Okay, here’s a chance for you to earn $20.

I’ll give a Jackson, 2 Hamiltons, 4 Lincolns, 20 Washingtons or one-fifth of a Franklin to the first person who can send me a biography, autobiography, or recorded or printed interview with someone who says:

“I have achieved my full and complete potential. I have done everything possible for me as a human being. There is no way I could have accomplished any more than I did.”

Your entry doesn’t count if the person in question includes anything to the tune of, “I could have…” and describes anything they didn’t actually do in their life.

Quick experiment — think of something you could be doing with your life that you aren’t. Something that, were you not on Wii Bowling marathon, you could accomplish that might make you happier in some way.

Now, feel that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach? The one that tells you that you could be doing more, could be more?

I want to let you in on a secret:

That feeling has NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR POTENTIAL!

Of course you’re not living up to your potential… that’s why it’s called POTENTIAL!

If you were doing it, it would be called YOUR LIFE.

And no matter what you’re doing in your life, you can always think of something else, something more that you could do or could have done.

That doesn’t mean you SHOULD be doing anything different. It just means you have one of those features that comes with the human machine — the ability to imagine something other than what you’re currently doing.

And when you engage that feature and imagine something you’re not doing, especially something that you think would lead to more of something (money, happiness, fame, sex, whatever), comes an interesting side effect: a FEELING.

Think about sucking on a lemon, you get the “lemon-sucking” feeling. Think about all the cool things you could do if you weren’t surfing for porn, and you get the “I’m-not-living-my-potential… now-I-wonder-where-else-I-can-find-free-porn” feeling.

This “living up to your potential” is one of those sales pitch lines that makes me want to scream. In fact, when I read someone pitching “you can live your full potential,” I don’t just want to scream… I usually do it for real, followed by slamming the book or magazine onto the ground. And if I hear someone say it on TV, I’ll scream and then wish that I had enough money to buy televisions by the six-pack so I could throw a brick through the one in front of me (note to self: GREAT business idea — TV tubes that cost $1 and screw in and out like light bulbs… sell by the 6 pack with bricks included).

If some “personal development” dingbat convinces you that the feeling you get after imagining some other life proves that you’re not living up to your potential (instead of pointing out that it’s just the side effect of imagining something “more”), then I guarantee that said dingbat will be reaching for an order form for you to fill out and has a credit card processing machine nearby.

If you haven’t been to a “living your potential” workshop, I’ll fill you in on a secret. Nobody’s potential includes being a fry cook on the graveyard shift and the IHOP, or the French Tip gal at the nail salon, or a  paraplegic on a ventilator.

The bottom line is this: You always have “potential” until you’ve just exhaled your last breath. So you’ve only truly lived your potential once you’re done living. So, dying is your ultimate potential!

And here’s another secret (though you probably already knew  this one): As far as I can tell, everyone who has ever lived has, at some point in their life, typically very close to the end… DIED.

What good news, since you will!

Like the 112 billion people who’ve been on the planet before you, I’m positive — anti-aging advocates be damned — that you’ll reach your fullest human potential by kicking the proverbial bucket (I guess I should put up another $10 for anyone who actually died while, because of, or simultaneous with actually kicking an actual bucket… “pails” do not count).

Nobody seems to know when the potential-fulfilling moment will happen. You may blow a gasket at the end of this sentence. Or you may engage in an impromptu physics demonstration if your mildly massive body gets slammed by a massively massive bus.

No matter how you do it, when you do, you’ll have proven that you’ve reached your potential, regardless of what you did or didn’t do with the preceding time.

Now, physics fans, chime in with how the word potential is used in the real (non-New Age) world, because that adds a fun twist to the whole “living up to your potential” thing.

And non-physics fans, just notice that the most accomplished people you’ve ever heard of still think they could have been or done more… because that thought also comes as a built-in feature with these human machine. Doesn’t mean it’s true, just means that we all get it.

I’m trying an experiment on this post.

I’ll suggest a concept, and you tell me what you think about it.

Here we go:

You do NOT deserve… anything

And, you do not have ANY rights

Needless to say, I think those two statements are true. Tell me what you think (and why) and, if necessary, I’ll back up my claim (and toss in some jokes) in my responses.

And…. BEGIN…

Every now and then the “check oil” light on your car’s dashboard turns red… so you add a quart of 10w-40 and go on your merry way… or your grumpy way… or whatever way you were going.

Some time later, the light lights, you toss in another quart (unless you’re driving in Europe, where you would add a liter, which, thanks to Schoolhouse Rock, I know is a little more than a quart).

Then, one day, you go to the shop for them to, oh, whatever mechanics do at the shop — calibrate the servo-trans-turbo-anti-locking-carburator thingy or something (it doesn’t matter WHY you’re at the shop; that’s not the important part of the story) — and the mechanic says, “Hey, I just noticed that this oil light of yours is broken. It’ll just go off at any old time for no reason.”

