Have you ever been looking forward to a nice, easy, Saturday afternoon, doing nothing but reading the paper and watching whatever happens to be on TV, only to have your most well thought out plans for laziness destroyed by a friend in need? Rides to the airport, helping somebody clean out their garage, and worse of all, moving, are things that define a friendship.

You wouldn’t ask that guy you see at the gym every couple days to pick you up at the airport, would you? Of course not. So, one the one hand, getting a call to do something horribly tedious and un-fun is a clear weekend killer, but it is also a remind that at least somebody counts you as a close friend (or a sucker).

I had just woken up, and was lying on my sofa, flipping through the channels when my cell phone went of. Since I recognized the number, (it wasn’t the IRS or an irate ex) I figured there wasn’t much risk in answering it. Oops.

My friend was having some problems in his backyard. He had gotten into a dispute, or a discussion, rather about some big tree. This big tree had some roots that were getting a little bit out of control, and they were starting to mess up their shared fence.

He and his neighbor had had the fence put in a few years ago, as the old one was nearly falling over. But the roots of this tree were stretching out under the fence into the neighbors hard. My friend’s backyard was all grass, but the neighbors was concrete, and he was worried (reasonably so) that the roots would damage not only their fence, but also his expensive concrete backyard.

So my friend request was to help dig out this root in his backyard, and stop it from spreading. The problem he was having was there were so many roots going all over the place, he didn’t know which was which. He didn’t want to kill the tree, as it was a really nice looking one, especially in spring.

I suppose the only good thing about this whole mess was that I didn’t have to take a shower or shave or anything before I went over to destroy his backyard.

We started digging, looking around, and sure enough, there were plenty of roots.

This was going to take some work. We were also going to need to get some more tools.

Roots can be an interesting topic, so long as you aren’t digging them up. Some trees have huge root networks that expand much further than the topside of the tree. Kind of like icebergs, some trees have most of their material below the ground, rather than above the ground.

From the perspective of a human, this doesn’t make sense. What good is a tree if most of it is underground? But from the perspective of the tree, it makes perfect sense. From a trees persepctive, it’s all about using whatever you have at your disposal to collect as many resources as possible to fulfill your objective.

And I suppose the objective of a tree is to live as long as it can, while making as many other trees as possible. So it stretches out its branches both above the ground, and below the ground to get as many resources as it can.

The fact that humans come along and put a tire swing on one of its branches is completely incidental.

Of course having roots is also quite limiting. You can very well get up and walk around with huge roots going several meters into the earth (unless you are one of trees from “Lord Of The Rings”)

Sometimes it’s best to cut your roots if they are giving you problems. Things that you used to depend on earlier may be a hindrance later on. Things that were originally built for safety can inhibit your freedom later on. The trick is to understand which roots are safe to cut, and which ones you should leave untouched.

This, of course, can take some digging, and an ability to take a step back and understand what it is that you are really after. And whether or not those roots are really giving you the benefits that you think, rather than just some imagination based on the past.

After a few hours, and a few trips to Home Depot (for digging tools I didn’t even know existed) we finally had all the roots identified, and had determined which one was threatening the fence, and the neighbor’s back yard. I turned out this particular root wasn’t nearly as deep as the rest, so cutting this wouldn’t cause any problems. There to be some big rock or something that had deflected the growth of this root several years ago. Otherwise it would have grown down, rather than out, like all the rest of the roots.

When we finally got the pizzas (yes, plural) after all that digging, it was just in time to watch some good movies on HBO.

And that’s how I spent my Saturday.

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I have a friend that lives in Korea. He’s never been to any other countries, and he told me the country he’d like to visit most is the United States. Not move there to live or anything, just to visit. I asked him why, and he gave me a rather peculiar answer, but it made sense after I thought about it for a while. And after he told me of his answer, I never looked at the world the same.

I remember when I was in third grade, when we first learned about plate tectonics. How all the continents are like giant pieces of an ancient jigsaw puzzle that used to fit together snugly, as one large mass of land. And of course, due to the structure of the Earth, the land can float around, albeit extremely slowly, at least according to human standards.

I remember asking my teacher how that was possible. She said that even though the Earth appeared to be a solid object, we can walk on the surface without falling through, it’s really liquid underneath. Really hot liquid, and the surface is really sort of floating around. She described it as a giant pie that’s cooking in the oven. The top is solid, or becomes solid while it cooks, but the inside is always liquid, especially if it’s an apple pie. And if you look at one of those time elapsed movies of an apple pie cooking, the surface will seem to expand a little bit, and move around.

There are many metaphors that are based on the “solidness” of the earth. Solid as a rock, immovable as a mountain etc. But these metaphors only hold true when compared to the attention span of your average human society, which isn’t nearly as long enough to appreciate the fluidity of a mountain range. The English language has only been around, in various forms, for a few thousand years at most. A mere blink compared to plate tectonics.

I remember once I was taking a sales course in handling objections. We learned many different ways to overcome a client’s reason for not buying our product or service. These are pretty handy techniques, and can be used in a variety of situations. One of the presuppositions of being able to out frame somebody’s objection is nobodies objection is ever set in stone.

They might not be able to buy today; right this second, but they will someday, or at least they think they will someday, otherwise they wouldn’t be talking to you. (Unless you happen to be a really aggressive door-to-door salesperson).

