“Really, you know you can do it. Just take a deep breath.”
“No, dude, I really can’t. I swear, it’s impossible.”

 
“Impossible? Why is it impossible?”
“It just is. If I drive over that bridge, I’ll die. I’ll have a panic attack or something. My heart will freeze up or something.”

 
“Ok, let me get this straight. If you drive over that bridge, you will die. But if I drive, you won’t drive.”
“Yea.”

 
“So it’s not actually the water that will kill you, it’s the combination of the water and the steering wheel? The brake pedal? The accelerator? How exactly does that work? How do you know that will happen?”
“What do you mean how will I know? I just know.”

 
“What if you could run through your thinking in slow slow motion. Like if they made a clone of somebody that was exactly like you, but they forgot to put in that piece of information about dying while driving over a bridge, how would you tell that clone to program that into his brain? What or how would he have to think for that to happen?”
“Well, first, wait! Why am I supposed to give this to somebody else? I don’t want it, why should he want it?”

 
“Just pretend, ok? So what would you tell him?”
“Well first, you see the water, and then you feel the car moving, and then, you get this, I dunno, tightness, and then you just know. You will die.”

 
“Ok, water, car moving, tightness, you’re gonna die. Got it.”
“Are we done yet?”

 
“No, well yea, well almost. Where did you learn this?”
“What do you mean?”

 
“This model of the world, it’s very interesting. Where or who from did you learn this model of the world?”
“I’m not sure, man.”

 
“I mean was there a time where water plus driving plus tightness meant something else? And for some reason you decided to make them equal death, that is when you mix them together right? Where exactly did you learn this model of the world? Did you see it on TV or something?”
“Wow, I never thought of it that way. I guess that time I was a kid. When I heard that that kid drowned.”

 
“Wow, sounds terrible. What happened?”
“These kids were jumping off a bridge, and their mom wasn’t paying attention, and one of them hit his head, and then died.”

 
“Were you there?”
“No, but I think my mom told me about it. To make me be careful and not jump off bridges, I guess.”

 
“Do you trust your mom?”
“Of course.”

 
“Did you ever jump off a bridge after that?”
“Um, nope, never.”

 
“So your mom’s story worked, right?”
“Yep.”

 
“You’re safe, right?”
“Yep.”

 
“Did she say anything about driving over bridges? Or only jumping.”
“Dude I was only six.”

 
“So you made up the driving part yourself. Did you understand driving at the time, how it works, how to go to the DMV and get a license and all that?”
“Dude, I was only six.”

 
“So maybe the driving part was a mistake?”
“Yea, I guess so.”

 
“Are you read to go?”
“Yea.”

 
“You want me to drive?”
“No, man, I got it.”

 
“Good.”

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In all the interactions that you’ve ever had, all the interactions you ever will have, there are only four things that are in your control. Luckily, these four sources of power are all you will ever need to achieve any dream, manifest any goal, and create any situation that you desire in life. These are not something you need to go out and get. You cannot buy these, you cannot steal these. You need do absolutely nothing to attain these, for you already have them.

These are your thoughts, your emotions, your words, and your actions.

Everything you see around you was created with these. All things tangible and intangible. From the great Sphinx to the very computer screen you are now reading, all were created with only these four powers.

Lets see how you can tap them now.

Thought

Those ideas you have floating around in your head. The result of billions neural synapses firing to create mental images. Created by evolution or God, to assist you in moving through the world to plan, learn and conquer. Have a look on the article regarding focus to get an idea how you can begin to control your thoughts, so that they don’t control you.

Emotions

Emotions arise in our minds when we use our thoughts to give meaning to events. Suppose you sit next a cute girl (or a cute guy, depending on your gender or tastes) at a coffee shop. As soon you sit, you notice that she inhales, and then turns her body slightly away from you. What just happened? If you assume that she finds you repulsive, and turned so she wouldn’t have to face you, what emotion would that cause? If you assume she finds you irresistibly attractive, and suddenly became very shy, what emotion would that cause? The secret here? Any meaning you give to a situation is perfect. The important thing is not whether it’s accurate or not, because we never really know why other people do what they do, but what emotions we create in ourselves by giving certain meanings to things.  When you start to pay attention to how you interpret the world around you, you can start to play around with giving different meanings to give yourself better emotions. This takes time and effort, and I will be writing several future articles to that end, so stay tuned.

Words

Words can be powerful. Words can be eloquent. Speeches throughout history have moved people to great heights of goodness and love, and to evil, horrible depths of destruction. A kind string of words can convince somebody not to kill themself. A kindly said “hello” can change a persons complete outlook. The Jurassic 5’s The Verbal Herman Munster said “..word power can plow through acres of cornfields, paragraphs cut like warm steel..” When you begin to pay attention to the words that you use, you can become incredibly powerful. It’s no coincidence that the ’spell’ which describes the correct order of letters in a word is the same ’spell’ that describes the correct order of words in a magic incantation.

Actions

The vehicle that carries the sum of our power is our actions. What we do. How we do it. Not just large physical movements. Body language, facial expressions, smiles, frowns. Our actions and words can synchronize together to either display a congruence so powerful that we can become kings, or with such chaotic psychosis that people steer wide to avoid us altogether.

Our reality is indeed a reflection of how we manage, control and use our four powers to our advantage. By releasing the childishly dependent strategy of hoping for free gifts from others, you can realize that when you harness your four powers for great achievements, you will receive more abundance than you ever imagined possible.

Good thoughts lead to good feelings, which naturally spawn congruent words and actions which lead to success. If reality is not how you like you need only go to your source of power. Change your thoughts, change your world.

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Have you ever stopped to realize that something in your experience wasn’t exactly quite what you thought it was? An event or a situation that you interpreted one way, but as you look back, it takes on a new light?

For example, think of something in your past, something that happened, say five or ten years ago. And imagine as you were, just before that situation took place. And now imagine yourself as you were going through that situation. How does that feel? What do you see? What do you hear?

What meanings do you choose to give the events unfolding around you, now, as you remember what happened to you in your past? What was the one element of that experience that you chose to define it for you? Was it the way something appeared, or what somebody said, or something about the way somebody looked at you? Perhaps it was the way you felt afterwards?

For example, once I saw a guy talking into a mirror at the gym. He was standing really close, and he was really animated.  Talking with fluidly changing and almost chaotic facial expressions, arms flailing around. The meaning that I chose to give to that situation was that the guy was crazy. I could have given another meaning, since I really didn’t know what was going on, but that was my best, my quickest guess.

Now what happens if you take your earlier situation, and then move forward in time  a couple of years, or even right up until recently. Can you find another similarly structured situation, but with a completely different meaning that you decided to give it? What was different? Why was the second situation, which was similar to the first, different in the meaning that you gave it? Were there different, more familiar people involved? Was the setting more comfortable? Had the weather changed for the better?

In my situation, I saw another guy talking to himself in the mirror. I didn’t know him, but I surmised he was practicing for a performance, because he was standing outside of a theater that I go to sometimes. I saw two different guys, that I’d never met before doing the same thing, but I gave them two different meanings. One guy was loony, and one guy was a professional actor practicing his craft.

What was different for you?

One of the more interesting things about this, is that as you increase your understanding of your experience, and naturally apply different realizations, it follows that you can vastly increase your potential for flexibility in your perception. And when you can apply this flexibility in real-time, so you discover different choices for the meanings that you used to give automatically, your world will astoundingly open up.

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Drifting aimlessly. Meandering here and there. Wandering up and down, back and forth, left and right. Not traveling in any discernable direction. Seemingly without aim or purpose. Reacting, rather than acting. Reacting automatically to an environment that is as unpredictable as the earth is old. These are your thoughts. And unless you learn to control your thoughts, your thoughts will control you.

Unfortunately if you allow that to happen, which all too many people do, you place yourself under the control of a infinitely complex feedback loop to which you have no option other than follow blindly, and hope everything works out.  You know too well that it rarely does.

And the worse part is that those times when it doesn’t work out, although it seems like the responsibility lies outside your wonderfully developed mind-body biological system, in truth, the responsibility lies with you. And only you. I believe it was Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin that said it best.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way. God, Mother Nature, the wonderfully random process of Darwinian Natural Selection, whoever or whatever it was that created you, didn’t create such a magnificent collection of cells and bones and muscles, and your fantastically powerful brain to just wander aimlessly through life.

You were created for a purpose, a reason, a destination. You are a missile with a highly sophisticated guidance system that scientiests are just now starting to understand. And known to only a few people, and put into practice by even fewer, is one of the easiest ways to harness the awesome power of your mind. To develop the power of concentration.

Remember when you were a kid, and you or some of your friends would play with a magnifying glass? You could take a very inexpensive magnifying glass, even one made of cheap plastic, and use it to focus the passive rays of the sun into incredible power. Power to burn, power to start fires. That power was harnessed by taking only a minuscule sliver of the suns total power and focusing it. The sun is a giant ball of fire, much bigger than the Earth fueled by the process of nuclear fusion, changing hydrogen atoms into helium atoms. One substance, one process, and enough energy to power an entire planet through eon after eon.

Your brain is infinitely more complex and intricate than that. Infinitely more rich. Infinitely more resourceful. The sun produces heat, and fire, and radiation. Your brain can produce ideas, which can turn into cities, art, cathedrals, poems, songs, equations. Whatever you can imagine, you can create. And you have the power to focus yourself.  Strengthen your mind so you focus your thoughts only on what supports and enlightens you. Focus your thoughts only on ideas that can increase happiness and abundance for you and those you love.

How to do that? How to gain that elusive power that through simple practice will give you an edge almost unheard of in today’s world?

Consistent practice. Opposite of the practice of meditation, in which you practice the emptying of your mind. To practice focus, think of an object. An apple. A bright red apple. Hold the thought in your mind of only an apple. Hold it for as long as you can. If you can hold it for five seconds, you’re doing pretty good. Practice whenever you get a chance. Red lights. In the bathroom. On the elevator. Decide to choose a thought, and hold only that thought for as long as you can.

When you can hold a simple thought, of a simple picture, move on to more complicated pictures. Ones containing a small amount of motion. A hummingbird floating next to a feeder. A clown juggling three bowling balls. A seal with a phone book balanced on its nose.

When you get good at that, you can move on to the next step. You’ll need to prepare yourself with five fantastic memories. If you ever notice your thoughts drifting to unhappy imaginations about the future, you can pull up your five happy memories, and force out the bad guys.

Start by remembering a happy memory from childhood. Really get into it. Close your eyes and easily allow yourself to float back into that memory. Really relive it. Relive it several times. Every time you relive this, put the memory into your left thumb. That’s right, put that wonderful memory into your left thumb. Use what you learned about pegging in the articles on memory and associate that memory with your left thumb.

Do the same with your forefinger, middle finger, ring finger and pinky. Take your time. They don’t have to be childhood memories. Any good memory will do. Make sure it’s a strong, powerful memory. Sex, money, sports, anything that causes you to automatically remember good feelings will work.

You might need to practice a few times before it really sets. But after you take the time to really attach those good memories to your left hand, you will have a powerful source to instantly and powerfully re direct your brain should you ever find yourself thinking less than supportive thoughts. Just open your left hand, and take a moment with your thumb and your fingers recalling all those good memories you’ve programmed in. Once you cycle through all five, make a fist and hold it up to sybolically chase the bad thoughts that have crept into your brain.

After you do this consciously a few times you won’t even have to recall the memories. By training your brain in this manner, simply by clenching your left hand into a fist will immediately flood your brain with good thoughts.

In future articles, I will teach you how install resources, goals, and other skills so you can automatically direct your brain, giving you the power to accomplish great things in your life.

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This morning I saw this old guy that I usually pass by on my morning walk. “Ohayo Gozaimasu!” I said, as I usually do. (’Ohayo gozaimasu’ is Japanese for ‘good morning.’) It seemed that he ignored me. I slowed down a bit, because he always responds in kind, and very cheerfully. He didn’t even seem to make any attempt at eye contact. I turned to look and see what he was looking at, and all I could see was a bunch of camellias over across the road.

Camellias are an interesting flower. They are nice to look at, and bloom when all the other flowers around them have decided to take the winter off. Maybe they think they got the short end of the stick, but I’m not so sure. Being a contrarian can have it’s advantages. Especially if you are a contrarian just because of chance.

For example, when you make a choice, some people base their decisions on internal factors, and others make their decisions on external factors. If you decide largely by internal factors, you will have your own reasons for doing that, without any regard to what other people will think. Like when you decide to get up a 5 AM and exercise every morning. You don’t do it because it’s popular, you do it because you’ve decided to do it for your own reasons. Other people make decisions based on external factors, or other people. Those people make decisions based on how other people think, or how they imagine other people will think. It’s almost like allowing a giant group of imaginary people make your own decision for you.

Like sometimes I’ll see a group of kids walking to school. They are supposed to walk in a straight line, with some designated kid the leader. Sometimes, though, I see a kid hanging out in the back, like you do sometimes when you decide to march to your own drummer, and kick a rock while you walk.

And sometimes when you decide to be a contrarian just for being a contrarians sake, you get extra benefits. That’s one of the reasons why the camellia leaf is used to make popular tea. One of the most popular ones is called Christmas Camellia.

And it turns out that old guy didn’t say hi because his wife had bought him a pair of earmuffs that affected his hearing a bit. Hear I was thinking he was marching to a different drummer, but that different drummer turned out to be his wife.

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I met an old friend of mine for dinner the other night. He seemed really upset about something. I kept pressing for details, but he didn’t want to upset my seemingly good mood. I have been on an interesting diet lately, and many people have been telling me that I look like I’ve lost weight, so I’ve been able to act a little happier than normal. But finally, my friend caved and told me his problem.

Turns out he and his wife had been planning on taking a vacation as soon as they could get their respective vacation times at their jobs to coincide. Their bigger plan is to take on last vacation together, kind of like a second honeymoon (even though they’ve only been married 2 years) before starting to build a family.  Seems that they take a pragmatic approach. Get married. Save money. Have kids.

“So what’s the problem?” I asked. “You guys sound like you’re really together! You guys are able to plan your life together, and make your plans that that you an easily achieve them. You are a lot better than most people. Most people shoot first, then maybe think about aiming in couple weeks. What gives?”

After my friend explained his problem to me, I understood. It seems that they both had their respective hearts set on a specific vacation place. And they both assumed that the other person had agreed to go to their place. And when they sat down to plan their fun, they realized that they weren’t on the same page. And since they both kind of viewed this as a ’last vacation together’ kind of thing, neither of them wanted to budge.

Which is interesting in and of itself. Most people can make plans, and then follow through. But we can run into problems when you don’t communicate well with others who will be involved in those plans. It’s like when other people don’t object, we assume that they will go along with us. I reminded my friend about this, as raising a kid requires that you be flexible and communicate well. I asked my friend that since they were both guilty of the same thing, if they could compromise.

“What do you mean, compromise?” My friend asked. “I want to go here, and she wants to go there. They are totally different. One person has to lose for the other to win.” Aha. I thought I saw the problem.

I was reminded of a business negotiation seminar I took. We would role play being different business situations, and practice these negotiation skills. For example, a Union Boss would want more health benefits, more vacation time, and higher pay. The Business Manager would want to save money wherever possible. The trick in being a negotiator, was to keep asking “What’s important about that?” Until you got a point where the Union Boss and the Business Manager could find a solution that would satisfy both of their respective deeper needs.  

For example, the Union Boss’s underlying concern was that the workers would realize that the company was serious about taking care of them, as the increases in health benefits and wages were really only symbolic. And the Business Manager was concerned with the long term growth of the company. As a ‘pretend’ negotiator, I explained to the Union Boss that the more stable the Business manager thought the future of the company was, the more willing he’d be to extend their long term contracts. And I explained to the Business Manager that by giving just a little bit of a raise, they would be much more willing to lock in that rate if it were for an extended contract period.

It was an interesting seminar that taught a lot about negotiating, and the importance of communication. Especially when you are able to find out what’s important to the people you care about, so when you make plans for the future, you can be sure to involve everyone.

I explained this to my friend, and we actually role played a few scenarios between him and his wife.  After a few practice rounds, he was convinced that they would be able to find a new place which would satisfy both their vacations needs for their second honeymoon. 

They invited me over to dinner a few days later. I tepidly asked them about their vacation, hoping I wasn’t precluding myself from any future dinners by starting world war three.

They both immediately broke into huge grins. Aha! I thought to myself. Maybe they would at least give me partial credit for solving their marital problems. Where would they go? Greece? Italy? Mexico? Maybe they’d let me house sit. They have a really nice, really HUGE flat screen HD TV.