How To Persuade Yourself And Others

One thing that has been brought to my attention lately is the power of learning persuasion skills. The political season of course brings billions of dollars worth of campaigning in the presidential campaign alone all intended to either persuade you to actually turn out and vote or tell you who specifically to vote for. If it had no effect, they wouldn't do it.

But when the election season is over, you still have individual companies spending hundreds of millions of dollars and you have thousands of companies trying to vie for your attention and persuade.

But persuasion is not something just trying to get you to take an action in the future. Persuasion can also be done internally. Additionally, it can also be focused on controlling your reaction. and create confirmation bias that convinces you that you like the product before you have even tried it, so that if you do try it once, you're more likely to purchase it again.

Persuasion is being used against you. If you're like me, you want to turn persuasion on it's head and instead use it on yourself so that you make better decisions in spite of all the ads bombarding your mind and convincing that you need a particular product.

The idea that sugary chemical soft drinks and unhealthy foods should be consumed is an unhealthy decision, and one that you're being persuaded to make. In addition there are chemical additions to caffeine and sugar. By taking control of persuasion as well as using knowledge to understand how to control your urges, you can persuade yourself to  eat healthier and make better life decisions.

Although I don't have anything groundbreaking to share with you that you can't learn elsewhere, I want to suggest you consider learning from reading books in a persuasion reading list.

The cliffs note version of things I have learned are:
1)The amino acids (proteins) we take in helps produce our neurotransmitters which effects how much of a particular brain chemical we have. read this for a primer or a shorter highlight below:
Using Amino Acids to End Emotional Eating
When psychological help does not clear up emotional eating, we need to look at the four brain chemicals – neurotransmitters – that create our moods. They are:
1. dopamine/norepinephrine, our natural energizer and mental focuser (Tyrosine)
2. GABA (gamma amino butyric acid), our natural sedative (GABA,Taurine)
3. endorphin, our natural painkiller (phenylalanine)
4. serotonin, our natural mood stabilizer and sleep promoter (Tryptophan)

parenthesis are the amino acids which the body synthesizes into the neurotransmitters. L-glutamine is also mentioned as the reserve storage of sugars needed for the blood.

2)The brain is not capable of accurate perception. See this Ted Talk.

3)Confirmation Bias and Reticular Activating System- Confirmation bias basically functions off of the reticular activating system's tendency to seek out evidence that supports a closely held belief as well as ignore evidence that contradicts a belief. When evidence contradicts a belief we experience cognitive dissonance. Persuasion often uses confirmation bias. The words we use get us to seek information or patterns that confirms words.

4)Neural Networks- See this video:  The essweense of the video is that the brain works through association. Through that understanding and putting two and two together you can understand how the human mind learns language.Try to do so before proceeding to number 5.

5-Learning Language

We constantly are looking for patterns by associating all 5 senses together, creating memories and neural networks, and associating sights, sounds, pictures, and context. A single word that we first learn is an association of the sounds we hear others make, the sounds we hear ourselves make during baby babel, an emotion we get from hearing a person say it and possibly the sights associated with seeing someone say those words. The physical need of our mothers as infants combined with our mothers often saying the word "MAMA" or "mommy" to try to get us to learn those words creates a need to attempt to express combined with the associations we make often enough and the mind learns its first word as well as how to say it.

But that's only one word. This has to be repeated for many other words, but usually the parent is thrilled by hearing their child say it's first words and they want to repeat the experience. Several words at first may not have much meaning or context of how to speak, but we know or recognize they associate with certain objects. Eventually the child may learn to say "I want my bottle" or something that sounds close enough to get the message across. The child then begins learning complex context of the words "I want" are associated with some form of request. In our minds we associate words with a picture of an object and possibily a desire or emotion, possibly a physical sensation of touch. These primative neural networks have memories with them and we remember how to say it, how the word webs together with other emotions and what it means. The brain then learns action words which may no longer be a still image, but a memory of a more animated image or visual movie. Concepts may associate several ideas and sensations together. From this I can deduce that thoughts form ideas, ideas form concepts, emotionalized concepts form beliefs, beliefs form paradigms, paradigm determines identity, identity forms our way of operating and how we view life.

6)Learning By Design - Our understanding of the world is shaped by our perceptions of reality, which are shaped by past experience, which form words. The mind is bombarded with information and it is only consciously aware of a very small percentage of information. Somewhere floating around the internet is a statement that our subconscious mind processes 2 million bits of information per second where our conscious mind only processes 2,000 at once. I don't know if these exact numbers are true, but the point is the mind makes neural association whether it intends on it or not. Persuasion is thus nothing more than using the brains process of learning. It doesn't require a trance to install associations, as the brain is designed to learn.

7)Simple Concept - The brain seeks pleasure and avoids pain. However, it does not distinguish between a real and imagined (or visually projected event such as a movie). It merely needs to make enough associations of a topic with pleasure or pain to trigger a subconscious perception to avoid something or seek something.

