When I was a kid I played little league. One of my problems was watching the ball hit the bat. I remember my coach was always saying to do just that, but I kept looking up to where I wanted the ball to go, or where I expected it to go I swung and connected correctly. It seemed a lot easier to “watch the ball hit the bat” when you were supposed to bunt, but I never really liked bunting. Something about sprinting towards first base and always worried you were going to be thrown out.

I must rather enjoyed hitting one into the outfield, and thinking of second base on the way to first base. Rounding first, slowing up a bit and checking to see what the ball was doing was a great feeling. A mixture of success, control, and possibility for more. A bunt, on the other hand, is pure danger. Like you are challenging the pitcher to a race. Of course, when you bunt, you aren’t supposed to bunt it right back at the pitcher, you’re supposed to bunt toward the first baseman or the third baseman, providing they haven’t read your signals and are playing way up.

They say baseball is a game of inches, and when you’re talking about bunting, they are certainly right. But it’s much more fun to blast away and hit the ball as far as you can (or at least intend to), so you don’t have to run very fast towards first.

I finally figured out way to drastically improve my batting, and start to hit it out of the infield on a consistent basis. It was just a small addition to how I usually practiced.

I used to date this girl in high school. I guess it was your normal high school relationship. Nobody really knows what you’re supposed to do. You’re lucky if you can get a car. Being in high school, I never had much money, so going out on dates was always a challenge. Drive somewhere, sit around, and hopefully make a move of some sort. I found the best dates were the ones where I didn’t worry about the little things along the way, when I was able to focus on the big picture, so to speak.

When there was something big going on, (and free) like a county fair or some kind of event, it was much more fun. I was able to look forward to something large, rather than focus on every single nuance of the conversation along the way to just parking somewhere and hoping something “happened,” if you catch my drift. Those dates were always worrisome, as I felt I needed to maintain every little change in the mood, and keep the interest level up.

But when we went to some carnival or something, I didn’t even worry if my date was having a good time or not. I just kind of assumed it, as I was having a pretty good time myself. Those dates were always much easier, and ended much better (ahem.)

Once with a couple of friends, we decided to go skydiving. It was the tandem kind, where you strap yourself to an instructor. You get to pull the cord, but he is there, strapped onto your back in case you black out or something. That is perfect for first timers, as it only requires about fifteen minutes of instruction. It’s pretty idiot proof. The alternative is to jump with two guys on either side of you, but that takes several hours of instruction and drilling.

One thing the guy I was strapped to said just before we leapt out of the plane. He said not to look down. At first I thought that was the regular advice given to people that are afraid of heights. If you look down, you’ll freak out, and lose your nerve. But he was referring to the minute or so after we jumped out of the plane, and was free falling.

That was without question, the most exhilarating minute of my life (except the obvious exception). And it was also the quickest minute (except the obvious exceptions). The reason he said not to look down is that you tend to find some spot below, and try to focus on it, or “fixate on it,” as he said. And when you do that, you miss out on the feeling flying. When you are free falling, you only actually feel like you are falling for the first couple seconds. After that, you hit terminal velocity, which is when you stop accelerating. And you feel like you are literally floating on air. If you look down, you’ll miss out on the fantastic feeling, and spend your brain energy staring at something that isn’t important. If you keep looking forward, and enjoy the experience, it will be much more memorable, much more thrilling, much more extraordinary. So when he said “don’t look down” he wasn’t trying to keep me from getting scared, he was trying to make sure I got the most enjoyment out of the situation.

And the funny thing about learning to consistently hit the ball out of the infield was to practice doing the thing I hated the most. Bunting. I’d go to the batting cages, and stand there like I was going to swing, and then at he last minute, lay down a bunt. I must have looked pretty foolish practicing bunting in the batting cages, but it really trained my hand/eye/bat coordination.

Pretty soon I moved from simple bunts, to short, slow swings, to bigger swings, and to full motion full power swings, all while keeping my eye on the ball the watching the ball hit the bat. Pretty soon I was smacking them all over the place.

Just changing where you place your focus can make all the difference.

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Success with NLP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I was watching this cooking show on TV the other night. I don’t usually watch cooking shows, but this guy was pretty entertaining. One thing I liked in particular was he didn’t seem to measure any of the ingredients. It was a handful of this, a pinch of that, a little bit more of this. Even when he cooked some of the dishes, he never said what level to set the heat to or for how long to cook them. Just throw some stuff together, stick it in the oven until it’s done, and next thing you know you’ve got a gourmet meal on your hands.

