Engage your Guests

You want to make your wedding a special time by sharing it with cherished family and friends. However, with many people in one place, it can be hard to spend quality time with each and every guest. Plus, there is always some lag time in the wedding reception and sit-down meal (if you have one). A close-up magician can keep your guests engaged while you, as part of the newly wedded couple, can take your time to meet and greet everyone.

The great part about hiring a magician as your wedding entertainer is the appeal to all ages. Adults are right along with the children in expressing wonder at the different tricks and sleights of hand of the magician. While hiring a DJ or band can be fun, what if your guests don’t like the music? With magic, you don’t have to worry. It has a universal appeal!

Choosing the Right Magician

Word of mouth is the first course of action when choosing the right magician for your wedding, particularly if you respect the advice of the person giving it. Look to local entertainment agencies if you do not have a starting point such as a referral. Once you have a few candidates for your wedding magician, check out their resume and website. Most magicians these days not only post their resume on their website but also video clips and testimonials from past clients.

Watch the video clips and see if the personality and style of the magician will work for your wedding. Talk to the entertainer and see if you believe you can work with them in the planning of your wedding. Ask for references from past clients, particularly if any were from previous weddings – and then call them. Finally, verify some of their previous work from their resume and look into whether the magician is a member of any professional organizations for their type of entertainment.

Planning a wedding can be fun and stressful at the same time. When it comes to your choice of a wedding entertainer, go with something a bit different from the other weddings you may have attended. Hire a close-up magician and create a wedding event your family and friends will talk about for years to come.

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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.

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Success with NLP

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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.

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Success with NLP

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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.

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Powerful Metaphysics

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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.

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Last week I went to a book signing at a local bookstore. Some guy was going to sign some books, and give some kind of lecture. I hadn’t planned on going, but a friend of mine dragged me along. I think there is a girl that works there that he would like to ask out, but he is too shy to go by himself. On the way there we ran into this group of kids that were having a semi organized race with their remote controlled formula one cars. Maybe that’s not the best way to describe them. They were cars that were designed to look like formula one cars. They were pretty loud for how small they were, and much faster that you’d expect.

I don’t know if they got special permission from the city, but they had designed a small course in a park. They had set up some markers to create the points on each side of the track. There were about fifteen kids in all. I didn’t see any adults, so I’m not sure if it was a sponsored event or some sort of school club.

So while we were hanging out and watching this race, this guy came up and stated talking to us. We had about an hour before the guy’s speech at the bookstore started, so we had plenty of time. Plus my friend promised me that if I went with him, he’d ask out that girl. So he was likely stalling for time.

The guy started talking to us about genetics and determination. It was quite a strange topic to just bust out of nowhere with. I thought for a minute that he was some homeless bum that walks around blurting out word salad to whoever will listen, but it turns out he is a university professor. Halfway through his impromptu dialogue, he stopped and apologized for coming in out of the blue with such a potential divisive topic. The nurture/nature debate never ends well. I suppose he could have been talking about which is the best manufacturer of shoe polish, and my friend would have eagerly listened. He was really getting nervous about asking out that girl.

It’s funny when that happens. The human brain has this powerful mechanism for self-protection and self-preservation that comes out in many forms. Whenever we perceive a threat, we will do anything to get away from it. If there is no getting away from it, we will ignore it at all costs.

I’m always reminded of biology class I took in college. We were studying various primates, and great apes in particular. There was some lady that came in to our class once that had actually gone to Africa and studied them up close. She said the trick in not getting beat to death by the silverback, the alpha male leader, was to never ever make eye contact. You can get very close to the group so long as you don’t make eye contact with the leader, or any of the other powerful members of the group.

People spend a lot of time pretending to be really interested in something, but in reality they are avoiding making eye contact with what they perceive as a threat. In the jungle of course, making eye contact with the silverback will get you a good thrashing. But in real life, staring your fears right in the face is usually the trick to making them vanish.

Which is lucky for this weird professor who was going on and on about the way the mind comes pre-wired for certain instincts. He was saying that people used to think that man was different from all the other animals, because animals have instincts, and we have to learn everything as we go along. That’s why they used to think that humans took so long to make it to adulthood compared to all other animals. That we were born like some computer with only a hard drive, and no software.

But in reality, we come with many more instincts that all the other animals, AND the ability to learn along the way. Making us extremely flexible and agile when it comes to surviving. Our instincts are just as strong as migrating birds who know exactly where to fly every winter, but ours are flexible, so we get to change the where they point. Of course, the draw back is that if you don’t consciously evaluate your instincts and where they are pointing, you’ll be covertly guided by all the messages and advertising we are surrounded with on a daily basis.