8)How Association Changes The Way We Think - Therefore, if we want to control our own minds, we have to understand how easily we can be persuaded. Even subliminal messages over and over again can PRE-suade our minds to have certain thoughts and feelings about a topic before we even experience it. It's more than just confirmation bias to create associations as discussed before, it's learning how to structure our own brain around a particular way of operating. Our identities can be formed in this way. Perhaps we see two topics together combined with laughter. We release the chemical producing pleasure and associate on a very small scale an idea or topic with pleasure. Repeat various forms of association of something with pleasure often enough and there will be a greater desire for exploring some idea than doing something else, if given the opportunity. Suppose we are watching a movie and something scary happens and a subliminal message flashes. It doesn't have to be an intentional subliminal message. It can simply be a motif or a thought in our own head that we correlate with a particular action. colors may have a particular unconscious psychological response, however many of these are also learned and reinforced through repetition.

8)Television Programming--literally. -Whether intentional or not, the Limbic and nervous system will respond to a movie. For example in a scary movie in a particular scene it will trigger adrenaline and increased heart rate, dilated pupils as if the threat itself was real. A movie or a TV show or a vividly imagined event from the perspective of how the mind operates in response is indistinguishable from the real thing. This means that both overt things like moral of a particular story as well as covert things like association and mental patterning are influencing the way in which we think and the things we learn and eventually the personalities we adopt. Just like our primate ancestors, we imitate behavior that we see, adopt personalities and identify with characters and react as if they would.

9)Self Persuasion - If we want to persuade ourselves, we can use visualization, repetition, subliminal messages (through software programs on our computers) as well as branding and using words that will trigger confirmation bias. For example if we want to exercise more we can associate pleasure with it by imagining feeling good, associate fear of doing nothing by imagining melting into goop by sitting still for long enough, use word associations like the word "bright" and "sunny" and other words we personally consider enjoyable, and associating it with the word exercise. We may even say "I have a hunger for working out" and whenever we get hungry and want food, go run a mile first and then eat. The hunger for food will then be associated with the task of exercising if we want to eat. As long as you do this in the right order often enough it's a good response and also one consistent with our ancestors who had to chase down and hunt food before technology no longer required it.

10)Additional Technique - There are several important, learnable skills in regards to persuasion that I have not yet learned myself, but hopefully with that understanding of at least how the brain learns and how confirmation bias and the reticular activating system works you will have enough tools to begin to take back control of your life, and if not you can always learn more about it.

Persuading others is a separate skill, but there are so many overlaps that it seems to largely just require additional skills on top of self-persuasion skills like story telling, reading people and conversation. When you learn these you can also create audio recordings of yourself talking and listen to them yourself for self persuasion.

How To Learn Success - Luck Is A Skill

“In mathematics, two angles that are said to coincide fit together perfectly. The word “coincidence” does not describe luck or mistakes. It describes that which fits together perfectly.”— Wayne W. Dyer

Most people think coincidences are lucky events in and of themselves. That people that have several coincidence that all contribute towards success are "lucky". The idea that luck is a skill seems contrary to logic for many who have defined luck as "positive, random chance encounters" and skill as "an ability to do or produce something effectively". However, one function that physics teaches is that nothing is random, everything is cause and effect. So realistically, there isn't really "luck" as most define it.

Instead what people consider "luck" is really nothing more than events that seem out of control to anyone watching that actually are resulting because of specific causes. The cause may be unknown to most. In fact even to the consistently "lucky", they may not know what specifically is contributing towards their "luck". However, if one develops a skill in producing meaningful coincidences, they are in fact developed in the skill of what most would call "luck".

Of course no one has the power to influence a coinflip or dice roll with regular accuracy. Well, within reason.

Perhaps if an individual is allowed to roll a dice on their own and they spend an enormous amount of work learning and running calculations of physics and running simulations using some physics based engine and determining the exact arm motion and amount of force and angle conducive to a specific result from a specific starting point, and then practicing for 10,000 hours until muscle memory takes over and one can influence the odds of the dice roll enough to gain an edge. But outside of perhaps an insane method that may not even work unless you are able to provide perfectly consistent conditions, no one can use their mind to influence a dice roll of manifest a "lucky roll" more often than the odds dictate indefinitely.

But not everything in life should be looked at as a dice roll. Even a dice roll has cause and effect relationship, but the reason it functions as if it is random is because it's sensitive to very minor changes. This is not randomness, but chaos. The weather was once thought to be random, until it was found to be chaotic by Edward Lorentz who modeled movements on a computer. There are specific causes and effects, it's just that in chaos, a small change in the system can cause a massive change to the result. It's hard to quantify all of them, or to predict accurately what will happen 100% of the time, so instead the weatherman will do their best to determine a range of outcomes and an approximate probability of the event. This may not be useful in a single prediction, but if you could for example determine when there's a 20% chance of a single dice roll landing on 4, you have a strong meaningful edge that can produce profits over time if the upside vs the risk is large enough.

Even when life is a dice roll, the person will produce more positive outcome if they can manage to deal with or manage more negative outcomes and only take the risks where the rewards outweigh the risk, or better yet, the skill gained plus the reward is more than the risk and managed appropriately.

One way of obtaining "luck" more often has a really simple formula of taking more chances at the lowest risk possible relative to the reward often enough while managing the downside correctly to obtain a high enough reward to offset the risks over time. It's simply to increase the volume and only "throw the dice" when the odds are in your favor or the reward is so disproportional to the risk that the expected value is positive.

If you have a 10% chance of success, but that success pays out 20 times the risk, it's a good outcome, provided you don't risk 100% of your capital or even 10% of your capital. In fact you should probably only put about 1% at risk or less, but up to 5.5% would still be worth taking if you could withstand failure and continue a very large number of times over your life.