I took a cooking class, two cooking classes a few years ago. Asian cooking. We learned to cook Chinese, Thai, and Japanese food. Two different course, and two different instructors. But they had two completely different approaches to cooking.

The first class I took (the classes were each four weeks, one night per week) she was extremely specific. Cut this exactly this way, measure this, make sure to shake the measuring spoon exactly three times to let the ingredients settle, but don’t shake too much, otherwise they’ll settle too much. Make sure to wash your hands and the instruments (cutting board, knives, measuring spoons, etc.) after each and every step. I was even lectured about placing the washed utensils in the drying rack at the proper angle so they would dry properly. Extremely detailed. The food, however, was magnificent. I don’t remember what we cooked exactly, but it was better than anything I had in a restaurant.

The other lady, who was from the course I took a few months later, because I had enjoyed the first course so much, was completely different. She was more like the guy on the cooking show. Put some of this in; add a bit of this spice, and a dash of that spice. Cook until it looks done. The food came out just as tasty, but not as “perfect” as the first class. This lady seemed to have the philosophy of showing us the general idea of how to make stuff, which we could later add to our own tastes. Whereas the method taught by the first lady didn’t seem to lend itself too much to improvisation. Being somebody who likes to cook, but rarely from a recipe, I rely heavily on improvisation. I have cooked some doozy experimental meals in the past, some good, some outrageously horrible. Once I tried making peanut butter popcorn, and it didn’t come out so good. One of the many tragedies of theory meeting reality.

One thing I noticed about the temperament of the two ladies is that the first lady seemed to be what I would describe as a type “A” personality. Detail oriented, always has a shopping list when they go to the store, lives and dies by their personal planner.

The second instructor seemed much more relaxed and a “make it up as you go along” type of person. While neither is better or worse, both characteristics have their strong points and weak points, there is evidence of type “A” people suffering more from stress related diseases. There’s also evidence of type “A” people making more money than the slackers among us.

One interesting idea I read in a book on personal development is that you can train yourself to be either type “A” or type “B” depending on the situation. If you need to perform some consistent behavior to get a specific result, you can train yourself to follow a specific set of instructions to maximize your success. Likewise, when it’s the weekend, you can easily switch into type “B” mode, and sit on a park bench and stare off into space when it’s time to unwind.

The trick is to develop a “switch” that sends you into automatic behavior mode when the situation calls for it, and being able to turn the “switch” off when the job is done.

One way to do that is through modeling. When you model somebody, you unconsciously soak up as much as their behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes as you can to achieve the same result they want. For example, if you are a student, and you have a difficult test coming up, it may help to model the most diligent person in your class. For the time being, simply pretend that you are them, as much as you can.

Where do they study, how long do they study, how many breaks do they take, how long, and how often. How do they motivated themselves, whey they are feeling lazy, what do they say to themselves to keep them focused, what do they visualize when they see themselves achieving their goals. Are there any authority figures from their past telling them supporting messages (in their imagination) while they are studying.

These some things that can collectively turn you into a studying machine. If you need to “switch” on this behavior, develop a kind of external anchor that you can use to put you in study mode. I had a friend once that was studying for a chemistry exam, and one of his “heroes” (as much as you can have a hero if you are a chemistry geek) was the guy that came up with the chemical structure for benzene from a dream he had of a snake eating it’s tale. This guy (the hero) had a relentless desire to figure out how stuff worked, so much that it permeated his dreams.

So when this guy (the student) wanted to get into “the zone,” he would sit at a table, place both palms on the table, close his eyes, and take a few deep breaths. Then he would imagine the ghost, or the spirit of the benzene guy slowly slinking into his body from behind, and giving him all his motivation and desire to figure out how stuff worked. He (the student) said this really helped to study, and he always did well on his chemistry tests.

So if you can figure out what you want to achieve, figure out somebody that has already done it, and come up some kind of physical “switch” along with a useful hallucination to help you take on their behavior. You may find that this can help you more than you realize.

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I remember this story I read once in a book on communication. The story goes like this:

And old guy was sitting at edge of a small town out in the old west. He saw a horse and wagon, pulling a family of four. They stopped, and greeted the stranger.

“So, tell me, how are the people in this town?” They asked.
“Well, how were the people in your old town?” The stranger replied.
“Oh, they were pretty nice. Friendly, always willing to lend a hand.
The stranger smiled.
“Well, that sounds like the people in this town.” He said. The family thanked him and rode past toward there new home.

