Dale Carnegie Training, the self-help program that’s shaped the lives of such people as Warren Buffett, Johnny Cash, and Emeril Lagasse, can claim an additional ardent disciple: Charles Manson.
In his new book, Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson, author Jeff Guinn credits Carnegie training with transforming Manson from “a low-level pimp” to the “frighteningly effective sociopath” who created a cult of killers in the late 1960s.
Manson took classes in How to Win Friends and Influence People, based on Carnegie’s iconic book, while doing time for car theft in a California federal prison in 1957. “It was critical in shaping how he manipulated people,” says Guinn, noting that the young convict told people he’d enrolled to get strangers to open up to him.
Manson became especially obsessed with Chapter Seven, on how to get cooperation, and often practiced key lines in his cell, a former prison mate told Guinn. Carnegie’s advice—”Let the other fellow feel that the idea is his”—became vital in helping him recruit and control a band composed mostly of young women. Former “Family” members Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten (who was denied her 20th bid for parole last month) both say Manson mastered the technique: Not only did he often solicit and praise his followers’ advice, he was careful to frame every killing as a Family decision.
Jackie Kellso, who runs Dale Carnegie courses in New York, says, “it’s a very hard concept to understand.” The notion of letting others take credit for your ideas goes against what most people are taught, she explains, yet “it’s fundamental to being a good leader.”
Not that producing nimbler and more cunning criminals is the kind of success that boosts a global brand. Guinn says the Hauppage (N.Y.)-based company, which claims 8 million graduates, refused to help with his book. When contacted by Bloomberg Businessweek, a spokeswoman e-mailed a statement that “Dale Carnegie Training does not offer courses in prisons at this time” and focuses instead on working with “corporations, government agencies, individuals, and teams.”
The Dale Carnegie website lists the New York City Department of Corrections as a client, however, and prison clubs across the country have won accolades for helping inmates learn life skills. Chris Burke, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, also notes that its 119 facilities boast “a wide variety of training courses available to our inmates, including some locations that offer Toastmasters and Dale Carnegie.” The California state prison system in which the 78-year-old Manson is now incarcerated offers similar leadership training.
How people incorporate the lessons is up to them. As Carnegie himself wrote in his 1948 book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: “Two men looked out from prison bars, One saw the mud, the other saw stars.” With Manson not eligible for parole until 2027, that’s the kind of positive attitude he might want to hone.
Read this carefully! We become PRISONERS in our RELATIONSHIPS, WORK and PLAY because of our DESIRE to REACT and RESPOND. We mentally, verbally or physically RESPOND to our own THOUGHTS or stimuli detected via our five senses from outside sources. The quality of our lives is dictated by our REACTIONS. Every selected REACTION takes our life into a certain DIRECTION. We, like the rest of society are so predictable because we developed STANDARD reactions on virtually every stimulus. It is our REACTIONS that keep us in our MENTAL JAIL where the system can CONTROL us and make us jump though hoops. Let us look at some of our REACITONS while we serve the MATRIX.
Greed
As Gordon Gekko assured us, ‘greed is good.’ Greed is the impulse towards the accumulation of property, be it money, food, sexual partners, knowledge, or power. Since greed implies excess (i.e., can only be satisfied by having more than one needs), the nature of such compulsive acquisition is to covet things which one does not really want, or have any use for. And since the rationale behind greed (what makes it good) is that by acquiring things we can favourably compare ourselves to others, who have fewer things, greed is most fully vindicated when we are able to acquire not only what we don’t need, but what others palpably do need, and quite badly, but cannot have (partly because we have taken it for ourselves). Greed is industry. It empowers, and inspires the individual to perform at a peak capacity, even if he must kill himself in the process (and cause everyone else to starve). Greed is especially effective for keeping plugged-in humans plugged in because it is wholly outer-directed. The greater one’s spiritual emptiness, the stronger the need to fill one’s life with material goodies. Thus, the matrix perpetuates itself indefinitely.
Lust
The desire for sexual satisfaction is also primary to plugged-in humans. It is not a hormonal desire, however, since plugged-in humans, by becoming part of the greater mechanism of the matrix, have evolved beyond their animal physicality and are no longer organic beings. They are driven not by biological but by psychological/emotional needs. Hence, the desire for sex, once healthy and natural, has become, like all fake virtues, the desire of the ego for self-aggrandizement (often masquerading as self-debasement). The more people one can fuck, the more self-esteem the ego may gather; the stronger it becomes, the more power it perceives itself to have over others. Sexual gratification, therefore, must always include some element of contempt and even debasement of the other, in order to ensure that there is no possibility of real connection. Such connection is fatal to a plugged-in human, since empathy always entails a loss of self and a corresponding weakening of the ego, which thrives on isolation. Hence, to plugged-in humans the lust mechanism is unrelated to any true sexual desire for union, and relates rather to the need to dominate.
