thelifething.com » Personal Development

How to be wise by the time you’re 30

Jonny — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 12:43:01 +0000

This is a guest post from Eduard Ezeanu, a communication coach.

A while back, a professional personality assessment was describing me as wise. This was consistent with the results of other tests and with feedback I got from people who knew me. Yet it still surprised me.

Because I thought that wisdom was a quality only old people can have, while I’m in my late 20’s. Wisdom was in my mind, that ability to understand certain life things with clarity and depth, as the result of countless years of experience. Now, I believe I was right about the first part, but not about the second.

Wisdom is something you can acquire relatively early in life, provided you follow the right track, you do the right things. You don’t need to have white hair and no more real teeth in your mouth to be wise.

Quality of experience instead of quantity. It’s not how much experience you have that makes you wise, it’s which kind of experience you have. Which is why plenty of old people are in fact not wise. A friend of mine who is a trainer says that most people don’t live 70 years; they live 1 year repeated 70 times.

If your life is repetitive and shallow, chances are you’ll never be wise. But if you live a rich life, with various and powerful experiences, the kind that truly shape a man’s personality, than you acquire wisdom fast. This is one of the main reason why I encourage people to do all sort of things and to get out of their comfort zone.

Asking yourself powerful questions. As a coach, one of the essential things I do is to ask my clients questions which really get them thinking and help them have important revelations. About themselves, about others, about life. I discovered that answering this kind of questions is one of the best ways to get wise.

The good news is that you can also ask yourself powerful questions and you can make a lot of progress on your own. Ask yourself stuff like:

 What is important to me?

 What can I bring to this world that no one else can?

 What kind of life would I live if I had no fears?

It’s weird, unusual questions like these, which you hesitate to tell some of your friends about, that create the most powerful effect in getting wise. Put them to good use.

Having wise mentors. Looking back on my growth as a professional and as a person, the first thing that comes into my mind is all the wise people in my life, who have seen and done much more than I did, which helped me develop. I owe a great part of what I am now to great mentors.

So the first thing I encourage you is to find mentors. The second thing is to make sure they have something of real value to offer in terms of wisdom. Actively seek to discover, meet and interact with people you consider wise. Surround yourself with great mentors and you will see your degree of wisdom increase big time.

I think one of the most important lessons you can learn is that age is not wisdom. Wisdom is something which derives from the quality of your life, your thinking and your environment. And the best thing is that you can consciously shape all of these, so you can consciously make yourself a wise person.

It’s a funny and interesting feeling, to see yourself and to be seen as wise before you reach 30 or at any age when you are not labeled as old. In a way, you are then living proof of the power conscious, effective human learning has.

Eduard Ezeanu is a communication coach with an attitude-based approach. He helps others to improve people skills they find relevant and get top notch results. He also writes on his blog, People Skills Decoded.

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I Will Teach You To Speed Read At 500 wpm In 5 minutes

Jonny — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:33:54 +0000

Your speed reading options – put in the hours or read this post.

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Why Read? (850 words)

I have been training myself to read faster for many years now and I have an average reading speed of 300 wpm ( words per minute) with 80% comprehension and a scanning speed of 480 wpm with a comprehension of 45% which can be pushed to around 900wpm if really scanning. However, just recently I have come across a nice little trick that will allow you to read at over 500 wpm straight from the get go with a high 50% comprehension. And yes, because I am a nice guy I am going to let you in on the secret.

The Basics Of Speed Reading

In short, the science behind speed reading is batching. Like a microcomputer system batches data, so too does a speed reader batch words.

Imagine speed reading is like making delicious chocolate brownies.

Making just one individual delicious chocolate brownie at a time is a very slow process and limits the amount of chocolatey goodness one can stuff in their face. Batching the process however, allows many more delicious chocolate brownies to be created in the same timeframe thus allowing one to get fatter quicker.

Speed reading is the same. Normal readers read every single word and this is a very slow process, like ordering food in India. Speed readers batch the words and read groups of words in chucks which is a much quicker process, like receiving the bill in India.

The brain, like an AppleMac, can compute the information it is receiving far quicker than the eyes can send it. It is actually the eyes that are the bottle neck in reading quickly. In addition the eyes tend to “bounce” when reading and one doesn’t read each work in one continuous line like you would think. They eyes actually bounce forward and backwards across sentences and up and down across paragraphs. You may not realize you are doing this when you read but I assure you it is happening.

It is for this reason that when you start to learn how to speed read you are forced to read with your finger following the words, much like you did when you were 10. As humiliating as this is, it helps to train the eyes to stop bouncing around on the page, which slows down your reading speed.

As one increases their reading speed to start batching words and reading in chucks, first in pairs, then threes, fours and sometimes fives. Very fast speed readers will break entire lines into two sections and scan the pages in only two eyes “bounces” while their brain remembers the word chucks and makes sense of them in the background. This takes time to learn so I have discovered an easier way to speed read at over 500 words a minute.

The 5 Minute, 500 wpm Super Secrety Secret.

“In any article, publishing, blog post or any other form of written word only read the first sentence of each paragraph.”

It’s as simple as my mate George who still eats the red crayons even though he’s now 32. Try it out for yourself. (Reading the first sentence, not eating crayons.)

It has come to my attention that the first sentence of every paragraph almost always seems to be a mini summary of the preceding section. The rest of the paragraph tends to back up what the first sentence is highlighting. If you don’t believe me try it with newspaper articles or blog posts and you will see that this rings true more often then not.

Now lets take that principle and apply it across a whole article. As an experiment try it for yourself. Write down only the first sentence of each paragraph of any article and blog and then review it. See if you can get the main gist of the article and the major points it is trying to present. I think that you will find that you almost always can get a very good idea of the piece and it will only have taken a fraction of the time to read, equivalent to a reading speed of 500 wpm.

Also, you will probably find that because you are only focussing on a reduced number of sentences you will find it easier to remember the main points and themes of the piece, far more than if your read the whole article slowly and then tried to pick out what it was saying.

Speed reading takes time to develop but is an exceptionally good tool for the average lifestyle designer to develop. Until such time as you have the hours to perfect your reading average, why not try the technique outlined above and instantly reduce the amount of time it takes you to ingest information AND more than likely improve you level of comprehension to boot. You know, because that would make life at lot easier for you. Right? Just do it ok.

To Sum Up

Just read the first line of every paragraph and increase you reading speed instantly.

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Delivering Happiness: Great Advice From A 1.2 Billion Dollar Shoe Seller

Jonny — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 10:00:54 +0000

How “Delivering Happiness” turned into a $1.2 Billion dollar success.

Ok, I feel that twinge of jealousy again and this time with very good reason. Here is that reason.

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Why Read?

Let me introduce you to Tony Hsieh

In 1999, at the age of twenty-four, Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) sold LinkExchange, the company he cofounded, to Microsoft for $265 million. He then joined Zappos as an adviser and investor, and eventually became CEO. He helped Zappos grow from almost nothing to over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually, while simultaneously making Fortune magazine’s annual “Best Places to Work For” list. Hsieh currently lives in Las Vegas and sort of has a cat.

He is now 36 and still rocking the entrepreneurial world.

Good reads have done a great article on him as part of his new book marketing campaign ( no affiliation link). I have taken out some of the more excellent bits from the interview.

How To Deliver Happiness

1. Create Something Meaningful

You really get a sense from watching Videos of Tony and the people that work for him that he is simply bursting with genuine passion and kid-like enthusiasm. An infectious combination.

Whatever your passion or interest, is it meaningful? It need only be meaningful to you, but it needs to be meaningful to someone. Nothing was ever built successfully and has lasted that was founded on a strong reason d’entre or reason for being.

Check out his talk on Delivering Happiness

2. The Value Of Values

In my post A Simple Structure That Will Change Your Life the Seven Life system has your core 7 “Principles” or “Values” right at the top of the tree.

Tony also places a huge emphasis on the necessity off having these core values, even to the point of firing individuals who may be profitable short term, but risk the long term health of the company because they do not buy into the same value system as the rest of the team.

Having a set of core values is essential to your success. It focuses you, gives your success a framework of integrity and ultimately is reflected in anything you do.

Check out the Zappos 10 core values video.

3. Don’t Just Write Down Your Values, Live Them

Zappos has a great culture of seriously “Going the extra mile”, especially when it comes to the hiring process. They go so far as to interviewing the drivers of the interviewee at the end of the day to find out what they are like “off camera”. It is no doubt this commitment to hiring the very best match of employee that has seen their company take off.

4. Do The Opposite Of Everything

“Basically I try to do the opposite of what everyone is doing in the industry” Tony.

Simply philosophy. Risky philosophy. Successful philosophy. Something to reflect on.

Wrapping Up

Tony is a great inspiration to Entrepreneurs everywhere – let us focus on “Delivering Happiness” to our customers, readers, friends, family and all those we know.

There is also an awesome free audio book on Tribal Leadership which you can download here.

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The Most Important Post I have Ever Written About Lifestyle Design

Jonny — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:19:20 +0000

How To Change Your Current Reality By Inflating A Bigger Balloon For A Better Life

Why Read

Possibly the most important post I have ever written and the most powerful in terms of changing your reality and effecting the rest of your life.

A highly visual and critical lesson in your current reality and the implications it has for the rest of your life. You cannot afford to miss this one.

Reality And The Future

Your current reality is at the core of who you are and the life you are living right now. What reality you have in the future will determine who you are and the life you will be living then. Visualizing this need in order to upgrade your reality is difficult and the reason I have developed the concept of Reality Balloons.

The Reality Balloons

One of these balloons will define your current reality and one will define your future reality. You can be happy in both just as you can be unhappy in both. Whether you are happy in life or not will determine which balloon you want to be in and whether that is indeed the case.

Your reality can be best illustrated visually by a balloon.

Some people have a very small balloons and their current reality is very limited. Others have slightly bigger balloons and live a much larger reality, other still have huge balloons and live a life many of us cannot imagine. Here are the balloons.

The Birthday Balloon Reality

Most people only ever own a birthday balloon throughout their lifetime.

You know the ones, small size and usually have some simple or ironic birthday message like “Happy 13th Birthday” or “Now That You Are 25 – No More Sheep”.

Some peoples birthday balloons are more inflated than others but all are limited to a very small size, small enough for a child to hold.

People that I would put in this category are those stuck in a 9-5 job – the deflated balloon owners hate their jobs and the highly inflated balloon owners love them but are trapped by them.

The Fairground Balloon Reality

Some others in life own fairground balloons.

They have a bigger reality and thus live a bigger life than most. There are quite a people who own fairground balloon realties.

People I put in this category are those currently living their dreams, owning a small business, living where they want and having more free time than most. They work hard, they play hard but their reality is still small enough to be held by hand. They mainly work for themselves and have very little effect on the lives of others.

The Hot Air Ballon Reality

Still others own Hot Air Balloon Realties.

They have a large balloon and a large reality, it cannot be grounded by any individual nor in fact by many people.

The hot air balloon reality has huge amounts of lift and can carry the owner and others up to very high heights.

People I put in this category are large business and charity owners, the builders of organizations and systems that make themselves rich and help a huge amount of others in the process through products, services and job opportunities.

They enjoy the best things in life and they make positive impacts on hundreds of people in their home cities and countries.

The German Airship Reality

A small number of people in this world have airship realities.

Nothing short of powerful machinery can keep them from becoming airborne and rising to incredibly heights.

The Airships have unrivaled power and lift. They lift hundreds and thousands of people up with them.

I put people like Henry Ford, Edison, Warren Buffet and Richard Brandson into this category.

They live lives that most can not even dream about. They can have and experience anything this world has to offer and in their success they change the lives of millions around the globe through their ideas, businesses and systems.

Your Future Reality

Where are you currently? Are you a birthday balloon, a fairground variety, or do you own a hot air balloon or just perhaps you almost have an airship.

Your future reality is first determined by what you think. If you cannot imagine ever owning the ballon above where you are now then you will NEVER be able to achieve it. Success first begins in the mind, and then through focus and hard work, is translated into reality.

You can be happy or miserable within any balloon reality so bigger is not always better. Which reality you will be happiest in is decided by you and who you are.

If you are a person who wants to own a hot air ballon reality but you stay with a birthday balloon one all your life, then you will never find peace and contentment.

There is a huge exponential difference between the four balloon realties and one cannot simply keep inflating your current balloon to get to the next size up. A paradigm shift needs to occur.

Content Verses Context – Expanding Your Reality

A paradigm shift is defined as A radical change in thinking from an accepted point of view to a new one

You cannot simply inflate you current balloon reality to the next size up. If you try to put as much air as is in a fairground balloon into a birthday ballon it will burst.

The same thing goes for a hot air balloon into a fairground and an airship into a hot air balloon, except that in these cases the difference is exponential.

To move to the next air balloon reality you need to pop your old balloon and upgrade to the next one up. Like busting a balloon this will be a shocking experience. When you burst a birthday ballon, you flinch. When you burst a birthday balloon reality, you definitely flinch.

I bursted my birthday ballon the moment I quit my high paying job and realized I was living the wrong reality. I could have spent my life inflating air into this balloon reality and might have got it to inflate to its very peak. Then, around age 35-40 I would overfill it and it would burst. I would be left with nothing because I had too much ambition for the balloon but it took me 20 years to work it out.

I burst my balloon early, even though it was becoming nicely inflated. I had a great job, great pay, lots of travel, girls and great promotion opportunity.

I would have done well, made middle management and then top management. However I would have not been happy.

I was filling a balloon I didn’t want to end up with and so I had to make the tough decision to burst it. It was shocking, it was painful and most people couldn’t understand why the hell I would do that but I understood the reality ballon concept and realize that it had to be done.

The major pain with popping the balloon is that you now upgrade to the fair ground one but it has no air in it, and it is going to take a huge amount of time and effort to inflate to anywhere near my last one was.

This is painful but necessary. I am back to square one but now, I am filling a new balloon from deflated.

My paradigm shift happened and I couldn’t be happier even though the road ahead is going to be long and tough.

I know also that in the future I eventually want to own a hot air balloon or even an airship.

Each time I am going to have to burst the ballon I am in and this time it will be even more shocking and painful.

You also will need to decide what balloon reality you want to be in and make your decisions. If you are happy with a Birthday Balloon Reality then great, many people have been happy and successful with this approach. However if you want to be the owner of a fairground, hot air, or airship balloon then you cannot be wasting your time filling air into a Birthday balloon. No matter how full it gets you will never be happy until it bursts and then you will be left with nothing.

People will have different ballon realities at different times in life. You cannot go from Birthday Balloon straight to Airship without owning each of the two before it. Just make sure you know which reality balloon you are currently holding and if you are happy with it at this point in your life.

To Sum Up

Be honest with yourself and decide what reality ballon you are in. If you are happy to own this ballon, however well inflated, at the end of your life then great, stick with what you have and fill it to breaking point.

If however you want to own a different ballon, then you will never be happy no matter how much you fill your current one.

If you want to end up with a different ballon reality you have to first burst your current one. It will be painful, you will have to start again and you will have to work even harder but if that is what you want then you will not be happy any other way.

Please re-read this post because it is the most important one I have ever written and if you fully grasp the concept it will revolutionize your life.

Thanks for reading.

The Most Important Post I have Ever Written About Lifestyle Design is a post from: thelifething.com
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Mountain Madness: How To Completely ‘Balls” Up A Charity Challenge

Jonny — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 11:49:44 +0000

As per my post the other day I was meant to be running the UK three peaks charity challenge but actually went and completely ballsed it up. Not being one to take failure lightly here are some lessons from the disaster which I hope will help you not make the mistakes I did.

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What Went Wrong

In short, the challenge started well.

3 hours 15 minutes for Ben Nevis (Avg. time 4 hours) decent 5 hour drive to the next one, good quick start.

Then it all went wrong.

Fog, poor maps, wrong turns, deceptively similar landscape and a poor route that took us over three times the distance and twice the altitude resulted in a dismal 5 hour clock time for the second peak (average 2.5 hours).

Then things really went wrong.

75 year old men, random villages, mountain rescue, the police, a lovely little shop owner, a stolen phone and more resulted in us having to eventually abandon our challenge. Though not until we had been missing for 8 hours, spent 4 hours sitting on a bench and been kicked out of a village.

So though I know can’t feel my legs, have lost me kneecaps and feel like a 90 year old man getting out of bed at the moment I am going to have to do it all again in 6 weeks time. This time, however, I plan to be ready. Here are the three dumb ass things I got wrong.

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Dumb ass Mistake 1: Forgot the 7 P’s

Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance

A printed google map, 3 satnav post codes and a multi buy pack of snickers does not count as proper prior planning when undertaking even a relatively small challenge like the three peaks and thus it resulted in piss poor performance.

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Dumb ass Mistake 2: Was Careless About Communication

We ended up stranded for 8 hours because our communication channels were pants.

Loss of signal, no emergency plan and no communication protocol between driver and runners were ultimately what stuck the final dagger into the heart of our challenge.

Communication truly is key to the success of any endeavour; challenge, business, project, marriage, friendships.

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Dumb ass Mistake 3: Didn’t Choose Team Wisely

Whenever you are undertaking anything, a talented team is essential.

Unfortunately this time we made a bad team member choice which had an substantial impact on performance, especially when things started going wrong which ultimately led to failure.

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Concluding

With proper planning, established communication channels and protocols and a hand picked team of complimentary talent, we could have hit our 18 hour target for the 24 hour challenge. Unfortunately we did not have this combination this time and thus had to pull out defeated after 23 hours without having completed the third peak.

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Your Mental Pilot And Visualizing The True Effects Of Negative Thoughts

Jonny — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 09:31:21 +0000

Why Read (750 words)

Today, we are going on a journey through the mind and your mental pilot is going to be your guide.

You would do well to respect this little guy as he is a fearless flying ace and fantastically awesome at what he does, he eats punks like Top Gun Maverick for breakfast. No one believes you are that cool Tom Cruise.

If you want to change you outlook on life, you need to know what is creating it in the first place. This article gives you an idea and steps on how to change it.

You Have Control Of A Fearless Flying Ace (AKA Teddy)

Even though you may not realize it, you do in fact have sole responsibility for tasking a fearless flying ace with his missions,. This means, In effect that you not only have a lot of responsibility, you now also have a lot of power.

That being said though, with great power come great responsibility (Copyright Spiderman. Stolen thelifething). If you fail in your duties he will simply go rogue and do whatever he damn well pleases, which is usually that which is easiest – the path of least resistance.

An easy way to truly understand the effects of positive and negative thoughts on your mind is to think of your mental pilot’s craft as a ball; a well rounded, beautifully crafted spherical object of desire.

Every thought you have sends this ball carving a route through your mind and once this route has been carved it can never be undone. The grooves are permanent, like the morning coffee stains on your brand new white handwoven mountain sheep wool carpet, only just recently hand delivered by four highly trained Nepalese shirkers. If you happen to not own one of these said carpets then just imagine a similar permanent situation, sticking your hand to your face with superglue perhaps.

The key thing to get your noggin around is that negative thoughts carve negative grooves and positive ones carve positive grooves.

You mental pilot is excellent at his job but he is blind to what is positive and what is negative. He will simply follow orders, like a common garden mole ordered to the front lines.

As very little of out daily life is under our complete conscious control, the way you behave on a daily basis is generally headed up by your subconscious, your mental pilot.

Though powerful, he/she/it has the unfortunate disadvantage of simply following the path of least resistance, which will happen to be the deepest grooves.

If your deepest grooves are negative you will generally act more negative on a subconscious level as your mental pilot will naturally fly along the deepest negative grooves, as these are the easiest to navigate.

If however your deepest grooves are positive, he will naturally choose to fly along the positive grooves and your outlook and your actions will generally be positive.

Remember your mental pilot and make sure you are creating depth in the right grooves so that he can fly along the positive grooves and not along the negative ones.

If your negative grooves are far deeper than your positive ones at the moment then it will take a lot of persuasion to encourage your mental pilot to fly along and deepen the shallower positive groove, though it can and must be done if you are to develop a more positive attitude.

The deeper your positive grooves are in relation to your negative grooves, the easier it is for him to always fly positive and this in turn creates a larger differential between the positive and negative and the individual develops an overall more positive outlook.

Actively focus on encouraging your mental pilot to fly and deepen your positive grooves and stay away from the negative ones.

If you are not active in giving orders then he/she/it will simply fly whichever one is easiest and if this should be the negative pathways then things could be looking pretty gray for you in the future.

Best to have him flying positive, the skies are sunnier and clearer.

To Sum Up

Take control, give the right orders to your mental pilot, deepen the positive grooves while neglecting the negative and discover a massive difference in your outlook and reality.

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Your Mental Pilot And Visualizing The True Effects Of Negative Thoughts is a post from: thelifething.com
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Einstein Economics: Knowing Everything Without Spending A Cent On Courses

Jonny — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 10:40:26 +0000

Why Read (1000 Words)

Life is one big social adventure – whether one is out with old friends, going to a dentist, competing in chocolate fudge cake eating competitions, or exploring new relationships while traveling.

Everyone has unique interests, topics they are incredibly passionate about and could happily talk for hours to people about. Mine is chocolate.

These can be the most informed and impassioned teachers you will likely ever come across – and unlike a university degree, they won’t cost you a thing. If you want to explore how to make the very most of this valuable life success tool then read on.

Why Increase Your Knowledge?

This was the third dentist consultant I had seen in the last hour or so. He was suggesting I removed the tooth and get a dental implant. I asked him why he thought this was the best thing to do. He said it was the only option.

I countered with my own suggestion that deep route canal on stem 1,2 and 3 with laser treatment on the regional bone marrow of adjacent tooth could save it and protect the tooth, which, seeing as I am only 24, would be a better option in the long term.

He seemed slightly taken aback and said this was not possible. I again suggested that it was a third of the cost and had the possibility of saving the tooth which would serve me a hundred times better later in life. The chances of success were about 50/50 maybe better, surly this was worth a go. He disagreed, the expensive and damaging treatment was the only option. I thanked him for his time and left.

Why would you need to know about the inner workings of an Ipod touch, exactly how your mouth is designed and modern dentistry can go about rebuilding almost any tooth based damage, or how the German education system works? Chances are, you don’t, not in any real sense anyway unless you have some weird fetish for obscure information gathering.

However, meet me in a pub or lying down in the middle of the street (Tim Ferris fans will understand this reference) and if you have even a remote interest in any of these things or their relative fields then you are probably going to like me, even if we have never met.

Same goes for if you have any interest in new medical break throughs on joint reconstruction, ligament based injuries, charities problem with leaking money, helping street kids, how gold is mined in Australia or the real corruption going on in Thailand . These are all bytes on knowledge I acquired in the last week.

In fact the likelihood is that whatever you have a passion or interest in, I probably know a small amount about it or at least a little about a related field that will allow us to engage with a common point of interest.

How? Because I have spent the last 7-8 years constantly asking questions; some smart, some delving but most painfully and embarrassingly dumb questions of almost everyone I have ever met – be they pub dweller, professional, life long friend or local prostitute. I am of course joking about the last one (we didn’t talk) Again, another joke. Don’t judge me.

The forth dentist suggested we go for route canal to try and save the tooth. I asked about whether he thought additional laser treatment on the surrounding bone across tooth one and two would help. He seemed impressed I even knew what was possible, and offered the advice that as the treatment is not cheap that doing the other tooth would not really have any effect, just the effected tooth would suffice and that a gap of a few weeks between filling and crowning the tooth would allow an additional xray to determine the infection had been removed. I thanked him and inquired on prices.

Even if you are a raving nutcase who believes the world is flat or that polio was a government created monstrosity to reduce the population pool, or a goth…chances are I will still want to know why you think like you do and learn about what you can teach me on the subject, even if it ultimately becomes obvious you are in fact a nutcase.

The only exception to this rule is if you are a Manchester Unite fan as I have no interest in you whatsoever, unless you happen to be a very hot blonde but even then, you are on thin ice lady.

Asking questions is the very best way I have found of becoming highly sociable, engaging and possibly even popular, while drastically increasing your chances of success and happiness in life through extended daily schooling.

You never know when the information you learn might come in handy.

For example, recently I have concluded from talking to a few guys passionate about SEO that gaining high google rankings is becoming more difficult and expensive and that some better returns can be found by leveraging creativity in well targeted banner adds through other mediums such as Facebook.

This is great, I hate SEO but love creative design – many hours of wasted effort saved. Hours I can now spend playing Call Of Duty.

“We had be talking over the procedure for the last 10 minutes. I had learn’t more from this forth dentist than the other three put together. I understood all the procedures, what the best procedure would be and with what tools and chemicals and the timeframe for it. We decided on taking the best course of action with the best calculate rick of not loosing the tooth while not costing the earth. This dentist I like. The operation was a success and I now know what to talk about if I ever meet anyone in the dentistry trade.”

To Sum Up

The very best teachers are all around us, it just takes the right questions.

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Einstein Economics: Knowing Everything Without Spending A Cent On Courses is a post from: thelifething.com
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The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Jonny — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 09:25:43 +0000

It seems that we are not as easily manipulable by everything around us than we might think. RSA Animate have a very cool video that explores what actually motivates us in the workplace. They also have a whole load of other cool videos on their youtube feed. Worth checking out people.

The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us is a post from: thelifething.com
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How To Seriously Revolutionise Your Thinking And Kick Start Your Success Plans – Another Reader Email Answered

Jonny — Tue, 18 May 2010 08:12:53 +0000

I have a “When time is playing ball” folder on my computer where I stash all the things I plan to work on when I have a spare moment. Today I had such a moment and so dug out this email from one of my readers.

Hey Jonny,

First of all thanks a lot for doing what you do on your blog, you have greatly inspired me to follow a similar path, I have already pointed that out in a comment on your 7 Life system. Currently also doing the 4-hour-work-week book from Tim Ferris, all of this is giving tons of energy. I have decided I need to and I will be an entrepreneur who manages his businesses to create the cashflow to do the things I want in life, and hope to inspire others to do the same.

Without further a due; as I believe every kind of thinking must be stimulated to be mastered (lessons from NLP), I was wondering if you knew a few tricks/tips to get an entrepreneurial mind, what has inspired you? I believe I already have a furious drive, I’ve had for a couple of years now and I finally feel I can put this powerful train on some tracks to actually go somewhere.

I have read your ebooks, blog and the several other blogs you talk about, this has inspired me for a great deal already, but I wish to speed up the process by changing the way I think, so maybe you can point out some things that has changed yours, if you would like.

A great thanks in advance,

Cheers,

Jordi Franken

The Netherlands

So thanks for the email Jordi and here are three practical killer tips for revolutionizing your thinking that will hopefully help you to focus that furious drive of yours.

Shake up your Reality

The problem most of us have in pushing forward towards success is that we are very much hindered by our current reality. What is holding us all back is the current reality we have in our minds.

How we operate at the moment all stems from our current reality. What we think we are capable comes from our current reality, even how we act and behave is derived from our current reality.

In short, our current reality and thus our mind is what is keeping most of us trudging through sludge in the pursuit of something more. We must wage war on small reality thinking.

How Warren Buffet invests is very different to how I invest because his reality is very different. How Richard Brandson acts and makes business decisions is very different to how I go about my own business because his reality is different to mine. What Ronaldo thinks he is capable of on the football field is very differnt to mine because his reality is different.

The greatest asset you have is your mind, an asset even more powerfull then chocolate fudge icecream, but is your thinking and you mindset is small, your successes will also be small. Small thinking creates small achievements.

To shake up your reality I recommend putting yourself in situations that are way above your current level of thinking and get in close contact, but not too close or we might have a lawsuit on our hands, with people that have a much larger reality then you do at present.

You will start to expand your reality by proxy of these people and these environment as you see people living and operating in a different reality. This reality will start to expand yours and so expand and change the way you act and behave.

This “expansion by proxy” is part of the reason the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor.

Kids from rich familys pick up and learn from a completely different reality than those kids from poor backgrounds and so in turn they grow to live in a completely different reality, one of great wealth and not poverty.

If you read the post “The power of expanding your reality as highlighted by my april fools millions” post, you will see that I am constantly trying to expand my reality away from where it is currently.

Expanding your reality is the first and most important step to achieving great things.

Read Ferociously

Though learning through association is a far more effective approach to learning and improving, it is not always possible and definitely not as freely available as learning through books.

If you want to get successful quickly then you need to start investing in knowledge and the best way to start that is to read ferociously. Chop through those books like a wild hungry squirrel with a fetish for paper.

Reading will expand your mind and give it a foundation of knowledge as well as fuel for creativity in whatever field you are in. It is like gasoline for your success spark.

For example, I am incredibly interested in money, finance and wealth creation at the moment and I want to be wealthy while I am still young. That being said it is not enough just to want to rich, I know I don’t know the first thing about how money works and how to create wealth because I come from a middle class background, not a rich one.

Therefore I read. This year I am reading a book a week on things relating to wealth, money and finance so that by the end of the year I will have a good foundation of knowledge to start getting creative and develop my own wealth creation.

Find what you want to be good at in life and then grab all the reading material you can get you grubby hands on on your chosen subject. Get your teeth and a good proportion of your face into some books.

Tell Great Stories Of Your Failures

No one likes to fail, fundamentally, because it is humiliating. Whenever you take a risk there is a chance that you are going to fail, this you can count on just like you can death, taxes and a shortage of chocolate fudge ice cream just when you want some.

You can also count on the fact that there will be people there to say “I told you so”, usually loud and in ear shot of many other people. Forget about these people, they risk nothing and so they do nothing and ultimately will gain nothing. Punch them in the back of the head if it makes you feel better.

However, the sting of failure can be lessened by embracing it and even celebrating in it. When people ask me about my business or my life I like to go into great detail on my failures, not my successes (mainly because I have more to talk about with failure than success). People are usually intrigued by this, thinking that focussing on failure seems a very negative approach to life, that or I am some kind of loon.

Perhaps, though this focus on where I went wrong allows me to correct the mistake and hopefully not make it again. Also, by bringing my failures to the centre of attention I am also allowing myself to let failure into my life. If I am happy to talk light heartedly about failure then future failures are easier to take light heartedly.

If you can look light heartedly on failure and laugh about it, you can risk bigger failure and it is by risking bigger failures that your expand your reality and ultimately achieve bigger things.

To Sum Up

Focus on expanding your reality first. If you have a small reality and work hard at success you will still only achieve small successes.

Read ferociously on the topics that interest you until you start seeing the themes repeat themselves. When this happens, read some more.

Finally, celebrate failure ad revel in your lack of success. It will allow you to succeed in the future.

I hope this helps both Jordi and you other lovely readers out there and if there are any more questions you may have or you wish me to expand on any of the points made above please leave me a comment or drop me an email.

How To Seriously Revolutionise Your Thinking And Kick Start Your Success Plans – Another Reader Email Answered is a post from: thelifething.com
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35 Things I Have Learnt In the Last 25 Years

Jonny — Sat, 08 May 2010 14:06:01 +0000

Hello all you lovely readers. I am back. All limbs are accounted for, skin is sufficiently tanned, I just received an awesome “Thelifething.com” inscribed red baseball cap for a birthday present and all is right with the world.

I am sure you have all missed me, and even if you haven’t I am going to pretend that you have. Lets get right back into things with a post of some of the thoughts I was jotting down while sunning myself on a beach in Goa regarding the most important lessons I have learn’t in the last 25 years. Its about 2000 words but well worth a gander. Be sure to say hi in the comments so I can make sure that my readers haven’t all died and enjoy.

Also, check out the new resources section which is under development and let me know what you think of the new design direction for the site. Cheers all.

1. There is no greater loss than that of a loved one.

As many of you know, a few years ago my Mum lost her fight with cancer. For those that have never experienced the loss of a loved one then you are truly blessed. For those that have, my heart goes out to you. There truly is no greater loss you can experience in life.

2. Discontentment is a power full motivator…

I love the life that I live but I am not comfortable with it. I want more…bigger, better, faster, shinier things and experiences and thus I am also discontented with life. You should be also. Discontentment will keep you pushing out of your comfort zone and taking on new challenges while you continue to grow and develop.

3. …so is Anger

Sometimes I get angry, not to the extent of turing green, losing the clothes and throwing things around but definitely slightly less than happy. The source of this anger can be many things – situations, problems, a run of bad luck, people doing better than I am. The thing about anger is though that when controlled well it can become one of the most powerful motivators in life and I use it to drive me towards bigger goals.

4. Nothing is ever as important as it seems

Remember back to your old school days and the weekly class test every Friday, seemed like the most important thing in the world – well at least to a geek like me. How about the last school prom or finals? At the time they may have crippled you with fear that failure here will be the end of the world. Seems foolish now doesn’t it but how many of us are currently worrying over situations that will probably be meaningless in a few years time.

5. Generally speaking, the best things in life are unplanned

This little nugget of wisdom was hammered home during my three months in India. I am a great one for plans and vision but even I can’t argue that the very best experiences I have had in life have almost all be unplanned. Leave time in your day, week, month, year just to let everything hang out and see what life brings your way.

6. Happiness is best shared

Traveling around India alone was incredible but there were times when I wished there were people I cared about with me to experience some of the incredible things I was seeing and doing. The very best times in my life in the last 25 years have always been in the company of others.

7. Being confident in a group is easy, being confident alone is more difficult.

I’m a pretty confident with people and don’t struggle that much in social situations however part of the reason I went to India alone was because I knew it is a lot harder to be confident when on your own and I wanted to develop my skills.

8. Confidence is a state of mind

That being said I have come to learn over the last 25 that what goes on in your head really reflects on how you come to act. The battle with confidence, success, wealth, and happiness is really just a battle in your mind. If you can win that battle, and it is no walk in the park, the the reality is merely the details.

9. There is nothing more valuable in life than good friendships

This follows on from sharing happiness. Once the mechanics of life are stripped away, jobs , money, gadgets, food, clothes and ice cream the core of what makes us all tick is relationships and the development of those relationships.I would take good friendships over anything else the world has to offer. They are not free, they require investment of time and effort but the rewards are exponential.

10. Usually the prize goes to the one who tries the hardest

From time to time, we have all been guilty of passing off others success as a fluke or undeserved, I know I subconsciously and sometimes consciously do it all the time. If you find yourself doing this then take the time to look into how the person really got there. More often than not, underneath the glamour of instant success lies many years of hard work and sacrifice. Try developing an attitude that everyone successful person deserves what they have achieved. It is very freeing.

11. School doesn’t teach you much

School teaches you to pass exams, life teaches you to live. Though an education is important the biggest danger is that you believe classroom mentality that there is only one right answer and one must not fail. There is never only one right answer and it is through failure that we learn to succeed.

12. You can just as easily create your past as you can your future

Your past is, as they say, in the past but this doesn’t mean that you can’t choose to remember it how you want to remember it and allow it to shape your future in the way that you want it to. Nothing is concrete, not even the past, it is all a matter of what you think.

13. Failure stings

Those that have felt the sting of failure know what I am talking about. Though if one is not willing to put up with the odd sting, one will never enjoy the swim and the more one is stung the less each subsequent sting hurts.

14. The best way of getting over failure is movies and sugar

It’s a personal thing.

15. The best of anything is never done alone

No businessman is an island. It is the collaboration of many great minds that create great visions and achieve great things.

16. Life is all about balance

120 hour weeks might make you successful but you will have no one to share the success with. True success comes from finding the balance in your work, social, family, health and spiritual life. Lean too much to anyone side and the bike falls over.

17. We all know very little about almost nothing

The world has been around a long time, you and I have not. We each know very little about the huge expanse of our own existence so anyone who thinks they have nothing to learn is a dangerous person to be around. Stay clear of them in dark alleys at night.

18. All of us are fallible

Yes, even David Beckham. No one is perfect and we all fail. Those who have never failed have never achieved anything so cut the other person some slack if they slip up from time to time, we are all just trying to live to the best of our ability.

19. Sometimes being alone is the greatest thing in the world

It gives you time to think and reflect so that you can see the world through a fresh pair of eyes.

20. Life is a series of mini adventures

1 day, 1 month, 1 year, it matters not. Life is simply a roller coaster ride of up and downs, in and outs and free falls and emergency stops…let it be this way. Plan the adventure into your life.

21. Control over ones own mind is the most powerful force in the world

It is the most valuable asset you own, the most powerful computer you have…the greatest flirtation device you possess. Be in control and use it and it will MAKE you, lose control and waste it and it will break you.

22. Most things are overhyped

Unfortunately most people over promise and underperform, so take every “new greatest thing” with a pinch of salt.

23. What makes you happy won’t always be what makes the crowd happy

We are all unique so living another persons life is not going to make you happy. KNow yourself, be confident in yourself and follow what makes you happy.

24. People can and will justify any action

Arguing seldom solves problems for this very reason. People will do what people want to do. Save time and stress by focusing on making sure your your own actions are inline with your own principles and let the world decide about the others.

25. You define your own reality

What you think about becomes reality. How you believe your life will turn out or what you think you are capable of generally turns out to come true.

26. Inspiration is more valuable than money

Money can come and go and never seem to last long enough but a spark created in the inspired can light a fire that will burn for many years to come.

27. Sometimes you have to leave people behind

Not everyone you meet is destined to share the journey with you and people will come and go. From time to time you have to make the hard decision to let people go in order that you both can grow. It is never easy.

28. Life is full of surprises

That is the joy of it. The best laid plans, the most well thought out visions, the greatest preparations can all be laid bare by the surprises of life. Sometimes they just crept up on you out of nowhere.

29. Always take expert advice with a pinch of salt, sometimes a spoonfull

Advice is very powerful, both in a positive and negative way. All advice and all advisors are not created equal so it is important to put any new information through your own personal filtering system before you apply it to anything meaningful.

30. Don’t worry about what people think of you…few care that much

If you can have just 10 people care enough about you to give you more than a passing thought on a regular basis then you are a blessed person indeed. People are usually too involved in worry about themselves and their own dreams and desires to spend time worrying about yours.

31. No one is ever wrong

You can never tell some one they are wrong, even if the evidence backs you up. People have very highly developed filtering systems they see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, feel what they want to feel and think what they want to think, regardless of facts. Save your breath.

32. The whole of your life is ahead of you.

This is the first day of the rest of your life.

33. You should always come first, then your family, then your friends, and then the world.

You can be no help to anyone unless you sort yourself out first, if you don’t you simple end up taking your problems to others. You can also only influence your own sphere of influence. Start small with your family, then your social circle and then take on the world.

34. Occasionally “Fuck” sums it up perfectly.

35. There is nothing better in life than living

So enjoy it every minute of every hour or every day.

It good to be back.

35 Things I Have Learnt In the Last 25 Years is a post from: thelifething.com
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