Wednesday, 23 November 2016

The Law of Expectations: Whatever you expect, with confidence, becomes your own self-fulfilling prophecy.

You are always acting as a fortune-teller in your own life by the way you think and talk about how things are going to turn out. When you confidently expect good things to happen, good things usually happen to you. If you expect something negative to happen, you are usually not disappointed. -8- 8 Wealthy people expect to be rich. Successful people expect to be successful. Happy, popular people expect to be happy and popular. And your expectations are largely under your control. Expect the best of yourself. Imagine that you have unlimited abilities and that you can accomplish anything that you put your mind to. Imagine that your future is only limited by your own imagination, and that whatever you have accomplished up to now, it is only a fraction of what you are truly capable of achieving. Imagine that your greatest moments lie ahead and that everything that has happened to you up to now has merely been a preparation for the great things that are yet to come.

4. The Law of Attraction: You are a living magnet; you invariably attract into your life the people, situations and circumstances that are in harmony with your dominant thoughts.

This is one of the great laws that explains much of success and failure in business and personal life. It says that everything you have in your life you have attracted to yourself because of the way you think. You can change your life because you can change the way you think. When you develop a burning desire for financial success and think about it all the time, you set up a force field of positive emotional energy that attracts people, ideas and opportunities into your life to help you make your goals into realities. Look at your financial life today and see how it harmonizes with your thinking. Take full credit for all the good things in your life. They are there -9- 9 because you have attracted them to yourself. Then, look around you at the things you don’t like and take full responsibility for them, as well. They are there because of you as well, because of some flaw in your own thinking. What is that flaw, and what are you going to do about it?

thanks for reading.Hope you enjoyed it

The Law of Correspondence: Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world and corresponds with your dominant patterns of thinking.

5. The Law of Correspondence: Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world and corresponds with your dominant patterns of thinking.

This is an extraordinary principle. This law explains most happiness and unhappiness, most success and failure, most greatness and meanness in life. After years of study in this area, I still stand in awe before this powerful law, like standing and looking out over the vastness of the Grand Canyon. Just think! Your outer world reflects your inner world in every way. Nothing can happen to or for you in the long term until and unless it corresponds to something inside of you. Therefore, if you want to change or improve anything in your life, you must begin by changing the inner aspects of your mind. Sometimes this is called your “mental equivalent.” Your greatest responsibility in life is to create within yourself the mental equivalent of what you want to experience on the outside. The fact is that you cannot achieve it on the outside until you have first created it on the inside. It is as though your life is a 360-degree mirror. Wherever you look, there you are. Your relationships, for example, always reflect back to you the -10- 10 kind of person you are on the inside. Your attitude, your health and your financial conditions are a reflection of the way you think most of the time. The Law of Correspondence is a foundation principle of virtually all religions and schools of thought. It is really great news. It is the key to personal freedom and happiness. It is the key to great success and fulfillment. There is only one thing in the world that you can control, and that is the way you think. However, when you take complete control over your thinking, you take control over all the other aspects of your life. By thinking and talking only about what you want, and by refusing to think or talk about what you don’t want, you become the architect of your own destiny. You create your own world.

6. The Law of Abundance: We live in an abundant universe in which there is sufficient money for all who really want it and are willing obey the laws governing its acquisition.

There is plenty of money available to you. There is no real shortage. You can have virtually all you really want and need. We live in a generous universe and we are surrounded on all sides by blessings and opportunities to acquire all we truly desire. Your attitude, of either abundance or scarcity toward money, will have a major impact on whether you become rich or not. The first corollary of the Law of Abundance says that, People become wealthy because they decide to become wealthy. -11- 11 Individuals become wealthy because they believe they have the ability to become wealthy. Because they believe this completely, they act accordingly. They consistently do the things that turn their beliefs into realities. The second corollary of this law says: People are poor because they have not yet decided to become rich. In the book, The Instant Millionaire, by Mark Fisher, the old millionaire asks the boy who has sought his advice about becoming a millionaire, “Why aren’t you rich already?” This is an important question to ask yourself. However you answer this question will reveal a lot about yourself. Your answers will expose your self-limiting beliefs, your doubts, your fears, your excuses, your rationalizations and your justifications. Why aren’t you rich already? Write down all the reasons you can think of. Go over your answers one by one with someone who knows you well and ask them for their opinion. You may be surprised to find that your reasons are mostly excuses that you have fallen in love with. Whatever your reasons or excuses, you can now get rid of them. The world is full of hundreds and thousands of people who have had far more difficulties to overcome than you could ever imagine, and they’ve gone on to be successful anyway. So can you.

thanks for reading.Hope you enjoyed it

JOB

The 21 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Money

One of your major goals in life should be financial independence. You must aim to reach the point where you have enough money so that you never have to worry about money again. The good news is that financial independence is easier to achieve today than it has ever been before. We live in the richest country at the richest time in all of human history. We are surrounded by more wealth and affluence than ever before. Your goal should be to participate fully in what many people are starting to refer to as the “Golden Age”of mankind.

Money has energy of its own and it is largely attracted to people who treat it well. Money tends to flow toward those people who can use it in the most productive ways to produce valuable goods and services, and who can invest it to create employment and opportunities that benefit others. At the same time, money flows away from those who use it poorly, or who spend it in non-productive ways. Your job is to acquire as much money as you honestly can and then to use it enhance the quality of your life and the lives of those you care about. Here now are the Twenty-one Absolutely Unbreakable Laws 0f Money:

1. The Law of Cause and Effect – Everything happens for a reason; there is a cause for every effect.

This is the “Iron Law” of human destiny. This law says that we live in a world governed by law, not chance. It says that everything happens for a -5- 5 reason, whether or not we know what it is. Every effect, success or failure, wealth or poverty, has a specific cause or causes. Every cause or action has an effect or consequence of some kind or another, whether we can see it, or whether we like it or not. This law says that all achievement, wealth, happiness, prosperity and success are the direct and indirect effects or results of specific causes or actions. What this means is that, if you can be clear about the effect or result you want, you can probably achieve it. You can study others who have accomplished the same goal, and by doing what they did, you can get the same results. The Law of Cause and Effect applies to money as much as to any other subject. This law says that financial success is an effect. As such, it proceeds from certain, specific causes. When you identify these causes and implement them in your own life and activities, you will get the same effects that hundreds of thousands, and even millions of others have gotten. You can acquire whatever amount of money you really want if you will just do what others have done before you to achieve the same results. And if you don’t, you won’t. It is as simple as that.

The most important expression of this universal law is that, “Thoughts are causes and conditions are effects.”

Put another way, “Thought is creative.” Your thoughts are the primary creative forces in your life. You create your entire world by the way you think. All the people and situations of your life have been created by your own thinking. And when you change your thinking, you change your life, sometimes in seconds! -6- 6 The most important principle of personal or business success is simply this: You become what you think about most of the time. It is not what happens to you but how you think about what happens to you that determines how you feel and react. It is not the world outside of you that dictates your circumstances or conditions. It is the world inside of you that creates the conditions of your life. Specifically, it is the way you think about money and about your financial situation that largely determines your financial conditions today. Accurate diagnosis is half the cure. Look at the most important parts of your life - your family, your health, your work, your financial situation, and observe the cause-effect relationships between what you think, say, feel and do and the results you are getting. Be honest with yourself.

2. The Law of Belief: Whatever you truly believe, with feeling, becomes your reality.

This law says that you always act in a manner consistent with your beliefs, especially your beliefs about yourself. Your beliefs act like a set of filters that screen out information that is inconsistent with them. You do not necessarily believe what you see but rather you see what you already believe. You reject information that contradicts what you have already decided to believe, whether or not your beliefs, your prejudices, are based on fact or fantasy. This is especially true with regard to money. The best belief that you can develop within yourself is that you are destined to be a big success financially. When you are absolutely convinced -7- 7 that you are a financial success in the making, you will engage in the behaviors that will make it come true. The worst beliefs you can have are “Self limiting beliefs.” These exist whenever you believe yourself to be limited in some way. The fact is that no one is better than you are and no one is smarter than you are. If someone else is doing better, it is largely because he has developed his natural talents and abilities more than you have. He has learned the laws of cause and effect that apply to his life and finances before you have. But anything anyone else has done, within reason, you can probably do as well. You just need to learn how.

What one great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail? If you had no limitations, if you had all the time, money, talent, skills and contacts you could ever want, what would you want to do or be or have in your life?

thanks for reading watch out for more laws

The Law of Time Perspective: The most successful people in any society are those who take the longest time period into consideration when making their day-to-day decisions.

