Friendly Dive Bar I was out of town with a couple of friends. We were sitting in this dive bar, kind of small, but a pretty friendly atmosphere. All of a sudden this train went by, the entire bar started shaking, and the bartender started toss out these Nerf basketballs to everybody and […]
The Missing Gorilla Paradox
Perception Limits There’s a famous video that allegedly points out the discrepancies and inadequacies in human perception. The point is to show that even if you pay attention to something, you will miss most of what is going on here. You’ve no doubt seen this video, as this one is really popular. […]
Editorial Magic
Invention of Writing Without question, one of the most profound inventions of human history was written language. Humans have been able to speak and think for at least 50,000 years, but written language has only been around for a few thousand. This means that for most of human history, our thoughts and words were […]
Ancient Frame Battle
Meaning Is Subjective Most farmers would agree that rain is a good thing. Most elementary school kids on a Saturday morning would agree that rain is a bad thing. Meaning is something that is very subjective, very flexible and very relative. One of the best skills you can develop is the ability to consciously […]
The Myth Of History
What Really Happened? This will be a purposely confusing post. This won’t come to a specific point, rather we will be taking some common ideas and taking them apart to see just how flimsy they are. Looking at things from a different angle is very helpful, if only for the skill in doing so. You […]
Useful Models And Mindsets
What Are Models? Models are ways of looking at the world. We humans are hopelessly behind the curve when it comes to being able to handle and make sense of all the data that is hitting our senses at any given second. Some studies show that the difference between what we are consciously aware of […]
Who Defines YOUR Reality?
One of my favorite lines from the TV show “Breaking Bad” is also a fun pattern from NLP. It’s based on the idea of ambiguity, where you’ve got a bunch of words together in a sentence, and it’s unclear, since there’s more than one meaning, which words apply to which other words. Like for example, […]
Use Flexibility Of Meaning To Define Reality On Your Terms
I used to do a lot of backpacking when I was younger. When it was just two or three of us, we did pretty good time. But somehow, as our groups were larger, it took a lot longer to go from point A to point B. Not just backpacking, but any kind of traveling. When […]
Become a Shaper Of Reality
Once upon a time there was this group of scientists. These were different from the scientists I talked about in yesterday’s email, but they had a similar problem. Yesterday’s problem was understanding how something worked. How reality was actually unfolding itself. Today’s story is about how these scientists had a pretty good idea of what […]
Proper Positive Thinking Using Well Formed Goals
Many people have heard of “positive thinking.” To some, this is nothing more than some kind of Pollyanna-ish view that everything is just peachy, no matter what happens. In fact, I knew this guy in college that was heavy into the positive thinking mindset. He always had something positive to say, what a great day […]