Ambition
Closely related to greed, ambition is the preprogrammed desire, present in all plugged-in humans, to serve the system to fullest capacity, and so reap the favour and benefit of the said system, or matrix. Once again, ambition must always be externally directed. Success cannot be measured in terms of any inner sense of well-being, but only according to external assurances from others that, indeed, one is a success. If the inner voice of a plugged-in human (in so far as he or she still has an inner voice) tells them that their success is somehow unsatisfying or meaningless to them, it is expedient that this voice of doubt be drowned out at once by a sensory overload of external stimuli. These stimuli (fellow plugged-in humans) will duly reassure us that, yes, this is success, and of course, we must feel good about it. In time, the fully adapted matrix human learns to measure his or her worth entirely by social criteria, i.e., by what others say. Since the matrix tells us we are successful, and that we must feel good about it, then it must be true. At which point, any friends or acquaintances who do not support us in this view, or who dare to question the value of our ambitions, must be ruthlessly removed from our social circles. Ambition is fulfilled through service to the whole, in this case, the social matrix which tells us what to desire and how, precisely, to get it.
Envy
Envy is the means by which the ego aspires to what it is not. It is envy for the neighbour’s Porsche or the best friend’s girl that fires a plugged-in human’s greed, lust, and ambition, and allows it to become a driving force in life. Since the egos of all plugged-in humans are intrinsically unstable, insecure, and racked by doubt and self-loathing, it is only natural for them to wish to be everything that they are not. Envy also keeps the plugged-in humans’ resentment and hostility towards others alive and bristling, giving their acts and words the necessary edge to cut through the competition. As we saw in rule seven, plugged-in humans invariably despise those they admire (which is why falling in love is total anathema to plugged-in humans, though they talk about it almost constantly), and this conflicting emotion is reconciled in the fake virtue of envy. All superior egos serve to remind the inferior ego of its own worthlessness. This in turn gives the ego impetus, through subterfuge and deceit, to buy, beg, or steal whatever it needs to become equal to other egos, and eventually to surpass them altogether.
Conceit and Self-Pity
Once known as pride, the plugged-in human has replaced such a noble sin with the more comfortable (fake) virtue of conceit. Since pride implies a self-awareness and appreciation of one’s virtues, strengths, and deeds – and since such awareness is not available to plugged-in humans due to their complete refusal to examine their lives – the only means for the plugged-in human to appreciate himself is to compare himself to others and decide, on all occasions, that he is more important than everyone else. Conceit is the ability to value one’s own feelings, ideas, opinions, and decisions as infinitely superior to everyone else’s, even when they are quite obviously nothing of the kind (even, in fact, when they are not one’s own at all, but stolen or borrowed from others). Conceit is the ability, central to the make-up of all plugged-in humans, to think exclusively and constantly about the self, to take one’s own experiences, be they in the nature of blessing or curse, with utmost seriousness and to regard those of everyone else with a sneering indifference or at best, a supercilious pity. Conceit is really self-pity masquerading as self-importance, however. It is the means by which plugged-in humans hide, from themselves and others, the insidious, crippling fact of their own self-loathing. Hence it is perhaps the most valuable of all fake virtues within the social matrix. Plugged-in humans love nothing more than to feel sorry for themselves, to feed their sense of being better than their circumstances, without ever taking responsibility for having created these circumstances in the first place. Thus it is that self-pity masquerades as self-importance, and conceit acts as a cover for self-loathing.
Sloth
All plugged-in humans are naturally apathetic, indolent, and lazy. The matrix encourages ambition, social climbing, and all external goals or material industry; but it strongly discourages anything resembling real effort, will, or discipline. This is why outer goals are stressed so insistently, since it is possible to attain fame and wealth without ever having to develop one’s character or inner nature. Above all, it is essential to maintain the proper degree of complacency, the smug self-satisfaction common to all plugged-in humans, and not to bid for any real, lasting change. Constant stagnation is the basis of the matrix; without this it could not exist. Such stagnation depends upon fostering the illusion of change in order to distract plugged-in humans from the rank and putrid truth of their lives. Hence, it is mandatory that plugged-in humans continue to allow themselves to be distracted by constant stimuli, those of external goals, desires, problems, fears, and so forth (be they relating to food, shelter, sex, money, fame, or power). In this way, plugged-in humans continue to neglect utterly their inner needs and remain in a state of constant stagnation. Thus, while plugged-in humans are physically and materially active, in constant struggle to overcome material obstacles and solve mundane problems, they are entirely passive at an inner or spiritual level, to the point where the muscles of the creative imagination (the one thing the matrix truly fears) have atrophied and barely work at all, save in a few, rare individuals.