What would that knowledge to do you?
Your car was broken, but you had no external indication of the problem. Would it even occur to you that the oil light was faulty? Of course not.

This, by the way is a more tame version of the thought-experiment … the more National Enquirer version is: What if you just found out that your “mother” is really your grandmother and your “sister” is actually your bio-mom? (And let’s add that as you scan your history, there is NO INDICATION at all that this was the case.)

Does this change your thoughts about who you are?

Regardless of your answer, consider this:

What if your most fundamental decision-making mechanism was broken and you didn’t know it?

Not that you were unable to make decisions, nor that every decision you made led to some unpleasant circumstance. But what if, say, it had a short-circuit so that any time you were deliberating or trying to decide between some options the “YES” signal went off totally randomly, having nothing to do with any sort of rational thinking process, and you just went with that YES, because you had no reason to think it wasn’t the result of a faulty YES-meter?

And what if, I’ll say this again to highlight it, you had no objective indication that this was happening? Sometimes the YES worked out well; other times not so well.
Would you be able to tell that your YES-meter was broken?

Nope.

And this problem is bigger than your car issue, because if you wanted to examine your decision-making mechanism, guess what? The only tool you have is the broken decision-making mechanism. So, if you start looking at the “data,” and played with theories about whether it was working or not, you could get a big random YES that “confirms” a theory that’s completely not true.

That is, you can’t use your damaged analysis tool to determine if you have a damaged analysis tool.

What difference, if any, would you expect to experience in your life if it turned out that, all along, ever since you were born, your decision-making analysis tool were broken and you just found out?

You can probably guess why I’m suggesting this line of thinking.

It could be true (though, again, if it is, it would be almost impossible to determine!)

Wrap your brain around that for a bit and let me know what you find… or take a gander at On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not  by Robert Burton, and let’s chat 😉

I didn’t mean to watch Oprah, honestly.

But I fell asleep on the couch with the TV on and when I woke up, there she was, in the middle of a makeover show. This show was the 2nd part of a series about hairstyles. On the first show, Oprah took 100 audience members and matched them up with hair stylists to the stars. So, on this show, we’re seeing the results.

“Our next audience member,” Oprah announced, “hadn’t cut her hair in TWENTY NINE years! Let’s see how she looked.”

And then we see a middle-aged woman with long, kinda frazzled red hair.

“And LET’S SEE HER NOW!”

Cut to:

This woman and her daughter, each with beautiful, stylish new coifs.

(If you’ve been wondering what this has to do with the Freudian Trance, here it comes…)

“So, why hadn’t you cut your hair for TWENTY NINE years?”

“Well, Oprah, after I had kids I just didn’t think about it and I guess I was kinda stuck with that haircut.”

(okay, get ready for it…)

“Right,” Oprah says. And with a knowing look in her eye, asks the probing question, “And were you stuck in other parts of your life, too?”

You could practically feel the audience stop breathing, waiting for the woman to reveal (with gobs of tears) that, yes, in fact, her life had been just one giant tar pit and, thanks to the freedom she felt with her new, un-stuck haircut, she had gotten a new job, replaced her entire wardrobe, mastered Mandarin, gotten a PhD in particle physics, solved world hunger, and become the U.N. envoy to Bulgaria.

Instead, the woman thought for a second. And just as her daughter started to shake her head, No, the woman says to Oprah, “No, not really.”

Her stunning psychological insight thwarted, Oprah just changed the topic and moved on.

“The way you do ANYthing is the way you do EVERYthing…”  This is the popular self-help line (made particularly popular by T. Harv Ecker… BTW, the “T.” stands for “The,” a name change Harv made in order to “affirm his uniqueness”) that Oprah was echoing. And the Freudian connection is simply that something always is a metaphor for something else.

While “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” other times it’s proof that when you were an infant you saw your parents copulating and, overcome with infantile jealousy and rage, suppressed your overwhelming feelings, which now reveal themselves every time you go to a baseball game and order a hot dog.

(Many of Freud’s interpretations of metaphors and dreams are no less ridiculous sounding.)

It’s easy to find seeming relationships between unrelated events… it’s what we do best. It wasn’t that long ago that we sacrificed one of our people each night to make sure the sun came back the next morning.

And now we love the Freudian notion that one aspect of our life is a metaphor for some other, hidden, aspect of our life.

Here’s the home version of the game: If your garage is full of stuff, can you see how your life is “over-full” as well and needs a clean up? Of course you can.  And if you believe in this relationship, you’ll pay money for the book/tape set/workshop that says you need to clean out your garage before you can have room for what you want in the rest of your life.

Now try this: If your garage is full of stuff (the same stuff), can you see how your life is “abundant” and how you’re blessed with more than you ever imagined having? Of course you can. And if you believe this, you may, instead, want to cram even more stuff into where your car used to be, so you have constant reminders of the bounty of the universe.