There's 5 elements to success: risk, reward, odds, management and knowledge/experience (the intangible value you get out of it). Managing all of these and making good decisions is one way to be lucky. If you manage your risk, you will survive longer then most so you are in a position to get lucky while others take far too much risk and lose and get discouraged or wiped out so that after a few losses their next win is on such a small amount of capital that it doesn't even get them back to even. I prefer risking far less so that experience can be accumulated over time, and larger edges can be gained over time.

Another way of obtaining "luck" more often is to work in a way where every "failure" allows you to get better at something that you can apply towards the next attempt. In other words, improving your rate of success per attempt over time. That may mean not necessarily chasing the most obvious path. It may be choosing the path that will develop technique that you can use later. People usually don't judge you by your failures that are virtually unrecorded, and life is a mechanism powered by failure, particularly in capitalistic societies.

Every business eventually fails given enough time. Even General Electric and General Motors have not failed yet, but they have had individual failures. Also, given enough time they will be acquired ending their existence, or they will split up into two companies and one of the derivatives will fail. Given 10,000 years the companies that acquire them or all of the companies they split into will eventually probably all fail. But does that mean the economy has to eventually end? No! All of the eventual failures in the meantime will provide experiences and knowledge and help others to survive or make life better in some way, and generate transactions that keep the economy going as a result. Experiences and knowledge will be applied to the next business or career for in many cases dozens, hundreds, thousands of individuals or more.

Those failures will provide the means for others to succeed. And the next time the entrepreneur exits the existing business to start something else, he will probably do a little bit better at certain aspects, or try something different and learn from the two experiences why one was more successful.

Failure to many is seen as an end point. If you treat failure as an end point, you will have much worse luck than someone who treats it as a starting point or rest stop before the next opportunity.

In nature, some of the most destructive and violent fires can actually fertilize the soil with ash that actually makes it easier to grow. Many farmers used to intentionally burn down crops and forest in what's known as the "slash and burn" method. The resulting layer of ash provides the newly-cleared land with a nutrient-rich layer to help fertilize crops. This would to many seem counter productive, but although there may be more modern methods that are used and work just as well or better, the slash and burn method is still the best option to many parts of the world.

So if in many instances the act of creation comes from the starting point of a failure, you can actually choose a method or journey towards success that leverages those failures and even plans for them. 

One of the most common methods of failure en route to success and "luck" is split testing.
Split testing basically plants seeds of success with the intention of burning that which grows the slowest to continue with the metaphor. For example, if you create the same exact page and change only one word in the headline, you are going to intentionally destroy the worst performer in order to focus more of your resources on the one that performs better. You may measure performance by dollars generated or dollars generated per viewer if you are running a sales page, and you try to create as fair and equal environment possible for each one to succeed.

You also may simultaneously test 10 other entirely unique headlines and then test 10 unique key words within that headline, and destroy all but the best performing. Although you may constantly be adding new ideas, essentially you are trying to eliminate every one that doesn't work well.

Meanwhile you also may test 10 other sales page in this exact same way. You also will repeat with 10 different products. You eliminate all which don't earn you the most money per dollar spent or perhaps the most per visitor if you can get very good at find creative low cost ways to get new visitors and referrals. Or you may instead focus on the pages and methods that generate the most visitors if you are very good at converting even the lowest quality of visitor to a long term customer that buys a high end product many times over the course of his or her life. This is more "relationship building" and building a low cost membership site with several upsells over the course of your business relationship. Either way, you have a clear plan or system of how you are going to take all these failures, and eliminate them in favor of putting the most amount of your resources (time and money) into the best performing.

People see the one succeeds and says "He was so lucky. He caught the right product at the right time and found the exact right market". What they may not see is everything else you did that they would have called "unlucky".

Here's an example:10 products with 10 sales pages and testing 10 headlines per sales page. 1 succeeds, the rest are essentially failures that you sell off to someone else to try to recuperate some of your costs.

 

You're picking the least bad option of all of them, and focusing your resources on that.

Then you will eventually restart the process testing perhaps more sales pages and headlines and details to mirror as much of the successful things as possible, plus you also will look to test other new products looking to find more failures to eliminate. Meanwhile, you hopefully are studying a lot including self study and learning a lot from each one of your failures. If done correctly, the small scale testing will be very small relative to the successes.

You may start with 1 sales page and 1 headline and 1 product, and then you might test 9 different products over months of time. You then will add to the process. You could potentially lose money in 999 of these, or at least find a market that is unsustainable (only makes money for a little while before you have to move on). But if you can find one that succeeds that you can continue to invest in, you can have enormous success if you do it right.

Let's say for example it takes about $1 worth of time or money for each combination of product, sales page and headline. Heck, let's say it costs $100 each for a total of $100,000. If the one that succeeds generates $300, You have lost a lot of money. However, if next time rather than putting in 1% of your money allocated towards finding new ideas, you then put 90% of your money into it and are able to duplicate the results, you can have enormous profits.