Of course this agility makes it very easy for us to come up with unique and interesting ways to avoid overcoming our fears and our problems, like pretending to be really interested to some blathering professor in the park, like my friend was doing.

I was finally able to pull him away from the “professor,” who apologized profusely when he checked his watch. I guess he had lost track of time as well.

Which was just as well, because by the time we got up to leave, the kids had finished their tournament. The kid that won was being congratulated by all the other kids as we got up to leave. I saw a school bus pull up, and some adults got off and pulled out some boxes, into which the kids put their cars. I guess it was a sponsored event after all.

And when we got to the bookstore, the guy that was signing the books was the guy that we just talked to in the park. I guess he had written several textbooks on evolutionary psychology, and this was his first book targeted at normal people. As it turns out, his dialogue with us in the park was practice for tonight’s, lecture. I guess he thought if he could get a bunch of random strangers to understand his theory, then he could explain it to some eggheads in a bookstore. He made sure to thank us for being his guinea pigs. His speech was actually pretty good.

And my friend finally asked that girl out. Sort of. He got her name, and phone number, and a vague commitment to “maybe do something together later, or something.” I guess that’s pretty much what we came here for.

Her phone number.

But this sure was a round about way to get here, wasn’t it?

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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.

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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.

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They had already figured out the math and the physics behind the interactions, and could accurately predict the behavior of two or three particles. In a closed system with five or ten particles bouncing around, it was pretty straightforward. The could use any number of statistical algorithms to figure out the motions of particles, say, x, y, and z, based on the motions of particles a, b, and c.

From that they could effectively extrapolate to the whole system. The only problem is that in nature, there is never a system with only ten or fifteen particles. There are systems with billions and billions of particles. When you go up to that same level, the same principles apply, but the sheer number of particles makes the calculations impossible. Even with a computer that is a billion times more powerful than any computer that can ever be invented, trying to calculate the motions of system with so many natural particles is impossible. (If you’ve ever wondered why they can never really predict the weather with any amount of scientific accuracy, this is the reason. There are just too many variables.)

Now this group of scientists was studying something called solid-state physics. This is where you have material that is really packed with particles. The particles don’t have very much room to move, so they are always getting in each other’s way, kind of like twenty people on an elevator. If the elevator stops on the fifth floor, and the person in the back needs to get off, then pretty much everybody has to move a little bit to accommodate them.

Same thing in solid-state particle physics. When one particle moves, just a little bit, it pretty much affects every other particle. These poor scientists were wracking their brains trying to figure out how to accurately predict the behavior of the system as a whole.

Then one guy had a brilliant idea. Why don’t they look at holes, instead of particles? In the elevator example, there are twenty people, and may enough space for one more person. So thinking of that empty space as a separate entity, you can reduce the math significantly if you only try and predict the movements of that empty space, rather than everybody else on the elevator.

So the scientists started looking at holes, instead of particles. And they gave holes the same properties that they normally give particles. Like weight, size, mass, density, spin, charge, etc. One of the cool things about scientists is that a value of zero is a perfectly acceptable value to give something. It is a number just like any other number. So they looked at a system with only few particles (holes) with zero mass, zero charge, zero spin and zero everything else they normally give to particles.

And lo behold, the math was much simpler, and it accurately predicted the behavior of the system. And solid-state physics was born. Solid-state physics is the underlying science behind all kinds of fascinating inventions that will help mankind for hundreds of years. To say solid-state physics is a significant development in human history would be a huge understatement.

And it was all based on a “model” of reality. They looked at a system, and figured out the easiest way to “frame” reality so they could predict it and utilize it the most. They ignored the traditional way of “looking at things the way they really are,” and came up with their own model. It didn’t matter one bit that they were looking at imaginary “holes” moving around in a space.

It’s been said that a musical equivalent would be to write a piece of music by ignoring the notes, and focusing only on the spaces between them.

The moral of the story? Reality is a finicky thing. You don’t necessarily have to buy into everybody else’s’ interpretation, or model of reality. You are allowed to observe things, give them whatever meaning you want, and see how that works out for you.

You ask a girl out, and she rejects you. Have you been rejected, or did you only meet a girl that has bad taste? You try a business venture and it consistently loses money. Did you fail in business, or did you find a way to practice and improve your skills so you’ll be better in the next venture? Did that person cut you off in traffic because they are an evil person with no manners, or are they suffering significant emotional pressures and are at their wits end?

Labels you give to reality can be helpful, or beneficial. They can make it easier for you to get what you want, identifying learning opportunities and resources, or they can make it difficult, only identifying obstacles and problems.

When you realize that you have complete control over how you label things, you’ll be surprised how many opportunities open up for you.

Join countless others and sign up for our email list! If you don’t join the crowd and join our list, you’ll be left out in the cold. You don’t want that, do you?