Finally, try this: Can you see how your garage has stuff in it… and there could be more, or could be less, and all it means is, well, there’s exactly as much stuff in your garage as there is, no more, no less? That “full” or “empty” is an arbitrary judgment and the amount of stuff has no relation to other parts of your life?  Of course you can.

Same stuff, different story.

The way you do ONE thing, is the way you do THAT thing (and maybe a few others), but not EVERY thing.

I recently began training to be a Masters sprinter (“Masters” is the euphemism for “old”). I assure you that the way I treat my running training is NOT the way I treat everything in my life. On the track, I’m competitive in ways that I’ve never been in relationships, or business or, well, even team sports (when the results are not entirely dependent on my efforts, I really don’t care about them).

Sometimes, Oprah, a haircut is just a haircut.

What follows is a book review for a book I haven’t read yet (I just ordered it). I’m reprinting this here not only to point to what seems like a great read, but because the review itself highlights some of my all-time favorite cognitive biases and thinking errors. While neither the book nor the review highlight how these thinking glitches affect people in the spiritual and psychological growth game (those playing the game and those who think they’re running the game or making up the rules), I’m sure you’ll be able to make the connections yourself.

In fact, as you read about these biases, notice if you think, “I don’t do that one.”

If you have that thought, let me suggest the following: “Yes, actually, you do.”

And if you get offended by *that*, remember, I don’t know who you are! It’s not personal 😉 Oh, and also remember: Self-righteous indignation is usually (like, always) a sign of guilt 😉

I know you do these things because we ALL do these things. You, me, and all the other 112 billion people who’ve ever been on the planet. And one of my favorite cognitive biases is the thought that while every other human being who has ever lived does it… *I* don’t because *I* am special.

So, with that, may I present:

The Matrix of the Brain

a book review by David Ludden
originally published in the eSkeptic Newsletter

In the 1999 science-fantasy film The Matrix, people have been plugged into a giant computer that creates a virtual reality that is both pleasing and plausible. A few renegade humans have unplugged themselves from the Matrix, only to wake up to a miserable underground existence below a war-scorched Earth. In a similar fashion, our brains generate a comforting version of reality that protects us from the desolation and despair of the real world.

We implicitly trust the products of our brains — our perceptions, our memories, our judgments, our sense of self. We say, “I know what I saw,” and we ask, “How could I forget?” After all, if you cannot trust your own brain, who can you trust? But all is not as it seems. More than half a century of cognitive and social psychology research has shown that much of what we see, remember, and think is an illusion. In her new book A Mind of its Own, Cordelia Fine lays out in a highly entertaining fashion the myriad ways in which our vain, immoral, pig-headed brains are constantly deceiving us.

Although we like to think of ourselves as rational beings, our brains covertly strive to create for us a view of the world and of ourselves that is self serving but not necessarily consistent with reality. Beliefs and opinions are formed quickly and become part of how we define ourselves, so the brain selectively perceives and recalls evidence that supports cherished beliefs while disregarding or forgetting evidence that contradicts our beliefs. Fine calls this “motivated skepticism.” We are naturally skeptical of anything that challenges our beliefs, but accepting of anything that bolsters our beliefs, and hence our egos. For example, it is for us easy to mock the tenets of other religions — “How could they possibly believe that?” — while swallowing whole the equally far-fetched teachings of our own church.

Motivated skepticism can even lead to belief polarization, a process whereby counterevidence only strengthens the convictions of our beliefs. The counterevidence is strenuously scrutinized for any weakness, which is then used to diminish the validity of evidence for our opponent’s point of view. Our selective perceptions are further bolstered by illusory correlations. These are caused largely by selective memory, in which we remember only supporting examples but not counterexamples. For instance, if you already believe the stereotype that all Asians are shy, you will only recall experiences that support this stereotype. When confronted with an assertive Asian, the reaction is likely to be: “Yes, but she grew up in America.” In such a fashion, counterexamples are simply dismissed as aberrations.

Our brains also trick us into believing we have more control over situations than we really do. We blow on dice and perform other rituals to influence events. We also feel safer driving than flying because we think we are in control behind the steering wheel. This is especially true when things turn out in our favor. For instance, we take the credit for picking a winning lottery ticket, but blame a losing ticket on bad luck. It would seem that going through life deluded by our own brains would not be a good thing, but that is not necessarily the case. Some people have markedly more balanced self-perceptions than normal people — they know clearly what their limitations are and how little control they actually have over their lives. They are also clinically depressed, and seeing reality for what it is, they become overwhelmed and lose the desire to go on living. So it seems that our brains delude us to keep us happy, healthy and ready to face life’s challenges. In fact, people who are generally optimistic tend to live longer.

Emotional arousal also plays an important role in cognitive functions. Brain damage can create a mismatch between emotion and rational thought. People who cannot experience arousal during the decision making process, for example, become incapable of making decisions or consistently make poor choices. It seems that the gut feeling we get when faced with a choice is more important than any rational decision-making process.