A few minutes later he saw another horse and wagon, pulling another family. They two were moving into town.
“So, tell me, how are the people in this town?” They asked.
“Well, how were the people in your old town,” the stranger replied.
“Oh, not so good. Always sticking their noses in where they didn’t belong, gossiping, always waiting for you to make a mistake so they could take advantage of you.”
“Hmm.” The stranger said, shaking his head.
“I’m afraid you’ll find people in this town the same way.” They thanked him, and rode toward their new home.

There’s a powerful method of goal setting, or rather goal getting, called the solutions focus. In it, you take whatever goal you are aiming at, and periodically do an inventory of what you’ve done so far. You rate yourself on a scale of one to ten, ten meaning your goal has already been achieved, and you are enjoying the results, while one is you haven’t even started yet.

Whatever number you give yourself, then you ask yourself why that number, and not a lower number. Even if you gave yourself a 1.5 rather than a 1, ask yourself why. This forces you to come up with all the positive things you’ve done recently that have moved you toward your goal.

The next step is to figure out what small steps you cold take to get you from a 1.5 to 2.

This is called the solutions focus because you force yourself to focus on what you are doing right, rather than what is standing in your way.

In the story above, the family that found the previous town filled with happy friendly people were likely to find the same in the new town, not because an objective measurement would show their previous town as filled with happy, smiling people but because they were the kind of people that seemed to find the good in others.

The second family, by comparison, even though they were going to the same town, would likely find only pettiness and unfriendliness, because that is what they look for. If you look for crap, that’s all you’ll find. But if you look for treasure, you’ll likely find that as well.

There are plenty of good metaphors and stories that illustrate this point.

There’s also a pretty good exercise to give yourself a lot more resources that you think you have. Here’s how.

Think of a skill you’d like to develop, or one that you don’t think that you have. Then relax a bit, put yourself into a comfortable position, and take an inventory of your life history, and look for any evidence of when you’ve already exhibited this skill you are aiming to develop.

For example, if you want to become a good public speaker, just find all the times in your history that you spoke in front of others. Any time since you can remember from your earliest childhood memories are fine. And any public communication is fine. Yelling, screaming, singing, any time you spoke out in public and effectively got any point across.

Now whenever you think to the future, and any potential public speaking engagements you may be involved in, force your mind to those times in the past when you’ve already done what you are planning to do. When you do this enough times, your brain will start to see public speaking as something that’s normal and natural for you, and not something that is strange and terrifying, as it is for most people.

Like it or not, your past does influence your future. But there are so many ways to interpret your past, so many different memories and events that you were part of, that you can literally take any event, and spin it any way you like to support any future you’d like to create. Of course, there are some limits. For example, I’d have hard time finding some past experience that supported my goal of being able to slam dunk a basketball. It just ain’t gonna happen. But I would be able to vastly improve my outside shooting, my free throws, and any other part of the game that wasn’t wholly dependent on my height and my vertical jumping capability.

As much as we’d like to believe, we aren’t psychic. We can’t predict the future. But we can make reasonable assumptions on how things are going to turn out based on what happened in the past. And when you can choose which part of your past to reference, and how to interpret it, you give yourself a lot more flexibility.

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One of the advantages of being human, and not some other animal is that we have the ability to imagine different scenarios in our minds. Some evolutionary psychologists argue that was one of the driving forces that led to human, rather than some other animal developing a big brain.

In all animals, there are basically two driving forces, which propel them forward through evolution. Between species, and within species. Between species is a fight with other animals for resources, namely food, and shelter if that’s the kind of animal we’re talking about. Many times a food source is linked closely with a location, so an animal can develop a strong sense of territoriality.

Within species, it’s a whole different ballgame. Within species, the competition is largely between the males for the females. Generally speaking, the females choose the males best suited to provide the best DNA. They don’t consciously decide, rather their instincts and impulses are shaped over many generations, so that the ones who have the impulses to mate with the fittest males are selected for survival, and others who happen to be driven to mate with unhealthy males are naturally selected out.

Different animals have different methods to determine who is the fittest male. Usually it is based somehow on aggression, and physical dominance. In gorilla’s, the silver back is the biggest. In elephant seals, the dominant male is the most aggressive. In peacocks, the ones with the most colorful tales are deemed the most fit. Scientists suspect there is a correlation between colorfulness of tail feathers, and resistance to parasites and disease. So when females use colorfulness of tail feathers as their deciding factor, they’re also giving their future offspring genes with strong resistance to disease and parasites.

So what was the inter-species driving force in humans? Apparently it was brain size. Language, imagination and creativity are highly desirable traits in males, according to anthropologists. They say that in parts of the world where tribes still live according to ancient ways, the tribal leaders, who usually have many wives, are extremely eloquent, persuasive, and charismatic speakers. The driving force with which humans were selected over the last million years was our ability to use words. And not just putting a couple of words together, like “give me a banana,” but to string them together in such a way as to evoke powerful emotions in others.