9. The Law of Time Perspective: The most successful people in any society are those who take the longest time period into consideration when making their day-to-day decisions.

The higher a person rises in any society, the longer is the time perspective or time horizon of that person. People at the highest social and economic levels make decisions and sacrifices that may not pay off for many years, sometimes not even in their lifetimes. People with long time perspectives are willing to pay the price of success for a long, long time before they achieve it. They think about the -17- 17 consequences of their financial choices and decisions in terms of what they might mean in five, ten, fifteen and even twenty years from now. People at the lowest levels of society have the shortest time perspectives. They focus primarily on immediate gratification and often engage in financial behaviors that are virtually guaranteed to lead to indebtedness, poverty and financial problems in the long term. You begin to move up socially and financially from the day that you begin thinking about what you are doing in terms of the possible long-term consequences of your actions. As you begin thinking longer term and organizing your financial life and priorities with your future goals and ambitions in mind, the quality of your decisions improve and your life starts to become better almost immediately. The first corollary of the Law of Time Perspective says: Delayed gratification is the key to financial success. Your ability to practice self-mastery, self-control and self-denial, to sacrifice in the short term so you can enjoy greater rewards in the long term, is the starting point of developing a long time perspective. This attitude is essential to financial achievement of any kind. The second corollary of this law says: Self-discipline is the most important personal quality for assuring long-term success. Self discipline was defined by Elbert Hubbard many years ago as, “The ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.” -18- 18 Your ability to discipline yourself to pay the price of success, in advance, and to continue paying it until you achieve the goal you have set, is the true mark of the winning human being. The third corollary of this law says: Sacrifice in the short-term is the price you pay for security in the long-term. The key word here is “sacrifice.” When you resist the temptation to do things that are fun and easy and instead discipline yourself to do the things that are hard and necessary, you develop in yourself the kind of character that virtually guarantees you a better life in the future. When you continually invest your time and money in improving yourself rather than frittering it away in idle socializing or watching television, you are putting yourself on the side of the angels. You are virtually guaranteeing your future.

10. The Law of Saving: Financial freedom comes to the person who saves ten percent or more of his income throughout his lifetime.

One of the smartest things that you can do is to develop the habit of saving part of your salary, every single paycheck. Individuals, families and even societies are stable and prosperous to the degree to which they have high savings rates. Savings today are what guarantee the security and the possibilities of tomorrow. The first corollary of the Law of Saving comes from the book The Richest Man in Babylon by George Classon. It is to: Pay yourself first. -19- 19 Begin today to save ten percent of your income, off the top, and never touch it. This is your fund for long-term financial accumulation and you never use it for any other reason except to assure your financial future. The remarkable thing is that when you pay yourself first, and force yourself to live on the other ninety percent, you will soon become accustomed to it. You are a creature of habit. When you regularly put away ten percent of your income, you soon become comfortable living on the other ninety percent. Many people start by saving ten percent of their income and then move to saving fifteen percent, twenty percent, and even more. And their financial lives change dramatically as a result. So will yours. The second corollary of the Law of Saving says: Take advantage of tax deferred savings and investment plans. Because of high tax rates, money that is saved or invested without incurring taxes accumulates at a rate of 30% to 40% faster than money that is subject to taxation. Invest in company pension and retirement plans, 401(k) plans, IRA’s, Keough Plans, Roth IRA’s, Education Investment Accounts, stock option programs and whatever else has been approved by the IRS for long term financial accumulation. Begin today to put away ten percent of your income. Set up a special account for this purpose and treat your contributions with the same respect that you do your rent or mortgage payments each month. If you are in debt and ten percent is too much for you, start by saving one percent of your income and living on the other ninety-nine percent. When -20- 20 you become comfortable living on ninety nine percent of your income, increase your saving rate to two percent. Over time, work the rate up to ten, fifteen and even twenty percent of your income.

Thanks for reading

The Law of Time Perspective: The most successful people in any society are those who take the longest time period into consideration when making their day-to-day decisions.

9. The Law of Time Perspective: The most successful people in any society are those who take the longest time period into consideration when making their day-to-day decisions.

10. The Law of Saving: Financial freedom comes to the person who saves ten percent or more of his income throughout his lifetime.

Thanks for reading

The Law of Exchange: Money is the medium through which people exchange their labor in the production of goods and services for the goods and services of others.

7. The Law of Exchange: Money is the medium through which people exchange their labor in the production of goods and services for the goods and services of others.

Before there was money, there was barter. In barter, people exchange goods and services directly for goods and services without the medium of money. As civilization grew and barter became too clumsy, people found that they could exchange their goods and services into a medium like coins, which they could then exchange for the goods and services of others, thereby making the whole process more efficient. Today, we go to work and exchange our work for money, which we then use to purchase the results of the work of other people. The first corollary of the Law of Exchange says: Money is a measure of the value that people place on goods and services. It is only what a person will pay that determines the value of something. Goods and services do not have a value separate and apart from what someone is willing to pay for them. All value is therefore subjective and based on the thoughts, feelings, attitudes and opinions of the prospective purchaser at the moment of the buying decision. The second corollary of this law says: Your labor is viewed as a factor of production or a cost by others. We each have a tendency to look upon the “sweat of our brow” or our work, as something special because it is so intensely personal. It comes from us and is an expression of what we are as a person. However, as far as others are concerned, our labor is just a cost. As intelligent consumers, as -13- 13 employers or customers, we want the very most for the very least, no matter whose labor is involved. For this reason, you cannot place an objective value on your own labor. It is only what other people are willing to pay for your labor in a competitive market that determines what you earn and what you are worth in financial terms. Third corollary of this law says: The amount of money you earn is the measure of the value that others place on your contribution. The way the market for labor works is simple. You will always be paid in direct proportion to three factors: the work you do, how well you do it, and the difficulty of replacing you. How much you are paid will be in direct proportion to the quantity and quality of your contribution in comparison with the contributions of others, combined with the value that other people place on your contributions The fourth corollary of the Law of Exchange says: Money is an effect, not a cause. Your work or contribution to the value of a product or a service is the cause, and the wage, salary or earnings that you receive, is the effect. If you wish to increase the effect, you have to increase the cause. The fifth corollary of the Law of Exchange says: To increase the amount of money you are getting out, you must increase the value of the work that you are putting in. -14- 14 To earn more money, you must add more value. You must increase your knowledge, or increase your skill, or improve your work habits, or work longer and harder hours, or work more creatively, or do something that enables you to get greater leverage and results from your efforts. Sometimes, you have to do all of these together. The highest paid people in our society are those who are continually improving in one or more of these areas to add greater value to the work that they are doing.

8. The Law of Capital: Your most valuable asset, in terms of cash flow, is your physical and mental capital, your earning ability.

You may not even be aware that, unless you are wealthy already, your ability to work is the most valuable asset that you have. By utilizing your earning ability to its fullest, you can bring thousands of dollars each year into your life. By applying your earning ability to the production of valuable goods and services, you can generate sufficient money to pay for all the things that you want in life. The amount of money that you are paid today is a direct measure of the extent to which you have developed your earning ability so far. The first corollary of the Law of Capital says: Your most precious resource is your time. Your time is really all you have to sell. How much time you put in and how much of yourself you put into that time, largely determines your earning ability. Poor time management is one of the major reasons for poor productivity and -15- 15 underachievement in every industry in America. It is the number one problem for both managers and salespeople in every field. The second corollary of the Law of Capital says: Time and money can be either spent or invested. To a certain degree, your time and your money are interchangeable. If you spend them, they are gone forever. You cannot get them back. They become sunk costs in your life. On the other hand, you can invest them, in which case you get a return on them that can go on and on. If you invest your time or money in becoming more knowledgeable and better skilled, you can increase your value. By increasing your ability to get results for yourself and others, you increase your earning ability, your personal cash flow, sometimes for your entire career. One of the smartest things that you can do is to invest three percent of your income every month back into yourself on personal and professional development, on becoming better at the most important things you do. There is nothing that will give you a bigger and better “bang” for your buck than reinvesting some of your time and money back into your capability to earn even more. All wealthy and successful people have learned this sooner or later, and all poor and unhappy people are still trying to figure it out. -16- 16 The third corollary of the Law of Capital says: One of the best investments of your time and money is to increase your earning ability. The purpose of corporate strategic planning is to increase “return on equity”or ROE. This requires organizing and reorganizing corporate activities so that the company is earning a higher return on the capital invested in the organization. In your work life, your personal equity is your mental and emotional capital. Your job then is to earn the highest possible return on your human capital, to increase your “return on energy.” Identify the things you do in your work that represent the highest value uses of your time. Focus more and more of your time on doing those things that represent the greatest contributions you can make to the most important results that you can achieve. Continually look for ways to increase your return on energy.