The experience of emotion is also integral to our sense of self. In a condition known as Capgras syndrome, patients no longer feel any sort of arousal in the presence of family members, and so they become convinced that their loved ones have been replaced by impostors. Others lose the ability to feel emotion altogether; they also feel detached from themselves and lose all interest in life. Even healthy individuals experience this depersonalization sometimes, particularly during traumatic experiences. Afterward, people report a feeling of detachment from the events around them and even from themselves. This seems to be a coping mechanism of the brain to keep it from becoming overwhelmed.

By three quarters of the way through the book, the reader is yearning for a return to blissful ignorance, as there seems to be no escape from what Fine calls “our innate lack of scientific rigor.” But still there is hope. Fine advises that we “[t]reat with the greatest suspicion the proof of [our] own eyes.” In other words, we need to trust in the scientific method to lead us out of the tangle of deceptions our brains weave around us. As with any other behavior, modes of thinking can be practiced until they become automatic, and so Fine is hopeful that practice in critical thinking can help guard us from the extravagances of our own brains.

One of the strongest points of this book is the way Fine deftly describes how research is done in psychology. She does not just tell what is known about how the brain deceives, she explains how we know it. In friendly terms, she presents hypotheses to test, clearly describes how experiments are set up, and shows us how reasonable conclusions are draw from the data. Thus, she demonstrates how the scientific method can be used to overcome our false beliefs and misconceptions.

Life is pleasant inside the virtual reality of our minds. So what if we think we are more intelligent or virtuous than others and believe we are more in control than we really are? Such minor self-deceptions are, for the most part, harmless, and they may help us to get through the day. But we are not necessarily prisoners of our minds. When the deceptions become harmful to ourselves and others, there is a way out. Science gives us a way to unplug ourselves from the Matrix of our brains.

Click here to order > A Mind of its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives

Freud was known to poo-poo hypnotism, which is ironic considering the trance he has placed Western civilization under for almost 100 years. Here’s an example:

We love good stories. It’s like we’re wired to tell them, to hear them, to make them up.

The earliest cave paintings seem to be stories of the hunt. We are story making machines.

And, we’ll hold onto a good story even in the face of evidence that it’s dramatically wrong, if the evidence doesn’t provide a better story.

One story we love is the Hero’s story… we love and adore the victor. We also attribute qualities to the victor that s/he may not have had.

Freud is a victor. His theories permeate society (Google “Century of the Self” +BBC and watch this provocative documentary series).

But, just because his stories won, that doesn’t mean they were the best or that he was correct.

For example: One of Freud’s contemporaries, Rudolf Meringer, mapped out a simple explanation for most verbal blunders and slips of the tongue. He identified a handful of specific errors that recur in almost every language and, just as important, noticed which ones do not occur. For example, we’ll often swap the first phonemes of words (e.g. “I bought a lottle of biquor” for “I bought a bottle of liquor”) but not the last ones (e.g. “I bought a bottor of liqttle”), and when we make swaps the new words sound like they could be real words.

In short, Meringer concluded that slips and blunders were merely processing errors. It’s difficult to produce language and, therefore, or not-perfect minds make predictable mistakes. That is, we’re quite mechanistic, but not perfect machines.
But the story that we are machines is not as compelling as Freud’s story about verbal blunders, namely, that these gaffes revealed our hidden, secret, repressed, real thoughts that, like steam from a kettle, have accidentally escaped. For Freud, a verbal gaffe is a battle between good and evil, right and wrong, inner and outer.

This is, clearly, a much more engaging story (Freud, in fact, cherry-picked specific examples from Meringer’s research to “prove” this unconscious escape theory). Meringer’s doesn’t stand a chance.

Freud’s story is so much more engaging that even when it seems blatantly obvious that Meringer’s is a simpler explanation, a more robust and testable theory, and, much more likely to be closer to the truth… we can’t drop the notion of a “Freudian Slip,” and it’s almost impossible to hear George W. Bush talk about the “erections in I lack” (instead of “elections in Iraq”) and not believe that he just inadvertently revealed his hidden agenda and that he really invaded Iraq because of some issue that could have been solved with Viagra.

More about this Freudian Trance (or is it a nightmare) soon…

(and thanks to Michael Erard and his book Um. . .: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean for introducing me to Meringer… and, um, like, you know for a wonderfully entertaining read)

I was given a popular meditation book recently.

Aside from the confusing fact that the cover blurb said, “The most American form of meditation,” yet the book taught basic Buddhist meditation practices, I was struck by the fundamental teaching:

Whatever arises, simply allow it to be.

Sounds like a great prescription for living, doesn’t it? Simply allow whatever arises to be. Mention this teaching to any adult, with or without a “spiritual” leaning, and they’ll agree that if they were better at allowing things to be, their life would be calmer, more relaxed, more successful.

There’s only one problem with this theory… it’s impossible (hence the 150+ pages about how to deal with the difficulties of meditation based on this teaching).