Think of this scenario. Millions of year ago, there were several tribes. The women naturally fell for the guys that had serious game, meaning they could woo the women with only their words. They could use their words to organize and lead hunting parties, so they were instrumental in the survival of the group. They could use their words to form coalitions and defuse potentially dangerous situations between rivals. They naturally had more kids that the not so eloquent, and every successive generation produce more and more eloquent people. This in turn creates evolutionary pressure to build bigger and bigger brains to accommodate this need.

There is another reason for the ever-increasing brain of man. Humans were nomadic for the bulk of our human history. Humans had to think and plan and to imagine different scenarios, and weigh the probable outcomes, and then decide which would be the best course of action. Even throwing a spear at a gazelle that was running at an odd angle required a quick calculation and projection into the future of a couple seconds, so the spear thrower in question would know where to point he spear, how hard to throw it, and what angle. This was all done unconsciously, without any thought of the thrower. He just knew. This required immense computational power, involving delicate visualization skills.

Your brain is the result of millions of years of evolution that created a computer with such power that we will likely never create a machine that can even come close to its abilities. You can think into the future, imagine hundreds of different scenarios, judging each one by it probable effect on your future, and come back with a decision on what to do. All within a split second, and all out of your conscious awareness.

Your brain can think of desire, a goal, an intention, and through the powerful use of language, enlist the help of others to make your imagination about the future come true. Your brain can take thought, and turn it into reality.

In the last twenty years or so, there has been a huge leap in understanding in how the brain works. There have been several different strategies designed and codified to take the mystery out of how some people are wildly successful, while others struggle. Experts have been modeled, and their unconscious methods have been uncovered and described in precise detail, so that the rest of us can emulate them, and achieve exactly the same success as them.

That is the promise of NLP. With NLP you have an operators manual for your brain, perhaps the most complicated thing ever created in the history of the universe. You have the keys to unlocking exactly how achieve whatever it is you want. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, have already discovered how NLP can powerfully enhance your life in as many ways as you can imagine.

With NLP, there is no more need for hoping, or wishing, or disappointment. There only desires, planning, and achieving. To find out how you can start uncovering your magnificently powerful potential today, click on the banner below.

Success with NLP

Have you ever been window-shopping, and maybe decided to venture into a store to get a better look, and one thing led to another and you ended up buying something that you hadn’t set out to buy that day? Or maybe you were kind of in the market for something, like maybe a TV or something, and weren’t quite ready to make a purchase, but you came across a salesperson that somehow seemed to make buying a TV that day the most obvious choice in the world?

We’ve all had the experience of being hounded by a salesperson that just wouldn’t take no for an answer, and know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of hard sell after hard sell. You know a salesperson is desperate for a sale when they relentlessly follow you around despite your clear indications for them to take a hike.

So what’s the difference? Why does on salesperson seem to be helpful, and when you do make the decision to buy something, you feel grateful and want to tell your friends about him or her, while other sales people, they just emit an aura of desperation that triggers every single one of your warning signals?

Or more importantly, if you are trying to persuade somebody, whether it is in direct sales, marketing, or other form of persuasion, how do you be the first salesperson and not the second one?

Most people will tell you that being able to sell things is a natural gift that you either have it, or you don’t. Like a guy being a “natural” with women, wherever he goes, women follow. And no matter how hard you try to emulate him, you just can’t figure it out.

Part of the problem with so-called “naturals” is that they themselves have no idea how they do what they do. Unless they’ve gained their skills through long concentrated practice, they likely have no clue what makes them such a persuasive and charismatic salesperson. And unfortunately, many books on sales are written by these “naturals” and aren’t all that helpful, as they don’t really know how to describe what they are doing in a way that makes it easily repeatable by others.

They may say things like “respect the client,” “develop rapport,” “be sincere,” but these are particularly vague. How exactly do you “respect the client?” What is the best way to “develop rapport?” if you ask ten different successful salespeople these questions, you’ll likely get ten very different answers, which will likely be just as vague and unhelpful.

Enter NLP.

NLP, or neurolinguistic programming was developed as a powerful modeling tool to figure out exactly what these “naturals” were doing that made them “naturals.” It all started with therapists. Most people, when they think of therapy, they imagine going to a shrink every week for many years, and talking endlessly about childhood problems and parental issues (like Tony Soprano). But when NLP was first developed, they studied a few therapists that could “fix” people in just a few sessions.