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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.

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I remember a friend of mine bought a specific golf club once. He had played golf for several years, and for the longest time only had this set of clubs that he’d bought a long time ago, back when he was in high school. For the longest time he never used any other club except for these. Then one day he was invited to play in a tournament at a course that he normally couldn’t afford. His boss knew somebody and he got picked at the last minute. He showed up, with his old inexpensive set of clubs. He was ok at first, but somewhere along the line he got into trouble

On the back nine, he found himself in a particular unique hazard. It was a partial pond, but also a partial heavy grass. He looked into his bag, but he didn’t have a particular club for that shot. After a few moments delay, he finally settled on an eight iron. Not the best club for this, but it worked. For some reason, even though the shot was a good shot, and everybody complimented him on his resourcefulness, he felt a little ashamed of having to pull out an old eight iron into that situation. He’d noticed that all the others around him had all kinds of specific clubs for each particular hazard.

Of course as soon as the tournament was over, he went out and shopped and shopped until he found a club that was designed for that particular hazard in mind. He promptly put it in his bag, where it stayed.

I had this professor in college, a professor of philosophy. Dr. Mclurg at San Diego State, probably one of the most influential professors I’ve ever had. He had a particularly engaging way of arguing. He’d grab your attention, pull it in, and you couldn’t help but to see things from several different perspectives at once. Whenever the class finished, I always felt as if my mind had been irreversibly expanded, and I could never go back to my previous way of thinking. One of the striking things about him was that he almost always wore the same shirt. It was a normal, regular button down shirt, but he seemed to always wear the same one. It was if he had decided that the particular thing you are using, despite whether it’s an article of clothing, or an electronic component, as long as it works, it doesn’t really matter what other people think about that. It’s not like the shirt that you wear is going to affect your philosophical arguing points.

Probably the coolest thing I ever did with my seventy five in one electronic kit was to take the strobe light, which was only set up for the amps and current for a small 1.5 volt bulb, and run the light in my bedroom through the circuit. It created a really cool powerful strobe light. And it actually lasted a few minutes before the whole circuit board caught on fire due to overheating. Probably the best thing about that was, by the time I’d saved up my allowance to buy a replacement kit, the newest version was a 150 in 1 kit. Me and my friends really had a blast with that one, and I managed to not burn down my house in the process.

Last time I saw my friend, I asked him if he’d ever used that club, and of course he said he didn’t. He kept it as a reminder to always make sure he was using things for the right reason, and not because he thought he was supposed to according to what other people supposedly thought.

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This is due to our evolutionary past. When we were in an area that was populated by red spotted tigers, our ancestors would quickly learn that they were dangerous. The brain was then programmed with a collection of information, sounds complex mathematical visual representations. If a red spotted tiger was detected by any one of our senses, it would automatically trigger a fight or flight induced panic, giving us the energy to run away. Conversely, when we lived in an environment which had a small green fruit that was extremely tasty and provided long term energy, that became important as well. So when our ancestors were out walking around and spotted one or a bunch of these out of the corner of their eyes, they immediately felt hungry and remembered how good these things taste.

Because humans can be so flexible and adaptable (arguably this is why we were the ones Mother Nature chose to give such big brains to,) we lived in several different environments. Because of this, we developed the capability of shifting the desirable and undesirable things in our environment for our brains to be on the lookout for. In one place and one generation, it might have been lions and purple fruits. In another place, and another generation, it might have been huge flying predators and small animals that were delicious.

So how does this affect you, and moreover, how can you profit from it? This is how beliefs work. Despite living in a modern society, where we have police to protect us from predators and grocery stores to provide us with all the food that we need, we still have these filtering mechanisms in our brains. These filtering mechanisms come into play when we have certain beliefs. The scary thing is, sometimes these beliefs can be self-sustaining. That is, if we believe a certain thing (even though it isn’t true) and see random events, which we take to be “proof” of these untrue beliefs, they reinforce the belief, making it harder to get rid of. Let’s say you believe that members of the opposite sex find you disgusting. You go through out your day, and because this belief has been programmed strong enough, you will only find evidence of it being true. Just like our cavemen ancestors only saw the purple fruits and ignored the rest, you will only register and remember the one odd fellow out of a hundred that behaves in a way that might be considered loathsome towards you. This of course reinforces the belief, which depressed you, changes your behavior, and actually invites behavior from others that reinforce this belief.

How about another example. You read the papers, watch the news, and decide the economy is in shambles. You go out, and only notice expensive things you can’t afford, people on the street begging for money, shops having going out of business sales, and so on. This reinforces this belief, and directly affects your ability to make money. What happens when you realize that even in a down economy, there are plenty of people making money? What do they believe about the economy? Many believe a down economy is the best time to start a new business venture, because you are getting in on the ground floor of future growth. Many people learn to see a down economy as an opportunity for wealth, rather than a scary situation.