Whenever they give an objection, or a reason, or an excuse or whatever, you just say:

“Yes, but for how long?”

That usually throws them for a loop, and gets them thinking outside of their small “now” frame of not being able to buy. Once they start thinking in terms of some time in the future, when they will be able to buy (and their objection is no longer valid), you simply bring that feeling into the present.

“I can’t afford it.”
“Yes, but for how long?”

“I’m not sure I like the color.”
“Yes, but for how long.”

“I’m just shopping for now, kind of looking around.”
“Yes, but for now long.”

Unless you’ve done something wrong and they’re ready to kill you, they won’t usually answer with “Forever!” before stomping off.

A flip side to this is to say a variation of “No yet?”

“I don’t really like the color.”
“Hmm. Not yet, huh?”

“I’m not sure if I can afford it.”
“Yea, not yet?”
(Note: for you conversational hypnotists, they won’t be sure if the “not yet” applies to them not being sure, or them not having any money)

If you have good rapport with your client/target/mark, these simple questions will get them out of right now, where all their problems are, and get them thinking in the future, when their problems have already been solved. Then they can take that feeling of already having solved their problems back to now, and the current situation will look a lot more doable.

Obviously, you can use this in any kind of conversation, for any kind of intention, so long as you have a win/win outcome in mind. Sales, therapy, seduction, getting your kids to clean their rooms, whatever.

So when I asked my friend why wanted to visit the states, it was for the simple reason to be able to look out toward the horizon, and see nothing but flat earth. Korea, being a pretty cramped peninsula, has many mountains, and no matter were you are in Korea, no matter which direction you look, (unless you are looking out over the sea) you don’t have to look for to see mountains.

But in the United States, there are plenty of areas with nothing but flat ground, and open sky. He wanted to be able to look out his window, or whatever, and see nothing but uninhibited views of the ground stretching flat seemingly forever until finally meeting up with the sky. And look to the right, and to the left, and see a perfectly flat horizon, endlessly expanding in both directions.

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All it took was a brief second of eye contact with her peeking out behind her living room curtains and we would have nightmares and create a million more reasons to be afraid of her.

One Halloween, one of the kids was chosen, on dare, to go and knock on her door. She always kept her house completely pitch black on Halloween night, and as far as anybody could tell, nobody had ever had the courage to do that before.

He went up to her door and timidly knocked. I think he was afraid to ring her doorbell for fear of electrocution or something. He knocked, waited, knocked again, and then ran. It took a while before we could pass by the house again, at least by ourselves. We were sure she was plotting some kind of evil and painful revenge on whatever kids had disturbed whatever she did in their in the dark on Halloween.

One of the cool things about Halloween is all the candy that we got. Most of it was normal, everyday candy you would see at the store, but there would always be one really cool neighbor that would get some kind candy that we’d never seen before. Candy that was made specifically for Halloween. Edible ears, fingers, spiders made out of chocolate. Stuff you’d expect to see in a Harry Potter movie.

One year there was this neighbor that gave out full sized candy bars. Not the small miniature sized ones, but full size snickers, and mars, and three musketeers bars. He must have spent a fortune on candy. It didn’t last long, though, as soon as the kids found out, he quickly ran out.

I was riding the train into town the other day, and this guy sitting next to me started talking about his business. I’m not sure how we got onto that subject, or what his business even was. The conversation just kind of ended up on this. So he was explaining that he had this old roommate, and his roommate was involved in a similar business, which somehow had something to do with his. And he said that he was helpful in the beginning, but then he moved on to bigger and better things, which left him all alone to figure these things out. One of the things that he said was to be sure to always pay attention to opportunities that are around you. And the trick to always finding new opportunities is to see them where others do not. Which means you need to always be able to look at things from a different perspective, and different angles. That way you’ll see this differently than others do, and be able to really get a lot of benefit from this.

My favorite candy of all time was those yellow, waxy candy corns. I never really saw them except during around Halloween. Even though waxy candy corn really doesn’t have anything to do with Halloween. I guess it’s just one of those things. Something that you know you really like and you can really look forward to enjoying this when you get the opportunity.

And one summer, something really interesting happened. The old woman had this cat. And apparently, she had never gotten around to getting it neutered, or spayed, or whatever they do to cats. And this cat had a bunch of kittens. This of course, was very interesting to all the kids, and when we saw this old woman outside taking care of the kittens, she suddenly stopped being a scary witch. She was really a nice old lady that was just scared of going outside. When the kittens came, she was forced to go outside and help take care of them, and the kids noticed them, and it became like a neighborhood project. A few of the kids even took some of the kittens home. She seemed to be a friendly grandmother type after that. She even invited some of the kids inside and let us see her old record player and records from the great depression era. It turned out to be a pretty cool experience.

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As such, when elephants go wandering off like this young elephant did with his friends, they were concerned, but not overly so. They knew that the elephant would initially find its way. Of course different parents had different time when they let the elephants go roaming off by themselves. After all, they really couldn’t get very far. It was hard to find a large group of elephants slowly moving east. It might take a young adventurous elephant a few days, but they usually found there way fairly easily.