For example, let's say you apply 10% of your money towards finding new ideas. In other words, lets say you have $1,000,000. You "waste" 100,000 on "bad ideas. But you have a system. Once you find your good idea you then invest say $100,000 on that specific idea to make sure it can continue to generate income. You find it can, only at a slightly less rate because of the law of diminishing returns. After all of this, you put in $200,100 and perhaps you get $200,300 back. A lot of volatility for not much gain. However, since it worked, and you have $1,000,200 now. You may put ~20% of your wealth into the idea or ~200k. You may only get a 50% return this time.  So you get your $200,000 back plus an additional 100k. You're up to 1.1M. You invest your 20% and you are up to 1.21M, then 20% again and it's 1.331M. You can repeat this, and decide whether or not you want lower risk. If you managed it differently at a much smaller scale, you might have started with 1,000 and now you have $1331. The point is you have an engine to generate wealth. In the meantime you repeat the process of looking for a better engine and constantly testing new things, scrapping everything that didn't generate the most positive response and focusing there.

The "cost" of failure is experiencing what didn't work. The benefit is finding out what didn't work and spending more time doing something else. 

 

There are other ways to "plan" for luck than throwing a bunch of stuff to the wall to see what fits. My favorite story about luck and coincidence was told by Wayne Dyer here.

 

However, a combination of persistence, risk taking, risk management, positive belief, designed coincidences and timing along with other skills like negotiation and marketing to make you more visible and find more value and be more persuasive can literally create positive opportunities that wouldn't otherwise exist. People will say "you're lucky", but the truth will be you learned to develop the skills of luck.

 

How much more lucky can you be than you already are? Maybe you can be even more lucky than you think you can now.

A Story About Luck And Coincidence

Wayne Dyer has an excellent success story because he had several "coincidences". Unlike most, however, these coincidences were mostly all manufactured intentionally. 

 

Wayne Dyer went and followed his intuition after teaching for 40 years or something. He decided to quit his job for what he felt was his "purpose". He had a message he felt he had to tell. So he found a small publisher that would publish him and they said that they would start with 2000 copies. He asked what would happen if he sold all 2000. They assured him he wouldn't, but after pressing them they'd told him they'd move him up the list and he'd get more exposure so they would promote him more.

 

“In mathematics, two angles that are said to coincide fit together perfectly. The word “coincidence” does not describe luck or mistakes. It describes that which fits together perfectly.”— Wayne W. Dyer

Unknowingly to the publisher, Wayne BOUGHT every single copy of his own book. He figured he'd get a portion of the money back and also be able to make up for it later, plus his main goal was to get his message out, not make money.

Upon doing so the publisher began moving him up the list of best sellers from the publisher and doing a little more to promote him. Meanwhile he had 2,000 copies of books he had to get rid of. He filled his RV with his book and went around radio stations as well as calling them up and went around the US using local radio. He'd call them up to talk and leave his name. He wasn't trying to force it or going with the purpose of promoting. He had the idea that if more people heard about him and had a positive experience they'd want to learn more... He never even mentioned his book by name, because he wanted it seem like a "sign" or a coincidence that people came across his work just after they heard him on the radio and wondered where they could find more. He repeated this for every local radio station in a particular area.

 

Meanwhile he had several relatives call and even disguise their voice and call again asking a specific bookstore if they had his book in store. Just afterwards, he would come in as his own distributor saying something like "Hey I have my book I'm trying to sell, you can have the first 50 copies on me, here's my number and the publisher's number if you want to order more". They were amazed at the timing and often said something like "People have been calling about your book all day long! What a coincidence!" And of course it was. It just happened to be a manufactured coincidence.

 

Most likely some of the local customers that were planning on going to the bookstore in the next week had listened to the radio and some of those that did would have heard him, and he'd have their attention. "What a coincidence, I just heard this guy on the radio!" They'd likely think to themselves or say outloud. "Everyone has been asking about this book, just the other day about a dozen people called asking for it" the owner may also say. "This guy must be popular, I better put the books in a more premium location" The owner probably would think to himself.

 

Wayne Dyer would repeat this across all radio stations in an area and all bookstores in an area until his books were gone. Well do this 40 times and the books are all in bookstores in areas that have had lots of local radio coverage of him. If 40 bookstores around the US sell these books and many of them put them in the most obvious place because they think it's in high demand, a lot of people will take a look at it. Some will buy it. Some of those 40 stores will sell out. At this point the store owners that happen to sell out will reorder a lot more than they would have. There is a manufactured appearance of even higher demand (he's not always going to be on the radio station just before people come in). So once they order it they're going to try to sell them as well, and because they think it's a hot seller they are going to put it in front or by the cash register where everyone can see it. It will become a self-fulfilling prophecy and sell out.

 

Additionally, people that buy it and think "what a coincidence" might read that book and have another coincidence in their life that matches with the book or that meets their needs. These people are going to tell the store as if their prayer was answered, and their friends and family are going to respond positively and perhaps even retell that story. Word of mouth will likely spread at least some, and some people that never would have known about this book AND never even heard of Wayne Dyer or even were one of the few that heard the radio may actually go out looking for it without any need for the book to be in a premium spot. They may share the story with the owner, or tell someone else if they like it as well.

 

I believe the publisher had another 5,000 after the first 2,000 and Wayne Dyer may have even personally bought a large amount or even all 5,000 books of the next order but after that, they started selling on his own. Well you may say... that's incredibly expensive. Write a book, buy the books, leave them for free... Wayne was living out of his RV at the time.