The bottom line is you have two choices. You can choose to let your beliefs be set by others, and wander through life reacting to the world. Or you can sit down, spend a few hours, and choose powerful beliefs you would like to be true. For example, how would you feel if you believed you could easily make lots of money? How would it feel if you could easily persuade people to your way of thinking? How would it feel if you believed you were a highly talented writer, or musician, or actor? How would your life change for the better?

Although it does take effort, and time, the results are powerfully rewarding. You can either drift through life and hope to get lucky, or you can choose your beliefs, and go out and find (or make!) evidence of their truth. The longer you keep at this, the sooner the beliefs will start to sink in to an unconscious level, operating automatically.

This is where the magic really starts to happen.

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Personally, I like the story behind the marathon. Some Greek guy ran 40 kilometers after the Greeks, led by the Athenians, defeated the Persians at the battle of Marathon around 500 BC. He ran from the city of Marathon to Athens to tell the Athenians that they were victorious. This wasn’t just a celebratory run. Had the Greeks lost at Marathon, the Persians would have marched straight to Athens and sacked the city, burned the temples, killed the men and raped the women. That was what happened back in those days. So the Greek guy who ran the 40K to tell the city was doing them a great favor. He was telling them they weren’t going to be killed and raped and then all their property destroyed. It would be a terrible thing to be sitting around hoping that a foreign army is going to come marching on your city in a couple days to make your last moments of life a new experience in suffering and pain.

The story goes that when this Greek guy reached Athens, he said the word “Victory!” and then fell dead. And of course, “Victory” in Greek is “Nike”, which is where the brand name comes from. Maybe if the poor guy had been wearing a pair of shoes, he wouldn’t have fallen dead. But I’m not so sure if that was the whole story, or the motivation for this Greek guy was merely to let the poor Athenians they were saved. You’ve heard the old saying, “Don’t shoot the messenger,” right? Well that saying is around because they actually did used to shoot the messenger. If somebody arrived with bad news, they generally were so angry that they killed the guy. I’m sure you seen or heard about the famous scene where the guy shouts “This is Sparta!” and then proceeds to kill the messenger and all his co-messengers by kicking them down that long well.

When the messenger arrived with good news, they did the opposite. He was treated like a rock star. Food, women, anything he wanted for a couple of days. This wasn’t really an official procedure of the city; this is just the way it worked out. Some guy would return from a big battle, and let the city know their men had succeeded, which meant that the other cities army wasn’t going to come and destroy everybody. Naturally, everybody was ecstatically happy, and the center of all this happiness was the lucky messenger. So of course, he got invited to parties, and orgies and whatever other celebratory customs were around.

So I don’t know if that Greek guy, who gave birth to both a very traditional Olympic sport and a world famous brand of athletic wear, had anything on his mind other than all the insane partying he was going to do for the next two or three days. Of course that version is not the most romantic version, but a funny things happen to stories over time. They get repeated and changed and take on whatever the current belief system that rests in the cultural consciousness. Because current western culture is still very steeped in traditional religious beliefs and sexual taboos, that part of the story is kind of only snickered at or not taken very seriously. Because, like it or not, a large part of the western culture is firmly rooted in the Church, namely because the Church was the major governing power until only recently. Stories from other cultures are either rejected, or filtered through the societies collective consciousness to mold to whatever messages we’d like to read into a story of historical event.

True power and choice comes when you can choose your own set of beliefs and filters through which you can see the world. If you can take a true objective view of the current values and priorities of the society you live, and only choose to take on those beliefs and values that serve you and the choices you’ve made for what you want your life to become, then you’re a step ahead of most other people. The sad fact about living in modern society is that most people are content to let others do their thinking for them, and dictate to them what is important and what isn’t. When you can truly learn to think for yourself, and decide your own direction in life, you will as victorious as the Greeks were at Marathon.

My friend finished the Marathon in around three and a half hours. I finished in barely under five. It took a huge amount of focus to keep going and not throw in the towel. I realized at about mile ten that I was in way over my head, so I had a tough choice to make, and both choices would have it’s own set of consequences. The next 16 miles proved to be a horrible. One of the things that greatly helped me to finish was all the people standing along the course cheering the runners on. It is one experience that I will never, ever forget.

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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.

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Lately, though, the young peacocks were talking about a great big meeting of the adult peacocks. Apparently the men and the women would go and meet in a special place, and they would do some kind of secret adult peacock ritual thing, like church or something. The young peacocks didn’t really know what it was all about. And they were too scared to ask the peahens, because well, everybody knows that peacocks and peahens don’t hang out together. It just isn’t cool.