Why is it impossible? Well, just check your own experience:

Imagine some unpleasant sensation arises… you get a headache or your shoulders hurt, or you have pain in your chest after hearing a friend with cancer say they’ll cure it with The Secret.

Now, notice a somewhat obvious reality: the sensation is there, whether you want it to be or not!

You don’t have to allow it, it was already allowed before you even noticed it.

Or, try a thought. Repeatedly think something like “blue balloon,” and notice that it’s kind of fading away by the time you catch a glimpse of it. (BTW, this is not an esoteric notion. Many neuroscientists believe that our discursive thoughts are reporting an event that has already transpired.)

So, you don’t need to “allow it to be”. It’s already been!

This reminds me of times where someone shares what they think is the profound realization that to improve an interpersonal relationship, “I just need to let my mother/father/spouse/child/boss/pet be who they are.”

Guess what? They already are being who they are. That’s all they’ve been, all along. They don’t need your “allowing.” They’re not lying comatose in a mad scientist’s basement, unable to move until you “allow them to be.”\

This idea of “allowing” what has an independent existence (whether it’s a parent or a sensation) strikes me as radically arrogant. It’s like sitting by a train track thinking that your “allowing” is what lets the train move past you. Umm… the train is on the move, regardless of your allowing… just like your thoughts, your sensations and, frankly, most of the rest of your life.

Rather than attempting to allow something that already is, or was, though, here’s something to try. It think of it as “backing up a level”:

When some unpleasant thought/feeling/sensation arises that you wish were different… “allow” yourself to be okay with the fact that you want it to change. You may as well “allow” it, because it’s simply reality in that moment.

You’re sitting to meditate and your leg itches? Rather than “allowing the itch to be”, notice that your leg itches and you are wanting it to stop. “Allow” yourself to want it to stop… you might notice that your technique for trying to make it stop was “allowing it to be”.

Your partner leaves the toilet seat in whatever position it shouldn’t be in? Don’t try to “allow” them to be who they are. It’s too late. You’re already pissed. Start with that. “Allow” yourself one moment of it being okay that you’re pissed (not that you’re “right”, just that you wish they were different).

Paradoxically, if you back up to “allowing” the thing that’s honestly arising — the desire to change what you’re supposed allow to be — you may find a surprising “okay-ness” with the entire phenomenon — the thing you don’t like and your not liking it — regardless of whether it stays, leaves, changes, or anything else things can do.

I’ll allow you to try it, or not. And I’ll allow you to tell me what you discover, or not.

When I was 8 years old, my parents discovered that I had $42 in my piggy bank.

“An eight year old shouldn’t have forty-two dollars!” they said, as if I had somehow come into possession of a stolen painting.

And with that proclamation, they took my $42.

Over the next 30 years, I attended all manner of workshops, saw all sorts of therapists and healers, and performed countless methods for resolving the issue that had been born in that moment, the issue that “I can’t have what I want.”

No matter how much I hyperventilated until I saw visions, had astral entities removed from the 3rd level of my aura, or cried at… well, the injustice of it all… I still had the thought that I couldn’t have what I really wanted.
Sometime past my 38th birthday, I retired. I was making more money per month doing nothing than I had made in my first year or two out of college. And, at some point, I started to recount — as I had done thousands of times in the past — the story of my issue.
Except this time, it was clear that reality — I had much more than I had wanted — was putting up a good fight with my issue. I still believed I couldn’t have what I wanted, but reality was hinting that I was, oh, full of crap.

It was in that moment that it occurred to me to ask a question that I had never asked myself. A question that had never been posed to me during the countless hours of healing work I had done about this issue, by any of the brilliant aids I had employed (don’t even get me started about the fact that I could have retired years earlier had I only taken all the money I spent to resolve the issue and put it in an average mutual fund).

I asked myself, “Hey, what did my parents do with the money?”

And as if I had said “Open Sesame,” the memory instantly appeared:

They put it in my bank account

By 8, I was well aware of my personal bank account. And I vividly remembered the savings account passbook and seeing the balance increase by $42 after my parents “TOOK” my money.

No wonder none of the therapy worked to resolve the “issue.” The issue wasn’t real because the event NEVER HAPPENED!

How did nobody ever think to ask the simple and obvious question?

I had a client who, during one session said, “I’ve worked with other people who are good compassionate listeners. They validate me and what I’m saying and are very accepting of whatever I’m going through. You… don’t do that.”

“Well…” I replied, “I’m not interested in helping you redecorate an imaginary house.”

Now, look, I’m not saying that if you have “an issue,” it’s all a lie and your own history never happened (though maybe what happened isn’t quite what you think)… but it’s certainly worth pondering that the idea “I have problems now because of something that happened when I was a child (or fetus, or blastocyst, or gleam in my parents’ eyes),” is just an idea that was most famously popularized by a goatee-wearing coke-head in Vienna about 120 years ago.

I was in a room full of people not too long ago, where the well-known and, in many circles, well-respected speaker announced, “We are addicted to unhappiness,” and almost everyone in the room began nodding with a collective sigh.

