our monkey brains to make a good decision. So modern man has learned to kind of have this vague cloud of ambiguity floating around, waiting for clear instructions. He said that the two biggest forms of guidance come in the form of social proof, and authority. Social proof, of course, is when you go along with the crowd. Everybody has experienced this. You do something, because everybody else is doing it. Of course, this isn’t what you tell yourself, we always have some other reason why we think we are doing something.

The other shortcut is authority. When a police officer, or a doctor tells you to do something, you rarely question them. Unless you are a criminal of course. So in the absence of these two elements, he explained, it can be hard to figure out what to do.

I asked him if he explained how to get around this, and he said he did. I asked him what it was, and he told me.

The best way to get around this is to have clear, strong, powerful goals. That way you will start to see everything in relation to your goals, and your automatic monkey response will decrease, and your evolved human response will become stronger and stronger, and you turn your mind/body system into a goal-seeking missile, instead of an automatic monkey responder.

And he concluded his speech by saying that the choice is up to you. You can let other people choose your goals for you, and walk around in an ambiguous monkey daze, bouncing from one mental shortcut to the other, or you can choose your own goals, and let your goal seeking mechanism do all work to create the life that you want. Then you can eat bagels, AND drink coffee at the same time.

Share this:

It’s interesting how your appetite can affect your decision making process. I’m sure you have had the experience of going to the grocery store while hungry. Perhaps you wanted to pick up something simple to eat like a cup of strawberry yogurt or a box of frozen pizza rolls, but you ended up buying five hundred dollars worth of stuff that you didn’t know you needed until it was right in front of you. Making you salivate in a way that only an expert marketer knows how to do through various product placement strategies.

Of course if you are a fish, not unlike the subject of this story, you don’t really need to worry about that. Because everything you need is all around you. Food, water, other fish. Fish don’t have separate places where they need to go and buy food, because it’s kind of just floating all over the place, so they just grab it when they want it. I’m pretty sure that fish don’t keep lists of things they need to buy when they get around to going to the corner supermarket.

So anyways, this fish was on his way to school one day, with his friends. They were pretty nervous because it was the first day of school after summer vacation. They were starting the fourth grade. They had heard stories about their teacher, and there were many conflicting reports. Some kids said that she was really mean, and others said that she was really nice and supportive. Others said they didn’t remember her at all, like she was kind of vague source of various instructions that didn’t seem to be any different than other everyday school instruction.

So finally they all arrived, and sat in their desks. They didn’t know where they were supposed to sit. Last year they had been told on the first day where to sit, as their third grade teacher had a specific seating chart which was based on their second grade performance. They all remembered how when they first walked in the room, they were immediately given their seat assignment, which made some of them feel relieved. I’m sure you can understand that.

But in this fourth grade class, the teacher didn’t say anything. She just sat at her desk and smiled. They students didn’t take long to realize they had to choose their own seats, and starting milling about, deciding whether they wanted to sit up front, or sit in the back. They students that heard that this new teacher was nice gravitated to the front of the room. And those that heard she was mean gravitated to the back of the room. Obviously, friends sat next to each other, so the could try and gossip while their fourth grade teachers back was turned. When they all had chosen a seat, she stood.

Young fish, you need to experience what it means to make a decision. You are growing up. No longer can you rely on others to make your decisions for you. You may think you have chosen your own seats, but have you really? Those that sat in the front, who chose those seats? Did you, or did the people that told you I was a nice teacher choose those seats for you? How about you sitting in the back, did you choose those seats, or did those friends of yours who said I was a mean teacher choose those seats for you? What thoughts are really your thoughts? What decisions are truly your decisions? The older you get, the more you have to understand that all of your thoughts are somehow influenced by what others say to you, whether you realize it or not. If you really want to become an adult some day, you will need to truly decide for yourself. I warn you, that is very difficult, as it takes a lot of effort. Most people don’t want to do that. Most people are content to drift through life letting others tell them how to live, what to eat, what to drink, how to enjoy their free time. Most people think they are free, but they are really not, as their minds and thoughts and ideas and beliefs are shaped by those around them. Only those that are truly free know the truth. Know how to think for yourself. So, let us begin.

