Archive for September, 2007

2007-09-26

I Don’t Want to be a Millionaire

I had a strange thought this week. The question that was buzzing through my head was “who wants to be a millionaire?” And I realized I have two issues with that question.

The first is the identity of “being” a millionaire. Try these on instead: having a million dollars, earning a million dollars, (or even better) having spent a million dollars on your mission in life. I am not identified by my income. I am identified by the outpouring of my love and my learning to those lives I touch.

Which leads to the next issue. I don’t know what people think will be different in their lives if they had $1M. I already own 57 acres, have a beautiful family, and am doing the things I love on a middle class income. Sure, I will be helping more people when I’m earning millions of dollars a year, but the helping comes first — the money is a side effect!

So what will be different when I earn millions? I will be free to learn more and make more connections for those who learn from me. I will be free to build, experiment, and tinker with the physical outcroppings of my learning. I will be free to put myself and what I’ve learned in front of more people so that they can share with others. I will be free to pursue technology that will improve the living conditions of millions of people across the globe. It isn’t the money I want, it is the change that it represents and enables.

How will your life be different when you no longer need money? What, if anything, prevents you from doing those things now? What are you letting yourself get stuck on?

Posted by Wayne Buckhanan | No Comments »
2007-09-21

Word of Mouth is Not an Oral Fixation

A quick note for those of you ahead of the pack on adopting the business metaphor.

Mark Joyner’s Word of Mouth Transformation training is beginning on Monday. What that means is that he will be closing the doors for registration in this year-long training at midnight (PDT) on Sunday. You have about 50 hours from me posting this to sign up.

If you are at all questioning whether this is right for you go now and reserve your spot. MJ is backing it all up with a 100% money back guarantee for up to a year!

You must know by now that I’m a great fan of MJ’s work and since this is a combination of his extensive marketing knowledge with his world renowned Simpleology format I highly recommend it for anyone with a business or interest in building a business.

What will you learn? Read all about it.

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2007-09-19

Blah Food – Bland Mood

It is amazing to me when I get to live through the things I “know”.

My latest adventure has been fighting off the marauding hordes of sniffles and coughs. I seem to be winning the fight and paying for it with lethargy. The worst aspect is that I’ve lost any enthusiasm for food. I couldn’t even bring myself to eat the meal a friend lovingly prepared and raved about.

I knew in my head that having an inhibited sense of smell dulled the sense of taste but I’d never consciously lived through it until being discouraged from eating recently. Somewhere in all this I also noticed that I’ve been in a bit of a blah mood as well. I’m curious whether the mood caused loss of appetite or if the foods I’ve eaten have caused the mood or (most likely) they are correlated but not causing one another at all. Then again it could be a feedback loop where food influences mood influences taste influences mood, ad nauseum (as it were).

However, the evil power of this food-mood combo is being dissipated by being noticed and discussed. The unconscious pattern is being interrupted just by being brought into consciousness. This is a macroscopic vision of quantum physics where the observer affects the outcome of the system being observed.

What blah mood, unconscious pattern, or unnoticed feedback loop will you influence for the better today just by noticing it?

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2007-09-16

A Lesson in (mis)Communication

First off, thank you guys for all your help last month with James Brausch’s and CDBaby’s sales contests. Unfortunately neither CDBaby nor Brausch have announced winners for their contests. We do, however, have a lively example of miscommunication.

It would be very easy to blame the whole sequence of events on CDBaby’s Derek Sivers. However, it takes two to tango and in this case they got the whole crowd involved too.

You’ve already got my views on Brausch’s initial reactions to the situation. It sounds like Sivers assumed he had gotten himself into a bad situation (check out cdbaby.org, starting with “Everyone: LISTEN UP”). Instead of starting a dialog with Brausch he automatically assumed that the situation was lose-win and the downward spiral began in earnest. Beginning a potential relationship with “we’re screwed” does not seem as helpful as approaching Brausch with “Hey, this isn’t what we intended with the contest and the prize may not be appropriate for you. What can we do to make this win-win-win for Brausch, CDBaby, and Ryko/Warner?”