thanks for reading.Hope you enjoyed it

Thursday, 3 November 2016

Mental Effort

If you wish to experience your System 2 working at full tilt, the following
exercise will do; it should br"0%e ca Tting you to the limits of your cognitive
abilities within 5 seconds. To start, make up several strings of 4 digits, all
different, and write each string on an index card. Place a blank card on top
of the deck. The task that you will perform is called Add-1. Here is how it
goes:
Start beating a steady rhythm (or better yet, set a metronome at
1/sec). Remove the blank card and read the four digits aloud.
Wait for two beats, then report a string in which each of the
original digits is incremented by 1. If the digits on the card are
5294, the correct response is 6305. Keeping the rhythm is
important.
Few people can cope with more than four digits in the Add-1 task, but if
you want a harder challenge, please try Add-3.
If you would like to know what your body is doing while your mind is hard
at work, set up two piles of books on a sturdy table, place a video camera
on one and lean your chin on the other, get the video going, and stare at
the camera lens while you work on Add-1 or Add-3 exercises. Later, you
will find in the changing size of your pupils a faithful record of how hard you
worked.
I have a long personal history with the Add-1 task. Early in my career I
spent a year at the University of Michigan, as a visitor in a laboratory that
studied hypnosis. Casting about for a useful topic of research, I found an
article in Scientific American in which the psychologist Eckhard Hess
described the pupil of the eye as a window to the soul. I reread it recently
and again found it inspiring. It begins with Hess reporting that his wife had
noticed his pupils widening as he watched beautiful nature pictures, and it
ends with two striking pictures of the same good-looking woman, who
somehow appears much more attractive in one than in the other. There is
only one difference: the pupils of the eyes appear dilated in the attractive
picture and constricted in the other. Hess also wrote of belladonna, a pupildilating
substance that was used as a cosmetic, and of bazaar shoppers
who wear dark glasses in order to hide their level of interest from
merchants.
One of Hess’s findings especially captured my attention. He had noticed
that the pupils are sensitive indicators of mental effort—they dilate
substantially when people multiply two-digit numbers, and they dilate more
if the problems are hard than if they are easy. His observations indicated
that the response to mental effort is distinct from emotional arousal. Hess’s
work did not have much to do with hypnosis, but I concluded that the idea
of a visible indication of mental effort had promise as a research topic. A
graduate student in the lab, Jackson Beatty, shared my enthusiasm and we
got to work.
Beatty and I developed a setup similar to an optician’s examination
room, in which the experimental participant leaned her head on a chin-andforehead
rest and stared at a camera while listening to prerecorded
information and answering questions on the recorded beats of a
metronome. The beats triggered an infrared flash every second, causing a
picture to be taken. At the end of each experimental session, we would
rush to have the film developed, project the images of the pupil on a
screen, and go to work with a ruler. The method was a perfect fit for young
and impatient researchers: we knew our results almost immediately, and
they always told a clear story.
Beatty and I focused on paced tasks, such as Add-1, in which we knew
precisely what was on the subject’s mind at any time. We recorded strings
of digits on beats of the metronome and instructed the subject to repeat or
transform the digits one indigits onby one, maintaining the same rhythm.
We soon discovered that the size of the pupil varied second by second,
reflecting the changing demands of the task. The shape of the response
was an inverted V. As you experienced it if you tried Add-1 or Add-3, effort
builds up with every added digit that you hear, reaches an almost
intolerable peak as you rush to produce a transformed string during and
immediately after the pause, and relaxes gradually as you “unload” your
short-term memory. The pupil data corresponded precisely to subjective
experience: longer strings reliably caused larger dilations, the
transformation task compounded the effort, and the peak of pupil size
coincided with maximum effort. Add-1 with four digits caused a larger
dilation than the task of holding seven digits for immediate recall. Add-3,
which is much more difficult, is the most demanding that I ever observed. In
the first 5 seconds, the pupil dilates by about 50% of its original area and
heart rate increases by about 7 beats per minute. This is as hard as
people can work—they give up if more is asked of them. When we
exposed our subjects to more digits than they could remember, their pupils
stopped dilating or actually shrank.
We worked for some months in a spacious basement suite in which we
had set up a closed-circuit system that projected an image of the subject’s
pupil on a screen in the corridor; we also could hear what was happening
in the laboratory. The diameter of the projected pupil was about a foot;
watching it dilate and contract when the participant was at work was a
fascinating sight, quite an attraction for visitors in our lab. We amused
ourselves and impressed our guests by our ability to divine when the
participant gave up on a task. During a mental multiplication, the pupil
normally dilated to a large size within a few seconds and stayed large as
long as the individual kept working on the problem; it contracted
immediately when she found a solution or gave up. As we watched from
the corridor, we would sometimes surprise both the owner of the pupil and
our guests by asking, “Why did you stop working just now?” The answer
from inside the lab was often, “How did you know?” to which we would
reply, “We have a window to your soul.”
The casual observations we made from the corridor were sometimes as
informative as the formal experiments. I made a significant discovery as I
was idly watching a woman’s pupil during a break between two tasks. She
had kept her position on the chin rest, so I could see the image of her eye
while she engaged in routine conversation with the experimenter. I was
surprised to see that the pupil remained small and did not noticeably dilate
as she talked and listened. Unlike the tasks that we were studying, the
mundane conversation apparently demanded little or no effort—no more
than retaining two or three digits. This was a eureka moment: I realized that
the tasks we had chosen for study were exceptionally effortful. An image
came to mind: mental life—today I would speak of the life of System 2—is
normally conducted at the pace of a comfortable walk, sometimes
interrupted by episodes of jogging and on rare occasions by a frantic
sprint. The Add-1 and Add-3 exercises are sprints, and casual chatting is
a stroll.
We found that people, when engaged in a mental sprint, may become
effectively blind. The authors of The Invisible Gorilla had made the gorilla
“invisible” by keeping the observers intensely busy counting passes. We
reported a rather less dramatic example of blindness during Add-1. Our
subjects were exposed to a series of rapidly flashing letters while they
worked. They were told to give the task complete priority, but they were
also asked to report, at the end of the digit task, whether the letter K had
appeared at any rored at antime during the trial. The main finding was that
the ability to detect and report the target letter changed in the course of the
10 seconds of the exercise. The observers almost never missed a K that
was shown at the beginning or near the end of the Add-1 task but they
missed the target almost half the time when mental effort was at its peak,
although we had pictures of their wide-open eye staring straight at it.
Failures of detection followed the same inverted-V pattern as the dilating
pupil. The similarity was reassuring: the pupil was a good measure of the
physical arousal that accompanies mental effort, and we could go ahead
and use it to understand how the mind works.
Much like the electricity meter outside your house or apartment, the
pupils offer an index of the current rate at which mental energy is used. The
analogy goes deep. Your use of electricity depends on what you choose to
do, whether to light a room or toast a piece of bread. When you turn on a
bulb or a toaster, it draws the energy it needs but no more. Similarly, we
decide what to do, but we have limited control over the effort of doing it.
Suppose you are shown four digits, say, 9462, and told that your life
depends on holding them in memory for 10 seconds. However much you
want to live, you cannot exert as much effort in this task as you would be
forced to invest to complete an Add-3 transformation on the same digits.
System 2 and the electrical circuits in your home both have limited
capacity, but they respond differently to threatened overload. A breaker
trips when the demand for current is excessive, causing all devices on that
circuit to lose power at once. In contrast, the response to mental overload
is selective and precise: System 2 protects the most important activity, so
it receives the attention it needs; “spare capacity” is allocated second by
second to other tasks. In our version of the gorilla experiment, we
instructed the participants to assign priority to the digit task. We know that
they followed that instruction, because the timing of the visual target had no
effect on the main task. If the critical letter was presented at a time of high
demand, the subjects simply did not see it. When the transformation task
was less demanding, detection performance was better.
The sophisticated allocation of attention has been honed by a long
evolutionary history. Orienting and responding quickly to the gravest threats
or most promising opportunities improved the chance of survival, and this
capability is certainly not restricted to humans. Even in modern humans,
System 1 takes over in emergencies and assigns total priority to selfprotective
actions. Imagine yourself at the wheel of a car that unexpectedly
skids on a large oil slick. You will find that you have responded to the threat
before you became fully conscious of it.
Beatty and I worked together for only a year, but our collaboration had a
large effect on our subsequent careers. He eventually became the leading
authority on “cognitive pupillometry,” and I wrote a book titled Attention and
Effort, which was based in large part on what we learned together and on
follow-up research I did at Harvard the following year. We learned a great
deal about the working mind—which I now think of as System 2—from
measuring pupils in a wide variety of tasks.
As you become skilled in a task, its demand for energy diminishes.
Studies of the brain have shown that the pattern of activity associated with
an action changes as skill increases, with fewer brain regions involved.
Talent has similar effects. Highly intelligent individuals need less effort to
solve the same problems, as indicated by both pupil size and brain activity.
A general “law of least effort” appd t” alies to cognitive as well as physical
exertion. The law asserts that if there are several ways of achieving the
same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course
of action. In the economy of action, effort is a cost, and the acquisition of
skill is driven by the balance of benefits and costs. Laziness is built deep
into our nature.
The tasks that we studied varied considerably in their effects on the
pupil. At baseline, our subjects were awake, aware, and ready to engage
in a task—probably at a higher level of arousal and cognitive readiness
than usual. Holding one or two digits in memory or learning to associate a
word with a digit (3 = door) produced reliable effects on momentary
arousal above that baseline, but the effects were minuscule, only 5% of the
increase in pupil diameter associated with Add-3. A task that required
discriminating between the pitch of two tones yielded significantly larger
dilations. Recent research has shown that inhibiting the tendency to read
distracting words (as in figure 2 of the preceding chapter) also induces
moderate effort. Tests of short-term memory for six or seven digits were
more effortful. As you can experience, the request to retrieve and say aloud
your phone number or your spouse’s birthday also requires a brief but
significant effort, because the entire string must be held in memory as a
response is organized. Mental multiplication of two-digit numbers and the
Add-3 task are near the limit of what most people can do.
What makes some cognitive operations more demanding and effortful
than others? What outcomes must we purchase in the currency of
attention? What can System 2 do that System 1 cannot? We now have
tentative answers to these questions.
Effort is required to maintain simultaneously in memory several ideas
that require separate actions, or that need to be combined according to a
rule—rehearsing your shopping list as you enter the supermarket,
choosing between the fish and the veal at a restaurant, or combining a
surprising result from a survey with the information that the sample was
small, for example. System 2 is the only one that can follow rules, compare
objects on several attributes, and make deliberate choices between
options. The automatic System 1 does not have these capabilities. System
1 detects simple relations (“they are all alike,” “the son is much taller than
the father”) and excels at integrating information about one thing, but it
does not deal with multiple distinct topics at once, nor is it adept at using
purely statistical information. System 1 will detect that a person described
as “a meek and tidy soul, with a need for order and structure, and a
passion for detail” resembles a caricature librarian, but combining this
intuition with knowledge about the small number of librarians is a task that
only System 2 can perform—if System 2 knows how to do so, which is true
of few people.
A crucial capability of System 2 is the adoption of “task sets”: it can
program memory to obey an instruction that overrides habitual responses.
Consider the following: Count all occurrences of the letter f in this page.
This is not a task you have ever performed before and it will not come
naturally to you, but your System 2 can take it on. It will be effortful to set
yourself up for this exercise, and effortful to carry it out, though you will
surely improve with practice. Psychologists speak of “executive control” to
describe the adoption and termination of task sets, and neuroscientists
have identified the main regions of the brain that serve the executive
function. One of these regions is involved whenever a conflict must be
resolved. Another is the prefrontal area of the brain, a region that is
substantially more developed in humans tht un humans an in other
primates, and is involved in operations that we associate with intelligence.
Now suppose that at the end of the page you get another instruction:
count all the commas in the next page. This will be harder, because you will
have to overcome the newly acquired tendency to focus attention on the
letter f. One of the significant discoveries of cognitive psychologists in
recent decades is that switching from one task to another is effortful,
especially under time pressure. The need for rapid switching is one of the
reasons that Add-3 and mental multiplication are so difficult. To perform
the Add-3 task, you must hold several digits in your working memory at the
same time, associating each with a particular operation: some digits are in
the queue to be transformed, one is in the process of transformation, and
others, already transformed, are retained for reporting. Modern tests of
working memory require the individual to switch repeatedly between two
demanding tasks, retaining the results of one operation while performing
the other. People who do well on these tests tend to do well on tests of
general intelligence. However, the ability to control attention is not simply a
measure of intelligence; measures of efficiency in the control of attention
predict performance of air traffic controllers and of Israeli Air Force pilots
beyond the effects of intelligence.
Time pressure is another driver of effort. As you carried out the Add-3
exercise, the rush was imposed in part by the metronome and in part by
the load on memory. Like a juggler with several balls in the air, you cannot
afford to slow down; the rate at which material decays in memory forces
the pace, driving you to refresh and rehearse information before it is lost.
Any task that requires you to keep several ideas in mind at the same time
has the same hurried character. Unless you have the good fortune of a
capacious working memory, you may be forced to work uncomfortably
hard. The most effortful forms of slow thinking are those that require you to
think fast.
You surely observed as you performed Add-3 how unusual it is for your
mind to work so hard. Even if you think for a living, few of the mental tasks
in which you engage in the course of a working day are as demanding as
Add-3, or even as demanding as storing six digits for immediate recall.
We normally avoid mental overload by dividing our tasks into multiple easy
steps, committing intermediate results to long-term memory or to paper
rather than to an easily overloaded working memory. We cover long
distances by taking our time and conduct our mental lives by the law of
least effort.
Speaking of Attention and Effort
“I won’t try to solve this while driving. This is a pupil-dilating task. It
requires mental effort!”
“The law of least effort is operating here. He will think as little as
possible.”
“She did not forget about the meeting. She was completely
focused on something else when the meeting was set and she
just didn’t hear you.”
“What came quickly to my mind was an intuition from System 1. I’ll
have to start over and search my memory deliberately.”

