[reprinted, with permission, from Shyguy's How To Get A Girlfriend Blog.]

All too often, in our lives we find ourselves being manipulated or influenced by other men, by women, and sometimes even by the damned television.

Of course, as a kid against a schoolyard bully, perhaps the only options are the Charles Atlas course, karate classes, or a tactful withdrawal. But in later life usually we’re not influenced by physical threat.

HOW DO ‘THEY’ MANIPULATE US?

It’s done with worths, with images, and with social pressure.

If you’re being influenced this way … what that tells you is that you DO NOT actually understand how it’s happening. Oh, you may have theories and opinions about those bad people.

But if you’re still being manipulated, either “having” to go along, or even resisting but feeling upset or angry about it .. then you DO NOT fully understand how it works.

But here’s how to change that …

HERE IS THE KEY:

If you wish to invest time to understand how it all works, then *you* can learn to influence people around you. You can control nearly every situation. You can attract people to you, and they will listen to what you have to say.

If you don’t wish to invest time to understand how it all works?

<!–more–>Well, then you will simply go on with the same life you now have — being manipulated by women, by men, by situations. All seeming out of your control.

So unless you wish to continue the life of a helpless pawn … then the question becomes simply … WHERE and HOW can I learn how ‘Influence’ works?

And luckily, in recent years, this is no longer mysterious.

There is a body of knowledge that reveals all of this. It requires some time investment and some study, but it actually does deliver this kind of power, this kind of skill, into your hands.

It is the rightful study of Hypnosis.

WHAT?

Now before you start thinking about guys on stage with wild eyes, and people in chairs acting like chickens, please be aware that there have been radical developments in recent years, and for the first time, these INSIDE techniques are being presented to the public.

In the past, we sometimes have described certain politicians, certain charismatic individuals, certain evangelical preachers, and certain actors as “almost hypnotic.”

Well … it’s not “almost” … they are using modern, secret hypnotic methods.

Hypnosis is all around you, being used successfully, and profitably … by business, by politicians, by television.

Why do housewives pay $2-$3 more for a bottle of name-brand laundry soap? The stuff in the other bottle works just the same. So why do her eyes go to the more expensive bottle? Why does her hand reach out and pick it up? Why does she stand at the check-out stand and pay extra?

Hypnosis is simpler than you imagine, more common that you imagine, and easy to understand … IF it’s presented simply.

I FOUND A MASTER WHO MAKES IT SIMPLE

Though I’ve known of this field since about forever, I recently stumbled across an up-to-date report and was delighted to discover an outstanding hypnotist — perhaps the best hypnotist in the world — who has the true gift of a master and a teacher …

He has a way of making it simple.

GET THE FACTS

Your life can transform itself.

You can have a body of knowledge that sets you apart, that gives you freedom from being manipulated by women, by men, by situations.

You can .. be in control.

Get the facts. The full story is revealed here –

http://learn-conversational-hypnosis.org

You’ll be happy you did.

Mobius Megatar ToneWeaver Guitar.

I make and sell guitars. Unusual guitars that you can play without strumming or picking, and this lets you play strings with both hands, so you can play bass strings and guitar strings at the same time. The name of this instrument is the Mobius Megatar.

Recently, a college student had inquired because he wanted to get one of our instruments. We wrote back and forth, and he was all set to go, but then he sent me this email –

“I’m sorry but the Megatar is not in the picture any more. I was coerced into buying a 2700 dollar classical guitar from a company that gives referral bonuses to the teacher who I was coerced by, so I’m left broke and on crappy terms with my main teacher for the next 3 years.

“I really wish I had the cash and time to delve into a tapstyle instrument right now, and if I could, it’d be a Mobius with Bartolini pickups, but it seems like that won’t be available for a while. With student loans and a no emergency funds (thanks to the aforementioned jerk of a teacher) I’ll be lucky if my car makes it without scheduled servicing for the next 6 months.”

What is really odd is that I got another email from another college student, in a similar situation who told me something of a similar story, that he’d been required (or perhaps urged) to get a nylon-string guitar for some upcoming course work. However, the second student seemed much less bitter.

And it got me to thinking. I can understand the disappointment he must feel.

