gut – Mobiusman

How your inner-critic makes you a rope-a-dope

by David

We drink the poison our inner-critic pours for us.

The following anecdote about this boxing match, from which I refer to in this post, was from a brilliantly-written/voice-recorded post by one of my favourite pod-casters Terry O’Reilly.

Our inner-critic can be very manipulative. It can make us fall for what it says to us especially if it is allowed to do endlessly. The story I’m referring to in this post is, in an oblique way, illustrative of what happens inside our heads when certain suggestions get the best of us.

On October 30, 1974 the famous boxing match known as the “Rumble in the Jungle” in what was then Zaire Africa took place. It had been called “arguably the greatest sporting event of the 20th century“. The two fighters were the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world
George Foreman against challenger Muhammad Ali, a former heavyweight champion.

At the time Ali was the long-shot. A seasoned boxer for sure but already at 32 years old this title fight was not going to be easy on him. Foreman, a younger and way more muscular fighter, was just 25. He was already boxing legend. This was going to be a professional boxing bonanza for the winner. Both boxers knew it was a make-or-break bout.

In Ali’s dressing room prior to the fight all were unusually quiet. They knew about the punishing force from an opponent like Foreman. His powerful haymakers could be more than damaging to a guy like Ali who had hopes of becoming a world champion once more.

They actually feared for Ali’s life.

But as the fight wore on something changed. By the second round of the bout Ali had come up with a secret plan for Foreman. He realized early on that he could not go toe-to-toe with Foreman’s powerful blows. If he was to get him knocked out he would have to get really creative. And quickly.

So he changes his tactics and goes with something that would later be famously known as the “rope-a-dope”.

Staying close to the ropes and protecting himself by blocking Foreman’s punches all Ali had to do was survive long enough to tire Foreman out. He did this round after round letting Foreman do all the punching onto Ali’s body. It was almost like he was sparring with him. But he kept it up and the tactic worked like magic.

Ali Applies The Secret Sauce

Meanwhile people close to ringside noticed something. Ali was whispering into foreman’s ear. No one knew it until later what he was saying. It turns out that he was taunting Foreman over and over and over by asking him why was he always using his right. And then adding that he must not have much of a left.

After doing this for several rounds the now enraged Foreman finally bit at the challenge and changed hands from his right to his left. This bought Ali some time to get the feeling
back in his left arm as it was numbed-out from Foreman’s powerful right blows. Then, in the 8th round Ali saw a way opening up.

As the exhausted Foreman tried to pin Ali against the ropes Ali came back with a combination that forced Foreman’s head up in position for a right punch to the face.

Foreman stumbled and then fell to the canvas. The referee counted and then stopped the fight as Foreman was rising. But it was done.

Ali had accomplished what almost no one expected to see. He had beaten the fearsome George Foreman in an 8th round knockout. But he did it, not only with his fists, but with a subtle whispered suggestion.

How Your Inner-Critic Does It

You may not have noticed, but this is the kind of quiet coaxing that something in your head brain, your inner-critic, is constantly whispering into your own inner-ear.

You might of heard of, and eventually believed in, things like this:

“What are you doing? You always keep messing things up.”
“You can’t handle this stuff. Who do you think you are?”
“You’re not good enough for this. Get outta here!”
“Are you crazy? What’s wrong with you? Quit now while you still can.”
“You’re way too old (too young) to be any good at this.”

And on and on it goes. It want’s to make us all into rope-a-dopes.

I’ve heard it said that the best way to clear muddy water is to just leave it alone. But where else can you go that’s outside your own head?

Science has the right answer. Sort of.

They tell us that we have, not just one, but a second brain and it’s in our gut. That’s about as far from the noisy head as it gets without actually leaving the body.

I love science but so far no scientist I’m aware of has stated this yet. I’ve been pointing it out for years: the head brain is a thinking brain but the gut brain is a feeling brain. We need both because humans do two basic things all day every day.

We think things and we feel things.

One dedicated brain for each of these two essential tasks. What a great thing.

It’s fantastically elegant in both design and function. But they must be properly optimized in harmony so we can operate in the world with more happiness and fulfillment and less stress. I mean that, in most cases, a person won’t even know that this extra brain exists so how can you make better use of something if you’re not aware it exists?

But that doesn’t belie the fact that we still need to fix our noisy head brain if we’re to escape becoming a rope-a-dope to our inner-critic. The big news is that it can be done by applying the calming power of our second brain to our noisy head.

And it’s quite doable in as little as one day if you have the right tool for the job.

I’ve spent decades building it, testing it, and then understanding what it means for your future.

Extend your hand and learn more about it here.

More power to you.

Mobiusman

Gut-Brain – New Research

by David

neuron closeup and head brain illustration — The head-brain/gut-brain duo

Jim, an astute online friend of mine recently sent me this article. It’s about the work of Elaine Hsiao a scientist at Cal Tech. He saw the words “gut-brain” were in the title and he thought I might be interested in it.