Which of course, was why the parents of this particular elephant weren’t very worried, because he had shown fairly good memory so far. They had made the trip three times already. The first two times the young elephant had stayed very close to his parents, and had wailed considerably when they tried to run up ahead to see if he could find his way. On the third trip, he seemed to be able to stay fairly clear of his parents. Whenever they tried to round him up when they were getting ready to leave with the rest of he group, although he had eventually caught up with them, he seemed to have an “I can do it by myself attitude.”

You know how it is, when you feel a little bit resentful when people are telling you that you should do a certain thing, even though you know that you should probably be doing it anyways, but you kind of resent being told what to do? That is exactly how this elephant felt on that trip.

But now it had been three days since he had seen any other elephants. He had found a couple of small streams to drink from, and finding food wasn’t a problem, because after all, he was an elephant. But he was starting to get lonely. He missed the company of his friends, and that feeling you get when you see something familiar. He was right at the halfway point between enjoying being on his own, and feeling that familiar pull of doing what you are used to all the time. Like you feel like if you go one way, you will go back to how things always were, but if you go the other way, there is no telling how much fun and excitement you could have. The only problem is by going the second way, you might encounter danger that you didn’t know existed before, and you don’t know if you can handle it.

It’s like you have to choose between normal, safe, medium amount of fun, to an opportunity of fantastic excitement and adventure, coupled with a chance of horrible slow impending doom. Even though you are afraid of the doom, you can’t help but to feel compelled to follow this new path. To keep going forward until finally figure out exactly what you are looking for. Like following the familiar path is following the path of other people, and following this new path is following your true heart, wherever it may lead.

The young elephant kept trudging along, all of these thoughts swirling around in his quickly developing adolescent elephant brain. He came up to a rise, and surveyed where he had been, and where he could go. Up ahead, about five miles, to the east, he saw a large, slowly moving cloud of dust. At first he was happy to see it, because he knew it contained his family, his friends, and the rest of the group. To the west, he saw a vast plain filled with unknown trees and mountains and animals he may have never seen before. He knew that up ahead, in six weeks, time, both paths would converge, and all off the elephant groups would meet together. He looked one last time at the far away and slowly moving cloud of dust and certain safety, and then to the west, to the unknown. And he made his decision.

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Conversations can be tricky sometimes. Like Forest Gump says, you really don’t know what’s inside unless you bite into it. Sometimes you’ll see a really mean looking person, and when you start to talk to them, they turn into the friendliest person you could ever meet. Other times, somebody seems to projecting an aura of friendliness and kindness, but once you start to talk to them, they look at you as if you’d just ran over their puppy. People can be extremely interesting.

I was reading this book, and it was saying that you really do have the power to find this interesting. It’s like a movie. Sometimes you don’t find this movie very compelling, other times you just have to keep your eyes focused on this. He said that the more you can choose to feel interested, the easier it gets. It was kind of a strange concept, purposely turning up your interest level so you can find something very intriguing that you wouldn’t normally do. I guess like everything else, it takes practice. He compared it to a situation when you meet a new boss that you will be working closely with. At first blush, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy you’d want to spend more than five minutes or so in a bar, but since you are in a situation where you have to interact with this person, you somehow find a way to find interest in the same things he does. It’s almost as if by pretending, you actually generate strong interest. I know more than a few marriages where the wife will say at first she wasn’t interested, but this guy kind of grew on her. Persistence pays.

So I asked the woman where she was going this evening, and she said she was going to the airport to see her daughter who was away at university. The reason she looked so bored was that she just hates to travel. She said that she would much rather use those devices on star trek, where you just disappear one place, and then reappear in another place. That kicked off a great conversation about high tech electronic gadgets and where we’d be without them. Which just goes to show you, you never know until you bite right into it and see what’s inside.

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One technique that has helped me enormously in this regard is the power of perspective. This is really nothing more that imagining you are in somebody else’s shoes. I’m sure you’ve heard that before you judge someone, walk a mile in their shoes. The reason this simple saying has spanned many generations and cultures is because it is one of the most fundamentally sound principles that can really open up human communication.

Now the tricky part. How exactly do you do that? You can’t very well go and physically borrow the other person’s shoes. One way to do this is to imagine that you are actually watching yourself when you are talking to other people. Next time you are having a conversation with somebody, while you are talking, really imagine that you are watching yourself out of the other persons eyes. If you can find a partner to practice doing this with, fantastic. Otherwise, I would advise at the very least doing this with a friend whom you are comfortable with. When you do this at first, it can seem a little strange imagining that you are watching yourself from the eyes of the person you are talking to. After you practice this a few times, you’ll be surprised at what you see, and you won’t be able to help changing how you communicate with others, if only a little bit.

Once you master this, you can begin to imagine seeing other things from even more expanded perspectives. And the greatest thing about this is once you start to practice on a regular basis, you’ll be thinking of new ways to apply this idea almost automatically. And that can help in more ways than you can imagine.

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I don’t usually like to wait, which is why I don’t like going to doctors offices without an appointment. I made the mistake of thinking I could sneak in one Friday afternoon about an hour before I had another appointment with somebody else. Boy was that a mistake. Never make an appointment on a Friday afternoon and then just ‘pop in’ to the doctors office. I had been sitting there, already given up on the magazines that all seemed to be at least three years old. I kept checking my watch, already thinking of when I would be able to reschedule my appointment that I was already an hour and a half late for. When this guy sitting next to me starting talking. I normally don’t talk to people in doctors office waiting rooms, but you never know what can happen. You’ll be sitting there, and all of a sudden you will find yourself in the middle of a discussion that you aren’t sure where it came from.