But Wayne Dyer wasn't necessarily trying to make money from this book, but establish himself and his name and more importantly do what he could to get his message out. It just so happens that attention was needed to do so and in the process he gained a lot more attention. He became a best selling author and larger publishers with better promotion and more credibility and distribution to bookstores wanted Wayne to write a book for them next, so he wrote several more books after that and did what he could to make media appearances. The totally phantom and manufactured "best new author" title where he was literally buying all of his own books just happened to give him more attention and credibility and labels of "fastest growing author" which lead to more sales that were legitimate and plenty of real attention on him after that.

 

He would also continue with the promotion. He would contact anyone and everyone he could to try to get his face and/or voice out there. Many times he was enormously optimistic and would contact the same people as much as possible. I think one of his stories he wanted to get on with Johnny Carson or the major talk show host at the time like that and he kept pestering anyone and everyone he could. They finally said "If you call again, I'm going to block your number" He may have even came back in person and said "You didn't say I couldn't visit, but here's my number I really would like to get on the show and here's a copy of my book". As it turns out, shortly after the host was on an airplane and sat next to someone reading his book, and she couldn't stop talking about how wonderful it was.

 

The talk show asked his secretary if she would try calling him or to find out if he's worth interviewing and she probably flipped out. "That's the guy who's been calling me every day trying to get on your show for the past 3 weeks!" The talk show host could easily mistake a frustrated and annoyed but slightly shocked secretary speaking energetically with a high pitched voice as enthusiasm instead of frustration because she wouldn't have wanted to seem too negative in front of her boss. "What a coincidence!" The talk show host probably thought gleefully, "I'm going to have to get him on the show now!".

Now Perhaps Wayne Dyer himself or someone he knew worked very hard and found a way to make sure to get a seat next on the plane and gave it to her wife and told her to read the book or something. That isn't what happened, but if it was it would still be seen in the talk show host's view as a "coincidence" despite being obsessively persistent, coordinated (and borderline stalker) behavior. It would still be seen as "lucky" to many. But it's really the result of specific causes that were DESIGNED to look like a coincidence. But even if this was just a "random person", you have to figure the chances of this happening with over 2,000 books out there (or 10,000 as this may have been later on) were much better than if he had gone another route. Also, to the talk show host who wasn't annoyed with constantly receiving the calls, it was at least just a funny story, at most was some sort of sign and great coincidence as well as an impressive display of persistence.

The person who happened to turn on the radio on the way to the bookstore and happened to see the book available from the talk show host who left his name would see it as a coincidence and perhaps a "sign". The book stores would see it as a coincidence. The talk show hosts might have been visted at the exact moment they were looking for guests or content (perhaps after much persistence and perhaps by research and perhaps by intented timing. Or perhaps it was just the method of suffering thorugh dozens of rejections like any door to door salesman. The point is, all these COINCIDENCES were intentional intersections of making sure everything was done to be at the right place at the right time.

So let's repeat the quote from Wayne Dyer that this article started with:

 “In mathematics, two angles that are said to coincide fit together perfectly. The word “coincidence” does not describe luck or mistakes. It describes that which fits together perfectly.”— Wayne W. Dyer

You can direct your intention towards finding a way to be the perfect fit if you think from the perspective of the customer. If the customer happens to walk in a bookstore and see the book of the person he or she was just listening to on the radio and just thinking of buying the book, that would fit perfectly aligning the product and the buyer up without actually trying to "sell it" or manipulate them into buying it.

Well, as the story continues Wayne Dyer became one of the best selling authors in the nation multiple times, he's been on TV and radio all over the world, he's been a major selling force in the "self help" industry and he also has been one of the top fundraisers of all time on telethons to raise money for charity.

Now there are other ways to be in the right place at the right time. Knowing a potential market or solving a potential problem that isn't being solved or finding an audience that perhaps doesn't even know it wants a product that doesn't even exist yet is a skill as well and that is one additional thing that helps you get in the right place at the right time. There are many skills in marketing, advertising, persuasion, sales, influence, press releases, various forms of attracting attention that can help you get in the right place in the right time.

But if you start to treat luck as a skill, you will find ways to put yourself in a position where success will happen as a direct consequence of specific intended actions. The mere belief creates an open enough mind that you may start to look for ways to create coincidences, and the person who believes that luck is obtainable is more likely to find it. Believe you are lucky with all your emotion and imagine it so, and it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Luck to most people is not a skill because they don't understand that coincidence can be manufactured. Generally those who expect good things to happen for it have confirmation bias and spot the opportunities that will lead to positive outcomes. They simply notice it and do something about it.

 

What steps are you going to create today to directly plan coincidences so you can be more successful now that you have learned the secret of luck?

Another Way To Approach Nutrition Goals

A lot of nutritional information is based upon weight. Many people correct deficiencies by supplementing or adding more vitamins. However, to me that seems like it's not necessarily treating the root cause in everyon'es situation.

A healthy individual of average weight may need a lot fewer amino acids if you are overweight. So perhaps another solution is reducing the empty calories.

The standard american diet is full of calories and deprived of nutritional value. This potentially creates a situation where you are getting 130 pounds of nutrition (the amount of nutrition a 130 pounder should have to be healthy) in a 190 pound body.. Rather than up the nutrition to 190, it may be smarter and healthier to eliminate the empty calories while supplimenting up to 160 pounds of nutrition as a means to get your proper daily intake.

