Our perceptual position has a huge impact on our lives, and in any discussion, two people looking at the same topic from different sides could totally disagree about reality simply because they have different perspectives. And sometimes, looking at things from someone else’s perspective can provide us with new insights. Most people who know me, are aware of my ongoing quest to understand religion and its effect on people’s inner peace/joy. And in a recent discussion about this, a religious friend introduced me to a new insight which, ironically, has nothing to do with religion.

To make his point about blind “belief”, the friend asked, “why do you accept that setting goals is important? And why is ambition paraded as a virtue when it seems to, on the most part, fuel people into crossing ethical boundaries?”. The rest of that encounter is left for your curiosity to ponder. But...

That night, I spent some time giving serious consideration to the question of “why?”. Why do we take for granted the largely unchallenged dogma of setting goals? Particularly when most goals are dissatisfied widows living in the neglected retirement home of our own subconscious.

Goal setter would argue that statistically speaking, setting a SMART goal largely increases the chances of achieving a positive outcome in one’s life. This is as convincing as the argument that “you’ve got to be in to win” when talking about Lotto, but since we’re on the topic of statistics, why do we chose to ignore the statistic that suggests most goals fail to achieve fruition (the numbers vary from 60% to 90% depending on who you ask)

In fact, many argue that failure to achieve a goal is the most effective mode of transport from Motivation Road to Depression Land. And I would bet that everyone reading this has had at least one encounter with such a failure.

So why do we insist on insanity? Honestly, I don’t know. I simply “feel” that it works. I don’t care what statistics say. I guess there might be some sense in religion after-all.

From my own experience though, I believe that setting goals in the future (which is what most people do) isn’t the best. I believe goals need be set in a way to have a positive impact on our life NOW.

Also, those who achieve their goals regularly agree that rephrasing goals as affirmations has increased the chances of success by all accounts. (example: You could set a goal to make a million dollars in 10 years, or you could say “I live a rich life, and I act in a way that drives me a step closer, every day, to my million dollar destination”, or maybe you could do both!)

Another important factor in goal setting, is to ensure that achieving the goal is congruent with your identity, your values and your personal beliefs. There’s no point aiming to be rich when you also believe that wealth corrupts the soul, just as it’s crazy to set a goal of becoming the next Donald Trump when you are at your core a socialist.

So pull out your written goals and make sure you adjust them with these tips in mind. Who knows, you might actually achieve more of them.

Maybe next blog, I’ll share my thoughts on the whole thing about “why ambition is a virtue”

Got any other good goal setting tips?

Ps. I’m assuming you all know the difference between “goals” and “SMART goals”

Don’t read this page if your life is good enough as it is, and can’t improve. Seriously.

Any Psycho-the-rapist will tell you this is reverse psychology... it is, but not quite.

You see, the mind doesn’t understand negative suggestions like you would expect it to.

If I say to you, don’t notice your blinking rate, you inevitably start noticing it. This is because your mind first needs to process the thing it’s not supposed to process before it can then make a conscious decision to start thinking about other things. And the first step is to think about the blinking rate, before it can move on to something else. This is the basis for what is known as negative suggestion (an unconscious message framed in a negative way).

Unfortunately, we are constantly bombarded by negative suggestion that we don’t want... Some are dumber than others and can be very funny to observe like...  

“Addiction Centre”... really? Hearing that name makes me wanna go there to develop addictive behaviour? 

Or “Smokers Clinic”... is that a clinic full of doctors who happen to be smokers?

Or the old classic “Don’t drink and drive”, especially useless after a couple of drinks when conscious decision making goes out the window.

We can however, do two things to help our unconscious mind.

This first being, changing your day to day language to frame positive thoughts in a positive way. So for instance, instead of thinking, I “don’t want to smoke”, think “I want healthier lungs”. (I just want to make it clear that I don’t endorse people who quit smoking, because I never like quitters, but I guess “each to his own”). Here are some other examples...

“I want to lose weight” becomes “I want to be healthier/slim/more attractive”

“I’m sick of losers hitting on me in bars”, becomes “I want to attract smart/confident/whatever with ease”

The other thing you can do, is use negative suggestion in a positive way. So you can stop thinking about how confident you are. Which is great, because not only did you just give yourself a boost of confidence, but you also convinced your unconscious mind that you are indeed confident (why else would you need to stop thinking about it).

So here’s a few to get you started...

Try not to smile for the next 10 seconds.

Try harder not to think about the last time you really felt motivated.

And if you can do the first two things, you can stop thinking that I’m one of the best bloggers you’ve come across in a while ;-)

What do, “Microsoft Works”, “diet ice cream” and “religious tolerance” have in common?

They’re a contradiction-in-terms, oxymorons.

In fact, the word “oxymoron” is one too (not one two), since “oxy” comes from the Greek word for ‘sharp’... ie. “Sharp Moron”. Whoever made-up the word had a real sense of humour.

Lesson #2: contradict yourself.