He was right too.

First, some quick background.

In 1996 I became aware of a new article written by a New York Times science writer. It was about new research that had re-discovered a long forgotten second brain in humans. This brain was not at all like the one we’re all familiar with. This brain was found in the linings of the digestive tract and it was such an important find that it sparked renewed interest in an obscure branch of scientific inquiry called ‘neurogastroenterology’. They also gave this brain a name: “The enteric nervous system”.

To me the real kicker was between the lines. This second brain is a doer not a thinker. It can act on it’s own and it feels… everything! Gut feelings are real things. This is contrasted by the brain in the head that thinks wonderfully but doesn’t feel much at all because there are no pain receptors in the From that I could visualize an elegant reciprocal dual-brain system no one has ever thought of before. It takes the shape of a mobius. One brain that thinks but doesn’t feel, and another brain that feels but doesn’t think. The head brain is a conceptualizer the gut brain is an action taker.

Two acting as one — beautiful.

But here’s my main point. I’m kind of a self-help heretic. I’m working to help people who are in the ‘self-help’ category yet I’ve been a fierce critic of the main methods of the industry for a long time. What bothers me the most is it’s way too head-brain centric. Not surprisingly of course, there was only one brain to deal with.

I’ve read leading self-help practitioners say things sort of like this: “The brain thinks mostly negative stuff and that impacts a person’s success so, let’s teach them to switch-out negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones.”

That’s been the cutting edge of most self-help for the last 80 years or so. But wait; hang on a second. We now know there is a second brain that’s been found. But have we seen any training developed for the gut brain? TM maybe?

Nope.

TM requires a deep concentration of thought. Strictly head-brained stuff since you need a thinking brain for that. I was frustrated by all that same old same old, so instead I made this tool.

(End of background.)

The first thing I noticed when I read the article is that the words ‘gut brain’ are never actually used in the text. I did a [control + F] but nothing came up. Ms. Hsiao did talk a lot about digestion though and in the text it did mention the word “brain” twice but it was always in reference to the one in the head. So, I’m not entirely sure that she’s recognizing the fact that there’s actually a second brain located in the gut or not. The word ‘gut’ is found fourteen times since intestinal microbes are what her work is focusing on.

While the initial research carried out by Dr. Michael Gershon and published back in 1996 did show that the brain in the gut operates the various aspects of the digestion function on its own. Ms. Hsiao’s research added a new twist to it. She looked deeper into the workings of the microbiology of the ‘bugs’ in the gut and found connections to some of the pathology of autism in children. She and her team from Cal Tech have gone ahead and actually sequenced the entire DNA of these microbes and are now saying that, in all humans, there is another non-human genome – the “microbiome”.

Personally, I love the duality reference in all of that. I’m glad science has found something new here that helps people – in this case kids with autism. It’s been almost twenty years since Dr. Gershon ‘rediscovered’ the gut brain and I was wondering when new research would produce some more interesting results. The fact that we now have a dual-genomeinality (if that’s a word) is of particular interest to me. I’m always looking to make more sense of the duality of, and in, humans. This new finding helps me to better make the case for my theory of dual immunity – one physical and one ethereal. One that looks after the body (physical) and one that looks after the thinking (ethereal).

It’s basically this: If you as an individual can have two separate sets of brains and two vastly different genomes, then why not two unseen yet potentially active immune systems?

As you can probably tell my particular interest in the gut brain is in an area where scientists can’t ever go. Hobbled by the requirements of hard data and physical evidence science needs to ‘see’ real things. If they can’t it’s either not science or they tend to call it dark like “dark energy” or “dark’ matter”. Although those two terms are more for physicists not physicians.

What all this means is that investigating the unseen invisible ethereal properties of the gut-brain – the areas where the most potential exists – won’t ever be discovered by the experts in white coats.

But I’m not a scientist. So I’m not bound by such constructs. But I don’t see myself as a philosopher either so I’m not going to offer up just some flowery interpretations of what others have found. I’m going to investigate what’s going on down inside those rabbit holes that have driven better men than me totally nuts.

I know from experience that my work does bring forward real usable results in people who have used my tools. Massive beneficial behavioral changes in those whom I have worked with have attested to it. Things like a greater self confidence, a truer sense of their own life purpose, and the ability to set aside fear and worry and to power ahead with a reasonable amount of renewed vigor that seems to never peter-out.

And the beautiful part? I can now prove it to anyone as long as it’s done one-on-one. (Ready to try it? Let’s talk.)

By the way. This is not your mother’s personal development we’re talking about here so don’t even go there. This is different. I like to call it “Human Potential 2.0” because it’s a resetting of the old head-based paradigm to something that includes, in a big way, the gut brain as well.

