Interesting post on Seth’s blog a while back.

He’s commenting on one of my key themes: External motivation versus internal motivation. He doesn’t go into the topic at length of course, that’s not his blogging style. He likes short and pithy and he is the best in the world at it.

He just ends the post with this and it struck me.

“The nature of our new economic system, that one that doesn’t support predictable factory work, is that external motivation is far less useful. If you’re looking for a big payday, you won’t find it right away. If you’re depending on cheers and thank yous from your Twitter followers, you’re looking at a very bumpy ride.
In fact, the world is more and more aligned in favor of those who find motivation inside, who would do what they do even if it wasn’t their job. As jobs turn into projects, the leaders we need are those that relish the project, that jump at the chance to push themselves harder than any coach ever could.”

In isolation this is about work. It’s about industry. He doesn’t actually say it (it’s really not his department anyway) but I don’t think he knows how to exactly engender internal motivation that overcomes the external. How to make the gut strength motivation deeper and more pervasive than that which comes from the brain topside.

He’s not alone. Most every coach, counselor, or guru who’s trying to do it is on the wrong track. Often they fail to see that the motivation they’re supplying to their client is just yet another external motivating factor. Like a bird chirping on a tree branch or the sound of a wave hitting the beach. It’s still from the outside. It’s external.

Not surprising that they don’t see it for what it is though.

Internal motivating ques are very subtle and personal. Who gathers around the water cooler to talk about their gut feeling? Almost no one.

Too bad though. That one phenomenon is the basis of the new immunity that I’ve been writing about for some time now. The point I always make is simple but, as the old saying goes “still waters run deep” and this is no exception. It’s taken me years to give this voice so that I can explain it to people.

I think the era of the great motivator standing up on stage getting everyone going is now just about over. I don’t think people will go on paying big money for that same stuff for too much longer. Same with the calm-talk of the “spiritual teacher” sitting there answering questions while attendees hang on his/her every word.  It’s more personal now. It’s got to be. There’s just too much to contend with already.

All they’ve got is mostly just more words. Words that form ideas that motivate people. That’s how it’s been done for centuries. It’s about as old hart as it get’s

But now that model is in real trouble as our difficulties with a changing world catch up with us. Seth is smart enough to notice this new trend. So, how about you?

[Would you like to hear more about what I’ve got to say on this topic?  Sign-up here and get a free limited release MP3 download of my 90 minute conversation with copy guy extraordinaire Donnie Bryant. I hold nothing back and this call is jam-packed with information about my H.E.R.O.  project that I haven’t ever released on this blog before.

More power to you.

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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.

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Each week I intend to dispatch my pent-up creativity by creating a new version of something I call a “quotius”. (Learn about the genesis of it here.)
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Okay, it is a quote, well, sort of in a way at least it is. I mean, I’m quoting a collective group of people here but no one person in particular so there will be no attribution attached.
This is not only ground-breakingly different for me but I saved ink too because I just did it by hand with a marker.

The group I’m referring to, if you can believe it, is the population of biology researchers laboring away at labs all over the country.

I’m using a short list. I’ve stripped out everything extraneous so that all I’m left on it is six basic items. The professionals I’m quoting probably wouldn’t have done that themselves. They like long reports and white papers. They need those to justify their research funding.

The list includes the six main elements that make up the bulk of all living matter on planet earth: Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Sulfur and Phosphorus.

In the video I’m keeping with my usual theme of showing my inherent lack of respect for a circular-shaped thinking pattern. As usual I make sure it meets with a quick if not painless end.

In the circular thinking model I show what the problem is. You can only read half of the items on the list. The other three appear upside down on the inside of the band. They are separated and alone.

With only three items instead of the required six you can’t end up with a living organism. If you work in a lab and these three are all you have you may have something organic but it’s most likely not living or breathing nor will if fetch a stick.

Nevertheless science has a name for it… It’s known as “dead”.

The same can be said of the pattern of circular thinking itself. All that one can do when you’re caught up within it is stay trapped in an endless spiral going further down the road of frustration and time loss.

So who am I to make such critical observations?

After all the closest I ever got to being a scientist was watching Star Trek on television after school more than forty years ago. But for the last two decades I’ve closely watched the way circular thinking has taken hold in so many people’s lives. Promoted by the rush and demands of life these days it has stolen more of its portion of our joy and happiness. If they would just slow down enough they would appreciate the fact that they can see their own potential and build a deep self-belief on that hard-evidence-based vision. All it takes is a simple little brain tweak and the direction we all desperately need can begin to come into focus.

My point, if I may say so myself, is visually well made. Thinking like this is as dead as the organic waste that only three basic elements can make. It’s thinking that needs to be changed.

In this video I reconstruct this old model by it taking apart and by giving one end a little tweak by twisting one end of it 180 degrees (like the coil in a DNA) before joining it with the other end.

We now see something new.

It’s a model of a mobius strip of course but, at the same time, it’s also a 3D illustration of a reciprocal system of thinking. Now in this form we can easily read all six elements one–by-one because this new strip only has one side and one edge. With this complete list of six items we have just about everything that’s needed to define every living organism in the physical world.

We also have a very elegant metaphor for the shape that this new thinking pattern takes on. I have been helping people for a long time to make this type of change and it doesn’t take long to do. One day at the most. The rewards are a greater self-confidence, less stress, and a much clearer pathway to get out from under the weight of the world.