In summation, all plugged-in humans (which is to say, just about everyone everywhere, although western ‘civilized’ folk have the edge) are playing the game of consensus reality whether they are aware of it or not, and are playing by rules which they neither invented nor ever consciously agreed to. In most cases, in fact, they are grossly unaware that such rules even exist. (Of course, the laws of physics, of entropy, disease, death, sexuality, and so forth, are also rules which we never agreed to; but they go a lot deeper, and we shall get to them later.) And oddly enough, the matrix of consensus reality has been set up in such a way that it is necessary to first understand the rules before you can begin changing, bending, or breaking them. So this is an option which the vast majority of plugged-in humans never become aware of.
The first step to freedom, logically, is admitting that you are a slave. This is not an easy step for most plugged-in humans to take.
The fact that many plugged-in humans believe in both God and Satan, in Fate and ‘free will’, without ever becoming aware of the glaring contradiction in such a belief system, lets us know just how deep the denial goes. Logically, either God runs the world, or Satan does. It can’t be both. Either our actions are mapped out in advance by some force we call ‘Fate’, or we ourselves decide each and every moment, using some faculty called ‘will’. There is however a third option, and this is that God and Satan work together in some mysterious manner, that Satan is just a prison guard, a prison guard who keeps us from getting to God until we have proved ourselves smart enough to get by him; in which case, ‘free will’ is something only a very few individuals ever attain. It’s the prize for those precious Lucid (see Glossary) few who have dared to sneak past the prison guard and escape a wholly unacceptable fate. Here is where the matrix warrior comes in.
Take the opportunity to try out these ridiculously unique dining experiences at some of the world’s most bizarre themed restaurants, at least once in your life time.
I’m pretty mediocre. I’m ashamed to admit it. I’m not even being sarcastic or self-deprecating. I’ve never done anything that stands out as, “whoah! This guy made it into outerspace! Or…this guy has a best selling novel! Or…if only Google had thought of this!”
I’ve had some successes and some failures but never reached any of the goals I had initially set. Always slipped off along the way, off the yellow brick road, into the wilderness.
I’ve started a bunch of companies. Sold some. Failed at most. I’ve invested in a bunch of startups. Sold some. Failed at some, and the jury is still sequestered on a few others. I’ve written some books, most of which I no longer like.
I can tell you overall, though, everything I have done has been distinguished by its mediocrity, its lack of a grand vision, and any success I’ve had can be just as much put in the luck basket as the effort basket.
That said, all people should be so lucky. We can’t all be grand visionaries. We can’t all be Picassos. We want to make our business, make our art, sell it, make some money, raise a family, and try to be happy. My feeling, based on my own experience, is that aiming for grandiosity is the fastest route to failure.
For every Mark Zuckerberg there are 1000 Jack Zuckermans. Who is Jack Zuckerman? I have no idea. That’s my point. If you are Jack Zuckerman and are reading this, I apologize. You aimed for the stars and missed. Your re-entry into the atmosphere involved a broken heat shield and you burned to a crisp by the time you hit the ocean. Now we have no idea who you are.
If you want to get rich, sell your company, have time for your hobbies, raise a halfway decent family (with mediocre children, etc), and enjoy the sunset with your wife on occasion, here are some of my highly effective recommendations.
Recommendations for a Mediocre Life
Procrastination In between the time I wrote the last sentence and the time I wrote this one I played (and lost) a game of chess. My king and my queen got forked by a knight. But hey, that happens. Fork me once, shame on me. Etc.
Procrastination is your body telling you you need to back off a bit and think more about what you are doing. When you procrastinate as an entrepreneur it could mean that you need a bit more time to think about what you are pitching a client. It could also mean you are doing work that is not your forte and that you are better off delegating. I find that many entrepreneurs are trying to do everything when it would be cheaper and more time-efficient to delegate, even if there are monetary costs associated with that. In my first business, it was like a lightbulb went off in my head the first time I delegated a programming job to someone other than me. At that time, I went out on a date. Which was infinitely better than me sweating all night on some stupid programming bug (thank you, Chet, for solving that issue).
Try to figure out why you are procrastinating. Maybe you need to brainstorm more to improve an idea. Maybe the idea is no good as is. Maybe you need to delegate. Maybe you need to learn more. Maybe you don’t enjoy what you are doing. Maybe you don’t like the client whose project you were just working on. Maybe you need to take a break. There’s only so many seconds in a row you can think about something before you need to take time off and rejuvenate the creative muscles. This is not for everyone. Great people can storm right through. Steve Jobs never needed to take a break. But I do.