Somebody would have this deep emotional problem, they’d go see one of these “naturals” and in a couple of weeks, through three or four sessions, their problem would be completely obliterated. And these weren’t your basic problems like not being able to smile at a pretty girl, or ask your boss for a raise. These were deep emotional problems that had to do with sexual abuse, alcoholism, and other serious relationship issues.

So how did they do it? The interesting thing is when one of the co-founders of NLP, Richard Bandler, showed one of these therapists her specific language patterns, she was surprised. She herself didn’t even know that was how she was doing it. Bandler basically showed her that she was using the same language structure over and over again with her clients, and it was creating magical results. Much better than that stereotypical image of a useless psychiatrist who just sits there and says, “how do you feel about that? What do you think that means?” over and over again.

Through the creation of NLP, people were suddenly able to model excellence in human behavior and human communication. By asking the right questions, and paying attention to the specifics of the communication structure, they were able to figure out exactly how those “naturals” were doing what they were doing.

And a major part of their “natural” abilities was a strong belief about their capabilities. This went far beyond affirmations in the mirror every morning. This was a deep, powerful subconscious belief that they totally capable of doing what they were setting out to do, whether it be curing a child of his bedwetting, or selling a fifty thousand dollar car to somebody who was merely “looking around.”

There were subsequently several method and procedures developed in NLP to install these beliefs in people, or for people to install them in themselves. It became possible to become a natural without experiencing the random childhood that produced a natural salesperson or therapist. As Richard Bandler put it, with NLP, it’s never too late to have a happy childhood.

There is a huge amount of free NLP information available on the web, and there are several great sources of self study NLP courses, as well as NLP based self development products. With NLP, there really isn’t any reason why you can’t be a natural in your chosen field.

One powerful program that many people have been having massive results with is success with NLP. If you check out this website, you’ll find that this is just one of the many programs that uses NLP to help you become successful in any field you choose.

Success with NLP

One thing about studying NLP is that it is by no means a “quick fix.” Many of our beliefs that we’ve been carrying around for a while can take some effort to re engineer, but once you do, you’ll be amazed at how much you can accomplish in life. Take a look at success with NLP and see for yourself.

Many people discover that once they start down the path of self-development with NLP, they realize that the sky really is the limit, and studying and mastering NLP becomes an obviously essential skill of life.

There was this prominent business leader giving an interview on a famous talk show. He had built several large companies, and had enjoyed massive amounts of success with them. It wasn’t always this way. We often make a mistake of perception when we see successful people. We assume that they were always successful, or they have some kind of secret edge that the rest of us don’t’ have. Maybe they were lucky enough to attend a prestigious university, or just enjoyed a string of lucky breaks.

But here’s some news that a lot of us don’t like to hear. A poll was done with successful, independent business owners. And when I say successful, I mean they were making enough money to live a good life, without any financial worries or difficulties. Wondering if they have enough money to buy something is not usually a concern for these people. The poll was to determine exactly how long it took for them to be successful. One question that was asked to help determine this was how many businesses they’d started before they started making serious money. The average answer was over ten.

All these successful people had, in some form or another, started at least ten businesses that ultimately failed before they finally found their niche.

Ten.

The reason I say most of us don’t like to hear this is because most of us are completely terrified, some even to the point of inaction, of the very thought of failure. Trying and failing, for some of us, is our worst nightmare. We imagine some horrible memory from our childhood, often vague and distant, but painful nonetheless. We imagine ourselves a little bit into the future, trying something new, and then suddenly imagining all the horrible things that will happen if we aren’t successful. Then the fear and anxiety kicks in, and we come up with a million reasons, or rather excuses, why we don’t want to try. Most of these excuses are self-delusional. See if you recognize some of the more popular ones:

I don’t have time.
I don’t have enough money.
People from my background (whatever you think that is) can’t do that.
I’m man.
I’m a woman.
I’m (insert your ethnicity here).
As soon as I (insert your lame excuse here) I’ll do that.
I’m going to get started next week.
As soon as I get a raise at work.
As soon as I get a boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife/partner.
As soon as I pay off my credit cards.

The bottom line is all these are just excuses to cover the real reason we are afraid of trying. A mistaken belief that we formed before we even learned to speak. Since the first time we cried, and our moms didn’t come and immediately pick us up, we had to come up a reason to fill the cause/effect mechanism in our brains. This belief was created, and ratified thousands of times during the most formative years of our childhood.

I’m not good enough.

The good news is that this is only true if you believe it. If you don’t believe it, and throw it out like the garbage that it is and insert a more empowering belief in its place, that will be just as true.

