# 11 – Jan 31 , 2011 [display_podcast]
On my Roboform web file manager I have a folder labeled “Happiness” and it’s filling up fast lately.
Just in the last few days I’ve added three more entries. One was for Dr. Robert Holden’s “Happiness Project” one for Lord Richard Layard’s movement for social change “Action for Happiness” and the other was for a guy named Ludwig.
Famous Quotivations # 9 – Jan 28 , 2011 [display_podcast]
Know what I’ve noticed over the years?
A lot of us have wait problems.
No, I’m not talking about the heavy kind of weight. To be sure, obesity is certainly reaching critical mass here in Canada and in the US, but what I’m talking about is a problem that has gripped almost all of us no matter what the size label says.
The wait problem I’m talking about is metered by the pendulum not the tape measure and it’s probably more virulent than you would think. In fact the number one reason for highway deaths each year is speeding in an attempt to beat the clock.
So, why are we going so fast? We can’t wait to get to where we’re going.
See the wait problem?
We can’t stand to wait for anything so we surround ourselves with things that deliver quickly. Microwave ovens, email, rapid transit, TV and internet with high-speed cable, and, of course, pizza.
Clearly, we hate waiting. We want stuff and we want it now.
Instant gratification has become the new normal. Too bad our immune system, the one that looks after our thinking not the one that takes care of our body, hasn’t kept up to this speed increase. It’s been a mindset immunity massacre.
As a result all the old methods of personal development, the ones that were authored way back in the 30’s and 40’s, don’t work near as well as they once did They we’re never designed to overcome such a high level of uncertainty.
One of the most devastating effects of this bias for all things instant is when it comes to success. When a new entrepreneur doesn’t see their dream unfolding quick enough it tends to kill their motivation to carry on. They loose the ability to muster enough passion and persistence to keep running the business efficiently and learn from their mistakes over the long haul.
The problem with success is that the timeline to it can be long and arduous. Take for example the prolific mystery author Steven King. He wrote every day for nine years before he sold his first novel. Marie Curie spent seven years living in poverty in Paris while studding and researching radio activity. Michael Faraday worked as a lab assistant for seven years before he was even allowed to do his own experiments. And finally, Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star newspaper in 1919 because, his editor said, he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” Thirty-six years later on July 18, 1955 Disneyland opened to the public and approximately 50,000 guests attended the Monday opening day.
Studies show that, on average, fifty percent of all start-ups fail during the all-important first five years of being in business. Same for relationships (What’s that? You refuse to make me happy every single day? I’m outta here!)
Sure, you shouldn’t have to wait for success to happen but don’t quit trying new things to make it happen. Consistently working every day toward the end goal is key to getting through the dreaded timeline and the learning curve on the road to success.
It could well be that success in anything is always going to be further than you think. But what if the reward of knowing that you could do it on your own is worth the wait?
It’s Friday. Consider your self quotivated.
PS: Is this about you? Do you have a wait problem? Is success running away from you? Maybe you should check out my new book “The Gut Brain Balm – How to get more of the success and happiness you deserve by learning to love the ugliest brain your world has never known.”
# 9 – Jan 10 , 2011
The first that might come to mind is the one associated with all the vile stuff we hear about on the evening newscast.
But that’s not what I want to talk about today. You get enough of that in other media so here’s a little break from all that.
The word I’m using today is just another way of saying medium. You know. Not too hot and not too cold but just right. Sort like Goldilocks and the 3 bears sort of thing.
This right in the middle thing is sometimes looked at as the “average” on a certain scale.
And while “average” can accurately describe the position of being in the middle there is another derivative of that word meridian.
This has a famous connection to it as in the prime meridian. This is the invisible line that runs north and south and divides the globe into two distinct hemispheres of east and west.
The prime meridian has a historical connection to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich in London. In fact it’s drawn right through the center of it. If you go there you’ll see a line painted on the floor.
This is the same observatory that used to be the keeper of the measuring of time for the rest of the known world. Greenwich “mean time” was the standard for the world’s clocks for many years until it was replaced by Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) for scientific purposes.
But Greenwich mean time is still the time for you and me and is based on the sun’s position at a particular point as it passes over the earth’s meridian.
But what’s all this got to do with my main theme for this blog which is Mindset Immunity?
Glad you asked.
It appears that there is another important mean measurement term that I haven’t yet introduced you to.
I’ll refer to it as the “mood mean” It’s a state of mindset equilibrium. It’s kept nearest it’s middle point thanks to something I call mindset immunity.
Let me describe it this way.
The body maintains its temperature at approximately 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Much hotter than that and you probably should stay home and drink plenty of fluids. Colder than that and you’ll be in a chill that could have serious consequences unless you get yourself cozied up by the fire or head off to the nearest hot tub.
It’s well known that a natural state of good physical health is largely maintained by the built-in mechanism provided by the immune system. It automatically works on three levels:
Mindset immunity provides similar protection except it does it for the thinking mindset. In other words it keeps your mood closer to “normal” so that you can function and make good sound decisions even in the face of ever-changing realities.
But there is a problem.
I believe that, the average human today has a mindset immunity that is moving at a snail’s pace. That account’s for why it takes so long for many of us to get over a situation that was not seen as positive.
But I’ve figured out a way to speed things up quickly and permanently. It’s a process that I call H.E.R.O.; an acronym for Honest Examination of Real Occurrences. It entails reverse-searching your past success history in a structured way in real-time in an on-line platform with a live guide to assist you.
Mindset immunity is everyone’s birthright. You have it now. All it needs is to get untied and it will do its magic as it should.
That means it can smooth out all those otherwise rough spots in your thinking so you have more energy to do better at living a quality life.
And that is no mean feat.
More power to you.
Mobius Monday Minute #9 – January 3, 2011
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I was listening to the radio the other day while I sipped my morning mocha. When a song came on that I recognized instantly as Neil Young’s “Long may you run”.
After it finished playing the announcer off-handedly mentioned that the song was about one of Young’s cars.
It surprised me. I never knew that.
Kinda made me think about the connections we make with things. I can certainly relate to what Youg must have been feeling when he wrote the lyrics to this song. I remember my first car. It was a Green 1962 MGA two-seater convertible sports car. Incidentally that’s the year mentioned in the song as the last year that he saw his car “alive”.
I was only nineteen back then when I first got it. I had a lot of good memories with it. It took me through my last two years of high school and through the accompanying summers. It was a wonderful time.
This car, despite it’s wonky mechanics, was at least a constant steady reality at a time of real change in my life. The biggest of course was when I moved out of my parent’s house for the first time. It took me to college in another city about 250 miles away and I remember running out of gas on the freeway that crossed the north end of the big city. I was only there for a few minutes when a tow truck pulled up in front of me on the shoulder of the road.
The driver got out and as I no sooner had described what my problem was he quickly took a gas can from his truck and was pouring i’s contents into my empty tank. He wouldn’t even take any money for it. Turns out he worked for the city and it was his job to keep things rolling on that busy stretch of highway.
Try that today eh? Good luck.
Lot’s was happening back then but, no matter what there was always that car.
But, just like the song says changes come and I eventually sold the car.
Funny isn’t it? How you can think of an inanimate object as some kind of important anchor point to memories long past their freshness date.
I don’t really know exactly how this ties in with my ongoing theme on this blog which usually talks about my theory of Mindset Immunity.
Perhaps it’s this admittedly very tangential refrain from the song itself:
“Although these changes have come.
With your chrome heart shining in the sun”
At least that’s how it is with the historical view of memory. The best one’s always shine on seemingly forever.
More power to you.
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.