That’s when the rumors started. They said that when young peacocks turn into adults, their feathers change colors. And depending on how much their feathers change, they will become really popular, or not so popular, depending on the color. This caused a great deal of confusion among the young peacocks. Weren’t they already popular? Why did your feathers have anything to do with whether people liked you or not? Pretty soon the two groups, the young peacocks and the young peahens would gather. The peacocks were certain that the peahens were talking about them. They were always whispering and pointing and giggling.

Then one horrible day, young Roberto learned the terrible truth. His father took him aside, and told him how things really were.

“Son, some day you are going to grow some extra feathers. And if you grow really good feathers, you will be popular.”
Roberto gulped, too afraid to ask what would happen if he didn’t grow “really good feathers,” whatever that meant.
His father seemed to sense his apprehension.
“Don’t worry son, you’ll be fine. My father had good feathers, his father had good feathers, and my feathers aren’t too shabby. You’ll be allright.”
Young Roberto, however, wasn’t convinced.
“But what happens if I don’t?”
His father only stood, and walked away.

Three weeks later, Roberto noticed that his feathers were indeed changing. He rushed to meet his friends, some of them also had changing feathers, and some didn’t. They were all confused, and scared. The peahens continued to gather and giggle and point. With every passing day, Roberto and his friends grew more and more anxious. Then one night, he got up the courage to speak with his father.

“Why do they only care about feathers? Isn’t anything else important?” Roberto asked.
His father scratched his head.
“I don’t know son, that’s the way it’s always been.”
“But does it have to be that way?” Robert asked, sensing that his father didn’t have the answers he was looking for.
“I think it does. That’s the way it has always been.” He answered, sounding unsure of himself.
Roberto wasn’t convinced. At all.

The next day he decided to try something different. He gathered his friends, and his courage. He stood up to speak to them.

“Just because everybody before has only cared about feathers, doesn’t mean it has to be that way. You are more than your feathers. It doesn’t matter if your feathers are blue, or green, or the same stupid color as they are now. Who you are on the inside is more important. Your ideas and dreams and goals are what are important. If somebody thinks you are popular only because of your feathers, that’s their problem.”

The crowd of young peacocks was joined, for the first time, by a few brave peahens.

“You mean we can choose on something besides feathers?” A peahen asked.
“Yes!” Roberto answered, the crowd starting to cheer him.
“You can choose based on whatever you want! You don’t have to choose based only on what people before you chose!” The crowd cheered again, the young peahens now mingling with all the young peacocks. They mingled and talked and explored each other’s personalities. Everybody was happy. Everybody was popular, in their own way.

The adult peacocks watched in interest, as the young peacocks and peahens broke with tradition to their own delight and happiness.

“Can they do that?” One older peacock with large, fading red feathers asked.
“I guess they can.” Said another, with a dull set of yellow and oranges feathers, and a large grin on his face.
“I guess they can do whatever they want.” He added.

And from that day on, peacock feathers became only an interesting footnote in peacock history.

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The first thing that struck me was just how large the flower shop seemed on the inside. From the outside, it looked like a small shop that could only hold maybe a few dozen arrangements. The front of the store was not that large, and on either side were rather looking storefronts, so you would never imagine what you could find inside until you really look. The first thing I was reminded of is the scene in Harry Potter (book four or five, I can’t remember) when he went to watch the world Quiddich Cup, and he went inside a tent set up by the Weasley’s. It was small on the outside, but enormous and filled with magic on the inside. That’s what this flower shop was like.

Inside were incredible arrangements of flowers I’d never even seen before. The colors were tantalizingly fantastic, and the way the proprietor had arranged them was absolutely breathtaking. I won’t even begin to try and describe it, because one, I only know the vocabulary of about six colors, and two, I only know the names of maybe three flowers. Bu suffice it to say that as soon as I went inside that shop, I started racking my brains for a reason to buy an arrangement or two and a reason to give them to somebody.

I started talking to the proprietor of the place. She had been in business for about ten years, all in the same shop. She had done several renovations to maximize the small space she had to work with, and the results spoke for themselves. She had originally been a high level executive assistant, pulling close to six figures a year (and that was over ten years ago,) but something about her job was less than satisfying. She wasn’t able to find happiness answering the needs of others. She was well respected, well liked, had enjoyed several promotions over the course of her career, but something was missing. She wasn’t able to choose her own direction.

So she looked around and found the flower shop for sale. She had always had a penchant for arranging things. But up until then, she had always been arranging things according to the criteria of other people. Like when you’ve had enough, and you need to choose things that are important to you. You feel a need to set your own course, and not have to follow the orders of others. You need to be yourself, whatever that may be. And she found it in this shop.