Then you’ll learn one of the most elusive, deceptive and at the same time most powerful secrets of human development and potential.

Mistakes and failures are the best things you can do to be successful, in anything you try. Instead of seeing “mistakes,” or “failures,” as proof of your erroneously believed inadequacy, you’ll see them for what they truly are.

Feedback from the environment in which you are operating. If you have a clear and solid goal of where you want to go, these mistakes and failures will be the things that keep you on track, and guide you toward you target like a heat seeking missile.

This famous businessperson in the interview was asked as simple question:

“How can I double my success rate?”

The answer was quick, straightforward and simple:

“Double your failure rate.”

The most successful people, in any field, understand this. Every action they take offers feedback. They look at every feedback as a golden opportunity to analyze their actions, compare them to the results that the actions created, and then to go back and modify their actions to get better results the next time around.

When you make this process a habit, success is inevitable. No matter what you are after, with this mindset, you will achieve it. It may take time, and you may not get there in the way that you thought, but you’ll get there.

And for bonus points, you can learn to enjoy the path. For those that have learned to enjoy the journey, as well as the destination, are the happiest people in the world.

I was taking this self-development seminar once, and the guy was saying that thinking about your future is like driving a car. At least when it comes to comparing how much time you should focus on the future, versus how much time you should focus on the path. His analogy was the size of your windshield compared to the size of your rear view mirror.

It’s important to glance behind you from time to time, but it’s much more important to keep a keen eye on where you are going. You should dwell on past mistakes, or worry too much about things from your past that you can’t change. Accept it and move on. Even if others have treated you like crap, it never does any good to hold a grudge. I believe it was Mandela who said holding a grudge is like drinking poison and hoping the other guy dies.

OK, that makes sense. It also reminds me of another metaphor by Wayne Dyer when he said that the wake doesn’t drive the boat. The wake being the waves of water left behind a boat as it goes across the water. The wake is purely an after the fact effect, and has no bearing whatsoever on the future direction of the boat. OK, sounds simple enough. The past is the past, and should stay in the past.

But is it really that simple? Humans have some really powerful, and really deep hard wiring in our brains to learn and improve. That is one of the reasons we have become the dominant animals on the planet over that last couple million years. We have instincts, just like many other creatures (some say many many more instincts) but we also have the capability to learn. And many times, that learning is automatic, unconscious and completely outside of our awareness.

Just ask a little kid who performed the unfortunate, but necessary experiment of sticking his finger on a hot stove. He or she will learn in about half a second that stove with fire equals danger, and should avoided at all costs. In that particular example, the wake indeed does drive the boat. The wake I this case being the memory of pain the child will remember whenever he goes near as stove. His memory of the event, or the wake, will definitely mold his choices and thinking in the future.

If humans didn’t have the capability to learn from our mistakes, and the mistakes of others, we’d have been extinct hundreds of thousands of years. When Zog and Bog were out hiking around, and Bog got eaten by a tiger, Zog didn’t was any time remembering every single thing about the event, and committing it to memory for future reference. The location, time of day, appearance and sound of a tiger were all burned into his brain. Because of the magic of language, he was able communicate all of these things to his buddies back at the cave, so they wouldn’t make the same mistake as poor Bog.

So it seems that our history and experience really can have a powerful and profound effect on our behaviors, thoughts and actions as we move toward the future. It’s not quite as simple as the two metaphors described above.

But there is some good news. While it’s true that our brains will automatically remember things that caused us pain in the past, and remind us of those memories as we move close to experiencing those things again (usually in the form of vague anxiety), there is a solution.

Whenever we label something as dangerous, our brains remember the label we give to the “thing” as much as the thing itself. When the kid touched the stove, and Zog saw Bog get eaten by a tiger, the events themselves caused an automatic reaction. But in today’s modern world, our interpretation of events is what causes the emotional pain in many cases.

Things like public speaking, asking a pretty girl or guy out on a date, or asking your boss for a raise bring up feelings of anxiety and fear not because they are inherently dangerous situations (unless of course you actually have an experience of giving a speech at toastmasters, and were beaten within an inch of your life due to your lackluster performance) but because we labeled them as such.

Many times this label is as automatic as Zog’s was while watching his friend being eaten. But there is a cool trick.

There is so much in your personal history; you can re program your brain to “access” different memories whenever you go into a potentially worrisome situation. If you let your brain choose, it will go for the most safety, so it will find the scariest memories. Your brain operates on a “better safe than sorry” strategy, so it picks out the most scary and painful memories in order to keep you the safest.