Procrastination could also be a strong sign that you are a perfectionist. That you are filled with shame issues. This will block you from building and selling your business. Examine your procrastination from every side. It’s your body trying to tell you something. Listen to it.
Zero-tasking
There’s a common myth that great people can multitask efficiently. This might be true but I can’t do it. I have statistical proof. I have a serious addiction. If you ever talk on the phone with me there’s almost 100% chance I am simultaneously playing chess online. The phone rings and one hand reaches for the phone and the other hand reaches for the computer to initiate a one minute game. Chess rankings are based on a statistically generated rating system. So I can compare easily how well I do when I’m the phone compared with when I’m not on the phone. There is a three standard deviation difference. Imagine if I were talking on the phone and driving. Or responding to emails. It’s the same thing I’m assuming: phone calls cause a three standard deviation subtraction in intelligence. And that’s the basic multi-tasking we all do at some point or other.
So great people can multitask but since, by definition, most of us are not great (99% of us are not in the top 1%), its much better to single-task. Just do one thing at a time. When you wash your hands, hear the sound of the water, feel the water on your hands, scrub every part. Be clean. Focus on what you are doing.
Often, the successful mediocre entrepreneur should strive for excellence in ZERO-tasking. Do nothing. We always feel like we have to be “doing something” or we (or, I should say “I”) feel ashamed. Sometimes it’s better to just be quiet, to not think of anything at all.
Out of silence comes the greatest creativity.
Not when we are rushing and panicking.
Failure As far as I can tell, Larry Page has never failed. He went straight from graduate school to billions. Ditto for Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and a few others. But again, by definition, most of us are pretty mediocre. We can strive for greatness but we will never hit it. So it means we will often fail. Not ALWAYS fail. But often.
My last 16 out of 17 business attempts were failures. I made so many mistakes in my first successful business I’m almost embarassed to recount them. I remember one time I was trying to pitch Tupac’s mom that I should do the website for her dead son. I had a “CD” (what’s that?) of all my work. I went to Tupac’s manager’s office and he said, “ok, show me what you got”. The only problem was: I had never used a Windows-based machine. Only Macs and Unix machines. So I honestly had no idea how to put my CD into the computer and then view its contents. And I had gone to graduate school in computer science. He said, “you have got to be kidding me”.
It was a $90,000 gig. It would’ve met my payroll for at least two months. It was a done deal until I walked into his office. I left his office crying while he was laughing. When I came back to my office everyone asked, “How did the meeting go?” I said, “I think it went pretty well.” And then I went home and cried some more. I roll that way.
Then I bought a Windows-based PC for myself and learned how to use it. I don’t think I ever bought a Mac again actually. It’s possible to learn from successes. But it’s much easier to learn from failures. Ultimately, life is a sentence of failures, punctuated only by the briefest of successes.
So the mediocre entrepreneur learns two things from failure: First he learns directly how to overcome that particular failure. He’s highly motivated to not repeat the same mistakes. Second, he learns how to deal with the psychology of failure. Mediocre entrepreneurs fail A LOT. So they get this incredible skill of getting really good at dealing with failure. This translates to monetary success.
The mediocre entrepreneur understands that persistence is not the self-help cliche “Keep going until you hit the finish line!”. The key slogan is, “Keep failing until you accidentally no longer fail.” That’s persistence.
Not original I’ve never come up with an original idea in my life. My first successful business was making web software, strategies, websites for Fortune 500 companies. Not an original idea but at the time, in the 90s, people were paying exorbitant multiples for such businesses. My successful investments all involved situations where I made sure the CEOs and other investors were smarter than me. I wrote a TechCrunch article on this titled “My Angel Investor Checklist”. 100% of my zeros as an angel investor were situations where I thought I was smart. I wasn’t. I’m mediocre.
The best ideas are when you take two older ideas that have nothing to do with each other, make them have sex with each other, and then build a business around the bastard, ugly child that results. The child that was so ugly nobody else wanted to touch it. Look at Facebook: combine the internet with stalking. Amazing!
And, by the way, it was about the fifth attempt at such a social network. Twitter: combine internet with antiquated SMS protocols. Ugly! But it works. Ebay, combine ecommerce with auctions. The song, “I’ll Be There”. Combine Mariah Carey with Michael Jackson. If Justin Bieber sang John Lennon’s “Imagine” it would be a huge hit. I might even listen to it.