LIFE'S MOST IMPORTANT LESSON

Donald Trump and Mother Teresa are driven by the exact same force. I can hear you saying, "Are you off your rocker. Tony? They couldn't be more different!" It's absolutely true that their values lie at opposite ends of the spectrum, but they're both driven by pain and pleasure. Their lives have been shaped by what they've learned to get pleasure from, and what they've learned will create pain. The most important lesson we learn in life is what creates pain for us and what creates pleasure. This lesson is different for each of us and, therefore, so are our behaviors. What's driven Donald Trump throughout his life? He's learned to achieve pleasure by having the largest and most expensive yachts, acquiring the most extravagant buildings, making the shrewdest deals—in short, accumulating the biggest and best toys. What did he learn to link pain to? In interviews he has revealed that his ultimate pain in life is being second-best at anything—he equates it with failure. In fact, his greatest drive to achieve comes from his compulsion to avoid this pain. It's a far more powerful motivator than his desire to gain pleasure. Many competitors have taken great joy in the pain that Trump has experienced from the collapse of much of his economic empire. Rather than judge him—or anyone else, including yourself—it might be more valuable to understand what's driving him and to have some compassion for his obvious pain.

By contrast, look at Mother Teresa. Here's a woman who cares so deeply that when she sees other people in pain, she also suffers. Seeing the injustice of the caste system wounded her. She discovered that when she took action to help these people, their pain disappeared, and so did hers. For Mother Teresa, the ultimate meaning of life can be found in one of the most impoverished sections of Calcutta, the City of Joy, which is swollen past the bursting point with millions of starving and diseased refugees. For her, pleasure might mean wading through knee-deep muck, sewage and filth in order to reach a squalid hut and minister to the infants and children within, their tiny bodies ravaged by cholera and dysentery. She is powerfully driven by the sensation that helping others out of their misery helps alleviate her own pain, that in helping them experience life in a better way—giving them pleasure—she will feel pleasure. She learned that putting yourself on the line for others is the highest good; it gives her a sense that her life has true meaning. While it may be a stretch for most of us to liken the sublime humility of Mother Teresa to the materialism of Donald Trump, it's critical to remember that these two individuals shaped their destinies based upon what they linked pain and pleasure to. Certainly their backgrounds and environments played a role in their choices, but ultimately they made conscious decisions about what to reward or punish themselves for.

thanks for reading.Hope you enjoyed it

Tuesday, 1 November 2016

WHAT YOU LINK PAIN TO AND WHAT YOU LINK PLEASURE TO SHAPES YOUR DESTINY

One decision that has made a tremendous difference in the quality of my life is that at an early age I began to link incredible pleasure to learning. I realized that discovering ideas and strategies that could help me to shape human behavior and emotion could give me virtually everything I wanted in my life. It could get me out of pain and into pleasure. Learning to unlock the secrets behind our actions couldhelp me to become more healthy, to feel better physically, to connect more deeply with the people I cared about. Learning provided me with something to give, the opportunity to truly contribute something of value to all those around me. It offered me a sense of joy and fulfillment. At the same time, I discovered an even more powerful form of pleasure, and that was achieved by sharing what I'd learned in a passionate way. When I began to see that what I could share helps people increase the quality of their lives, I discovered the ultimate level of pleasure! And my life's purpose began to evolve. What are some of the experiences of pain and pleasure that have shaped your life? Whether you've linked pain or pleasure to drugs, for example, certainly has affected your destiny. So have the emotions you've learned to associate to cigarettes or alcohol, relationships, or even the concepts of giving or trusting.