But when you realize that you have billions and billions of memories to choose from to use as a reference when you go into any particular situation, you can train your brain to use more positive and enhancing memories rather than scary ones. This takes some time and some conscious work, but the rewards are enormous.

Imagine having to give a speech. Scenario one is relying on your brains automatic factory installed programs, which find the most horrifying experiences of your life regarding public speaking. You’ll likely get sweaty palms, heart palpitations, and feel as if you are about to vomit.

Scenario two is instead of automatically recalling all those horrifying memories, you consciously choose to remember all the times you’ve expressed yourself in public and gotten good results. Like I said, this can take some practice, but after a few times you’ll feel excited and happy, as if you are about to do something really fun and exciting, rather than dreading it.

And you can do all this purely through your imagination. Just imagine yourself giving as speech, and then quickly and consciously recall as many positive experiences and memories as possible. Keep switching back and forth in your mind, imagining a future speech, and then going back into your past and thinking of all those good memories.

And here is a bonus tip. If you can’t find any positive memories in your history, you can make them up. Your brain won’t know the difference. Find some memories that are kind of close, and then change them around so you can remember them differently. This will have be jus as powerful.

The choice is yours. You can either leave your mental programming the way it came from the factory, designed to be used by cavemen and cavewomen to survive from saber tooth tigers, or you can upgrade to the modern version, and consciously go in reprogram your thoughts and memories to serve you in exactly the way you want.

I remember I went on this backpacking trip once. We had planned it out fairly thoroughly, reading several guidebooks, and buying maps with different levels detail. One thing that we couldn’t really plan on was the size of the rivers. The mountains we were planning on hiking in were in the Sierra Nevada range in California. Those mountains have several thousand small lakes, which are fed by the annual rainfall, creating several thousand streams and rivers of various sizes.

Because these streams and rivers are so numerous, you inevitably have to cross one or two large ones if you are going on hike that is longer than a day or two. Since these mountains are kept as pure as possible, from a human interaction point of view, doing anything other than keep debris from blocking established trails is strictly prohibited. This means that no bridges exist, or do strategic placements of stones. It’s not uncommon to spend several hours wandering up and down a riverbank looking for an appropriate place to cross.

Often time there is not real danger, but when hiking with a pair of wet boots is never a pleasant experience. It makes it much easier to get blisters, which can ruin an entire trip. Crossing a river without getting wet is ideal.

Generally speaking, when looking for a place to cross, you either look for a point where the river is particularly narrow, where crossing will only take a couple strategically places steps. Other times the best you can do is find a place that is relatively shallow, and simply walk across. If you are lucky, and the bottom is relatively smooth, you can take off your shoes and wade across, with the water hopefully not getting higher than your waist. Keep in mind this water is freshly melted snow, so it is really cold.

The ideal is a slow moving river that is shallow enough and narrow enough to not get your boots wet. The worst I’ve ever experienced was when we had to strip down to our underwear, carry our packs over our heads, and cross that way. The best place we could find to cross was about four meters across, and about a meter deep. Luckily the bottom was sandy, and the water was flowing slow enough that it didn’t pose any danger. But it was really, really cold.

I was listening to an interview on the radio the other and they were talking about this book called “Flow,” where the author described the experience when you are completely and fully engaged in something to the exclusion of all else. It is a fascinating feeling, usually experienced by athletes and artists. If you’ve ever experienced it, then you know what it’s like. Everything seems to disappear, and any conscious interference that exists normally is virtually shut off. You become a machine, fully focused on the event at hand. It’s almost as if you are watching yourself flawlessly performing some task.

One of the most esoteric conversations you can have with yourself is regarding the metaphysical flow of money. You can look at it as a purely right-brained physical based entity, obeying the laws of physics and of cause and effect. You do certain things, and you get a certain amount of money. You want certain things and you give up a certain amount of money. Other schools of thought, usually thought a little bit on the new agey side, teach the money should be thought of as a flow of energy, and that all you need to do is open yourself up, in both directions. That is, in order to have money flowing in just as readily as it flows out, you should set up your consciousness to appreciate the exchange in both directions. You should be just as happy to receive product or services in exchange for your money, as you should in receiving money for your products or services.

I’ve even read some suggestions saying you should write a big “Thank You” on your checks to the IRS every year.

The interesting thing about money is that if flows whether we want it to or not. For the whole of human history, until only a few thousand years ago, there wasn’t any money. Now there is hundreds of millions traded every day on the Forex Exchange. This is just different country swapping out their currencies at the end of every single day.

Whatever your own personal beliefs about money are, money is there, money is flowing, and it would probably do you some good to figure out a way to get in on the action. It’s not like there is a finite size of the pie, and once the pieces are gone, they’re gone. The money supply increases every year, and the ways and paths that it flows increase as well.