Poor networking I’m that guy. You know the one at the party that doesn’t talk to anyone and stands in the corner. I never go to tech meetups. I usually say no to very nice networking dinner invitations. I like to stay home and read. When I was running businesses I was often too shy to talk to my employees. I would call my secretary from downstairs and ask if the hallway was clear, then ask her to unlock my door and I’d hurry upstairs and lock the door behind me. That particular company failed disastrously.
But many people network too much. Entrepreneurship is hard enough. It’s 20 hours a day of managing employees, customers, meetings, and product development. And the buck stops here sort of thing. And then what are you going to do? Network all night? Save that for the great entrepreneurs. Or the ones who are about to fail. The mediocre entrepreneur works his 20 hours, then relaxes when he can. It’s tough to make money. Not a party.
Do anything to get a “yes” Here’s a negotiation I did. I was starting stockpickr.com and meeting with the CEO of thestreet.com. He wanted his company to have a percentage of stockpickr.com and in exchange he would fill up all of our ad inventory. I was excited to do the deal. I said, “Ok, I was thinking you would get 10% of the company.” He laughed and said, “No. 50%”. He didn’t even say “We would like 50%”. He just said, “50%”. I then used all my negotiating skills and came up with a reply. “Okay. Deal.”
I’m a salesman. I like people to say yes to me. I feel insecure when they so “No” or, even worse, if they don’t like me. When I started a company doing websites we were pitching to do “miramax.com”. I said, “$50,000″. They said, “No more than $1,000 and that’s a stretch.” I used my usual technique: “Deal!”
But the end results: in one case thestreet.com had a significant stake so that gave them more psychological stake. And for my first business miramax.com was now on my client list. So Con Edison had to pay a lot more. I’m a mediocre salesman and probably a poor negotiator although I try to learn from the best. But consequently, I get more deals done, I get the occasional loss leader, and then ultimately the big fish gets reeled in if I get enough people to say “yes”. It’s like asking every girl on the street to have sex with you. One out of 100 will say “yes”. In my case it might be one out of a million but you get the idea.
Poor judge of people The mediocre entrepreneur doesn’t “Blink” in the Malcolm Gladwell sense. In Gladwell’s book he often talks about people who can form snap correct judgements in two or three seconds.
My initial judgement when I meet or even see people is this: I hate you.
And then I veer from that to too trusting. Finally, after I bounce back and forth, and through much trial and error, I end up somewhere in the middle. I also tend to drop people I can’t trust very quickly. I think the great entrepreneur can make snap judgements and be very successful with it. But that doesn’t work for most people.
At this point, when I meet someone, I make sure I specifically don’t trust my first instincts. I get to know people more. I get to understand what their motivations are. I try to sympathize with whatever their position is. I listen to them. I try not to argue or gossip about them before I know anything. I spend a lot more time getting to know the people who I want to bring closer. I have to do this because I’m mediocre and I’m a lot more at risk of bringing the wrong people into my circle.
So by the time I’ve decided to be close to someone: a client, an employee, an acquirer, an acquiree, a wife, etc I’ve done a lot of work into thinking about them. This means I can’t waste time thinking about other things, like how to put a rocketship on Jupiter. But overall it’s worked.
The Bright Side of Mediocrity
“I thought being mediocre is supposed to be bad?” one might think. Shouldn’t we strive for greatnes?. And the answer is: “Of course we should! But let’s not forget that 9 out of 10 drivers think they are’above the median in driving skill.” People overestimate themselves. Don’t let overestimation get in the way of becoming fabulously rich, or at least successful enough that you can have your freedom, feed your family, and enjoy other things in life.
Being mediocre doesn’t mean you won’t change the world. It means being honest with yourself and the people around you. And being honest at every level is really the most effective habit of all if you want to have massive success.
YOU ARE NEVER STUCK, BLOCKED, IN A RUT – JUST AFRAID!
WHEN YOU FEEL STUCK, THE MIND IS OFTEN PULLING IN TWO DIRECTIONS. PEOPLE THAT ARE STUCK ARE USUALLY BEING HELD BACK BY A RIOT OF SELF-ATTACK AND SELF-DOUBT!
CONFUSION IS ALIVE AND WELL: From a very young age you often go through periods where you really feel stuck. You want to take control, but often feel that something is holding you back. You want to tell someone how you feel, but cannot find the right words or moment to express your view. You feel cheated and abused, but hold back to “unnecessary” confrontation.
There is millions of relationships that are held together because at least one of the parties is afraid to face reality. There is millions of people that hate their jobs that drag their tired bodies to work everyday because they are to afraid to start over or make waves.
When you get that stuck feeling you will usually discover that you are held back by self-doubt and fear. It is your ego that is holding you back, using your historical doubt and fear to prevent escape or progress.