If you're a doctor, isn't it true that the decision to pursue a medical career so many years ago was motivated by your belief that becoming a physician would make you feel good? Every doctor I've talked to links massive pleasure to helping people: stopping pain, healing illness, and saving lives. Often the pride of being a respected member of society was an additional motivator. Musicians have dedicated themselves to their art because few things can give them that same level of pleasure. And CEOs of top organizations have learned to link pleasure to making powerful decisions that have a huge potential to build something unique and to contribute to people's lives in a lasting way. Think of the limiting pain and pleasure associations of John Belushi, Freddie Prinze, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison. Their associations to drugs as an escape, a quick fix, or a way out of pain and into temporary pleasure created their downfalls. They paid the ultimate price for not directing their own minds and emotions. Think of the example they set for millions of fans. I never did learn to consume drugs or alcohol. Is it because I was so brilliant? No, it's because I was very fortunate. One reason I never drank alcohol is that, as a child, there were a couple of people in my family who acted so obnoxiously when drunk that I associated extreme pain to drinking any alcohol. One especially graphic image I have is the memory of my best friend's mom. She was extremely obese, weighing close to 300 pounds, and she drank constantly. Whenever she did, she wanted to hug me and drool all over me. To this day, the smell of alcohol on anyone's breath nauseates me.

Beer, though, was another story. When I was about eleven or twelve, I didn't consider it an alcoholic drink. After all, my dad drank beer, and he didn't get that "obnoxious" or disgusting. In fact, he seemed to be a little more fun when he'd had a few beers. Plus, I linked pleasure to drinking because I wanted to be just like Dad. Would drinking beer really make me like Dad? No, but we frequently create false associations in our nervous systems (neuro-associations) as to what will create pain or pleasure in our lives. One day I asked my mom for a "brew." She began arguing that it wasn't good for me. But trying to convince me when my mind was made up, when my observations of my father so clearly contradicted her, was not going to work. We don't believe what we hear; rather, we are certain that our perceptions are accurate—and I was certain that day that drinking beer was the next step in my personal growth. Finally, my mom realized I'd probably just go drink somewhere else if she didn't give me an experience I wouldn't forget. At some level, she must have known she had to change what I associated to beer. So she said, "Okay, you want to drink beer and be like Dad? Then you've really got to drink beer just like your dad." I said, "Well, what does that mean?" She said, "You've got to drink a whole six-pack." I said, "No problem." She said, "You've got to drink it right here." When I took my first sip, it tasted disgusting, nothing like what I'd anticipated. Of course, I wouldn't admit it at the time because, after all, my pride was on the line. So I took a few more sips. After finishing one beer I said, "Now I'm really full, Mom." She said, "No, here's another one," and popped it open. After the third or fourth can, I started feeling sick to my stomach. I'm sure you can guess what happened next: I threw up all over myself and the kitchen table. It was disgusting, and so was cleaning up the mess! I immediately linked the smell of beer to the vomit and horrible feelings. I no longer had an intellectual association to what drinking beer meant. I now had an emotional association in my nervous system, a gut-level neuro-association— one that would clearly guide my future decisions. As a result, I've never had even a sip of beer since!

Can our pain and pleasure linkages produce a processional effect in our lives? You bet. This negative neuro-association for beer affected many of my decisions in life. It influenced whom I hung out with at school. It determined how I learned to get pleasure. I didn't use alcohol: I used learning; I used laughter; I used sports. I also learned that it felt incredible to help other people, so I became the guy in school everybody came to with their problems, and solving their problems made both them and me feel good. Some things haven't changed through the years! I also never used drugs because of a similar experience: when I was in the third or fourth grade, the police department came to my school and showed us some films about the consequences of getting involved in the drug scene. I watched as people shot up, passed out, spaced out, and leaped out of windows. As a young boy, I associated drugs to ugliness and death, so I never tried them myself. My good fortune was that the police had helped me form painful neuro-associations to even the idea of using drugs. Therefore, I have never even considered the possibility. What can we leam from this? Simply this: if we link massive pain to any behavior or emotional pattern, we will avoid indulging in it at all costs. We can use this understanding to harness the force of pain and pleasure to change virtually anything in our lives, from a pattern of procrastinating to drug use. How do we do this? Let's say, for example, you want to keep your children off drugs. The time to reach them is before they experiment and before someone else teaches them the false association that drugs equal pleasure. My wife, Becky, and I decided that the most powerful way to make sure our kids would never use drugs was to cause them to link massive pain to drugs. We knew that unless we taught them what drugs were really about, someone else might convince them that drugs were a useful way of escaping pain.

To accomplish this task, I called upon an old friend. Captain John Rondon of the Salvation Army. For years, I've supported John in the South Bronx and Brooklyn in helping street people make changes in their lives by raising their standards, changing their limiting beliefs, and developing life skills. Becky and I are very proud of the people who've used what we've taught to get off the streets and increase the quality of their lives. I've always used my visits there as a way of giving something back and as a reminder of how fortunate I am. It keeps me feeling appreciative of the life I have the privilege to lead. It also gives me perspective and keeps my life balanced. I explained my goals to Captain John, and he arranged to take my children on a tour they would never forget, one that would give them a clear experience of what drugs do to the human spirit. It began with a firsthand visit to a rat-infested, rotting tenement building. The minute we walked in, my children were assaulted by the stench of urine-soaked floors, the sight of addicts shooting up heedless of who was watching, child prostitutes soliciting passers-by, and the sound of neglected, crying children. Mental, emotional, and physical devastation is what my kids learned to link to drugs. That was four-and-a-half years ago. While they have all been exposed to drugs many times since, they have never touched them. These powerful neuro-associations have significantly shaped their destinies.

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.-"MARCUS AURELIUS

We are the only beings on the planet who lead such rich internal lives that it's not the events that matter most to us, but rather, it's how we interpret those events that will determine how we think about ourselves and how we will act in the future. One of the things that makes us so special is our marvelous ability to adapt, to transform, to manipulate objects or ideas to produce something more pleasing or useful. And foremost among our adaptive talents is the ability to take the raw experience of our lives, relate it to other experiences, and create from it a kaleidoscopic tapestry of meaning that's different from everyone else's in the world. Only human beings can, for example, change their associations so that physical pain will result in pleasure, or vice-versa.

Remember a hunger striker confined to jail. Fasting for a cause, he survives thirty days without food. The physical pain he experiences is considerable, but it's offset by the pleasure and validation of drawing the world's attention to his cause. On a more personal, everyday level, individuals who follow intense physical regimens in order to sculpt their bodies have learned to link tremendous feelings of pleasure to the "pain" of physical exertion. They have converted the discomfort of discipline into the satisfaction of personal growth. This is why their behavior is consistent, as are their results! Through the power of our wills, then, we can weigh something like the physical pain of starvation against the psychic pain of surrendering our ideals. We can create higher meaning; we can step out of the "Skinnerian box"9* and take control. But if we fail to direct our own associations to pain and pleasure, we're living no better than animals or machines, continually reacting to our environment, allowing whatever comes up next to determine the direction and quality of our lives. We're back in the box. It's as if we are a public computer, with easy access for lots of amateur programmers!

Our behavior, both conscious and unconscious, has been rigged by pain and pleasure from so many sources: childhood peers, moms and dads, teachers, coaches, movie and television heroes, and the list goes on. You may or may not know precisely when programming and conditioning occurred. Itmight have been something someone said, an incident at school, an award-winning sports event, an embarrassing moment, straight A's on your report card—or maybe failing grades. All of these contributed to who you are today. I cannot emphasize strongly enough that what you link pain and pleasure to will shape your destiny. As you review your own life, can you recall experiences that formed your neuro-associations and thus set in motion the chain of causes and effects that brought you to where you are today? What meaning do you attach to things? If you're single, do you look upon marriage wistfully as a joyous adventure with your life's mate, or do you dread it as a heavy ball and chain? As you sit down to dinner tonight, do you consume food matter-of-factly as an opportunity to refuel your body, or do you devour it as your sole source of pleasure?

"Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.—"LORD CHESTERFIELD

Though we'd like to deny it, the fact remains that what drives our behavior is instinctive reaction to pain and pleasure, not intellectual calculation. Intellectually, we may believe that eating chocolate is bad for us, but we'll still reach for it. Why? Because we're not driven so much by what we intellectually know, but rather by what we've learned to link pain and pleasure to in our nervous systems. It's our neuro-associations— the associations we've established in our nervous systems—that determine what we'll do. Although we'd like to believe it's our intellect that really drives us, in most cases our emotions—the sensations that we link to our thoughts—are what truly drive us. Many times we try to override the system. For a while we stick to a diet; we've finally pushed ourselves over the edge because we have so much pain. We will have solved the problem for the moment—but if we haven't eliminated the cause of the problem, it will resurface. Ultimately, in order for a change to last, we must link pain to our old behavior and pleasure to our new behavior, and condition it until it's consistent. Remember, we will all do more to avoid pain than we will to gain pleasure. Going on a diet and overriding our pain in the short term by pure willpower never lasts simply because we still link pain to giving up fattening foods. For this change to be long-term, we've got to link pain to eating those foods so that we no longer even desire them, and pleasure to eat more of the foods that nourish us. People who are fit and healthy believe that nothing tastes as good as thin feels! And they love foods that nourish them. In fact, they often link pleasure to pushing the plate away with food still on it. It symbolizes to them that they're in control of their lives.

The truth is that we can learn to condition our minds, bodies, and emotions to link pain or pleasure to whatever we choose. By changing what we link pain and pleasure to, we will instantly change our behaviors. With smoking, for example, all you must do is link enough pain to smoking and enough pleasure to quitting. You have the ability to do this right now, but you might not exercise this capability because you've trained your body to link pleasure to smoking, or you fear that stopping would be too painful. Yet, if you meet anyone who has stopped, you will find that this behavior changed in one day: the day they truly changed what smoking meant to them.

thanks for reading.Hope you enjoyed it

THE FORCE THAT SHAPES YOUR LIFE

"Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion."-SIR THOMAS BROWNE

She had been jogging for only about half an hour when it happened. Suddenly a dozen young boys began to sprint in her direction. Before she had time to realize what was happening, they pounced upon her, pulled her into the bushes and began to beat her with a lead pipe. One boy continually kicked her in the face until she was bleeding profusely. Then they raped and sodomized her, and left her for dead. I'm sure you've heard about this tragic, unthinkable crime that happened in Central Park several years ago. I was in New York City the night it happened. I was appalled not only by the savagery of the attack, but even more so to hear who the attackers were. They were children, from the ages of 14 to 17 years old. Contrary to stereotypes, they were neither poor nor did they come from abusive families. They were boys from private schools. Little League players, kids who took tuba lessons. These boys were not driven crazy by drugs, nor were they racially motivated. They assaulted and could have killed this 28-year-old woman for one reason and one reason only: fun. They even had a name for what they had set out to do; they called it "wilding."

Not more than 250 miles away in our nation's capital, a jet airliner crashed on takeoff from National Airport during a blinding snowstorm. It hit the Potomac Bridge at the height of rush hour. As traffic snarled to a halt, emergency rescue services were immediately dispatched to the scene, and the bridge became a nightmare of chaos and panic. Firemen and paramedics were overwhelmed by the destruction, and dove again and again into the Potomac to try and save crash victims. One man repeatedly passed the life preserver to others. He saved many lives, but not his own. By the time the rescue helicopter finally got to him, he had slipped beneath the icy surface of the water. This man gave his life in order to save those of complete strangers! What drove him to place such a high value on other people's lives—people he didn't even know—that he was willing to give his own life in the process? What makes a person with a "good background" behave so savagely and without remorse while another gives his own life to rescue complete strangers? What creates a hero, a heel, a criminal, a contributor? What determines the difference in human actions? Throughout my life, I have passionately sought the answer to these questions. One thing is clear to me: human beings are not random creatures; everything we do, we do for a reason. We may not be aware of the reason consciously, but there is undoubtedly a single driving force behind all human behavior. This force impacts every facet of our lives, from our relationships and finances to our bodies and brains. What is this force that is controlling you even now and will continue to do so for the rest of your life? PAIN and PLEASURE! Everything you and I do, we do either out of our need to avoid pain or our desire to gain pleasure.

So often I hear people talk about changes they want to make in their lives. But they can't get themselves to follow through. They feel frustrated, overwhelmed, even angry with themselves because they know they need to take action, but they can't get themselves to do it. There is one elementary reason: they keep trying to change their behavior, which is the effect, instead of dealing with the cause behind it. Understanding and utilizing the forces of pain and pleasure will allow you once and for all to create the lasting changes and improvements you desire for yourself and those you care about. Failure to understand this force dooms you to a future of living in reaction, like an animal or a machine. Perhaps this sounds like a complete oversimplification, but think about it. Why don't you do some of the things you know you should do? After all, what is procrastination? It's when you know you should do something, but you still don't do it. Why not? The answer is simple: at some level you believe that taking action in this moment would be more painful than just putting it off. Yet, have you ever had the experience of putting something off for so long that suddenly you felt pressure to just do it, to get it done7 What happened? You changed what you linked pain and pleasure to. Suddenly, not taking action became more painful than putting it off. This is a common occurrence that many Americans experience around April 14!

"A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary."-SENECA

What keeps you from approaching that man or woman of your dreams? What keeps you from starting that new business you've been planning for years? Why do you keep putting off that diet? Why do you avoid completing your thesis? Why haven't you taken control of your financial investment portfolio? What prevents you from doing whatever it takes to make your life exactly as you've imagined it? Even though you know that all these actions would benefit you—that they could definitely bring pleasure to your life—you fail to act simply because in that moment you associate more pain to doing what's necessary than missing the opportunity. After all, what if you approached that person, and they rejected you? What if you tried to start that new business but failed and lost the security you have in your present job? What if you started a diet and went through the pain of starving yourself, only to gain the weight back eventually anyway? What if you made an investment and lost your money? So why even try? For most people, the fear of loss is much greater than the desire for gain. Which would drive you more: keeping someone from stealing the $100,000 you've earned over the last five years, or the potential of earning $100,000 in the next five? The fact is that most people would work much harder to hang on to what they have than they would to take the risks necessary to get what they really want from their lives.

"The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you.-ANTHONY ROBBINS"

Often an interesting question comes up in discussions about these twin powers that drive us: Why is it that people can experience pain yet fail to change? They haven't experienced enough pain yet; they haven't hit what I call emotional threshold. If you've ever been in a destructive relationship and finally made the decision to use your personal power, take action and change your life, it was probably because you hit a level of pain you weren't willing to settle for anymore. We've all experienced those times in our lives when we've said, "I've had it—never again—this must change now." This is the magical moment when pain becomes our friend. It drives us to take new action and produce new results. We become even more powerfully compelled to act if, in that same moment, we begin to anticipate how changing will create a great deal of pleasure for our lives as well. This process is certainly not limited to relationships. Maybe you've experienced threshold with your physical condition: you finally got fed up because you couldn't squeeze into an airline seat, you couldn't fit into your clothes, and walking up a set of stairs winded you. Finally you said, "I've had it!" and made a decision. What motivated that decision? It was the desire to remove pain from your life and establish pleasure once again: the pleasure of pride, the pleasure of comfort, the pleasure of selfesteem, the pleasure of living life the way you've designed it.

Of course, there are many levels of pain and pleasure. For example, feeling a sense of humiliation is a rather intense form of emotional pain. Feeling a sense of inconvenience is also pain. So is boredom. Obviously some of these have less intensity, but they still factor in the equation of decision-making. Likewise, pleasure weighs into this process. Much of our drive in life comes from our anticipating that our actions will lead to a more compelling future, that today's work will be well worth the effort, that the rewards of pleasure are near. Yet there are many levels of pleasure as well. For example, the pleasure of ecstasy, while most would agree is intense, may sometimes be outweighed by the pleasure of com- fort. It all depends on an individual's perspective. For example, let's say you're on your lunch break, and you're walking past a park where a Beethoven symphony is playing. Will you stop and listen? It depends, first of all, on the meaning you associate to classical music. Some people would drop anything to be able to listen to the valiant strains of the Eroica Symphony; for them, Beethoven equals pure pleasure. For others, however, listening to any kind of classical music is about as exciting as watching paint dry. Enduring the music would equal a measure of pain, and so they hurry past the park and back to work. But even some people who love classical music would not decide to stop and listen. Maybe the perceived pain of being late for work outweighs the pleasure they would get from hearing the familiar melodies. Or maybe they have a belief that stopping and enjoying music in the middle of the afternoon is wasteful of precious time, and the pain of doing something frivolous and inappropriate is greater than the pleasure the music could bring. Each day our lives are filled with these kinds of psychic negotiations. We are constantly weighing our own proposed actions and the impact they will have upon us.

thanks for reading.Hope you enjoyed it

DECISIONS: THE PATHWAY TO POWER

Man is born to live and not to prepare to live.-BORIS PASTERNAK

Do you remember when Jimmy Carter was still the President of the United States, the Empire was striking back, Yoda and Pac Man were the rage, and nothing came between Brooke Shields and her Calvins? The Ayatollah Khomeini had come to power in Iran and held our fellow Americans hostage. In Poland, an electrician from the Gdansk shipyards named Lech Walesa did the unthinkable: he decided to take a stand against the Communist hold. He led his co-workers in a strike, and when they tried to lock him out of his place of work, he simply climbed over the wall. A lot of walls have come down since then, haven't they?