And actually, it does sound kind of crappy behavior for the college music instructor, to push the student toward an instrument that pays the instructor a commission.

On the other hand …

On the other hand, that’s the past, and I’m guessing that it’s a pretty good guitar, and I expect that the young man will get quite a bit of good out of it. So I suggested that he might as well see if he could let some of the bitterness go.

If somebody makes you angry, it’s as if they have given you a heavy rock to carry around. You can go into the other room, but you’re still carrying the rock. Over time, it seems like the rock grows heavier and heavier and heavier.

The person who triggered the unhappiness, perhaps they are good perhaps they are bad, but in any event most of the time these other humans are doing about the best that they can with the training and insight that they possess; most people are like you and me. Sometimes we are good people. Sometimes we are bad people, but generally we are doing the best that we can. Because, if you knew how to do better, you would do better, wouldn’t you?

Even the fools and jerks are about the same.

Generally speaking, you cannot do too much about the ignorance or wrong choices of other people, but you do make your own choices.

At this point, might you be able to consider this idea? … Throw down the rock. Let it roll away. Someone else can pick it up, if  they want to. Might that make your passage through the days … lighter?

You’re young or you’re old. Either way, there are lots of adventures ahead.

Time enough for things that are important.

For example, if you think you want a Megatar, start picturing it, allow yourself to think of it as something you *already possess*. Something you already have, in the fullness of time. Perhaps you don’t see the way right this minute, but that’s the way of all life. You don’t see all life right now. And the first step is to see it, decided that it’s on the way, picture it, enjoy that you have it … and generally it will show up, often sooner than you’d have thought, just because that’s the future you are creating.

You create your life as you go, moment by moment, with your thoughts and with your perceptions.

Perceive tragedy and all around you tragedy abounds, and with your thoughts, future tragedies begin to take form.

Perceive what you want, and the good things you enjoy, and all round you, good things exist, and you create more good things a-coming.

Your Megatar is just one of the good things coming to you. You have a wonderful life unfolding.

What is it about taking a shower that causes new ideas to pop into your head?

Is it the invigorating ions that are caused by splitting water droplets?

Or is it a simple as Murphy’s law triggered because you will never have pencil and paper in the shower?

I don’t know the answer to this time-proven rule, but as of this morning’s shower, I do know a super-simple way to look at mental health, a simple way to be happier and more productive.

It’s simply this –

As you go through life, and as you go through each day, stuff will be going on. Some of it’s yours, and some of it seems to just happen. And you’re going to be seeing this stuff happening and you’re going to react to it and think about it.

Now here’s the key –

If you allow yourself to *dwell* upon the bad in it, you’ll be using your mind in a way that, over time, conditions you (by repetition) to habitual thinking. And in this thinking, you’re dissatisfied with life, you’re the effect of stuff out there, perhaps a repeating victim of stuff out there. And this will never produce happiness in your life, and your thinking or perception will tend to become oblivious to the good things, the good possibilities, the good feelings, that could turn it all around for you.

But to have a happier life, if you will make an ongoing and intentional practice to consciously find what good is in whatever is happening, if you will consciously consider what’s happening and consider how it may be to your (now or later) benefit, then several good things will happen.

Over time, as you do this you will experience more happiness, because you’re going out of your way to find some happy thoughts. Thinking happy thoughts tends to go along with a happy life. Sounds a little too simple, because frankly it is simply too simple. It is so simple that hardly anyone thinks to try it.

Further, as you intentionally practice focussing your attention on discerning what good is in what’s happening, or how it may turn to your advantage, you are developing a creative problem-solving mentality, and you’ll discover yourself creating new ways to operate that are to your advantage. This too is horribly simple — if you look for ways to get good from a situation, you’re likely to find some.

Now let’s hear it from the nay-sayers!

The nay-sayer will have an automatic reaction against what’s just been said here. Now in fact, what we’re seeing with the naysayer is that something happened (some words appeared) in the naysayer’s life, but the naysayer is in the habit of finding the bad, so the automatic, trained, habit of the naysayer is to now find something that will ruin it for himself.