When you feel stuck you often feel helpless, frustrated, depressed and angry. When you are stuck you have chosen struggle instead of purpose, fear instead of faith, control instead of openness, pride instead of help. When you experience any of the above emotions you should always ask yourself, “What is this stuck feeling trying to tell me?” When you feel stuck your ego is working day and night to write horror scripts for you.
For every potential escape you think of your ego will find examples from your past in an attempt to convince you that your intended action will result in pain and loss. If the ego fails after bombarding you with historical “pain examples” he will create horror images that you could face at some future date if you dared to escape from the stuck zone.
You might be married to a monster that physically and mentally abuse you all the time, but the ego will caution you and remind you of the saying, “Better the Devil you know”.
You might be working for a slaved driver that work you like a mule, but when you want to hand in your resignation you ego will show you videos of people living in cardboard boxes that scrounge for food in dustbins.
Your ego is a master in manipulation and fear. He can write disaster scripts for you game of life that will make wonderful material for a movie. It is fear of failure, loss, disaster, rejection and pain that are binding you in a place where you would rather not be.
You can often see fun, joy, friendship and success a few meters away, but the psychological hold of fear spun around you like a giant spider web keeps you bound in your own personal hell.
They are selling a devise to keep your dogs from straying beyond selected demarcated areas. All you have to do is to fit this device to you dog’s collar and install the invisible parameters that you want it to stay in. When the dog reaches the outer parameters the collar is activated and will induce a painful shock to such dog. After a few attempts the dog “learns” the “safe areas” that he can operate in and will remain in these areas even when the device is switched off. The reminder of the pain when he went outside the “acceptable” parameters is enough to tame even the most stubborn dog.
I am sure you can see that we allow our egos to also keep us locked in by reminding us of past pain and discomfort if we ever dare to contemplate escape from our “discomfort” zone.
“I AM SO CONFUSED” Being stuck often betrays an inner conflict between “yes” and “no”, “want to” and “won’t”, positive intent and fear. The mind is split between what it wants and what it is afraid to have. When you are stuck, the mind is often pulling in two opposing directions.
Have you ever been faced with too many options? When you want to buy a piece of jewellery and they place ten items to choose from in front of you, you usually become confused and often just do not know which one to select. Often when you arrive at a “crossroad” in your journey through life you get stuck there for long periods because you are afraid that you might make the wrong choice.
In selling the salesperson will usually sell you on one specific product and then close the deal by making you choose between the obvious choice and something else. When you select the obvious choice they close the deal. What they have done is get you to make a buying decision by distracting you. A poor salesperson will ask you to chose between ten items and lose the sale.
WHEN YOU FEEL STUCK: When you feel stuck you need to answer the following questions.
· What am I afraid of?
· What am I resisting?
· What am I blocking?
· What am I not being honest about?
· What am I not looking at?
· What am I holding on to?
· What am I not saying?
· What am I not giving?
· What am I refusing to hear?
· What am I punishing myself for?
· What do I want acting in this manner?
Write down your answers to the above questions. The next step is to take action and to prevent your ego to force you back into the “no win” zone. They key here is action and to continue to operate in the now. When you allow your ego to use the past to predict your future you are in a no-win zone. You run on the treadmill of life and get nowhere.
There is no need to remain in this “fear zone” any longer my friend. This is the area where you recycle all your old garbage and foster a friendship with your useless ego. It is a call to let go of the past and unwrap the present. It is a call to give up your ego and step into your true light. The true light continues to shine in the now, where the past is a dreary place with a rotten smell. There is no purpose living in the past or the future.
When you feel that you are stuck it must always be taken as a warning that you are dabbling with garbage again. I discovered that action is a deadly killer of yesterday’s monsters. These monsters feed on your indecision and doubt and will starve to death when you chose action and progress. Your dominating ego will go to sleep and stop dominating you once you have shown him that you are now a person that live in the now. The reoccurring nightmares will come to an end and you life will take on a brand new dimension.
You will never get stuck at the crossroad of life again. You will love change and take back the control of your life that might have been in the hands of the heartless and gutless ego.
That is indeed a very good question, why do women cheat? There are a number of reasons and they are not just down to their partner either. Some women will cheat no matter what you do (short of locking them at home) and some have more honest (if you can say that) reasons behind their infidelity.
When asking why do women cheat? It is necessary to ask if you are making your lady feel wanted and appreciated. This certainly extends to a sexual context too and many women find sex a very effective mood booster. If you are allowing the excitement to slip in your relationship then you must put some passion back into it. This can be in terms of surprise emails or kissing in public. Whatever it is, women will always want to feel wanted and special. If they lack this then don’t ask yourself why do women cheat?