Nelson Mandela was famously quoted, during his inaugural speech, for saying “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure”. Indeed, Mandela hadn’t said these words at all, as transcripts would prove. It was actually taken from the book “a Return to love”, By Marianne Williamson, 1992, and attributed to Mandela by mistake.

Whose words they are, is irrelevant. What matters is the great contradiction in term that exists in the world of self empowerment. How can our fear come from our? Why, if we are powerful beyond measure, would we fear it?

It is brilliantly simple. We are so hell bent on letting our fears rule our lives, and so determined, unconsciously, to hold on to our fears in order to give our lives a sense of safety. What better way to plant a hypnotic suggestion for the masses to feel powerful, than to turn it into a fear. From a neuro-linguistic point of view, unconscious thought is more powerful than the conscious thought, and manipulating words in this way hold great hypnotic impact. I bet, most people felt a rush of enthusiasm when they heard the quote for the first time, even if it didn’t make logical sense.

So, learning from this quote, I present you with this challenge. Come up with a contradiction within yourself and use to change your frame of thinking from negative to positive, from weakness to strength. Here’s an example:

What if you suddenly decided that you are the biggest loser of all time. Wouldn’t it be great... to have the power to lose all self-defeating mentality, and lose all negative thoughts, and lose all the excess weight, and lose all fear of failure, and lose and lose...

Well, it is now up to you start changing the meaning of words in your own mind’s vocabulary. If you come up with any, don’t be shy, post them in the comments.

from (http://www.maxfreemynd.blogspot.com/)

If you’ve read my previous blogs, you’ll know that if you only want to be rich and powerful, I wish you all the best, but I also don’t want to know. This blog is not for you. If, however, you have a higher purpose in this life, then I’ll start teaching you how to get there.

Lesson 1:  “The Power of Visualisation” is a myth, unless...

We all know the amazing not-so-secret of the power of visualisation, but there’s more to it, and no one told you what to do with these images. Having a mental image of what you want to achieve is well and good, but some can get it, yet others can’t. Why?

Did you know you have a remote control in your arsenal of tools that controls images in your mind? Seriously, try it. Imagine holding the remote in the picture below in your hand.

Take the image of what you’d like to be doing in 5 years from now, now use the following remote functions on this image and see what happens.

1.       Position: this moves the image left to right, and up & down.

2.       Zoom: this can enlarge the image to the point that it fully overwhelms your peripherals. Or zoom out till the image is small enough to fit onto a grain of sand

3.       Switch: this allows you to see things in your visualisation through your own eyes, or switch perspective and start to see yourself in the image (as if to watch yourself through a camera filming a movie that you are the star of).

4.       Dimension:  this converts 2D images to 3D images and vice versa.

5.       Brightness: up or down.

6.       Colour: not only does it change the colour contrast but it also inserts a colour filter on command. A blue filter will make the image blue as if you are looking through a blue tinted window (colour filters include blue, red, green, yellow)

7.        B&W: this instantly turns the image black & white, pressing the button returns the image to previous colour settings.

8.       Motion: this changes the visualisation from still images to a video sequence and back.

9.       Skip: as in a DVD player, this skips scenes forward and back, in single time increments (1 minute/hour/day/week/month/year, you chose which).

10.   Volume: up and down.

11.   Surround: from mono speaker to surround sound.

12.   Custom: There are 4 different custom settings. You can pre-program each of them to your favourite setting and achieve all changes by hitting the button once. To set up these buttons, hold button [c1] down for three seconds, make all the adjustments desired, then hold [c1] down for 3 seconds again, repeat for each custom setting button. Then simply press the button briefly on future images to achieve the same settings quickly and conveniently.

Now you have this cool gadget, play around with different images in your mind. And see how you can enhance the positive images, or dim down the negative images. Take 10 minutes to play around with this remote now, to get used to it. Then pull it out anytime you feel the image you have in your mind isn’t as you’d like it to be.

The first thing you’ll notice, is how the feelings inside will change as you play with the images in your mind. The objective is to improve your state of mind by enhancing positive feelings and diminishing negative ones. Because only when you can do that well, can you benefit from the power of visualisation.

from (http://www.maxfreemynd.blogspot.com/)

And quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. That’s not to say it can’t be Daffy Duck, or a Superhero Duck.

“Success” is the mother of all misconception fuck-ups. I personally don’t like the word success because the mention of this bi-syllable term sends egos into the outer sphere of reality, and brings out the tall-poppy-syndrome-infected sheeple to point finger.

The real definition of success is “to achieve an aspiration or goal”.

A Middle Eastern taxi driver in the viaduct is the perfect example of what success really means. The man aspires only to provide his six children with a quality education and a lifestyle far from oppression. What’s irrelevant is the fact the he’s a retired brain surgeon with two doctorate degrees who’s only intellectually stimulating conversation comes from a drunk patron at 4am on the way home chewing their way through a mediocre pie from the Gull station. He’s the genuine article of success, and if any of you disagree, go to any graduation ceremony of any university and listen to the loudest cheer when the name, hardest to pronounce, is called out. Then follow them out as they hop into the taxi that drove them to this successful moment, driven by dad.