And it’s all because of a well placed little twist and a little tweak.

More power to you.

PS: Have you noticed that a lot of personal development methods no longer pack the punch they once did? Could be the times. I went ahead and invented this simple little brain tweak that makes a huge difference in leveraging your efforts for creating a better version of yourself. Want more? Check out my FREE webinar here.

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Famous Quotivations # 15 – February 25 , 2011

Friedrich Nietzsche - 1844 - 1900

There was a time when I would have thought that chaos was a mess. You know a real screwed up situation. That it meant that things were all confused.

I think that “Freddie” here thought the same thing.

But we’d both be wrong. It appears that references like that is often found at street level alright but the word chaos actually has a more exalted meaning.

It’s used in mathematics and many applications in scientific circles that use math use it. One thing that comes to mind refers to a little happening known as the big bang birth of the cosmos.

I’m no mathematician nor am I a scientist by any stretch but I have been aware of these techie usages of chaos.

One of my favorites is something called the “butterfly effect”.

This was first discovered by a weatherman back in the sixties by the name of Edward Lorenz. He was running experiments with a computer full of weather data. That’s when he realized that even very very small changes in the figures made huge changes in the outcomes.

If two identical systems are set in motion with their starting conditions just a micron different the whole game runs away with itself. The resulting graph is so vastly different it’s like night and day.

Kind of makes me think about the gurus of personal development. You knowhow they promise us that if we read their books diligently and follow their teachings we will build a successful future same as they did?

But not mathematically likely.

Figures don’t lie.

Chaos kicks in and makes the whole thing virtually impossible. Turns out all we can do is try. But that’s it.

Which means that we need more than mere instruction if we’re to gain any traction in the world. That’s exactly the kind of thing I talk about in my free Traction in the Trenches webinars.

So, what’s with the “dancing star” thing at the end of this quote?

That’s easy. Didn’t you know? Couldn’t you have guessed?

Freddie, you see, was a nutbar.

It’s Friday. Consider your self quotivated.

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If you payed for head-based self-motivation you could end up taking a bath

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” -Zig Ziglar

Welcome to this edition of “Quotivations” for December 17, 2010.

Usually every Friday I choose quotes that I think are motivating or inspiring. But today I’m doing something a little different.

Rather than being motivating I found this quote, from one of the original key figures of modern day Self-help, to be a less then a subtle complaint about one of the biggest faults of his positive motivational product.

It doesn’t last.

Never has and never will.

Poor old Zig. He’s been at this self-help game since before the earth was done cooling. A defensive quote like this one appears to bring out the curmudgeon in him.

It’s total spin though.

But there is something I’ve  got to give him credit for. He’s always been good at adding a touch poetry to make his message more memorable. Remember the famous line “Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude”. Clever stuff like that sells well and it sure did for multi-millionaire Zig Ziglar.

But I still don’t buy it.

Want poetry? How about this: “Disable the fable about motivational spinners making you able”.

Ok, maybe it’s not as good as Zig can do it but, hey, I’m still working on it.

I believe that the real reason why motivation appears not to last very long is because of the type of motivation that’s being delivered.

What doesn’t last is the typical self-motivation injected toward your head-brain by clever artful dodgers like Zig.

Now, don’t get me wrong here, anyone who’s been at for over forty years, like Zig has, deserves some respect. I’m sure he’s helped some people along the path.

But we need some hard truth here.

The problem is that Zig, like all of his compadres today, did not and has not been able to recognize that there is another overriding motivational force that comes from the gut and powers through all the head-brain muddle causing a desired goal to be achieved despite all the great motivational sayings.

That energy, we refer to it sometimes as persistence and determination, cannot and does not originate in the head brain. It’s strictly a property of the gut brain (scientifically known as the enteric nervous system).

The problem with trying to change thoughts from negative to positive is that as humans we have a slight negativity bias to start with and the head-brain, which is always open to messages from the eyes and ears, can’t avoid reverting to and taking on the polarity of whatever has the greater amount.

In other words, there is a lot of negatively charged media fighting for attention with the positive stuff (poetry notwithstanding). It usually swings back to the negative side because that is often the default setting. Negative is also the polarity a lot of our perceptions happen to have about how our existence is treating us.

For example, you could be studying one of Zig’s great books and feeling very positive about your day. That’s until some jerk cuts you off in traffic or you get a flat tire on your way to work and suddenly bamm! just like that you’re back to where you started. You need to bathe your brain again in more positive juice.

The fundamental Problem…

It’s taken me a lot of years but I can now describe the fundamental problem with just three words: lack of immunity.

See the mindset is constantly under attack by our negative perceptions of our situation. But the body’s physical immune system is primarily a buffer against the attacks of pathogens and most of the time it works quite well.

But mindset immunity is another animal all together. It’s not physical it’s ethereal because thoughts are ethereal. The problem with it is that it’s too weak and too slow acting in most people to act like much of a buffer. But, here’s the good news:

I’ve found a way to fix that with this.

Not one of the best head-based motivators working today has ever thought of this approach before. If they did they’d have to change their whole business model to include one where they only deliver the result just once and it sticks.

Like I do.

They wouldn’t want to ever do that though. If they did their business could end up taking a bath… daily.

That’s it for today, consider yourself “quotivated”.

More power to you.

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# 6 – Dec 13 , 2010

In this edition I’ll speak about my favorite subject: Persistence and the new book I’ve just released.

More power to you my friends.

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