The Greatest Motivational Mystery Of All Time

by David

We’ve all heard it said that “your first choice is often your best choice” and “trust your gut feeling it’s usually right“. This is something that is recognized as a phenomenon in many cultures the world over. It has caused people to make major decisions based entirely on how it felt rather than how it looked regardless of how strongly others advised them against it. I think this has got to be the greatest motivational mystery of all time.

Recently I ran across an interesting video on Evan Carmichael’s site that suggests this same advice should be considered number one when making business decisions. Check it out:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owXhVn-0YKI[/youtube]

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PS: If you want to learn more about how this mysterious phenomenon, what I call the “mobius effect” fits in with my theory of Mindset Immunity then check this out.

More power to you,

Paper Cut Learning

by David

Paper cuts can be healed with time and an active immune system

Photo Credit: The Fuzzy Bunny!

If you’ve ever had a paper cut you know how it hurts. Pain like this is nature’s way of saying: “Today’s lesson is…” If your immune system is breached, and remember your skin is your immune system’s first line of defense, then there will be pain. There is no getting around it. Pain demands attention every time.

But fortunately more often than not you don’t need to actually do anything yourself because your immune system works on auto-pilot to solve tiny breaches for you 24 x 7 x 365. So the question I’ve been asking for years now is: Why doesn’t your thinking have the same capacity to respond to failure events as the body does?

Mobiusmanifesto

by David

I always wanted a manifesto of my own so here it is. (More to follow in this series.)

When I started out into business years ago I was told early on that a positive mindset was essential for success.

But after repeated attempts to get lasting results from the usual methods, offered by the great gurus and authors of personal development, I came to the conclusion that something must be broken.

With all their books, recordings, and seminars I felt that they were doing is what has always been done. That is: Offering information on personal development TO me. I needed it coming THROUGH me so I could internalized it better and get to the place where they were but in far less time and with less effort than I had before. Otherwise, I’d just be the same as I was before and what would be the point of that.

Of course, a methodology that could do that didn’t exist back then so I set out to build one. I decided to create something so different it would stand the old personal development model on its head. I didn’t want to just have information “transfer” from one person to another, I wanted a personal “transformation” from one person to another. In other words from the “old” me into the “new” me.

What I came up with is the H.E.R.O. Personal Success Discover eMachine.

Over the last few years I’ve been quietly perfecting it. Creating the language for talking about it in an envelope of a new theory: The theory of Mindset Immunity.

This manifesto will outline how I want to contribute to the world by encouraging a conversation about these two new ideas. I’m hoping that by writing it I’ll get better at finding the words to articulate how these new creations can be useful to people like you.

Trans Fat Thinking

by David

I’m not a huge health nut. I’m a mindset immunity nut. So what am I doing writing about trans fats? There is a story here.

Not that long ago my wife and I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things. We soon found ourselves in the dairy isle so we got our cheese, sour cream, and some yogurt. Then we got to the butter. “Where’s the butter?” I asked her as if she would know. There wasn’t any. The shelf was bare. Seems there was a sale on butter and, since this was latter in the day, other customers had run off with it.

Our only alternative was the other brand and it was about twice the cost of the house brand that was on sale.

But by now I was hooked on getting a deal and we did need butter. So the only other choice was something that is not even a dairy product. It’s margarine, that molecular mash-up that often stands-in up to four times as often as butter in many families’ refigerators. Same color, similar consistency, and it even has the same packaging as butter. The one pound square this I got comes dressed in that familiar paper wrapper and its even exactly the same size as a pound of butter.

But of course it’s not the same.

It’s margarine.The label says that on the front. On the back is its ingredients and nutritional info including the trans-fat percentage. This is the thing that’s been linked to many diseases including some types of cancer. It’s a molecular freak that the body simply can’t use. If it tries to it will turn it into something even more deformed.

Now that I’ve had a chance to research it a bit I find that it’s probably closer to being plastic than food. Nothing will grow in it. Leave it out and no pesky flies will go near it. Won’t rot or smell weird if left out either. It’s definitely not butter.

So why did I buy it?

I was skunked by price. Outmaneuvered by the marketing and seduced by easy availability.

Sounds familiar? Many do it every day when they pick up a great book of advice, positive quotes, or read stories of successful people. Get their shot of motivation for the day to help them overcome a tough situation or just help them figure out what to do next.

What else can they do?

Real authentic passion and mindset immunity is in short supply. It’s rarity makes it expensive in time and effort to find it too. So we stick with the mind-candy even though we know that it’s addictive and eventually leads to system breakdowns. It’s loaded with trans-fat thinking that:

is extrinsic, it doesn’t come from you it comes at you
clogs the pathways of good clear creativity with rules and “guidelines” that are not your own
it’s not natural to you so it may not quite fit and it doesn’t last very long
it’s just cheap and instant and requires little work to get because there’s lot’s of vendors out there who are ready to give it to you

I’ve read some of those trans-fatty books. I know what they are like but I now know better.

Glad I’m finished with this post. Now I can go to my fridge, reach in for that chunk of margarine, and chuck it in the garbage trans-fats and all.

More power to you all.

A Bridge Too Far

by David

I don’t get to the movies much so I haven’t got a lot of memories of too many of them. But back in 1977 I went to see a war picture called “A bridge too far“. I don’t remember why I want because I don’t really like war pics.

It had a lot of great actors in it though. Guys like Michael Caine, James Caan, and the famous actor of the Bond movies 007 Sean Connery. This was a true story which took place in 1944 in the middle of the second world war. It is known in history as “operation Market Garden”.

The Allies wanted to finish the war early and so poured everything into this operation. It didn’t go well. Not well at all.

The German forces were stronger than anticipated and in the end it was declared an “Allied operational failure”. Now we know it was the worst in history with over 17,000 casualties. One of the bridges they were trying to capture was just too darn far.

Kind a bit-off-more-than-we-can-chew type of thing.

Ever have one of those? I have, and it used to stress me out to the nines. It can do a lot of damage to your mindset that’s for sure.

Lucky I took this a long time ago and now I get an automatic buffering effect whenever a bad turn happens. It’s still not a cake-walk but it allows me to stay on track. A lot better than the alternative.

More power to you.