Now that I’ve given Ali, my favourite taxi driver at the viaduct, a plug, I return to my point. Success is achieving a goal. Success is not excessive wealth or fame. In fact I pity the fool that waists their life chasing a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. You must have a more noble cause than $ signs.

Taking this a step further, by definition, success is short-lived, because the moment you achieve the goal and become successful, you are no longer successful, until you achieve the next goal. So you’ll encounter a few moments of success in your life but can never hold on to these moments. Think about how funny the neighbour’s dog looks, chasing their own tail... that’s what I think of anyone who aims to be successful for the sake of success.

I think it was Einstein that said “aspire not to become a man of success, rather to be a man of value” or some words to that effect, I was drunk when I was given that pearl. (Thanks Ali, I learned more sitting in the back seat of your taxi than I ever did while sitting in the back row at my senior classes at university.)

Did you get that? “To be a man of value”... which leads me perfectly into the duck. Ask yourself this, what are your values? What do you stand for in this world? If you spend your life chasing success, you’re nothing more than a dog chasing your tail, a Scrooge McDuck at best, and a Duck Hunt at worst. You’re not even a cool duck like Daffy.

So here’s what you need to do. Write down your values and beliefs, and be true to them. Build a legacy that you can leave behind to inspire the next generation, instead of building a large bank account that’s likely to turn your daughter into the next Paris... and I don’t mean the city.

Now where’s that lotto ticket I got from my beautiful Nana.

P.S. If you don’t know what your values are and not sure how to find out, let me know. There’s an easy way to do it that takes no more than 30 minutes. And it’s well worth taking the time to do it. It will change your life. Who knows, you may even become the next Donald (Duck) Trump.

(From http://www.maxfreemynd.blogspot.com/)

It is often said that perception is reality. So what? Who cares what it means and what implications it has?

Well, you should. You should care because your perception is your reality, and you’re selling yourself short if you don’t saddle up for a change in perception soon.

If you think to yourself “I am in control of my life, and I have succeeded, I have achieved and my reality is strong” then think again. Chances are, that no matter how well your life has turned out, you’ve only scratched the surface.

And if you think to yourself “this sound too hard, I can’t even motivate myself to get out of bed in the morning” than worry not my friend, you are more likely to make your dreams come true than you think.

I remember a story about an experiment involving fleas jumping out of jars, I heard it a few years ago, and if you wonder where you heard it, go look in the garage for the mega memory tapes, they obviously didn’t work the first time.

What do fleas jumping out of a jar have to do with anything? Here’s the deal.

Fleas in a jar will jump up to try and get out, if you put a lid on, they’ll jump up and hit their head on the lid for a few hours before they starts to change their behaviour. They will continue to jump but after a couple of hours of head smashing, and a migraine or two, they actually learn to jump lower to avoid embarrassment among their peers. Fleas will jump to within a centimetre of the lid without hitting it. Here’s the cool part, you take the lid off and watch them jump up without getting high enough to get out of the jar. I actually tried this (call me strange if you like, but I had to see for myself, if the story was true).

And then it occurred to me, if a couple of hours of human imposed limitations can lead to a lifetime of self-imposed limitation for a flea, then how much damage have our talentless teachers and over-protective parents caused us in our childhood. How many limitations, and false perceptions have they planted in our heads.

Your perception is your reality, and if you start to see through the years of suppressed talent and ambition, through the constant droning of self imposed authority figures telling you what you can and can’t achieve, then you realise that to jump out of the jar, you need a lot more that self belief and a Tony Robins telling the power is within you. You actually need to be reprogrammed. You can spend a few years convincing yourself that anything is possible, or spend a couple of $100 notes and half an hour tapping into your subconscious. Find your nearest NLP practitioner, Ericsonian hypnotist or mentalist and tell them Max Freemynd sent you. Tell them you want things you don’t even dream of achieving and act surprised when they actually listen to you attentively instead of mocking you like your peer group and family do.

And for all the family members and peer groups, shame on you. Are you going to let your own insecurities get in the way of supporting a loved-one? Shame on you sheeple!

Go my friends, and don’t come back till you learn to jump out of the jar. And don’t fall into the cliché of a big house, a yacht and a sports car, let that be the dream of a lottery winner, let your dreams be worth something, Let your dreams change the world. If you start dreaming of super powers and levitation, aside from the fact that you read too many comic books, you are actually on the right track and then use your super powers to put a smile a beautiful women, or bring joy to a child because these are much nobler aspirations than success.

In the famous words of Hank Moody “People seem to be getting dumber and dumber. I mean we have all this amazing technology and yet computers have turned into basically four figure wank machines. The Internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us, but all it’s really given us is Howard Dean’s aborted candidacy and 24-hour a day access to kiddie porn, you know. And people don’t write anymore, they blog”...

Well, my name is Max Freemynd, and this my first Blog. God Help you all... if she can!

(From http://www.maxfreemynd.blogspot.com/)