So rather than calculating nutritional value based upon your current weight, you should perhaps do so based upon your target weight.

Then it's simply a calorie calculation on how to get down to your targeted weight.

For example, a calorie calculator can tell you if you want to lose 1 pound per month, or about 0.25 pounds per week that you should consume X fewer calories per day. If you can target "empty calories" such as sugars, corn syrup and some starches, you should be able to reduce calories without necessarily decreasing your nutritional value. And if you need to cut 100 calories and instead cut 200 and then add 100 of nutrient dense foods so the sum total is 100 fewer calories, you may even improve your nutritional value while decreasing your calories.

If you exercise, the amount of nutritional value you need may go up slightly, but you'll tend to burn more empty calories than you consume.

As a result, you can create a weight-loss goal and determine the approximate "net calories" you need to subtract through either diet or exercise or both. 

With greater exercise also comes a greater need for longer and higher quality sleep.
If you are far more physically active in terms of exercise, and you are getting plenty of sleep as well as having a nutrient dense diet, you may be getting the nutritional value of a 200 pound while in a 160 pound body, where the excess is lost due to extra exercise.

Optimizing Mental and Physical Health With Amino Acids

There are a number of ways to optimize physical and mental health but I believe the most important way is to understand biochemistry. Your body requires some amino acids to survive. Not only that but specific amounts of each to provide your body with the fuel it needs. Your brain is actually incapable of producing enough neurotransmitters on it's own, but it can synthesize amino acids into important neurotransmitters.

As such, I would make Amino Acids the primary focus if you are seeking to optimize your mental or physical health.

Below is the calculated daily suggested amount calculated based upon 165 pound male. Using a variety of sources that suggest either some multiplier by weight or some percentage or multiplier of the total suggested protein intake.

Note: If no amount is listed, it means I haven't been able to find the ideal amount or that the information is unknown or unavailable.

	amino acids	daily amount
1	L-Tryptophan	929.6	MG
2	L-Threonine	3585.6	MG
3	L-Isoleucine	3320	MG
4	L-Leucine	7304	MG
5	L-Lysine	6772.8	MG
6	L-Methionine	3320	MG
7	L-Cysteine	3320	MG
8	L-Phenylalanine	6241.6	MG
9	L-Tyrosine	6241.6	MG
10	L-Valine	4249.6	MG
11	L-Arginine		MG
12	L-Histidine	2390.4	MG
13	L-Alanine		MG
14	L-Aspartic acid		MG
15	L-Glutamic acid		MG
16	Glycine		MG
17	L-Proline		MG
18	L-Serine		MG

There are 23 amino acids. Some amino acids are essential to get from food. Others are "conditionally essential", and others still are non essential. I'm still doing research and I'm not a doctor or certified nutritionist so don't trust this research or follow it as advice directly (standard disclaimer applies).

So what I have done is looked at one theoretical day's worth of food consumption to see which amino acids I am likely deficient in. I used the data on nutritiondata.self.com where possible.
I looked at a breakfast of 3 eggs, snack of string cheese and trailmix, a cup of cottage cheese and 4 ounces of rotisserie chicken. A potential "typical" lunch didn't seem to have data on the specific amino acids at the time, and only "proteins" as a whole. I may on a given day have only 2 eggs, or 2 eggs and cereal or cereal and yogurt, but since I omitted some sides during meals and lunch it's a good enough to give me an idea.

Upon doing this I found some aminos I had more than I needed. For example, L-Isoleucine I had over 30% more than I needed for the day. Many others are around 100%. Even though I had more tryptophan than I needed, this may be misleading. Many people have tryptophan shortages, as it's one of the easiest to develop. On days when I don't have cottage cheese or eggs or chicken, I am probably short tryptophan so I may still be deficient in tryptophan and others on average.
However, some amino acids were deficient. I came up about 300 MG short of L-Threonine, 800 short of L-Methionine, and over 2000 short of L-Cysteine, L-Phenylalanine and L-Tyrosine. Some of that may be covered by the lunch, but probably not on average.
One possible approach is intentionally omitting a meal you would like to adjust in order to try to use that meal to target your greatest deficiencies.

L-Cysteine is actually the worst in terms of how deficient I am as a percentage of the recommended amount. While the total dosage is more deficient in L-Tyrosine, you need nearly twice as much Cysteine as you do L-Tyrosine, so it is more deficient on a percentage basis. Fortunately Cysteine is considered "non-essential" and your body can synthesize it if your body has enough Methionine. Unfortunately I am possibly also deficient in L-Methionine.

L-Tyrosine is very important. Although phenylalanine can synthesize L-Tyrosine, it seems I also have a shortage of Phenylalanine. So while certain amino acids may often support each other, if you are even slightly deficient in both, you should aim to correct it. If you have 120% of one and 80% of another it may not be a big deal.

Tyrosine can synthesize into L-Dopa. L-Dopa is a precursor to neurotransmitters like dopamine, norepinephrine (noradrenaline), and epinephrine. If your energy levels seem low overall; L-Tyrosine may be one of the most important amino acids to target.

Phenylalanine is in many ways interchangeable with L-Tyrosine and is useful to combine with Tryptophan in boosting mood (as well as energy.)

There are multiple ways to correct deficiencies. One is to simply look for foods rich in the targeted amino and look to mix them in your diet or switch other foods in for these. Another is to focus on removing foods lacking any of the targeted amino acids as replacing them with anything is better than zero. But as you swap out foods, you may end up deficient in other amino acids, not to mention we haven't covered vitamins and minerals and trace minerals yet.

So another solution is to simply add in supplements. Unfortunately your body may not absorb supplements as well as actual foods, and some amino acids run into potential problems if you have too much.

If I wanted to be thorough, I could construct 1 weeks worth of food and average them out for the day and correct the daily average shortages. Having "less than 100%" days followed by "more than 100%" days in a cycle may be perfectly fine.

For now I am content looking at potentially just adding supplements of L-Threonine, L-Methionine, and especially L-Cysteine, L-Phenylalanine and L-Tyrosine.

What the process of the mind's basic associations have to do with subliminal messages

The mind associates certain images and thoughts with feelings and sounds. Any particular combination, particularly when greater emotions are involved, stimulate greater significance to memory, and has a greater impact on your neural nets and identity. Subliminal messages are merely an attempt to associate into your memory banks certain things without you having to consciously come to any sort of conclusions yourself. Your mind has to be perfectly capable of learning in this manner otherwise you would be unable to construct the complex set of neuro-associative combinations and connections required to build the representational system known as "language" to represent meaning in a way that allows communication. Having to have consciously learned language as a child would have been incredibly difficult, especially since awareness largely has to do with a set of information and data points to refer to in assessing where you are and what you are doing and what you are thinking and how to react in a given situation. Without the ability to communicate and associate it would be incredibly difficult to learn without an entirely different processing system than the conscious mind... But, although the typical tendency is for the brain to become less malleable as you age and learn more and rely on representational systems and memory to think rather than creating a whole new structure of associations and recognizing patterns, the process still very much exists and can be manipulated intentionally or not.

Humans must possess the ability to learn. Take for example learning to not touch a hot stove. They need to associate their fear of loud noises and screams and the word "No!" with danger as well as the memory must be associated pain or fear so that they avoid doing it again. Association must exist[1] and thus, that process must also be capable of what we learn, and how we construct our brain's ability to process data and what thoughts and emotions it comes up with regarding certain actions and behaviors. So when people talk about "subliminal messages", "hypnosis" "hypnotic programming" Mind manipulation" and how the television "program" is in fact a "program" for the mind, they really aren't explaining it in a way that people can really identify with since it's already such a natural and normal process while those terms sound so radical, crazy, and unnatural to the learning process. In reality, it's often just branching off learned neuroassociative behavior that the human mind tends to rely on in the first place.

The fact is that any mental manipulation technique merely uses what the brain already is capable of and has demonstrated countless times by the nature of how it operates over the course of a lifetime. So of course people don't "feel" like they are being "programmed" or "manipulated" it is something people would have experienced every day in one form or another regardless of whether or not this manipulation exists. It is not that these techniques "cause" your mind to behave differently, instead, it is just manipulating what input your mind receives, and as a result, effects the output by the natural process that your mind interprets the information it takes in.

The terms many use to describe the process sound so radical to so many that you are better off without using them at all. Those that use terms like "subliminal messages", "mind control", "covert mind manipulation", etc sounds like exactly the type of term that gets lumped in with the type of term used by the [crazy] "conspiracy theorists" which in the mind of the public tends to be this radical, insane fanatical group of emotionally and psychologically unstable individuals, and/or media sensationalists looking for attention. And in many ways, perhaps rightly so.

One cannot read chinesee to people that do not know the language and expect them to understand and to try to do so to someone you know doesn't speak the language is insane. In other words, trying to describe this process to people in a way without giving them the tools to understand what you are really saying isn't doing them any favors. For even if you do convince them, they have attached their understanding of the world to an external source, rather than their own inquisitiveness and reflection of things they know to be true and can derive an understanding from on their own and from observing the world around them.

Many people who profess to be "awake", are instead just manipulated by an alternative group of the sensationalist conspiracy theories and are not truly learning from their understandings of reality, but instead are either accepting or rejecting information, operating out of fear, and being influenced to be "sheep" that merely have decided to follow another shepherd, while professing that it's everyone else that is the "sheep". Both groups are headed to different slaughterhouses so to speak, and choosing to reverse direction and go in one or another is pointless. If you cannot learn to think for yourself, by yourself independent of information, you are not really "free". Merely having someone point you to one set of information rather than another has not liberated you in any way and they do not deserve your energy one bit. Certainly nor do cheap media ploys, fake "beef" between celebrities and controversies that are as staged as wrestling along with their side stories.

But I digress. Advertisers still spend billions on commercials, so the techniques that are used by them, must have at least some effect on your mind or they wouldn't use them. I mean everyone and their mother has already seen so many superbowl commercials advertising for the same 3 companies (among others) over and over again. Yet they continue year after year to advertise. You really think they are going to just make millions off of making maybe a few hundred extra people "aware" of their product that didn't already know about it when their product is low margin to begin with? Yes they might do so, but they also might remind people to buy products, and more importantly, continue to reframe your beliefs and pre-existing associations to get you to associate pleasure with their product, and pain with the alternative.

But it's more than that, they can kill two birds with one stone as a part of greater manipulation as well, many times the intend is veiled to the extremely limited few. Regardless, subliminal messages are just hijacking the brains natural process of association and learning to get you to "learn" or "conclude" certain things on our own as they want, but usually not immediately, and not directly.  The combined bombardment of associations on a daily basis combined with the "communion" of many other individuals who have been exposed to similar associations which will act to reinforce those beliefs (think of kids in junior high/middle school kids trying to fit in with the perceived "cool" paradigm and aligning themselves with similar beliefs, thoughts, ideas, and actions and even how they present themselves). Combine this with learning over many mediums over a long period of time and it's only a manner of time before you develop habits and patterns consistent with the consumptionism they intend on projecting you into, it is only a matter of time and "which product" and personality type / projected archetype you most align yourself with.


Clarification:
[1]I do not mean this is the only way one can operate, it is just how humans are wired and how they tend to use what they work with. Consciously learned association and memory need not be used if one has instinctual understanding which can use memories, but need not do so. Technically we can still have instinct on par with animals as opposed to associative memory, but the human mind behaves differently at times, and must simultaneously be able to abort past neural associations and just react (such as running, slamming on breaks, or avoiding a threat without thinking about how they are going to do so) as well as use the associative memory to avoid dangerous circumstances to begin with. Animals are more in tune with external cues that they can resonate with so they need not rely upon memory to travel from Mexico to Canada and on back like many flying species such as birds and insects.

"Enlightenment" and Increased Intelligence Through Sleep Paralysis?

I have recently been thinking about the movie metaphors, particularly in movies I have seen lately. Is there some way to "wake up" so to speak? Is there some way to "see" outside of one's self, or at least perceive with NO filters?

According to something I once read, consciously you process only around 2000 bits of data, but subconsciously closer to 2million. If you had to consciously remind yourself to feel need for air if you didn't breath long enough and remind yourself to breath, forgetting would be fatal and temporary amnesia would kill you. You need conscious processing to be separate from a lot of autonomic tasks. But your brain is limited in overall processing power, not just conscious processing power. Some estimate that evolution is limited only by bloodflow and that processing power in the brain would be much more capable if it got more oxygen via bloodflow to the brain. Well, there are some "hacks" towards superior intelligence that a lot of geniuses used to do some form of. Geniuses are inspired in a dream or dream like state, or through solitude. Basically, as you begin to fall asleep, not only does your mind enter an altered state, but your body starts to get reduced bloodflow. This is part of "sleep paralysis" that is naturally designed to prevent you from acting out your dream and putting yourself in danger. The bloodflow is then concentrated among your vital organs and your brain. As a result,you may be capable of more complex thought. Certainly many have had the experience where they have a dream where they solve a major problem that was bugging them or come to some stunning realization or perhaps notice something they hadn't thought of before? Well it may be that it is the increased bloodflow and/or altered state that increases ability to connect with one's creativity and intelligence. Certain "hacks" to this involve meditating (being completely still until body falls asleep even as mind remains alert), "nano napping", falling asleep with an alarm clock and then falling asleep again and again with an alarm clock that can stimulate lucid dreaming or waking sleep paralysis (and astral traveling) and even get you into that as a habit. Or "falling asleep on a chair with ball bearings in hand and a wood floor where the sound wakes you up immediately and you immediately write down the ideas that come to you" (Edison did this). Or cross legged sitting up as many monks do while meditating. Einstein and Beethoven and Mozart all mentioned their greatest ideas/symphonies came to them in a dream state, and Einstein would day dream as well as take frequent cat naps.

So perhaps the vivid dreams that are at times more real than real life and allow me greater insight, can help me understand things that consciously my brain filters out. Perhaps I can interact with my subconscious through lucid dreaming to find some of these answers. Solitude, sleep paralysis hacks, and such probably stimulates some of the same concepts of sitting still and thinking with zero distractions that may exist in dream. People likely will sit relatively still and as a result essentially are at least getting to the point where their legs start to fall asleep and mental clarity is brought forth.

I don't really know if in my path I have completely found all of the answers, but I certainly have enjoyed all that I have learned so far, and have the ability to enhance my thought power. I'm starting to also think that there may be cues you can detect provided through forms in a different state of consciousness than you (e.g. mammals,birds,etc) by entering solitude against a tree cross-legged and barefooted (supposedly discharges excess or ionized electrons and "grounds" you and "neutralizes" your energy into more natural state. I have no idea if this is true), while entering sleep paralysis. Then you can begin watching their movement and relating to their perspective and reflecting upon it. At the very least several forms of technology have been constructed that mimic animals and natures own design, and you may be able to draw metaphors based upon what you observe to solve some sort of problem. Either way, the increased stimulus without it being distracting or implanting suggestions such as watching TV or being around humans may be beneficial in keeping the mind away while the body sleeps and may help you access more active parts of the mind (beta) due to the stimulation and movement you can observe while in this state, as well as perhaps elements of a creative side (theta) from being in tune with the earth's natural frequency. Maybe this is conjecture and crazy, but it won't hurt you much to try it and certainly the vitamin D you get from the sun and tan you might get may be beneficial from being outside as well.

I can confirm that I personally have solved problems much more efficiently after sitting crosslegged in the dark at home at night in a state of sleep paralysis, and this mental clarity hits me after awhile... There also is a personal feeling I get from being outside that is unique. So, you should give it a try, shouldn't you?