Of course, it is my sincere hope that Ms. Hsiao, and other scientists like her, continue to uncover more of the mystery of our brain in the gut but first I’d really like them to clearly acknowledge that the gut-brain, which I see as one of the greatest biological discoveries of the last quarter-century, truly does exist.

I know it does, but surprisingly most everyone else hasn’t even heard of it yet. I guess I have my work cut out for me.

More power to you.

PS: I’m currently working on a new book “The Gut Brain Balm – How the strangest brain ever made saves us from death by stress”. If you’d like to see a sample chapter or two just leave a comment below and I’ll whisk it off to you as soon as it’s ready.

PPS: Need something more? Leave a comment in the box below and we’ll soon be in touch.

Too big to believe

by David

Mobius Monday Minute – June 27 , 2011

Sports figures, entrepreneurs, politicians, and you and I. This is only a partial list of those who succeeded because of just one thing: they had just enough belief to try.

I’m talking about self-belief of course. That’s the kind of belief that infuses the confidence of our mindset and opens a portal to our potential that allows it to flood into our every attempt to succeed at something new.

But there is a problem with this. Two problems actually.

The first is the worrisome fear that our self-belief might be groundless and superficial. That it was applied, like a thin coat of cheap paint, from the time when we read something inspirational in a book or listened to a motivational talk from a skilled presenter.

The second problem is that our potential, if we even think we have any, cannot be seen. Its invisibility becomes a burden even though we’re told by others, who are trying their best to encourage us, that we have lots of it. So we stubbornly use that as reinforcement to our argument for why we can’t do something. If we can’t see it, we reason, then how do we know it’s really there?

There is one main reason why these two problems exist. It’s the lack of actual proof. The problem of your potential’s invisibility is do to the fact that you are human. You can’t see your own potential because it’s simply too darned big a pattern to fit into your human brain.

Yes, the fact is that you can’t possibly comprehend something who’s boarders you can’t see. For example, imagine that you’ve been shipwrecked and found yourself alone in the middle of the vastness of the ocean. You look around but all that you can see is open water in every direction. How could you not feel completely lost?

That ocean is like your potential. It’s a pattern and the pattern is huge. It may have an edge somewhere but since you can’t see it you’re unable to have a frame of reference between you and it. Without that frame of reference there can be no understanding of the pattern you’re looking at.

If you need some kind of proof you need to have it in a form that is solidly understandable. A huge ocean like this is a great metaphor for the size of your own personal potential but to get your head around it you need a something smaller. You need a sample. You need a cup.

A cup of that ocean’s water is an amazing game changer. Small enough so that its boarders can easily be comprehended yet chock full of truth because its contents are exactly the same as the water that’s in that ocean.

There is a word for this type of sample. It’s called a “fractal”.

Fractal images are usually rendered by computer and were first developed and named by the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot in the 1970’s. They are more closely related to geometry, rather than samplings of personal belief patterns, but they fit my purpose beautifully so I use them.

My point is this: If you had just two types of fractals
• a set sequence of true-life examples of your individual past accomplishments
• a set sequence of the exact same gut exhilaration you experienced when you first performed each of the successful activities you had examined above

I have discovered that if those two things are brought together in a tight time-frame of a few short hours then an interesting reaction happens inside anyone who does it. An authentic body feeling will present itself as irrefutable proof that you have had success in the past, and therefore, have enormous potential for attaining it in the future.

To overcome the problem of believing in something that is far too large to comprehend has been my life’s work up to this point. I now have turned the theory into reality and only need a few of you to test it.

Please leave a comment below if you’re willing to give it a try.

More power to you.

The Physics of Motivation

by David

It’s worth over seven billion dollars a year. Millions of us engage in its use every day.

But, for many of us it’s an unrealized waste of time.

I’m talking about the burgeoning self-help or self-development, or self-improvement industry. Whatever you call it that’s the one that’s got some of the biggest most recognizable names making huge profits from it.

Names like Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura, Dr. Grey and let’s not forget Tony Robbins.

But there’s a serious flaw here and it boils down to simple physics: heat rises.

What’s that got to do with your practice of self-development techniques?

Plenty.

What, me worry?

by David

For the last half-century or so an odd-ball spoof magazine has graced the news stands: Mad Magazine.

I, like a ton of other young boys, became aware of it when I was still in grade school. On the cover was the magazine’s fictional mascot and iconic symbol: a zany spokes-guy by the name of Alfred E. Newman. Alfred’s favorite catchphrase “What, me worry?” was also featured somewhere on the cover of every issue.

As kids if we couldn’t remember his name it didn’t matter, we just referred to him as the “what-me-worry-guy”; everyone knew who you meant.

But despite all the years of clever satirical humor (often at the expense of those currently in the glow of the news or popular entertainment) the general population today is reportedly more worried now than ever.

Not surprising either.

In my local paper today is a good example of how the news media is playing us all into the worry hole.