After that marvelous beginning it looks like they each exacerbated the situation — Brausch with his typical bulldozer attitude and Sivers with his further silence. A few pleasant exchanges could have bypassed much pain and suffering. The most obvious to me would have been for CDBaby to mention something about the August contest soon after the month wrapped up — even just saying that they were still tallying the results and would announce the winner in a few weeks.

So what should they do? I think it’s Sivers’s turn to pull his head out of his associations and address the situation rather than hiding and hoping it will go away. Heck, he could even go so far as to take a trip to Costa Rica and let Brausch buy him dinner! Unlikely, but it would be a great twist of fate, ne? Shy of a Costa Rican get-away Sivers might consider a bit of humility and willingness to accept responsibility (not blame) for the situation he is in. Admitting that he had a hand in creating the situation and working on an amenable solution would go a lot further than being defensive.

Brausch, on the other hand, has gotten a bit ahead of himself following a Biblical pattern for conflict resolution. Matthew 18:15-17 gives guidance for resolution within the church.

15 “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. 16 “But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. 17 “If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

Brausch got more than the two suggested in verse 16 when he asked his whole list to comment on the CDBaby post. Maybe he considered it bringing it to the church. Unfortunately it has turned into a bit of a brawl with no winner in sight (and very little confirmation of facts). Brausch, however, does seem to be at the point of treating Sivers as a tax collector!

What else should Brausch do? Relax and enjoy the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of Costa Rica and use those as the basis of his feelings when CDBaby finally begins communicating (rather than making conflicting announcements and double talking around the issue). And certainly a bit of humility and acceptance of responsibility could be helpful on this side of the rift as well.

What can we learn from this? Win-win-win or no deal can be difficult when tempers flare and people are being offensive and defensive. The only way to change a conflict situation is to change your response to it. The meaning of a communication is the response you get. Humility and responsibility go a long way. And, of course, be careful what you ask for, you might just get it!

It’s amazing what a difference one person’s reactions can make. Where in your life will you change your response and begin to clear up some miscommunication for a win-win?

Posted by Wayne Buckhanan | No Comments »
2007-09-12

Metaphor and MJ

I am here to present to you a number of life changing skills, techniques, and mindsets. I am more and more convinced that the most appropriate metaphor to wrap around this is the metaphor of business. Everyone is involved in business — at the very least as a consumer of goods and services provided by others.

And now Mark Joyner has driven the point home for me. Someone asked whether Joyner’s upcoming product was going to be a personal development product. MJ’s answer referred them back to the three sources of power in Simpleology 101: Time, Money, and Energy. Notice that at least one third of those are related to business.
MJ is best known for helping people make money. Invest a few minutes of your time to find out what has generated so much energy. At least 989 people answering a single question since yesterday!

What can you learn from someone who gets so much out of life? (His own and others!)

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2007-09-10

Living the Insanity

Despite the apocryphal origin of the “definition of insanity” quote I recently found myself going quite loony.

I was using one of the machines in the lab on Friday and wasn’t getting the reading I needed on the meter. So I turned the dial gently like I’m supposed to do. Still no reading. More turning, no reading, repeat. About the time I realized how far I had turned it things were self-destructing. With quick reflexes I minimized the damage.

The moral of the story is that had I realized I was stuck in a destructive pattern and stopped to assess the situation Friday afternoon I wouldn’t have spent this afternoon head down in a vacuum chamber scraping metal off the walls.

Where can you use a quick check to make sure you aren’t stuck “doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result?”

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2007-09-08

Tico Loco O No, Es Todo Bueno

Just a quick note on this beautiful Sabbath day.

After mispelling my name Brausch gave what I consider to be a great compliment.

“I would encourage you to go and read Wayne’s entire post. It’s excellent and I have nothing to add or clarify. It’s well put and right on.”