With that she started teaching the confused little fish about geography and history and long division.

Share this:

On the particular day in question of this story, the mom had been gone for longer than normal. She would usually go out for about an hour or so, and then come back with the good. However, it had been over four hours since she left, and they were starting to get hungry, and scared.

“What should we do?”
“Wait. We should wait.”
“I don’t want to wait.”
“But we have to wait. We don’t have any other choice.”
“Maybe she got mad and left us!”
“She didn’t get mad at me, she got mad at you!”
“Did not! Did too!”

And so they previously happy and well taken care of alligator began to argue. Pretty soon, it became dark. The mother alligator still hadn’t returned.

“We are going to die!”
“Maybe she got lost?”
“Maybe she was eaten by another alligator!”
“You idiot, alligators don’t eat each other!”
“She’s lost!”
“How could she get lost, she’ s our mom, she knows everything!”

The more they tried to ignore their hunger and fear in their tiny little alligator nest, the worse it became. Soon they began fighting, and biting each other. Simon, the young alligator who is the focus of this story, decided to climb over the edge of the nest, just to see what was on the other side.

“What are you doing? You want to get killed?”
“I’m just gonna take a look and see what is here.”
“Be careful!”

He climbed up, and looked.

“What do you do see?”
“Nothing, just a bunch of stuff that looks like the same as in here. Except…..bigger. Much bigger.” He had an idea. He looked back down at the young, scared alligators, and then turned to look again at the vastness of the swamp outside of their protective nest.

“Hurry up, and come down before somebody sees you! You’ll get in trouble!”
“I’m not coming down. I’m going out. There has to be food out here, someplace.” Then he disappeared over the edge of the side. The young alligators were horrified. They were sure that he died.

A few days later, two more small alligators climbed up and over the edge, their fear and trepidation overcome by their hunger. They two were never seen again. Another couple of days passed, and a few others got the courage to climb up and over the edge of the next.

A week and a half later, there were only four remains alligators. They were too weak to move by now, and had long given up trying to come up with a reason that their mother had abandoned them. They didn’t noticed when the birds began circling overhead. Nor did they notice, or really care when they came down and perched on the edge of their nest. They had already given themselves up to fate. One by one, the birds leaned in and ate the remaining alligators, until they were all gone.

It only took Simon and his brothers and sisters, a few hours to realize the abundance of food that outside, just waiting to be eaten, waiting to be taken. As Simon grew, and swam through the swamp, his strength and determination increasing with every morsel he hunted, killed, and ate, he realized how wonderful it was to be an alligator. Sometimes he wondered what had happened to his brothers and sisters. But he usually spent his time going after what he wanted. Which was fine with him.

Permalink

Share this:

Plans are an interesting thing. You never really know if you are in charge of your plans, or if your plans are in charge of you. And when you involve other people, everyone’s plans can merge together into one super plan that is bigger than everyone. And before you know it, you are all collectively submitting yourselves to some nefarious “plan” that has overtaken all your conscious reason. You begin to make sacrifices in the name of the “plan.” It’s like you voluntarily give up your capacity to think for yourself, and choose your own direction. And even when there isn’t a “plan” to submit your higher intelligence to as an offering in exchange for imagined safety, you pretend there is one anyways.

I’m sure you’ve had this experience. You are with a few friends, sitting there, on a Friday or Saturday evening, or whatever evening is your night to relax. You sit around looking at each other, and keep asking yourselves “So, what’s the plan?” Your lack of a plan keeps you from making the most of your time so that you can enjoy yourself. Sometimes you’ll go out and have a fantastic night, all planned by somebody else. Or sometimes not planned by somebody else. Sometimes events are just random strings of overlapping coincidence, which when strung together seem to serendipitously give you a night of fortuitousness enjoyment. What is the difference between luck and chance?