This guy started talking about his job. He is a resource manager for a temporary staffing agency. He said that is always important to gather resources. And there really never is a good time or a bad time to gather resources. I guess since he is in that line of work, it’s important for him to keep that frame of mind. Of always being open to new things, because you never know when you are going to find this useful. He always carries a stack of business cards with him, because you never know who you might run across that you may be able to develop a mutually beneficial relationship with this person. And because the most valuable resource you can ever discover is other people, it always pays to treat people with respect. Once you’ve successfully cultivated a resource that can provide many years of valuable service, both to yourself and to the person providing the service, you can truly enjoy a beneficial relationship.

Which is why, by the time I saw the doctor, I had forgotten all about my appointment, which this guy explained to me was a sales appointment. He explained how you can easily sniff out people that are trying to sell you something from those that just want to help. And the doctor really was apologetic, it seems he had been in an unexpected surgery all morning, and was trying his best to get through all the patients.

Wonderful things happen when you wait. The rice seedlings drop their roots in to the soil, and slowly pull up the nutrients they will mix with the air to grow bigger and bigger. And after a couple of months, you can see the rice growing from the stalk. And a month or so after that, these small seedlings have turned turn into giant resources of food that can be harvested for nourishment to feed entire countries. Amazing things happen when you wait.

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It reminds me when I was on the beach once, waiting for a friend. I was kind of learning against a wall they had separating the boardwalk from the actual sand. I was standing in the sand area, leaning against the wall, facing the ocean. It was really beautiful. The sun was off to the left, and was going to be setting soon. I was hoping my friend would arrive so we could enjoy the sunset together. But then again, it was one of those times where you are just relaxed and content to sit and let whatever happens happen.  Which is probably why I became so curious about the guy who started talking to me. It seems he was some kind of a performer, and would walk up and down the beach until he found a large crowd, and put on his show, and accept whatever donations they felt were appropriate. He started talking in sentences that didn’t really make much sense, but there was something intriguing about him, so I just listened, wondering where exactly he was going with all of this.

He sorted of reminded me from my friend from Australia, that I see every once in a while. This guy is a philosophy major, who is always going off on weird tangents, but he usually makes a lot of sense when you look below the surface. It’s like you have to take a step back to and figure out how to look at the broader concept of what he is talking about to make sense of it all. Sometimes you really need to pay attention to what is being said so you can really understand it. And many times he doesn’t make any sense then and there, it’s only when you begin to think about this that you can later find ways to apply it to your own life. He also likes to surf, which is probably why I started daydreaming about him while this guy was talking about whatever it was he was talking about.

Which ended up being that he was a fire eater, among other things. He had a bag with him, and while we were talking, or rather while he was talking and I was listening, enough people showed up. He kind of just broke off right in the middle of his story and then put on his fire eating show. And also he walked on fire, and rolled around on broken glass, and all kinds of cool stuff. All in all I think he collected a couple hundred dollars from the crowd. Not a bad take.

After my friend was wheeled into the emergency room, someone finally was able to summon the courage to intervene as a translator for the poor guy with the sick daughter. Turned out she just had diarrhea, and was dehydrated. That’s why she wouldn’t stop crying. Another person in the waiting room offered a solution that calmed his daughter down enough so the poor man was able to enjoy some peace until he finally saw a doctor. While we were waiting for my friend to come out of surgery (from which she fully recovered) he left and gave a gracious thanks to all that helped him.

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It’s like when I go to the movies. I am pretty easy to impress and entertain. Sometimes I read the reviews of movies I want to see, sometimes I don’t. An interesting thing that I’ve found was that when I read a particularly unflattering review of a movie, it allows me to enjoy this more, because I go in with less expectations. Like when you really expect to enjoy something, you sometimes can have an unconsciously higher standard that is harder for something to live up to.

I guess that is why on the stock market they always wait and see if earnings beat the markets expectations. Even ones that don’t make a lot of money, if they make more than the analysts have expected, then the stock will go up on that particular day. I remember a company I used to work for had a stock that performed tremendously well. The company had earnings in excess of one dollar per share, which is a lot. One particular day, when the earnings came out, they were only 99 cents a share instead of a dollar a share. Any company that earns 99 cents a share is a very financially stable company, so imagine the surprise when the stock went down almost 4 percent that day because it “didn’t meet the analysts expectations.”

It reminds me of a book I read on self improvement. If I remember correctly, it was a relationships book. And they key to having a happy relationship was having accurate expectations on what to get out of the relationship. Because when you are with somebody, and you find this person interesting, you have to make sure that you like this person because of real reasons, and not imaginary ones. Because when you start to expect reality to behave based on your imagination, and not an accurate assessment of what is out there, you can run into trouble. The book went on to say that one of the best ways to have a really good, solid relationship with somebody was to establish solid expectations based on communication, and your own observations of each other’s behavior in certain circumstances.