Friend Brausch and family are settling into their mini-retirement in Costa Rica. A great example of follow through on the 4HWW suggestions of Tim Ferriss. I highly recommend visiting Tortuguero and seeing the turtles especially since it is laying/hatching season.

Pura vida y feliz sábado!

Posted by Wayne Buckhanan | No Comments »
2007-09-07

Un-assuming

We all delete, distort, and generalize to survive. Problems arise when there are unwarranted deletions, distortions, or generalizations. One tool available to recover the original information is called the meta model.

Two powerful meta model questions are “Who/what/when/where/how specifically …?” and “How do you know …?” By strategically asking these questions you can clarify unclear communications.

Beware: if you decide not to give enough attention to the strategic application of the meta model you are likely to ruffle some feathers. At a live training I would joke that it’s okay to use the meta model all the time, you can use your other NLP skills to make new friends. I can’t say that here since I don’t know what you’ve learned!

Poor use of the meta model:
“Honey, will you take out the trash?”
“Sure. When specifically would you like it taken out? Where specifically shall I take it? What trash specifically? How do you know that the trash needs to be taken out?”
[Friends don’t let friends become meta-monsters.]
Effective use of the meta model:
“That idea will never work.”
“What specific idea do you mean? What aspect specifically do you think will not work? How do you know this idea won’t work? How do you know it will never work?”

Where in your life specifically are you going to apply these questions?
What specific ineffective internal dialogue are you challenging today?
How do you know that your communication skills are improving?

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2007-09-05

Assumptions

Sitting thinking about vacuum systems (low pressure, not carpet cleaning) brought me around to all the assumptions we make in science — and in our daily lives. We all delete, distort, and generalize in order to deal with the huge quantities of information bombarding us constantly.

Deletion: using a subset of the available data. No one actively processes all of the estimated 6 million bits of data we are exposed to at any given moment.

Distortion: adding or changing the raw data. The perception of an event and the meaning attributed to an event as compared against the “facts” of that event.

Generalization: applying patterns in previous data to new situations. Based on previous experience with [object] we project that in the future [object] will do [action].

Very seldom have I found that only one of the three is occurring in a situation. Typically all three are happening to differing degrees. While driving down the road we delete much of the information coming from the sky, distort our perception of other drivers’ perceived skill level, and generalize that people will drive in their lane (more or less). If you scrutinize any situation you will find occurances of all three.

However, the point isn’t to create self-conscious individuals constantly analyzing everyone’s language. The point is to develop more flexibility in behavior and reaction by increasing your awareness.

“The map is not the territory.”
The menu is not dinner.
Your subjective perception is not objective reality.

Where have you been holding yourself back by deleting, distorting, and generalizing? How quickly will you reassess the usefulness of your reactions to the deletion, distortion, and generalization?

Posted by Wayne Buckhanan | No Comments »
2007-09-02

Using The Best Tool For The Job

I recently got a new electric shaver. It had been a long time coming.

I put off shopping for a new shaver because the previous one was doing the job, just not well. I had no idea how poorly it was working until I started using the new one. It was more than just being new and functioning well — I was able to use the best tool for the job at hand.
The new unit has different heads for different shaving jobs: a coarse toothed head equivalent to my old shaver, a fine toothed head, an ear trimmer, and a foil shaver. While I’ve already decided the latter two are unlikely to see much use I’m happy with having twice as many tools as before.

I can see the parallels to my learning skills. I was doing fine with the haphazard way I’d learned to read. In fact I discovered I read faster than almost everyone I knew. Yet when I started learning speed reading techniques I was able to really crank up the rate at which I consumed written materials. And the fun part is that my comprehension generally increased as my speed increased.

Now I have multiple tools for working with words. I can either plod along at about twice the average reading speed or I can apply a few quick techniques and double or triple your reading speed.

Where in your life are you slow to invest in new tools because “that’s the way we’ve always done it”?

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