Of course, when you do make a plan, and it comes off without any major hitches, you feel really good. Because you have given yourself a strong message. You can plan and choose your reality. You can choose to live your life however you want. And if you are really bold, you can ask yourself after your plans have flawlessly come out, “Aw, geeze, why didn’t I plan something even better?” I’m sure you know what that is like, right?

So we sat there in the bar, hanging on to our self imposed two-drink minimum. The place filled rather soon after we luckily got our favorite table. So naturally, we were reluctant to leave our seats. If so many people wanted to sit where we were sitting, our seats must be pretty important right? More important than anything else we could do by going out and creating something new, right? Or maybe not. Maybe we were just fooled that because other people wanted what we had, we thought it must be important. And here we were thinking that we were following our own plans. Funny when that happens.

Permalink

Share this:

I had a friend once that was an electrical engineer at a very large company. They hired him for his engineering skills. He was well regarded as an electrical genius, as he was responsible for ironing out the bugs in the machines that they were developing. They were in a meeting, getting ready for the big boss to come from the east coast. They had to decide, as one of their major projects was behind schedule. There was one of two ways they could go. They were fairly divided on what to do, and nobody really wanted to make a choice for fear of repercussions from the big cheese.

Its’ interesting what happens when you make a decision. When you make a strong choice, and you are congruent about it, people will almost always follow your decision without question. It almost seems as if people would rather follow somebody who makes a decision that they disagree with rather than choose on their own. Great leaders throughout history have always said the secret of their leadership is the realization that people want a strong and congruent leader who will stick to his decision regardless of what it is.

So my friend was able to see the clear solution. He raised his hand, and offered it to the management at the meeting. They were impressed, and accepted his idea. When the boss came, and approved of the idea, naturally my friend got all the credit. His ability to make a decision and take responsibility for it launched his career up into management, with more responsibility, more exposure, and of course, more money.

And when I finally decided to go around, it was as if a giant weight was lifted off my shoulders. Even though I arrived at our campsite a full four hours after my friend, I had a great time hiking alone. It was something that I’ve never really done before. Hiking alone, out in the Sierra mountains, with only the beauty of nature around us. All because I was able to make a simple choice.

Permalink

Share this:

When came around a turn, I noticed a car that had passed me only a few moments before going the other direction. Hmm. Maybe he forgot something. When I turned the corner. I saw the reason he turned around. There was a big flashing sign saying that the road was under construction. When I approached the sign, sure enough, there was a large piece of road construction equipment parked there, and the asphalt portion of the road ended. On the other side of the fence was a rather ‘in progress’ looking surface. What to do. I checked me watch. The train station I was heading for was perhaps fifty meters in front of me. If I turned back, I would have to walk through the rice fields again, and go all the way around. Which would be about an extra kilometer or two. Which would mean I would miss the next train which was due in about ten minutes, and would have wait for the next one. Which meant that I would miss my connection train at the main station. If was only  an extra kilometer of two of walking, it would be a no brainer, since I love walking through rice fields. But when you factor in all the added delays I would experience, it was also a no brainer.

I jumped over the “Do Not Enter Sign” and negotiated my way over the ‘in progress’ road they were building. I had to hop over a couple holes, but I finally made it to a walkway, and to the station in time.

Sometimes when we go through life, we come up against what we think are stop signs. Many times we see the stop sign, and turn around, go all the way back around and take extra time. But are they really stop signs? The one I saw above was. It was real. But what happens when you come up against a stop sign in your imagination? If you ask out a girl, and she says, “no,” is that really a stop sign, or an invitation to try something different.

If you are working on a project, and you come up to some problems, are they really stop signs? Or just an invitation to use your ingenuity to jump over the imaginary fence and go around?

The car that was ahead of me had no choice, because the road beyond the stop sign wouldn’t support the weight of his car. But because I was walking, I assumed the stop sign was only for cars, not for pedestrians. What happens when you encounter imaginary stop signs, but you assume they are only for other people, and not for you?