She said that at first the money was less than a quarter than she made before, but really enjoyed it. She could find ways to express her creativity in a way that gave her that special kind of satisfaction that you get when you do things your own way.

And of course, as time went on, and her shop became more and more successful, she started to earn more money than she did before. And not only that, but she is now able to set her own hours, choose her own arrangements, and feel really proud of her work.  Something she suspects never would have been possible before.

It’s kind of nice knowing that there are still people like this to model yourself after.

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So as you let those thoughts that you are thinking circulate in your thought-sphere that exists some place in the realm of ideas, I’d like to borrow your attention for a few moments. Don’t worry; I’ll give it back when we’re finished here. Just relax, because you know that those experiences that you enjoy are really up to you to discover them here, now.

Once up a time there was a sheepherder. His job was to take his sheep from pasture to pasture, and let them graze. When the time came for him to sell their wool, he took them into town to the place that bought the wool. They would sheer the wool from the sheep, and take the wool to make various things. Clothing, blankets, rugs, and other things. The sheep were happy, because they didn’t really have to do much except eat, and get a haircut periodically. The sheepherder didn’t have an overly difficult job, because he just found natural grass for the sheep to eat, made sure the wolves stayed away, and had to find a market for the wool from time to time. All in all, it was a happy life for all of them.

As the character in most stories do, our sheepherder boy encountered a problem one day. He had grown bored with his sheep herding life. At first, when he first got into it, it seemed fantastic. Travel, no boss, make your own hours, it was a young man’s dream come true. But the more the years passed, the more he realized as he traveled from town to town that he was missing out on something. It seemed more and more apparent that the townspeople were enjoying a happiness that wasn’t available to him.

Despite his freedom and detachment from the world, he longed for human companionship. He longed for the touch of a woman, and the warmth of a fire in the fireplace of his own home, and the smell of fresh bread from his own kitchen.

But he didn’t want to lose his sheep. They had served him well over the years, and he couldn’t bring himself to just abandon them. So he decided to have a meeting with his sheep. He hired a sorcerer from a nearby town, as he would have to find a way to communicate his intentions to the sheep, and gauge their responses. The sorcerer claimed to have experiences in these matters. After a long discussion, he was convinced that the sheep would be able to govern themselves, and find their way into town to get their usual haircuts, as they’d been accustomed.

The sheepherder had agreed to take the profits generated by the self governing sheep, and set up a wolf free zone, so sheep could live in safe environment, free from predators. The money would be used to buy special minerals and mix them into a special recipe known only to the sorcerer, thereby keeping the wolves from encroaching on their territory.
When they had finished making the arrangements, everybody was happy.

The now ex-sheep herder boy set off to find the girl of his dreams, and start the exciting journey of his new life. As he was leaving, the sorcerer pulled him aside, to give him some last minute wisdom:

“Life is a long journey. It can be easy or hard, depending on what you make of it. You can find peace, or you can find pain. The greatest secret does not lie in how to get money or how to seduce the most beautiful daughter of a shopkeeper. Nor does it lie in conjuring magic to keep away the wolves. The secret lies in seizing your own power to choose. Once you fully realize that you have always had that magnificent power, the world becomes yours.”

The ex-sheep herder boy thanked him, and wandered off, open to the bliss that was in store for him, and you.

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One way to get around this is to be aware of what your underlying intentions are. It helps to be able to dig deeper to find the real reason behind your goals. When you search beneath what is pretending to be the important part, you’ll be surprised to discover that many of your goals fall under the same basic categories. Safety, comfort, recognition, personal growth.

As I got off the streetcar (yes they have street cars where I live) I saw my goal in sight. The coffee shop where I had intended to relax and spend an hour or so writing in my journal. As it happened, the weather was particularly nice, and there were a fair number of people out and about. There is a street going just past that I’ve always kind of wondered about. There was a steady stream of people walking up this street, that looked as if they were going to some kind of event. You can sort of tell when people are going to find something special here. Because of the way they are dressed, many of them carrying water bottles, cameras, other things that make it appear as if they are on a mini-trek that might take a few hours.

But something funny happened. Usually when I’ve made a choice, (other than to wander around without a clear choice) and I see a distraction, I have at least a few moments of indecision. Should I go this way? What about my other plans? Which is better? Hmm. But not this time. My coffee shop plans instantly disappeared as I followed the crowd up the street. When I emerged back about two hours later, much richer for the experience, I never even gave my abandoned coffee shop plans a second thought.

If you are thinking this is completely platitudinous and futile, maybe you’re right. The thing that struck me was the speed at which I’d abandoned my coffee shop plans for an unknown trek up the street, merely using the crowd as my guidance. Which leads me to suspect that something told me that the underlying reason I wanted to hang out at the coffee shop would better be served by following the crowd up the street. On  an unconscious level, the change in plans didn’t even warrant a the token elevation into consciousness. My desire just shifted, without any conscious thought.