Now, if you know me at all, you know that nodding is my cue to, instead, tilt my head and wonder, “Really?”

But before I could even contemplate this idea, while everyone was still silently bemoaning their addicted state, the speaker started to pitch his course for getting over this horrible  addiction.

For me, that was all I needed to know that “We are addicted to unhappiness” was, let’s see, what’s the Hindu term for it… ah… bullsh*t. (see http://sashen.com/blog/12/how-to-become-a-millionaire-self-help-guru-its-easy/)
“We’re addicted to unhappiness”… that’s like suggesting that, given the choice between a bowl of ice cream and a bowl of gasoline, we’d pretend we were an SUV, while crying that we really wanted more Chunky Monkey, but couldn’t help ourselves. Nonsense.

In fact, if anything, we’re addicted to happiness!  Look at how many things we do to be happy, even when we’ve experienced that they don’t reliably work (or only work for a short time):

Let’s see… trying to earn more money, sleeping with people we don’t want our friends to meet, trying to get our partners to change, trying to accept our partners as they are (“If I accept you as you are, THEN will you change?”), spending money on “how to get over your unhappiness addiction” workshops… add your favorites.

I mean, if we really look, almost every thought we have is about how to become happier in the future.

So… I’ll be teaching a workshop on “Overcoming your HAPPINESS addiction.” Sign up details coming soon.

I can make anybody do anything for as long as I want, and so can you.

Here’s how:

1. Think of the goofy thing you want them to do. If you can’t think of any, here’s a quick list that might give you some ideas…
   • Go to a specific building every week (or more)
   • Speak or sing in a language they don’t understand
   • Wear unusual clothing
   • Place their bodies in uncomfortable positions
   • Breathe heavily for long periods of time
   • Give away rent and/or food money
   • Hang out with people they don’t like
   • Spend inordinate amounts of time attending to something like breathing
2. Convince them that by doing any of the above, they will eventually get something that they want. For example…
   • Lasting and total happiness
   • More money than you would ever want to spend
   • A partner who is “perfect for you”
   • No longer having unpleasant thoughts or feelings

What makes this technique so deceptively simple is, well, simple.

And that is, no amount of #1 will ever produce #2… because nothing will reliably produce #2.

But, as long as we believe #2 is possible, we’ll be suseptible to doing #1’s, especially when someone with seeming authority assures us that #1 leads to #2.

If you think this technique may not work, you can use THE FINAL GOAL for your #2 — Tell them they will get EVERYTHING they want… after they die!
I assure you that when you can convince people in the Final Goal, you can get anyone to do anything for as long as you want. Amazingly, it’s often easier to convince people of The Final Goal than of the usual #2’s (because there’s no way they can disprove your theory!)
If you convinced people you knew how to get The Final Goal (or have a really good #2), what would you get them to do to “get there?”

I was featured in a Toronto Star article about self-help and The Secret (www.thestar.com/article/193263) and since then have been getting quite the collection of emails in response.

My favorites are, of course, the people who agree with me and think I’m smart and funny. I love when people agree with me.

But in second place by a hair are emails that sound like this:

“I know “the secret” works! It’s changed my life. Why must you be so negative? You are sending out negative energy which will only come back to you. If that’s how you choose to live, fine. But, I don’t!”

For now, let’s not even bother analyzing the evidence that “The Secret works.” Suffice it to say, it wasn’t long ago that we were saying, “I know that sacrificing a virgin every night brings the sun back the next day… because the sun keeps coming back every time we sacrifice a virgin!”

(BTW, do you notice how similar that is to: “I know this book is the word of God, because it says so in this book!” But, anyway…)

Instead, let’s look at some other components of this “argument”:

1) First, it ends all discussion. “I know I’m right so there’s no need to think any more.” This is how our brains are wired… once we come to a conclusion we like, especially one that we think relates to attaining happiness, we are stuck on that conclusion like paparazzi on Brangelina. And rather than examine our conclusion, and seemingly risk future happiness, we shoot the messenger.

2) Second, it reveals that the speaker doesn’t even believe what they claim to believe! Here’s how: The only reason they see others as NEGATIVE is because they are POSITIVE they’re right! “These people say they “create their own reality,” but they don’t recognize that they “create” (as in “perceive”, not “attract”) negativity with their own “positive thinking.”

Look, I get it. If examining my beliefs might ruin my future satisfaction, and reveal that I’m not as smart and evolved as I thought, I wouldn’t want to go there either!

By the way, when did “negative” get such a bad rap? If you want to lick an electrical socket and I tell you that I think it’s not a good idea, am I being “negative”? If I later change my mind, am I alternating about the current?

Someone asked me, “Do you think it really matters if people believe in this stuff?”

It’s not about what they believe, it’s about why they believe, how they come to believe, how they don’t recognize they’re believers, how they treat people who don’t believe, and how they don’t recognize when they’re hypnotized by believing.