My friend, who is married with three kids told me about this. As soon as he learned to plan ahead for his family taking almost an hour sometimes to get ready to leave the house, he was able to make plans, carry out these plans, without having the added stress of expecting his family to meet unrealistic expectations. He said that in the beginning, when it was only him and his wife, he could kind of push for her to be ready earlier, but the more people they added to the family, the more impossible this got. So he naturally realized that the best way to reduce stress, when other people are involved, is to stand back, and watch their behavior, and plan your activities based on reality rather than fantasy.

Which I have gotten down to a science. I used to rush to the movies, buy my large popcorn and coke, then rush to the theater to sit down. It took me about three months of willpower to not eat all my popcorn before the trailers finished showing. Now I usually get to my seat just as the real movie is starting. I’ve learned to ignore the stated start times in the newspaper, and use my experience as a guide. I find that is much easier, because I’d rather enjoy my popcorn while watching the movie I came to see, rather than the movies I’ll most likely come to see in the future.

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Like sometimes I’ll be driving to work, and the traffic is just totally backed up. And the interesting thing is, is that sometimes there really isn’t a reason for the traffic to be what it’s like. And no matter what you try and imagine, now, it’s hard to come up with a reason for this. And that can be totally frustrating. You are just sitting there, not moving, and you don’t even know why. The radio doesn’t help, they just say try to use this exit, or that exit. But it doesn’t really help because since you aren’t going anyplace, you can’t very well take the next exit anytime in the next three hours.

Which is why I usually bring some audio books in the glove box. I don’t usually like to listen to music in the car unless I’m driving at a reasonable speed. If I’m stopped, and can’t get anywhere, I usually prefer to listen to people talking rather than upbeat music. I’d read the paper if it wasn’t so dangerous. Sometimes I’ll pop in a language tape, sometimes I’ll pop in a lecture. Once I put in a lecture that was about the great tonal shift in the English language. Supposedly it happened about a generation before Shakespeare. Which is interesting because he wrote all these fantastic plays, and was using a language that had recently undergone a drastic change. Had Shakespeare lived a generation earlier, or had the great tonal shift happened a generation later, Shakespeare’s plays wouldn’t be as accessible as they are today. When you find something like this that is really fascinating, and really appreciate the coolness of it, it’s hard not to be amazed at how much stuff there is out there to discover.

Similar to people who make it their life purpose to discover things. Like scientists, doctors, and artists, and certain types of engineers. Some people can get so involved into what they are looking for they seem to use lose track of where they are going. Like when Edison was discovering the light bulb, he burned through about seven thousand different filaments until he found one that would be economically feasible. Because he was able to lose himself in search for new information, and be able to apply it in ways that would help a great amount of people, this tends to happen.

Which is why I enjoy doing things like this. And sometimes I totally lose track not only of time, but of how many eggs I have in the refrigerator. Which is kind cool because sometimes when you run out of eggs, you can find other things that are just as healthy that you hadn’t noticed before. And it’s important to stay healthy, so you won’t have to rush to the hospital, like my neighbor did when he almost hit me. He later apologized, and told me that he didn’t turn around because he knew I was ok, and he knew that he would have plenty of time to apologize later. And I was glad the heart attack he thought he was having turned out to tendonitis, from doing too many pushups.

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Catching fish is an interesting process. There are several different ways to catch fish. When most people think of catching fish, they usually imagine finding a place to sit close to the water, and have their fishing pole, and fishing gear nearby. Then you cast your line into the water, and wait for the fish to bite. Others like to use lures. And depending on what kind of fish you want to catch, you can use different lures. Like spinners, which you cast out, wait a few seconds, and then reel in. The lure spins as you reel it in, to create some type attraction for the fish that you want to catch.

I remember I was sitting with my brother once, on a lake in the mountains. We were fishing, and talking. He turned to me and said that this is one of those experiences, and you feel you must share this with others. Like when you find this interesting, and you want to show others. You want to see if they find this as interesting as you do. I don’t know if you’ve ever been able to experience something in such a way that you want to tell others about it, but I’m pretty sure you can imagine those things now that you’ve been able to experience in your own way.

Other ways to catch fish are commercial methods. For these, they use large nets to cast out, and catch many fish at once. This is kind of the opposite strategy. Instead of throwing out a small piece of bait, and trying to attract what you want, you go and find it. And grab it. In large quantities. It’s funny how that works.

Fishing for pleasure, you bait your hook, and hope the fish find you. And sometimes, sitting and waiting is the best part. Like with my brother. I don’t even remember if we caught anything, because I had such a good time just being able to enjoy the process.

Fishing for results, on the other hand, is something else entirely. You determine exactly what it is that you are after. You choose your tools, and you go and get exactly what it is that you want. You can use big nets, large boats, and whatever else you want to use at your disposal to get what you want, again and again, without any question that you will be successful.

And the cool thing about this is, is either way you can be successful. You can make a little effort, and enjoy the process of attracting what you want. Or you can determine exactly what it is that you want, and enjoy the certainty that you will undoubtedly get it. Again and again.

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Some people make plans, but forget to dig deeper and uncover exactly why you are making your plans. Some people plan to do things because they think it is what other people expect them to do. Others plan based on what they did yesterday. I think It’s important to know the reasons for your plans, so if your plans don’t come through, you can always hold on to your reasons and put them someplace else that can be convenient. 

For example, my plan today was to find a nice quiet place to hang out, do some reading, some journaling, and dig into my thoughts to see if I can find something interesting that I’d forgotten was up there. Or maybe have a look around to maybe do re arranging or some general housekeeping type maintenance, which I’m sure you know is good to do from time to time.

But since I looked up the wrong time on the internet, I decided to catch the train going the other direction. I’d heard that there was a pretty decent shopping area that way, and since I’d never been there, I figured what the heck. I still had my backpack with my notebook, and pencils and pens to write with, so as long as I found a table that didn’t shake too much when I wrote, I’d be ok.

Turns out I was way more than OK.  I found a really cool little cafe that just opened a few months ago. They had some really tasty bagel sandwiches, and a really friendly staff and some pleasant background music against which I could easily write and think and arrange thoughts into more resourceful patterns.

Now had I gone in the right direction, I would have gone to the same coffee shop I’d already been to. I probably would have sat at the same table and eaten the same thing. Instead, I was able to discover something new, which was really there all the time. So when you think about it, I doubled a lot of things today. Before, I could only go one direction, but since I can now choose a direction, I have twice as many places to go. And because the new place I went to today is filled with restaurants, I now have twice as many restaurants to choose from. And because I can catch trains going both directions, I can be more flexible when deciding what time I have to leave.

It’s amazing how much the world opens up when you simply allow yourself to make mistakes, so that the unknown can become familiar and friendly. Because there are a lot of places in the world you can discover, and make friends with as you become used to doing new things for the first time. And one of the coolest things about that is you get to meet lots of new people along the way.

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Now when I say secret agent, I’m not talking about sneaking around in a trench coat like in “Spy vs. Spy,” but I mean using your latent psychic abilities to really understand what it is that the other person in question wants. Of course you don’t need to use any psychic abilities if you don’t want to, as some people don’t have their paranormal powers tuned in as much as the rest of you.

The secret to influencing other people boils down to giving other people what they need, and they will naturally want to help you any way they can. And you already know the secret to what it is they want, even without turning on your ESP. This is because underneath all of our surface desires, is really the same thing.

To feel wanted. To feel needed. To feel recognized. To feel approval from your peers. And this is the easiest thing to give to somebody. All you need to do is engage them in a simple straightforward conversation, and listen, really listen to what it is that they have to say.

Most of the time when we listen, we are too busy thinking of what we want to say next, or thinking of what we are planning on doing later, or wondering why whatever we did before didn’t turn out as well. Try this little experiment. Next time you are talking to somebody, just listen. And watch carefully for how they speak, and pay close attention to certain words that they use with certain emphasis.

And just simply repeat those words back to them, exactly the same way that they said it, and ask them to elaborate on it. When you do this you will naturally begin to realize not only how easy it is to make somebody feel good, but how to have a really positive effect on another person. And when you do that, you will naturally create an aura of charisma that will make it easier and easier to move through life and create the reality that you want.

Because when you think about, the whole of our existence is completely dependent on our ability to interact with other people. If you move through life with the easy to develop yet rarely practiced skill of really listening to somebody, you will find your expressed desires being readily filled by willing supporters.

It was Brian Tracy who described this secret agent policy of giving others what they want. By knowing what you want, you automatically have the inside scoop on what others want. And once you understand that by giving to others first you subsequently enrich your own life, your personal abundance will skyrocket to new levels. 

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So this young rabbit was building this volcano, but he couldn’t quite get it to work right. He didn’t have the lava mix quite down. I think he was using a combination of egg whites and mulch, or perhaps some kind of gelatin derivative.  He kept getting really frustrated, and he was about to give up. The wise older rabbit, Rectangle, said “Don’t give up yet, Rupert!” But Rupert just threw down his volcano making tools in dismay.

“Nothing is going right. I want to do this, and instead it does that. I want to make it lean right, and it wants to lean left.”

“Relax, Rupert relax. Go with the flow. Don’t fight against the natural order of things. It will come in time. It always does. Just remember to do things one step at a time. If it doesn’t go the way you want it, change what you are doing. Step back, take a bigger look, and figure out what to try next. It’s only practice, after all.”

Poor ruper was following along, but he didn’t quite understand the last part. “Practice? Practice for what?”

“Why tomorrow, of course. Everything you do today, is just practice for tomorrow. Because if you allow yourself to release your expectations, and let things be just the way they are, you’ll be fine. As long as you learn from what happens, you can do it better next time. Especially because you always have tomorrow to look forward to, right?”

“I guess so,” Rupert replied, “But how will I ever finish, if I only practice?”

“Take a look around you young sir, take a look at everything. Does everything look finished to you? Are all your friends not still growing? Are all the trees not still getting bigger? Does father not upgrade and improve your rabbit hole every winter? Do you not need to learn new things in school every year? Does your Uncle, the carrot farmer, not have to learn new carrot planting methods every year? Practice. It’s all just practice.”

 ”Practice for tomorrow. I got it,” Rupert said, getting back to work on his volcano.

“And one of the best parts about realizing that everything is practice for tomorrow, is that no matter how bad you mess up or how well you do, you can always look forward to being able to get better.”

And Rupert proceeded to make the best volcano ever.