Another aspect to the why do women cheat intrigue is as an exit strategy. Some women may wish to sleep with someone else as an easy way of breaking up the relationship. Others find the boredom of everyday married life a real drag and go in search of some excitement. Sex in the same place with the same partner and in the same positions is really, really tiresome and many women search greater levels of excitement. You need to inject some excitement with romantic ideas and spontaneous passionate demonstrations.
Women are really quite emotional creatures and they have certain emotional needs that you have to address. Why do women cheat seems to place the guilt on women but if you are not supporting them enough then you may be just as guilty. It may not always be at the very forefront of your mind but do try to consider the feelings of your partner and talk about them too. Even though it so often happens when women cheat, the answer to why do women cheat isn’t always even focussed around sex. Sex simply has a strange ability to make a woman feel emotionally more secure.
The answer to why do women cheat is not always the fault of their partners. Sometimes a woman can be more thrill seeking and many just love to be bad. This is not the fault of their partner necessarily although some extra excitement can be a good thing in any relationship. You cannot let yourself think that settling down into some kind of normality and never cheating will keep a woman happy. Women can also use infidelity as revenge for infidelity on their partners behalf so don’t give her reason to do this.
There are many possible answers to the question of why do women cheat but you can make it as unlikely as possible. You can keep her interested by avoiding the monotony of day to day life and share feelings. If you show her where she belongs, she isn’t going to wander. It’s really a simple case of understanding what women actually want.
Humanity’s preoccupation with themselves while they operate in their own little worlds obstructs them from noticing the amazing spectacle on show. They look and see nothing. They listen and only hear what they want to hear.
Most of us make our way through life in a daze. We daily find ourselves exposed to many opportunities to learn and to grow. We fail to identify the wonderful lessons that are hiding in our adversities. We cannot understand that everything around us, every tree, rock or event transmits subliminal messages to us. We are so busy with our superficial lives that most of us fail to hear the universal language that bind all of us together. Humanity’s preoccupation with themselves while they operate in their own little worlds obstructs them from noticing the amazing spectacle on show. They look and see nothing. They listen and only hear what they want to hear. They grow calluses on their ability to feel and experience. When will we evolve enough to care about every living plant, rock, tree and drop of water? Will we ever grasp that we are one with everything? What they do to a single blade of grass they do to themselves. Planet earth is alive. Planet earth is an extension of God. Everything and everyone is interconnected. What you do to anyone or anything affects the collective spiritual and physical well-being of the whole. Make each day a learning experience. Let the events that unfold on any given day be your teacher. God teach us via the wisdom of a rock or the grace of an eagle in full flight. God provides everyone with hundreds of opportunities to learn and to grow. The people and events that cross our path on any given day are our teachers. We must become still to hear God’s voice and experience his love and compassion. When you become still and open your spiritual eyes and ears, you notice that you and God are one.
Rene
Make each day a learning experience. Let the events that unfold on any given day be your teachers. God teach us via the wisdom of a rock or the grace of an eagle in full flight.
Everyday you make a thousand choices. You choose what to wear, where to go, who to meet, what to eat and what to do. MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, YOU decide WHAT TO THINK. One thing is sure and that is that your day will not be better than your thoughts. ...................
Just close your eyes for a moment and see if you can visualise this open toolbox and if you can see the hundreds of tools that are neatly placed in this toolbox. Now look if you can see the maker’s name on these tools. The creator of these tools (thoughts and perceptions) is you. You created thousands of thoughts and perceptions (tools) about everything since your childhood. ..................
When confronted with any situation or problem you reach into this toolbox and take out what you think the most appropriate tool would be and then attempt to fix the problem. It is estimated that your mind thinks at least 2,500 thoughts an hour. Every thought that you think is a tool (perception) that you have that you imagine would work best under specific circumstances. This thought process continues day and night and will do so for the rest of your life. .....................................
I am convinced that we think ourselves to a standstill. We never stop playing with these tools in our toolbox and can hardly ever really relax for a while. If we are not faced with a problem or task that needs completion we still continue to take out these tools and mentally rehears and contemplate how we will use them should something that we fear become a reality. ............................
We are forever thinking and scheming and never become still and tranquil inside. Our bodies might seem relaxed, but deep inside our heads this thought process continues churning around. What I am most worried about is that most of the tools that you have in your toolbox are very old and outdated. .......................