Bad economy? No problem. They aren’t talking about you. You can jump over the fence and think of another way. Limited budget at work? Not for you. They mean somebody else. You can think of other ways to get the project done. You have to run thirty minutes a day and eat only oatmeal to lose weight? Nope, that’s for those other guys that are really overweight. You can think of a better, easier way to get in shape.

When you think about it, the only real stop signs that are the ones that are shaped like an octagon and pained red with the word STOP on it. And you know as well as I do that it’s really only a suggestion, anyways. For those other guys.

Permalink

Share this:

Sometimes when you have a difficult decision to make, it can be frustrating. You think about going one way, and then you suddenly change your mind and think about going the other way. Sometimes it seems that the more you think about it, the more difficult the decision can become. What can even make things worse is when you have several people involved and everybody wants to go in different directions. It can be absolutely maddening. I was on a hiking trip, and we didn’t take the time to plan ahead, so when difficulties came up, we had to spend a long time discussing which way to go. Once we came upon a trail that was closed due to maintenance, and we stood there and argued for what seemed like an hour trying to figure out what alternative route to take.

And when you think about it, there are always alternative routes to take. Even if there is only one road, there are different times you can travel this road and find things of value here. I took a seminar once, shortly after new years, on goal setting. The guy said that setting goals is much better than making resolutions. He said that the more clear you are when you choose your desire, the more flexible you can be with how you get there. The problem most people have, he said, was that their desire that they’ve chosen is kind of vague, so when they think they are making progress, they are actually going in the wrong direction. Because they weren’t able to set a clear goal, they aren’t able to see the results they achieve when they get there.

As it turns out, while we were standing their arguing, a couple came walking up from one of our two choices. We asked where’d they came from, and they said that down this trail was a fantastic lake, and a big meadow with many wildflowers. And we decided to take this way, in part because they seemed to describe it so enthusiastically. And when other people describe things enthusiastically, you know there is something good here.

So I asked my friend if she was having some old friends over for dinner, or trying to impress a first date. She knew where I was going with this and realized the recipe wasn’t the most important thing. The most important thing was having a group of close friends over to discuss this really good book they’d all separately had the experience of reading and enjoying this, and were going to share it. The dinner was just a side dish, not the main course of the evening.

Permalink

Share this:

I remember once he was talking about taking a trip to Australia. He had just a commercial sponsored by the Australian department of tourism, and they made it look pretty interesting. I’ve never actually seen a kangaroo in the wild. One thing though, is that he is afraid of flying. So he kind of looked into buying a boat ticket, but he couldn’t’ really find anything other than cruise lines that went down there. He had a bad experience on a cruise once, where he spent way too much money on things that you are not supposed to spend a lot of money on. Luckily, it was before he got married, so he didn’t get into any trouble with his wife.

It’s weird when you stop and think, because the reason those infomercials make so much money is from impulse buyers. I remember when I was a kid and I had a allowance, when you had to save for what you wanted. You couldn’t rely on impulse to guide you. You had to take a step back, and consider what it was that you wanted, because you only made a quarter a week, or whatever your allowance used to be. And when you focus on what you want, and save your money or find odd jobs to do (I used to mow lawns), it makes it easier to enjoy this, when you are able to buy what you want. Instead of being suckered into something that you don’t even know why you are buying it in the first place.

And he actually never went to Australia, because the time he took trying to find a boat other than a cruise ship took longer than his excitement lasted. So patience won out, as it usually does, because something like that knows how to wait. And when your brain decides to have a contest between two emotions, the one that doesn’t mind waiting around is the one that is going to win.

Which is eventually what his wife did. She enforced a strict rule where he wasn’t allowed to watch TV and hold a credit card at the same time. It wasn’t like she gave him pin money or anything, but he knew that if he bought something from TV, he would have to ask her permission, and if he still wanted it by the time they got around to going to the electronic store, then they bought it. She got to save them money, and he got to realize that a lot of things that he was buying were things that he really didn’t want in the first place.
Permalink

Share this: