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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Position: this moves the image left to right, and up & down.
2. Zoom: this can enlarge the image to the point that it fully overwhelms your peripherals. Or zoom out till the image is small enough to fit onto a grain of sand
3. Switch: this allows you to see things in your visualisation through your own eyes, or switch perspective and start to see yourself in the image (as if to watch yourself through a camera filming a movie that you are the star of).
4. Dimension: this converts 2D images to 3D images and vice versa.
5. Brightness: up or down.
6. Colour: not only does it change the colour contrast but it also inserts a colour filter on command. A blue filter will make the image blue as if you are looking through a blue tinted window (colour filters include blue, red, green, yellow)
7. B&W: this instantly turns the image black & white, pressing the button returns the image to previous colour settings.
8. Motion: this changes the visualisation from still images to a video sequence and back.
9. Skip: as in a DVD player, this skips scenes forward and back, in single time increments (1 minute/hour/day/week/month/year, you chose which).
10. Volume: up and down.
11. Surround: from mono speaker to surround sound.
12. Custom: There are 4 different custom settings. You can pre-program each of them to your favourite setting and achieve all changes by hitting the button once. To set up these buttons, hold button [c1] down for three seconds, make all the adjustments desired, then hold [c1] down for 3 seconds again, repeat for each custom setting button. Then simply press the button briefly on future images to achieve the same settings quickly and conveniently.

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

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

Questions and comments are welcome.

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Advertising & influence

I recently learned about the origins of PR, celebrity endorsements, product placement and other such tools of mass consumer influence. Ironically, I learned more about these through my interest in psychology and sociology than I ever did in business school.

Then it occurred to me, that the great successes of such influence were inspired by Freud, not mad-men on Madison Avenue. And the failures of today’s idiotic interpretation of advertising are not the fault of agencies and brand consultants, it’s the fault is Clients who accept arrogant mediocrity of mad-men wannabies. Agencies nowadays complain that great creative is lost on the marketing ranks almost as much as women complain about the lack of good men. But neither the agencies nor the fair ladies are confessing their own sins!

Every campaign produced by an agency works on the assumption that their own, superficial, understanding of consumers, group behaviour and qualitative research is accurate. Then they wonder why campaigns fail even though the research is solid, the strategy is sound and the creative is mind blowing. Well, let me enlighten you... get a pen and write this down... campaigns fail for many reasons, one of which happens to be, your interpretation of the info at hand is as shallow as a piss puddle.

Have a look at the best advertising minds of the last half century, and as you do, you’ll start to realise they are good because they have learned about the likes of Eddie Bernays and other masters of consumer behaviour. And just so we are clear.. I don’t mean you should hire the average psychotherapist (or Psycho-the-rapist as the great Richard Bandler likes to call them). What I mean is that you need to find some people who know about the unconscious and the science of reading between the lines to do the interpreting for you, before you go into a creative brain storm.

The effectiveness of true mass influence comes from good knowledge of some very exciting sciences that really should never have been taken out of the agency in the first place.

Now, reading this, there are two groups of you. One group, currently foaming at the mouth from anger – you are the ones I refer to earlier as “arrogant mediocrity”, your days are numbered, I recommend you start packing. And the other group, currently having mini orgasms & getting wet from the thought that there’s a way to improve on your already flourishing careers, because that’s how enlightened ones think. You are the true leaders of mass consumer influence in the new age.

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God has a vagina

Manipulation is art, mastered by the “fairer sex” (a queen among oxymora). To learn how to get your way, stand in the supermarket and watch 4 year old girls get what they want, on a trip through the candy isle with dear old daddy. The tone of voice, puppy eyes and, as incestuous as it sounds, even the seductive body language.

The inherent physical weakness of “women kind” (a pun, ironic and intended) has lead to the evolution of manipulation. I often wondered if women simply allow men the illusion of dominance, or if they deliberately inject men with delusions of power, just as God occupies the masses with a misguided sense of faith.

See if this sounds familiar. She loves man, but she will make his life a living hell if he angers her. She asks only that man works for the betterment of himself, but if this better man strays from her, then he’s a sinner. She demands nothing from man but she’ll expect everything. Monotheistic, she accepts no competition. She wants his money. She owns his soul... All this, because she loves him.

“She” can be God or Eve. In fact they are one and the same. That is true manipulation.

I shall be castrated for this view and she will give me the look that “shrivels me testis” but before she does, let me say this...

She is wise my friends, observe her, and learn from her, for only she knows the ways of real influence, control and string puppetry. And that’s why I love her.

It takes the average poker player a number of years to master the art of recognising a “tell”, yet Eve will know Adam’s lies before they even depart his lips. It is called in-tuition because every encounter with Eve is a learning experience. Except that poor primordial Adam has never learned.

Well, I have seen the light. I believe and worship thy. Take me to heaven, and save me from Satan that pollutes my ego with the darkness of grandeur and the sin of pride.

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If it walks like a duck...

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

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

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

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

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

Taking this a step further, by definition, success is short-lived, because the moment you achieve the goal and become successful, you are no longer successful, until you achieve the next goal. So you’ll encounter a few moments of success in your life but can never hold on to these moments. Think about how funny the neighbour’s dog looks, chasing their own tail... that’s what I think of anyone who aims to be successful for the sake of success.
I think it was Einstein that said “aspire not to become a man of success, rather to be a man of value” or some words to that effect, I was drunk when I was given that pearl. (Thanks Ali, I learned more sitting in the back seat of your taxi than I ever did while sitting in the back row at my senior classes at university.)

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

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

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

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

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The learned limitations of the mind:

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

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

If you think to yourself “I am in control of my life, and I have succeeded, I have achieved and my reality is strong” then think again. Chances are, that no matter how well your life has turned out, you’ve only scratched the surface.
And if you think to yourself “this sound too hard, I can’t even motivate myself to get out of bed in the morning” than worry not my friend, you are more likely to make your dreams come true than you think.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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