Maybe because I’ve been doing a lot of meditating lately, I was able to not need to question the greater wisdom of my unconscious. I just went with it, and had a much richer experience because of it. Of course I wasn’t doing brain surgery, or walking across a tightrope over the grand canyon, I was just wiling away a Sunday afternoon. But in that moment I experienced an unconscious guidance that I don’t usually experience.

Thank you unconscious, whatever you are. That was fun.

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So my friend walks into this convenience store, fills up his coffee, and is waiting in line to pay. The guy working behind the counter begins an open tirade against the organization on my friends t shirt. Now my friend was on his way to work, and only stopped in for a few minutes to grab a cup of coffee, so he wasn’t mentally prepared for any kind of debate. And as luck would have it, everyone else in the store seemed to be in agreement with the worker behind the counter. So my friend, who was only expecting to buy a cup of coffee, found himself surrounded by people that had no problem ridiculing him for what he believed in.

Keep in mind that the organization that he supports is a mainstream organization with a large percentage of the population on the same page. It’s not like he was advertising kiddie porn or something on his t-shirt.

He was totally taken aback, both by the fact that he was suddenly surrounded by detractors who through their apparent agreement didn’t feel any reason to hold back, and that the instigator was working in a large chain convenience store, where one would expect at least a surface level of professionalism.

Now my friend is an avid meditator. He told me that after the situation began, he stopped, took a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled. He did this a couple of times, and focused on his purpose. Enter shop. Buy coffee. Leave shop. He told me that after only a few breaths, he was able to feel centered, and allow the people the luxury of expressing their opinions. They weren’t going to harm him, they didn’t have guns or knives, they were just capitalizing on the fact that they had him outnumbered, at least with respect to the opinion suggested by the organization on his t-shirt.

I asked him how he specifically practices to be able to get to that level of uninsultability, and he says it’s simple. All you do is exhale all your breath, wait until you feel the desire to breath, and then breath in slowly while feeling appreciation for your breath above all else. Then when you fill your lungs, you hold that appreciation in your mind to the exclusion of all other thoughts. He said that it takes practice, but once you develop a habit of breathing this way for a few minutes every day, you will train your brain in powerful ways. You will train your brain to “detach” from automatically reacting to the world around you. Instead, you will learn to see and hear the events around you, and then have the presence of mind to choose how to respond.

It all sounds very esoteric and zen like, but it really is just practicing a behavior that you want to get better at. Nothing different than practicing a golf swing or your tennis back hand. You are practicing withholding any thought other than the appreciation of your own breath in your own lungs.

And from that space between outside reality and your choice of thought, comes incredible power and resourcefulness. Not a bad skill to have, if you ask me.

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I was finishing up a workout once, and a guy with a particularly well defined body which indicated the amount of effort he’d put into it, said

“Well, go home force myself to eat healthy food, watch TV, fall asleep, wake up, go to work come back here, work out, take a shower, and do it all over again.”

There is a character in Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland called the red queen. She tells Alice that in order to stay in place, you have to keep running.
But does it have to be that way? Do you have to do the same thing day in, day out, on some path that you chose how many years ago? Is that the meaning of life? To struggle through elementary school, junior high school, university if that’s your thing, then as Bob Dylan said “twenty years of schoolin and they put you on the day shift.”

It doesn’t have to be that way. One of the reasons humans have catapulted themselves to the front of the line in the race of evolution is our adaptability. The beauty of mother nature is that we can go through life completely oblivious to the idea of having a choice and still manage to have a successful career and family, and produce more copies of ourselves. Which is all mother nature really cares about. She gave us the internal drives and desires that are strong enough so that even if try and ignore them, they will drive us forward. For most of human history, these basic urges have drove humanity to build cities, cathedrals, beautiful works of art.

But what happens when you examine your urges? What happens when instead of blindly following these to eat, make money, have sex, build a family, you not only accept these urges as a natural part of you, but channel them, even harness them, to help you create the life that you want?

What would that be like?

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Many evolutionary biologists agree that humans arrived on top of the evolutionary ladder not due to any single advantage. We became the kings of the jungle not because we have the sharpest teeth or the brightest feathers or the boldest silver stripe down our backs. We became rulers of the earth because we were flexible enough to live in any environment, under any circumstances, and could thrive with any set of resources. Humans have lived in trees, caves, grasslands, forests, deserts, and frozen tundras. This would not have been possible had we not the flexibility to adapt to the ever changing landscape of life.