And the cool thing about money flow is that you don’t have to worry about getting swept away by the current, or worrying about keeping your boots dry. You can just dive right in. Kick the boulders out of the way and let if flow. They’ll be plenty more where that came from.

Many years ago, I used to be an avid reader of fiction. My bookcase at home would be filled with all kinds of books, usually paperbacks that I would buy and tear through in a weekend. I would come home from work, and instead of sitting in front of the TV or a few hours, like most people do, I would sit in front a novel for a few hours. Not that one is better than the other. They both serve the same purpose, namely, a temporary escape from reality through a powerfully engaging story that captures and leads your imagination away from whatever daily crud you deal with on a regular basis.

It’s interesting when you think about stories, and story telling. In some form, story telling has been around since humankind learned to speak. And it survives today in various forms. I have no idea how big of an industry it is, although I doubt that you could even categorize all the different forms of story telling in the same group. Books, movies, plays, TV shows, operas. The list goes on and on.

I can imagine what it was like thousands of years ago. The guys would go out hunting, or searching for food. The gals would hang out near wherever their home was, taking care of the kids, searching for roots and other edible plants.

Then they’d get together at night, sit around a fire, and there would inevitably be a few people that were good at spinning tales. Perhaps they were embellished from actual hunts that were significant, or maybe they were stories past on from previous generations.

One can see how certain elements would creep into them, the sun, the moon, and the various weather patterns. I imagine that some of the stories told at night had social and cultural significance, while other stories were told purely for comic relief. Very similar to what you see on TV today.

That humans have retained our basic tastes in stories and how we use them in conjunction with our imaginations in order to remove ourselves temporarily from the daily stresses of life never ceases to amaze me.

I started out by saying that I used to read novels. I don’t them so much any more. I tend to read non-fiction. I like reading personal development books, and books that border on philosphy/psychology. I’m particular interested in books pertaining to human evolution and how it has shaped our current mindset.

On interesting passage I came across recently in a book I was reading about reframing was a procedure in creating a new history for yourself.

Just as the stories described above make extensive use of your imagination, this procedure does the same. But instead of somebody else’s imagined story, this method can be used to recreate your own story.

This sounds strange at first. Most people feel that their history is their history. You can’t change what happened to in the past. While you can’t change the actual events, you can certainly change your interpretation of them. And you can choose which events you automatically remember when you enter into a familiar situation.

For example, if you are terrified of public speaking, every time you even think about public speaking, you will remember all the times that you experienced emotional discomfort or pain whenever you expressed yourself in a public setting. This includes all instances, even back to when you were three and your mom told you to shut up while you were in line at the supermarket, even if you don’t consciously remember that happening.

The power of re creating your history is two-fold. First, you can change your interpretation to the events that happened. Second, you can change which events you use as your reference points as you look toward the future.

So you can either go into your history, and re interpret all the events where you tried to express yourself, but were shut down by others. Instead of remembering them as painful experiences, you can remember them as simple feedback from the environment. Maybe you were told to shut up at the supermarket because your mom was trying to talk to somebody. So instead of giving the event the meaning of “public speaking is scary” you should give the event the meaning of “when public speaking, be careful not to interrupt others, or they’ll get mad,” or something like that.

What makes this possible is the fact that our memories are not set in stone. Our memories are completely malleable, when can give them any meaning we want.
Even our memories of the actual events themselves are suspect, as any good defense lawyer will tell you. If all a prosecutor has is eyewitness testimony, he or she will have a very weak case. The law recognizes that human memory, even recent memory, is highly suspect.

The second thing you can do with this procedure is simply choose different events to remember. Choose events where you expressed yourself in public and everything went ok. This means singing at birthday parties, giving a recital that went ok, or anything else you can imagine.

Here’s another secret. If you can’t remember any positive experiences of expressing yourself in public, make them up. That’s right. You can make up some examples in your history of you doing things that you want to be able to easily do in the future. Don’t think this is possible? Just ask anybody that is convinced they were abducted by aliens.

In order to do this procedure, simply think of something you’d like to do. Relax and imagine yourself drifting through your past, and look for any events that are similar to your current goal. Change those events around by changing the meaning, and put in positive events if you can’t find any real ones. Do this until you get five or six events that are a positive memory of you doing something that you’d like to do in the future.

Then any time you think of doing that thing, just purposely recall your five or sex “created” memories. It may take a few times, but pretty soon you’ll be recalling those “created” positive memories automatically, and your future will look brighter than ever.