Without recognizing what a phenomenon like TS reveals about our thinking, some “interesting” things could happen.
For example, I hear a rumor that some people (more than 50 million) know for a fact that Saddam Hussein had WMDs and helped with 9/11… and “if you’re not with us,” you can be put in jail for life without legal representation. This rumor may not be true… but I believe it.

I got a phone call today.

“This is Jim. I’m calling because you bought our ebook about affiliate programs — are you looking to make more money, or quit your dayjob, or are you not serious about changing your life?”

“Well,” I replied, completely unaffected by his opening gambit, “it’s interesting to hear you frame my purchase, as if those are the only choices. But I didn’t buy the ebook for any of those reasons… and I don’t see how any of that has to do with changing my life.”

“Uh….”

“Actually, I bought it because I have my own product and I wanted to know more about how smart affiliates run their businesses so I could help the people who promoting my product… More importantly, I know realize that that selling that ebook isn’t where you make your money, and I’ll bet you’re about to pitch me on the expensive ‘mentorship’ program where you do.”

“In fact, if you qualify, I can try to get my manager’s approval and show you how you can join us for free.”

PAUSE…

Now, you have to realize, that I have NO interest whatsoever in the mentorship program. Even if I were interested, I don’t have the time. And, frankly, even if I had the time, I’ve seen so many of these “mentorship” programs that are a total scam that I 100% completely don’t want to be part of this one.

And, yet, when he said that sentence… and let me write it again, emphasizing the important parts…

“In fact, if you qualify, I can try to get my manager’s approval and show you how you can join us for free.”

… my brain turned off, my stomach started to turn inside out, and I could feel the desire to QUALIFY, to GET THE MANAGER’S APPROVAL, and to find out what secret he was going to show me … especially since it could be FREE!
Feeling like I was in a bit of a trance, I said, “I don’t think I’m your guy,” and I hung up the phone.

It’s 3 hours later and I’m still reeling from the experience… I mean, I know the advertising and marketing tricks he was pulling. I know that to “qualify” you need a credit card and a pulse (and the pulse is optional). I know that the “manager” is the guy sitting next to him and probably has a deeper voice to convey “authority.” I even know what they’re going to teach.

And, knowing all that I still have that idea/feeling that “I lost out on something I want”.

You could (and others have) write a book about all the persuasion tactics built into that one sentence. And then a graduate level book that describes the whole qualify/manager/show you tactic.

What amazes me most is how effective they are even on someone who KNOWS they are tricks and ISN’T INTERESTED anyway! No wonder so many people lose so much money on so many scams.
I’d love  to write more about this, but I just heard a bell in the distance, and I can tell by my saliva that food must be ready.

After weeks of reading/hearing/watching the back-and-forth about “The Secret,” tonight I realized that what *most* interests me is NOT whether it’s real or not, but the *type* of discourse that has surrounded it.

More specifically, it’s incredible to watch both supporters and detractors cling tenaciously to a belief (rather than examine the belief, or even recognize that their arguments are, often, beliefs and not merely observations). It’s impressive to watch people take information that contradicts their beliefs and twist it into a support for their beliefs. It’s amazing to witness the rash of “thought-stopping statements” (responses that put the brakes on any conversation) and rampant projection that replace genuine dialogue.

The supporters say, “You’re just being negative,” (as if negativity is a problem) or “Keep an open mind,” (which they aren’t) or “It’s true for me,” (as if first-person anecdotal evidence is meaningful).

The detractors say, “It’s all snake oil” (overlooking the valuable data contained in understanding why people think it works) or “It’s just marketing,” (as if marketing is a bad thing).

For both parties — pro and con — I’d recommend this book, “How We Know What Isn’t So.” And before you think the title implies I’m saying that The Secret “isn’t so”, I’ll tell you that, instead, it describes the various thinking errors to which we are all prone. Errors that cost us happiness, money, and clarity… and errors that prevent a meaningful discussion, analysis and understanding of anything, let alone the phenomenon of The Secret, and the information it tries to convey.

I asked a therapist-friend of mine to sum up everything he learned in his 40 year career. His response was, “You’re never upset for the reason you think you are.” I’ve come to think that arguing in support or defense of The Secret misses the more interesting point: what can be discovered by examining the argument itself.

And, you may as well examine the argument, because the odds of convincing someone from either camp to switch sides makes winning the lottery look like a sure bet.

First of all, my apologies for the long gap in my postings… I got on such a roll with Amazing Magical Clothing (now at www.Delightenment.com) that I lost track of blog-time.
Okay, now onto something that makes me want to scream…

This weekend I ran into an old favorite of the transformation biz: “Act as if” (otherwise known as “fake it ’til you make it”).

The premise, not too surprisingly, is simple… wait, that’s not fair… let me try again.

The premise, like most transformational theories, is ridiculously simple-minded.

This one: If you want to be rich, you need to “act as if you’re rich.” Act as if long enough and you will have to get what you want!