Just as our species rose to the top due it’s inherent gift of flexibility, so can you. Those that come up with creative and new solutions have always been rewarded with fame, riches, and a plethora of, ahem, mating opportunities. It wasn’t the strongest, or the fastest, or the tallest. It was he with dexterity of mind and thought that became king. It has been argued that the driving force of our ever increasing brain size was competition among ourselves to come up with new and better ideas to find shelter, get food, and woo women. This has wonderfully expressed itself in our time with the incredibly huge amount of art, poetry and pure beauty that this once monkey brain has produced.

How about in your life? How many ways can you realize that by improving your flexibility of thought you will reap rewards of a king? Flexibility is not only about success, it is about personal pleasure and happiness. Who is happier, somebody that can only be satisfied with one specific set of circumstances, or one who can create happiness for yourself anywhere, anytime? Should you not understand the power of flexibility, just look to the great inventors of our time, and notice how many wonderful inventions have come to pass because of their boldness of new thought.

As the economy continues to crumble, and the old model of doing the same thing for the same result passes away into the new paradigm, it becomes clear that he who is most flexible will come out ahead. And when you change your mindset into this kind of thinking, you will naturally become aware of the untapped opportunities that are all around you, now, waiting for you to profit from.

How many ways can you imagine doing that?

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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.

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But this story is about the two worker ants. They didn’t’ have names, because worker ants generally are not given much thought other than what they can produce. They only know how to follow one another, pick up a piece of food from the same source as the person who picked up the food before them, and turn and follow the trail back to where everybody else was going. Had they had the capacity of reason and the time to contemplate it, they would realize that all this was predetermined by nature and genetics. They didn’t have much choice in the matter. Food, trail, deposit, return to source. Over and over and over. They never got breaks, they couldn’t go out drinking on Friday night with their friends, they couldn’t wear shoes that didn’t match the rest of their outfits only because they were in a particularly festive mood that day. Food, trail, deposit, return. Such was the life of ants.

Until one day. One ant decided that he would stop, just for a little bit. Something inside of him spoke. Perhaps it was a genetic mutation, perhaps it was a voice that you never listen to. Perhaps it is a voice that you have inside you that is telling you to stop, and look around. Because when you stop, and look around, you might be able to notice things that you weren’t able to notice before. You might be able to see things that you hadn’t been able to see before. And you might have an idea, you might even create a new idea. The great thing about new ideas is that you can try them out, and nobody will really know what you are doing. Because it’s a new idea, even if it doesn’t’ work, you can still learn from the experience.

And when this one ant stopped, and took a break, he was completely surprised to see that all the other ants did the same. One second before, he felt depressed and angry and lonely. It’s not much fun being an ant. But when he decided to take a risk, and stop for a break, something amazing happened.  When he saw all the other ants following his lead, looking to him for guidance instead of that automatic scent they had been following, he changed. He transformed from a mindless worker ant to somebody with a choice.

When the queen gave birth to the new colony, she had to choose a leader. Because everybody knows that when a new ant colony is born, they are sent off into new and unknown territories, and must depend on the experience and guidance of those who came before. So naturally, the old queen, who was now advanced in years and failing in health, chose this young upstart ant to lead the new kingdom, which would undoubtedly flourish and prosper for generations to come.

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Some grass, of course, is greener than others. I had to help my friends put in new grass, or sod as they call it, in their backyard once. I never knew deciding on a grass was so involved. You can choose based on the weather, how much effort you are going to plan on putting into it, how much money you have, how much money you want the neighbors to think you have. I never knew that there was so much choice. I guess when you don’t put yourself in situation where you realize that you can choose, you don’t notice all the choice that is around you.

My friend was telling me that choice is a funny thing. You can choose which direction you want to drive, you can choose where you want to sit, and you can choose where you place your focus. Some people only place their focus right in front of them, which can cause problems, while others tend to take a longer view of things, placing their focus off in the distance or the future, to see things they hope to create instead of focusing on things they fear. Because usually, whatever you place your focus on, becomes your reality.

I guess the only real good thing about helping out friends with home improvement projects is you usually get treated to a really nice meal afterwards. He bought some really good steaks that he barbecued on their new barbecue. Rib eye’s. And she makes this secret recipe which is mouth wateringly fantastic. She gives me bottles of it sometimes, but she’ll never give me the recipe. It was the thought of that which kept me going through the whole sod planting ordeal. And all this time I thought grass just kind of grew on its own.

My friend had  really good idea. He told me, and I’ll never forget this, that just before I tee off, to close my eyes and imagine that the lake is really a big green fairway, and I wouldn’t have a problem. I tried it, and much to my surprise, it worked. Metaphysical advice in junior high school. Its always good to realize that when you focus on a postive outcome, the negative has a way of disappearing.

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