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Like this other friend of mine that I go fishing with sometimes. He has a gigantic tackle box with about eighteen million different lures. Once when the fish weren’t biting, he gave me the entire history and theory behind each type of lure. All I I know is I usually lose two lures for every fish that I catch. He was telling me that he has this system. He can tell what kind of fish are in the area, and he uses a specific type of lure and other set up (I’m not sure of the proper fishing lingo,) based on the type of fish and their current temperament. I, on the other hand, usually grab the first lure I see, which naturally is the closest. He kept telling that I didn’t know what I was doing. And although I agreed, I suggested a wager to see who would catch more fish.

I am of the philosophy that you can take whatever you have, throw it out there, and then let whatever fish that happen to like that kind of lure come and get it.  Maybe I’m lazy, but I don’t see any reason to change whatever you are doing to try and match the environment you’re in. I think it’s easier just to throw out what you got, and see how much you can attract. 

It’s like an old friend of mine that used to be in door to door sales. He swore by using the exact same sales pitch to every single person that opened the door. Others in his company would try to vary their pitch based on the gender, age, ethnicity, color shirt (I kid you not,) and all kinds of other stuff.  He said it was a lot easier to memorize only one pitch, and then just throw the same pitch time after time. He was able to be more successful than anybody else for quite a while.

So we each fished for two hours with our respective lure methods. And we each caught the same amount of fish. While that sounds like a tie, when my friend was fished with his method, he was studying the lures and prepping his next strategy. When I fished using my method, I read Moby Dick.

And I convinced my friend to only allow himself a new set of clubs after he’d managed to consistently improve his score to lower than a hundred.

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My coworker, being the incredibly nice guy that he is, would walk up and pretend he was going to punch me in the leg. Naturally I involuntarily contracted my thigh muscles, causing an unbelievable amount of pain. He did that all day long. I grimaced, he laughed. Even when I saw him coming, and knew what he was up to, I still couldn’t help but to contract my muscles when he wound up on me. Kind of when the doctor hits your knee with that little hammer that he has. Except that is kind of cool. This was rather painful.

I’ve heard from psychologists that stress effects the mind the same way. Something happens in the world, and no matter how much we are expecting it, or see it coming, our mind contracts, causing unneeded and unresourceful mental anxiety. So what’s the answer?  One way to train your mind to relax is through meditation. There are many medically proven benefits to a daily meditation practice. Lower blood pressure, better sleep, more energy during the day, better clarity of thought. When you think about it, all these benefits can easily be explained by a mind that has been trained to be relaxed when you want it to.

And just like when you relax your body by not moving your muscles, you relax your mind by not moving your thoughts. One way to still your mind is to count your breaths. One, breath in. Breath out slow. Two, breath in, breath out slow. Focus only on the numbers. Release all other thoughts. If other thoughts drift into your mind, just allow them to continue drifting, until they float all the way past and fall off the edge of your consciousness. It doesn’t really matter if you sit in a chair, or on the floor, or even lie on your bed when you do this. Breath in, one. Breath out. Breath in, two, breath out. A good goal to aim for is to get to three without noticing any other thoughts. When you can get up to three, shoot for five, and then ten. Slow. In. Out. And it doesn’t matter how long you do it, a few minutes is really all you need.

As you continue to improve your skills, you will notice that because you are able to release thoughts easier and easier, those old ideas that used to cause you anxiety can’t do so as much any more. And sooner or later, you will come to the liberating realization that it wasn’t those ideas at all that was doing it, it was your mind’s reaction to them. And the more you train your mind, the more it seems you can shape your reality.

While you walk through the world with your less reactive mind, you will naturally start to see opportunities that you didn’t see before, so much so you will wonder why you didn’t realize you could do this earlier.

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“What do you mean stuck?”

“I mean everything I try, it just seems like I’m in the same place. Like I keep running and running and I’m not going forward or anything. Like if I stop, I’ll fall behind or something. It sucks.”

“So what would you like it to be like?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what would you like it to be like. If you could snap your fingers, and magically make everything the way you want it, with regard to this thing, what would you see or feel or hear that would be different than it is now?”

“Well, for one, my boss could tell me I”m doing a good job.”

“Are you doing a good job?”

“Of course.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know what my job is, and I know when I’m doing it right, and when I’m doing it wrong. I’ve been there for over five years, you know.”

“I know. I know. So when you do a good job, and you know you’re doing a good job, how does it get better when your boss says something to you?  Do you think that he doesn’t know you are doing a good job?”

“No, if I wasn’t doing a good job, he would know, and he would ask me what was wrong.”

“He wouldn’t just yell at you? Tell you to do it better?”

“No, he knows I know what I’m doing. So if I started slacking off, he’d think maybe something was wrong, something at home or something.”

“Wow, sounds like a pretty good boss. I wish my boss was like that sometimes.”

“Yea.”

“So maybe he doesn’t say ‘good job,’ because he knows that you know, and that would mean that he really respects your opinion of yourself. Do you know how rare that is today? For somebody to know you well enough, and know and respect your own opinion of yourself?”

“Yea, I guess that is pretty cool.”

“So maybe you should tell him, ‘good job,’ huh?”

“Hmm. Maybe I will. Maybe I will.”

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Not completely unlike when I was sitting across from Cheryl. Nervous. Shaky. Eyes briefly making contact then quickly escaping into the many available distractions around us.

“So, uh, what do you like to do?”

“Um, play tennis, and uh,” deep breath, “uh, you, know, stuff.”