Many of the opportunities, problems and obstructions that you face daily cannot be repaired while you are using old and outdated tools. If you take a modern mechanic’s toolbox and you place the toolbox of a mechanic of fifty years ago next to it you will find that there are major discrepancies. When you are confronted with something that needs repair and you do not have the right tool for the task at hand it can be very frustrating. We usually improvise and try using some other tools and hope that it will also get the job done. ........................
When you are faced with a problem you need to select the right tool for the task at hand. If you do not have the tool in your toolbox it can complicate your life. What most people seem to ignore is that it is sometimes better not to reach for your toolbox when faced with a problem. Sometimes you need time to pass or need to leave the problem with its rightful owner. How well you use your tools is usually reflected in the world you see around you. What would you do if you were faced with any or all of the following? .........................
You get a flat tire on your way to an important customer or meeting. You can fall apart, develop a migraine and think that life is against you or you can take out the right tools (patience and reality) and take care of the problem in a relaxed manner. ........................
You have been working on the computer for hours and suddenly lose all your work. You can drop dead with a heart attack; think that God hates you or you can take out the right tool (sanity and reality) and begin over and this time remember to make a backup of your work. ....................
A lover or wife possibly cheated on you. You can go crazy and get an assassin to take out the potential threat to your relationship, think that you are a failure or you can take out the right tool (no fear of loss) and get on with your life. .......................
When you have the right tools in your toolbox it makes life a lot easier. The choices we make are vital in our lives. The more quality choices we make during any given day the higher the probability of success and peace of mind. ................
I suggest that you equip your toolbox with the best tools you can lay your hands on. It is important to upgrade if you discover that one of your tools are outdated or that a more modern version is available. How would you react if your TV packed up and a technician that obviously knows very little about electronics arrived at your house with only a sledgehammer and a few other primitive tools in his toolbox? I am sure that you will send him away and find someone better qualified and equipped for the task. .....................
You might sometimes be like this incompetent and poorly equipped technician indicated above if you do not often update your tools (thoughts) in your toolbox. You can also have all the right tools in your toolbox and never use them because you are afraid that you might make a mistake. ..................
You must remember that happiness and success is always just one thought (tool) away. You should remember when you find it difficult to cope with something that one new tool (thought) could change your life. One fresh thought and one new idea can change your life from pain and suffering to success and peace of mind. ........................
You are today what you were programmed with yesterday. The choices that you make on a moment-to-moment basis decide your fate and future. You can never feel or perform better than the ongoing thoughts and feelings that you allow to occupy your mind! .......................
The mistake we make is that most of us live our lives on a reactive basis. We start and complete our day in a reactive state of being. Something comes to our attention via our five senses or via a thought in our mind. We automatically slip into the “role” that we created for ourselves many moons ago. We act, react and experience the same feelings and emotions that we embedded with our scrip at its inception. We do exactly the same when new stimuli push the previous “drama” off the stage in our minds. We sustain this reactive mode of thinking until we finally go to bed at night. Most of our days are made up of a tapestry of “roles” that we played in our own colorful way. It is important to understand that nothing is going to change until we do something different. We cannot repeat the same old recipes and expect a different outcome. ....................
You can use the “Portable Life Skills Wisdom” book to develop a range of appropriate scripts that you can use when you are faced with a problem or project that need your attention. You will if you apply the scripts in this book find that you no longer run your life on a reactive basis. The new scripts will help you to live your life in the moment. You will become more realistic. You will treat each event on its own merit. How do you do this? ......................
The Process ....................
Read the first message in your book. Write it down if at all possible. It will assist you to absorb the data provided. Now sit back and close your eyes and visualize how you will apply the specific message in the various areas of your life. See yourself on the screen of your mind using the message in all your day-to-day activities. It is important to attempt to feel and experience the benefits that this new mode of thinking will bring into your life. Do this for ten minutes. Then open your eyes and begin to apply the wisdom on all occasions where appropriate in your activities on that given day. ...........................
Proceed to do the same with second message etc. in your book tomorrow. You will upload almost a thousand powerful recipes if you sustain the process indicated above. You can in less than three years upload a powerful “tool” system that will serve you for the rest of your life. This can be a life changing experience if you apply it daily. You will discover that the ten minutes you invest daily will upload countless new strategies into your subconscious computer. Build a successful and happy life. The key however is action. You can have the best tools available to man and still fail if you don’t use them daily. Wishing you the very best with this endeavor. .............................
Daily Support System (This Blog) ................
You not only have the massive key ideas in the book that you can use when appropriate you also receive daily posts on a wide range of subjects that will expand this system to a level never offered before. Visit this blog daily for fresh new ideas with a sprinkle of historical wisdom that stood the test of time. ..........................
Rene
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PORTABLE LIFE SKILLS DAILY WISDOM GUIDE 