Go test drive expensive cars, wear better clothes, eat better food… and you will eventually become rich enough to do these things for real … that’s the idea, at lest. A variation of “vibration/magnetism/attraction.”

And, as Lao Tzu once said, “Insane in the membrane!”

Now, I’m not going to address the issue of wanting to control the universe to get what we want, let’s just look at the technique itself and watch it fall apart, shall we?

Simply look to your own life to check this one out. Think of something you wanted to attain that you, in fact, *did* eventually get. Is the reality of having it even REMOTELY like what you imagined it would be? Was your first time having sex like you thought it would be? How ’bout the prom? Owning a house? Having however much money you have? Being with that dreamboat (or in Boulder, dreamkayak)?

If you picked an example where the result seems close to how you thought it would be, try 2 things:

1) Realize that we tend to manipulate our memories to fit our theories (read How We Know What Isn’t So)
2) Look for more examples and see which you have more of: eventualities that match your prior imagination, or a list “I really thought I’d be richer, thinner, better looking and having more sex” stories?

Even if the result was pleasant (which you wanted), it’s not like what you imagined.

It’s one of my favorite things, finding people who’ve attained big goals and asking, “So, is it like what you thought it would be?” The answer, but only every time I’ve asked, is, “Not even close.”
We simply can’t act as if we’re in some imagined future because we don’t have the ability to imagine well enough or act well enough. Hell, people who act as if for a living — actors — suck most of the time!

In fact, if you ever get a chance, go watch an acting class where the students are doing improvisation as themselves, not by putting on a character. What you’ll see is this: We can’t even “act as if” when we’re acting like US and we’re pretending it’s NOW!

If you really think you can “act as if”, try this experiment: replace your favorite dessert with dog poo and enjoy.

Now you can become a millionaire as Self-Help Guru! Just follow this simple six-step plan and in no time you’ll be living the life you thought you would have if you followed the advice of Self-Help Gurus!

STEP 1 – Pick some ubiquitous aspect of being human, something that a large number of people experience — like having unpleasant thoughts or feelings, having difficulties at work or in relationships, or having parents — and tell people that having this common condition is, in fact, proof that there is something wrong with them.

STEP 2 – Make up a theory about why they have this newly-minted “problem.” Don’t get too caught up on this step. Any theory will do: unremembered visits from aliens, “astral demons” that only you can see (this is a good one because nobody can prove you wrong!), having sadistic “parts of you” that want you to be unhappy, or the old classic, having parents that weren’t perfect when you were a child. Part of the theory must include the idea that not believing you have a problem is, in fact, proof you have the problem (you’re just in denial about it).

STEP 3 – Write a book or, better, give a workshop that promises to fix the “cause” of the “problem.” If you can come up with a cool name for the problem, the cause or the end-result, so much the better. Here are some examples that have worked well in the past: Inner Child, Co-dependence, Enlightenment. The key here is to engender an AHA! experience — a moment where the person feels some release or a rush or, at the very least, the idea that they can be free of this human experience once and for all. This is especially easy in a workshop setting where, frankly, if you charge enough money and put a bunch of strangers in an unusual place you’re guaranteed to get “results.”

The book and workshop circuit can get you to the 6-figure mark, but if you really want millions, then you need these next steps.

STEP 4 – Create the “ADVANCED COURSE” for when the students don’t quite “get it,” or who “lost it” when the adrenaline they got pumping by yelling “YES!” for 3 days wore off, or for when, for any reason, “it’s just not working.” Make sure you promise to reveal secret techniques that will speed up the process 100 times! At the end of the course, make sure you collect testimonials from people about how they FEEL their life will change in the future… use these to keep promoting the earlier books, workshops, etc.

STEP 5 – Begin a training program, certifying others to teach your technique. Make sure you:

• Charge at least 10x what your workshops cost… after all, you’re giving these people a livelihood!
• Get a percentage of whatever your mini-me’s earn when they use your material

STEP 6 – Keep building the list of participants from all these programs and then, simply, repeat from Step 1, selling your “newest, greatest, most life-changing discovery yet!” to the ever-growing group (or, by now, groupies). Ideally make your new works available as books, CDs, DVDs, telecourses and anything else you can think of. By the way, you don’t need to start from scratch! You can use the exact same “problems” and “solutions” you’ve already used, just with newer, cooler names! Oh, and make sure that you have enough new material to distract people from some events that will likely happen as you carve out your self-help millionaire niche: bankruptcy, divorce or affairs, health problems, kids who say you’re a fake.

Step 6, done correctly, can put you on a rocket ship to riches.

OPTIONAL INCOME ACCELERATOR – Use this optional step very carefully, as it can either put you on the ULTRA fast path or lead to a humiliating crash and burn. Here it is: Claim that you’re channeling all your teachings from a mega-smart non-physical being. This “being” can be from another planet, or from Atlantis, or merely a universal intelligence, but make sure it speaks with an ever-evolving accent. Don’t underestimate the power of this tool.

See you at the top!