“Wow. That sounds cool.”

I don’t remember leaving my brain at home. I was able to talk to her ok over the phone. Can’t the waiter come any quicker? Maybe I can spend an hour pretending to thoughtfully think of something interesting, while I’m looking at the menu, or maybe he will spill something on me so I can think of a reason to bail out. It’s not like this is my first time. Why is asking one person a simple question seem so much more difficult than asking somebody else the exact same thing? It works the same way, right? Brain makes thought, thought goes to vocal cords, mouth and lips and tongue move, sound comes out. It’s not like I’m going to do something different this time, am I?

My friend never has this problem. Of course he is a firefighter, and everybody knows that firefighters attract girls like Bill Gates can attract money. He was telling me the other day about this training exercise, where they have this old building set up, and they practice going in and putting out the fire. And I asked him, “why don’t you practice on different buildings?” He told me that most buildings basically have the same structure. They might look different on the outside, but on the inside they are similar enough. And when you train frequently, you start to to realize that what something looks like on the outside doesn’t really matter. All you really need to do is be able to notice the structure. And sometimes I ask  him why he doesn’t always have girls surrounding him. He told me he was tired of having the same conversations over and over and over.  He says that he learned that when you stay with something long enough, you really start to notice the small things that make you realize that this person stands out from the rest.

So anyways, after we ordered, it got a bit easier to talk, because she asked me if I was as nervous as she was. When I gladly said yes, that kind of broke the ice a little bit. I guess we both agreed on some level that it’s ok to embrace being nervous. We actually ended up not having that much in common, but it was an enjoyable conversation anyhow. And after I arrived at my destination on time, (actually five minutes early, because I hit all the green lights after I realized the exit was indeed mine) I was able to have another enjoyable chit chat with the suprisingly cute girl that was working there.

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Then my friend starts telling about this guy that he knows. It seems he really likes this girl, but he just can’t get up the nerve to go and talk to her.  He said that whenever he sees her, he can think of good things that he wants to say, but when he gets close, he starts to imagine all the bad things that might happen, and those overpower the good things. In his mind, at least. So I say, “Well, next time you see this guy, why don’t you..” and then my friend interrupts me, and says that he hasn’t seen this guy in like two months. And I say “Oh, so he’s one of THOSE kinds of friends.” And my friend nods and says “Yea. Low maintenance.”

Like the kind of person that you can go for three or four years with out seeing this person, and then next time you happen to bump into them, you are able to instantly remember good times, like you just got off the phone, chatting and talking about remembering good experiences. And then when you see them, you can just pick up where you left off, and everything is cool. And my friend said, “yea, just like that.”  So I asked him if he knew or had met the girl, and he said he did, and I said “so is she cool?” And he said “Yea, she’s totally cool.” “So it’s all in his head?” “Yea, it’s all in his head.” And I suggested that maybe he should just relax. Because I’m sure you know that good things happen when you stay out of your own way.

So anyways, the guy takes off on the wave, and it instantly becomes clear that not only does the guy know what he’s doing, because he expertly barrel rolled himself out just at the right moment, but it turned out he was the guy we’d been talking about. And right after a great ride, he came up to his spot on the beach where his girlfriend, apparantly, was waiting. “Is that her?” “Wow, yea it is,” he said with a chuckle. He waved, she waved, then I waved. Then we went and got some tacos, which is another story.

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Like when I was at the donut shop the other day. I always buy the same donut from the cute Cambodian girl that works behind counter. Chocolate with chocolate frosting with pink and white sprinkles.  Cute AND delicious.  Not today, as soon as I walk in, I see another customer. He’s taking MY donut! Does he have any idea? There aren’t any left. What to do? I can’t just stand here. Maybe I’ll go talk to her. Strike up a conversation. Ask her something. Maybe about Cambodia. Then she’d wonder why I’m here. I need to buy someting. I hate this. When you don’t know what to do. Confused. Bewildered. Perplexed.

The same thing happened at the chinese restaurant last week. I drive to the shop, the whole way eating Kung Pau Chicken in my imagination. You know how you can really imagine something, right? Someting you really want. Like you can just see it in your mind?  I get there. I walk in. No Kung Pau Chicken. Only a few left over pieces of moo shoo pork that looks like it was cooked last week. In a microwave.

Why does this alwasy happen to me? Why do I alwasy get the leftovers? It seems like the more I focus on something, the more it moves out of my reach. Maybe I’m focusing too hard. Like when you really want something bad, and you can’t see all the good stuff around it. Like when you try too hard to do one thing, you neglect to do the important things.

As I contemplate this, I see the cook walk in from the back. He has a freshly made pot of Kung Pau Chicken! Lord Have Mercy!

“I’ll take the three dish combo please…uh, Kung Pau Chiken, and , uh, Kung Pau Chicken, and uh, um, yea, Kung Pau Chicken.”  All it took was a little patience.

And not only that, while I was thinking of something to say to that cute Cambodian girl, she recommended their apple fritter. “Are these new?” I ask. “No,” she said giggling. “There always here.” I try it. I like it. In fact, I’ve gotten it ever since. Who would have thought? And while Tommy was gloating because he got to be story readers pet and look at all the pictures up close, I got to sit next to the new girl. Debbie.

Funny how things work out.

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