Do you remember hearing the news that John Lennon was murdered? Do you remember when Mount Saint Helens erupted, leveling 150 square miles? Did you cheer when the underdog U.S. hockey team beat the Soviets, and went on to win the Olympic gold medal? That was 1980, a little more than ten years ago. Think for a moment. Where were you then? What were you like? Who were your friends? What were your hopes and dreams? If someone had asked you, "Where will you be in ten or fifteen years?" what would you have told them? Are you today where you wanted to be back then? A decade can pass quickly, can't it? More importantly, maybe we should be asking ourselves, "How am I going to live the next ten years of my life? How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I'm committed to? What am I going to stand for from now on? What's important to me right now, and what will be important to me in the long term? What actions can I take today that will shape my ultimate destiny?"

You see, ten years from now, you will surely arrive. The question is: Where? Who will you have become? How will you live? What will you contribute? Now is the time to design the next ten years of your life—not once they're over. We must seize the moment. We're already immersed in the early pan of a new decade, and we're entering the final years of the twentieth century/ And shortly we'll be in the twenty-first century, a new millennium. The year 2000 will be here before you know it, and in a mere ten years, you'll be looking back on this day and remembering it like you do 1980. Will you be pleased when you look back on the nineties, or perturbed? Delighted, or disturbed? In the beginning of 1980,1 was a nineteen-year-old kid. I felt alone and frustrated. I had virtually no financial resources. There were no success coaches available to me, no successful friends or mentors, no clear-cut goals. I was floundering and fat. Yet within a few short years I discovered a power that I used to transform virtually every area of my life. And once I'd mastered it, I used it to revolutionize my life in less than a year. It was the tool I used to dramatically increase my level of confidence and therefore my ability to take action and produce measurable results. I also used it to take back control of my physical well-being and permanently rid myself of thirty-eight pounds of fat. Through it, I attracted the woman of my dreams, married her, and created the family I desired. I used this power to change my income from subsistence level to over $1 million a year. It moved me from my tiny apartment (where I was washing my dishes in the bathtub because there was no kitchen) to my family's current home, the Del Mar Castle. This one distinction took me from feeling completely alone and insignificant to feeling grateful for new opportunities to contribute something to millions of people around the world. And it's a power I continue to use every single day of my life to shape my personal destiny.

In Unlimited Power, I made it abundantly clear that the most powerful way to shape our lives is to get ourselves to take action. The difference in the results that people produce comes down to what they've done differently from others in the same situations. Different actions produce different results. Why? Because any action is a cause set in motion, and its effect builds on past effects to move us in a definite direction. Every direction leads to an ultimate destination: our destiny. In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently. The key and most important question, then, is this: What precedes all of our actions? What determines what actions we take, and therefore, who we become, and what our ultimate destination is in life? What is the father of action? The answer, of course, is what I've been alluding to all along: the power of decision. Everything that happens in your life—both what you're thrilled with and what you're challenged by— began with a decision. I believe that it's in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. The decisions that you're making right now, every day, will shape how you feel today as well as who you're going to become in the nineties and beyond. As you look back over the last ten years, were there times when a different decision would have made your life radically different from today, either for better or for worse? Maybe, for example, you made a career decision that changed your life. Or maybe you failed to make one. Maybe you decided during the last ten years to get married—or divorced. You might have purchased a tape, a book, or attended a seminar and, as a result, changed your beliefs and actions. Maybe you decided to have children, or to put it off in pursuit of a career. Perhaps you decided to invest in a home or a business. Maybe you decided to start exercising, or to give it up. It could be that you decided to stop smoking. Maybe you decided to move to another part of the country, or to take a trip around the world. How have these decisions brought you to this point in your life? Did you experience emotions of tragedy and frustration, injustice or hopelessness during the last decade of your life? I know I certainly did. If so, what did you decide to do about them? Did you push beyond your limits, or did you just give up? How have these decisions shaped your current life path?

Man is not the creature of circumstances; circumstances are the creatures of men.-BENJAMIN DISRAELI

More than anything else, I believe it's our decisions, not the conditions of our lives, that determine our destiny. You and I both know that there are people who were born with advantages: they've had genetic advantages, environmental advantages, family advantages, or relationship advantages. Yet you and I also know that we constantly meet, read, and hear about people who against all odds have exploded beyond the limitations of their conditions by making new decisions about what to do with their lives. They've become examples of the unlimited power of the human spirit. If we decide to, you and I can make our lives one of these inspiring examples. How? Simply by making decisions today about how we're going to live in the nineties and beyond. If you don't make decisions about how you're going to live, then you've already made a decision, haven't you? You're making a decision to be directed by the environment instead of shaping your own destiny. My whole life changed in just one day—the day I determined not just what I'd like to have in my life or what I wanted to become, but when I decided who and what I was committed to having and being in my life. That's a simple distinction, but a critical one. Think for a moment. Is there a difference between being interested in something, and being committed to it? You bet there is! Many times people say things like, "Gosh, I really would like to make more money," or "I'd like to be closer to my kids," or "You know, I'd really like to make a difference in the world." But that kind of statement is not a commitment at all. It's merely stating a preference, saying, "I'm interested in having this happen, if I don't have to do anything." That's not power! It's a weak prayer made without even the faith to launch it. Not only do you have to decide what results you are committed to, but also the kind of person that you're committed to becoming. As we discussed in Chapter 1, you have to set standards for what you consider to be acceptable behavior for yourself, and decide what you should expect from those you care about. If you don't set a baseline standard for what you'll accept in your life, you'll find it's easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that's far below what you deserve. You need to set and live by these standards no matter what happens in your life. Even if it all goes wrong, even if it rains on your parade, even if the stock market crashes, even if your lover leaves you even if no one gives you the support that you need, you still must stay committed to your decision that you will live your life at the highest level.

Unfortunately, most people never do this because they're too busy making excuses. The reason they haven't achieved their goals or are not living the lives they desire is because of the way their parents treated them, or because of the lack of opportunities that they experienced in their youth, or because of the education they missed, or because they're too old, or because they're too young. All of these excuses are nothing but B.S. (Belief Systems)! And they're not only limiting, they're destructive. Using the power of decision gives you the capacity to get past any excuse to change any and every pan of your life in an instant. It can change your relationships, your working environment, your level of physical fitness, your income, and your emotional states. It can determine whether you're happy or sad, whether you're frustrated or excited, enslaved by circumstances, or expressing your freedom. It's the source of change within an individual, a family, a community, a society, our world.

What's changed everything in Eastern Europe in the last few years? The people there—people like you and me—have made new decisions about what they'll stand for, what's acceptable and unacceptable to them and what they'll no longer tolerate. Certainly Gorbatchows decisions helped pave the way, but Lech Walesa's determination and commitment to a higher standard built the road to massive economic and political change. I often ask people who complain about their jobs, "Why did you go to work today?" Their answer usually is, "Because I had to." You and I need to remember one thing: there is virtually nothing that we have to do in this country. You certainly don't have to go to work. Not here! And you certainly don't have to work at a particular location on a particular day. Not in America! You don't have to do what you've done for the last ten years. You can decide to do something else, something new, today. Right now you can make a decision: to go back to school, to master dancing or singing, to take control of your finances, to learn to fly a helicopter, to turn your body into an inspiration, to begin meditating, to enroll' in ballroom dancing, to attend a NASA space camp, to learn to speak French, to read more to your children, to spend more time in the flower garden, even to fly to Fiji and live on an island. If you truly decide to you can do almost anything. So if you don't like the current relationship you're in, make the decision now to change it. If you don't like your current job, change it. If you don't like the way you feel about yourself, change it. If it's a higher level of physical vitality and health you want, you can change it now. In a moment you can seize the same power that has shaped history.

You must know that you can make a new decision right now that will immediately change your life—a decision about a habit you'll change or a skill that you'll master, or how you'll treat people, or a call that you'll now make to someone you haven't spoken to in years. Maybe there's someone you should contact to take your career to the next level. Maybe you could make a decision right now to enjoy and cultivate the most positive emotions that you deserve to experience daily. Is it possible you might choose more joy or more fun or more confidence or more peace of mind? Even before you turn the page, you can make use of the power that already resides within you. Make the decision now that can send you in a new, positive, and powerful direction for growth and happiness.

Nothing can resist the human will that will stake even its existence on its stated purpose.-BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision. Who would have thought that the determination and conviction of a quiet, unassuming man—a lawyer by trade and a pacifist by principle—would have the power to topple a vast empire? Yet Ma-hatma Gandhi's indomitable decision to rid India of British rule was a virtual powder keg that set in motion a chain of events that would forever change the balance of world power. People didn't see how he could accomplish his aims, but he'd left himself no other choice than to act according to his conscience. He simply wouldn't accept any other possibility.

Decision was the source of John F. Kennedy's power as he faced off Nikita Khrushchev during the tense Cuban Missile Crisis and averted World War III. Decision was the source of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s power as he gave voice so eloquently to the frustrations and aspirations of a people who would no longer be denied, and forced the world to take notice. Decision was the source of Donald Trump's meteoric rise to the top of the financial world, and also the source of his devastating downfall. It's the power that allowed Pete Rose to maximize his physical abilities to Hall of Fame potential—and then ultimately to destroy his life's dream. Decisions act as the source of both problems and incredible joys and opportunities. This is the power that sparks the process of turning the invisible into the visible. True decisions are the catalyst for turning our dreams into reality. The most exciting thing about this force, this power, is that you already possess it. The explosive impetus of decision is not something reserved for a select few with the right credentials or money or family background. It's available to the common laborer as well as the king. It's available to you now as you hold this book in your hands. In the very next moment you can use this mighty force that lies waiting within you if you merely muster the courage to claim it. Will today be the day you finally decide that who you are as a person is much more than you've been demonstrating? Will today be the day you decide once and for all to make your life consistent with the quality of your spirit? Then start by proclaiming, "This is who I am. This is what my life is about. And this is what I'm going to do. Nothing will stop me from achieving my destiny. I will not be denied!" Consider a fiercely proud individual, a woman named Rosa Parks, who one day in 1955 stepped onto a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and refused to give up her seat to a white person as she was legally required to do. Her one quiet act of civil disobedience sparked a firestorm of controversy and became a symbol for generations to follow. It was the beginning of the civil rights movement, a consciousness-awakening ground swell that we are grappling with even today as we redefine the meaning of equality, opportunity, and justice for all Americans regardless of race, creed, or sex. Was Rosa Parks thinking of the future when she refused to give up her seat in that bus? Did she have a divine plan for how she could change the structure of a society? Perhaps. But what is more likely is that her decision to hold herself to a higher standard compelled her to act. What a far-reaching effect one woman's decision has had! If you're thinking, "I'd love to make decisions like that, but I've experienced real tragedies," let me offer you the example of Ed Roberts. He is an "ordinary" man confined to a wheelchair who became extraordinary by his decision to act beyond his apparent limitations. Ed has been paralyzed from the neck down since he was fourteen years old. He uses a breathing device that he's mastered against great odds to lead a "normal" life by day, and he spends every night in an iron lung. Having fought a battle against polio, several times almost losing his life, he certainly could have decided to focus on his own pain, but instead chose to make a difference for others. Just what has he managed to do? For the last fifteen years, his decision to fight against a world he often found condescending has resulted in many enhancements to the quality of life for the disabled. Facing a multitude of myths about the capabilities of the physically challenged, Ed educated the public and initiated everything from wheelchair access ramps and special parking spaces to grab bars. He became the first quadriplegic to graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, and he eventually held the position of director of the California State Department of Rehabilitation, again pioneering this position for the disabled. Ed Roberts is powerful evidence that it's not where you start out but the decisions you make about where you're determined to end up that matter. All of his actions were founded in a single, powerful, committed moment of decision. What could you do with your life if you really decided to? Many people say, "Well, I'd love to make a decision like that, but I'm not sure how I could change my life." They're paralyzed by the fear that they don't know exactly how to turn their dreams into reality. And as a result, they never make the decisions that could make their lives into the masterpieces they deserve to be. I'm here to tell you that it's not important initially to know how you're going to create a result. What's important is to decide you will find a way, no matter what. In Unlimited Power, I outlined what I call "The Ultimate Success Formula," which is an elementary process for getting you where you want to go: 1) Decide what you want, 2) Take action, 3) Notice what's working or not, and 4) Change your approach until you achieve what you want. Deciding to produce a result causes events to be set in motion. If you simply decide what it is you want, get yourself to take action, learn from it, and change your approach, then you will create the momentum to achieve the result. As soon as you truly commit to making something happen, the "how" will reveal itself.

This kind of clarity gives you power. With clarity, you can produce the results that you really want for your life. The challenge for most of us is that we haven't made a decision in so long we've forgotten what it feels like. We've got flabby decision-making muscles! Some people even have a hard time deciding what they're going to have for dinner. So how do we strengthen these muscles? Give them a workout! The way to make better decisions is to make more of them. Then make sure you learn from each one, including those that don't seem to work out in the short term: they will provide valuable distinctions to make better evaluations and therefore decisions in the future. Realize that decision making, like any skill you focus on improving, gets better the more often you do it. The more often you make decisions, the more you'll realize that you truly are in control of your life. You'll look forward to future challenges, and you'll see them as an opportunity to make new distinctions and move your life to the next level. I can't overemphasize the power and value of gaining even one, single distinction—a sole piece of information—that can be used to change the course of your life. Information is power when it's acted upon, and one of my criteria for a true decision is that action flows from it. The exciting thing is that you never know when you're going to get it! The reason I read over 700 books, listened to tapes, and went to so many seminars is that I understood the power of a single distinction. It might be on the next page or in the next chapter of this book. It might even be something you already know. But for some reason, this is the time it finally sinks in and you begin to use it. Remember that repetition is the mother of skill. Distinctions empower us to make better decisions and, therefore, create the results that we desire for ourselves. Not having certain distinctions can cause you major pain. For example, many of the most famous people in our culture have achieved their dreams but have still not found a way to enjoy them. They often turn to drugs because they feel unfulfilled. This is because they are missing the distinction between achieving one's goals and living one's values, something you will learn to master in the pages to follow. Another distinction that many people don't have causes pain in their relationships on a regular basis. It's a rules distinction, another key element we'll be examining in our journey of self-discovery. Sometimes, not having a certain distinction can cost you everything. People who run strenuously8 yet continue to eat fatty foods, clogging up their arteries, court heart attacks. For most of my life, I've pursued what the famed business expert Dr. W. Edwards Deming calls profound knowledge. To me, profound knowledge is any simple distinction, strategy, belief, skill, or tool that, the minute we understand it, we can apply it to make immediate increases in the quality of our lives. This book and my life have been committed to pursuing profound knowledge that has universal application to improving our personal and professional lives. I'm constantly figuring out how to communicate this knowledge with people in ways that truly empower them to improve their mental, emotional, physical, and financial destinies. It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. —ANTHONY ROBB1NS

thanks for reading

(c)2016 Mercurial TECH

Posted by Atomic integral at 17:59 No comments:
Email This BlogThis!Share to X Share to Facebook Share to Pinterest

About Me

Atomic integral

View my complete profile

Blog Archive

▼ 2016 (32)

▼ November (13)

The Law of Expectations: Whatever you expect, w...

The Law of Correspondence: Your outer world is a...

JOB The 21 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Mon...

The Law of Time Perspective: The most successfu...

The Law of Time Perspective: The most successfu...

The Law of Exchange: Money is the medium through...

Mental Effort Mental Effort If you wish to ex...

LIFE'S MOST IMPORTANT LESSON LIFE'S MOST IMPO...

WHAT YOU LINK PAIN TO AND WHAT YOU LINK PLEASURE...

THE FORCE THAT SHAPES YOUR LIFE THE FORCE THA...

DECISIONS: THE PATHWAY TO POWER DECISIONS: TH...

DECISIONS: THE PATHWAY TO POWER DECISIONS: TH...

DECISIONS: THE PATHWAY TO POWER DECISIONS: TH...

► October (19)

Adverts

Awesome Inc. theme. Theme images by molotovcoketail. Powered by Blogger.