For example, the naysayer can object that “squelching down your negative feelings and suppressing them is an unhealthy mental practice.” And, truth be told, there is a germ of truth here. Because the ongoing practice of denying the feelings one experiences will lead to the automatic, trained, habit of becoming unconscious of one’s feelings. That doesn’t help survival nor lead to a happier life.

The difference is: if you’re *pushing against* a negative thought, you just keep it there. ‘Pushing against’ will tend to be reflected in the words you say inside your head. For example, “I’m not feeling like crying, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not!” is a pretty good example of pushing against. Another one is “I’m not going to be mad at Johnny any more!”

Maybe you squelch it, but it’s not really going away. And for some folks, who have fears about their mind being out of control, this can be a real catch-22. A self-fulfilling problem.

But if you have fears about your mind being out of control, then you can simply learn to practice meditation, in the simplest sense of the word.

Meditation, at the simplest level, is nothing more than practicing holding your mind on one thing. That one thing could be your breath going in and out. That one thing could be the repetition of a word, like ‘Om’ or ‘Shanti’ or ‘peace’ or even ‘boogie shoes.’ That one thing could be holding a picture in mind: a mountain, the bright light of a candle, the face of someone you love.

Now your mind *will* wander away; that is the unruly nature of a mind. And when you notice it’s wandered away, you just put it back.

And if you do this every day for 20 minutes, then after a few weeks you will notice that you feel better, and you feel calmer, and your fear about your uncontrollable mind will have dwindled, because slowly by slowly you are actually learning to control your mind. Not in a harsh, military and suppressive way, but by a gentle persistent returning way.

And this is the same way that you would develop your practice of looking at what’s happening to find good in it, or how it can be turned to good.

If you have a real stubborn case of the nasty unhappies, maybe you’ll have to start by simply finding ways to *minimize* the bad that you see all around you. But if you persist, you will slowly by slowly begin to develop the habit of seeing the good going on all around you.

Look, here’s a kind of proof:

In your life, like any life, there have been unhappinesses. Let’s consider how many of your experienced unhappinesses have been ‘hard’ unhappinesses caused by something that happened in the physical universe, and how many of your experienced unhappinesses have been ’soft’ unhappinesses caused as you *thought* about things that had happened or might happen.

If you’re like most humans, and even if you’ve had a rough life, then less than 5% of the unhappinesses were ‘hard’ ones, like you tripped and fell down the stairs and broke an arm or sprained a muscle, or like you had a traffic accident, or your boyfriend left for another woman, or your dog died, or somebody stole something that belonged to you, or something you owned got ruined or spoiled. These are hard unhappinesses caused by an actual event in the physical universe.

Now you may have more control over these things than you realize, but we don’t even need to think about that. What we want to look at here is this –

Do these things happen every day? Do they happen multiple times every day?

For most people, no. They don’t.

These things happen, but only now and then.

For most of us, many days go by before we get another of these ‘hard’ unhappinesses.

But if that’s the case, what about those times when you’ve been continuously unhappy for days and days at a time? Where is that coming from?

Well, if nothing is happening in the physical universe to give you a ‘hard’ unhappiness, then you’re filling up your experience with *your thoughts*.

And you must have these thoughts on automatic unhappy mode, because it’s just one unhappy thought after another. Let’s say the boyfriend left. That happened once. But what about the hundreds or thousands of times you think unhappily about it? What about the hundreds or thousands of times you think about it even before it ever happens?

With these hundreds or thousands of unhappy thoughts, you are training your mind by simple repetition to automatically generate unhappy thoughts, and these will create the unhappy emotions in your body, and you are training yourself, unconsciously and automatically, to become and remain an unhappy person.

Is this mental health? To train yourself to become an unhappy person?

No, it is not good mental health.

So what is the opposite of this unconscious training program for unhappiness?

The opposite is a conscious training program for happiness.

Can it really be that simple?

Yes. Actually, it is exactly that simple.

You choose: Unconscioiusly keep running your unhappiness training, or consciously re-train to become a happy person.

Maybe not always easy. Maybe not immediate. Takes intention, practice, and time. And it works.

You will recreate yourself as a happier, and healthier person.

Presto. Mental health and happiness.

People in my parents generation used the word “beggers” to describe people who beg on the street. Or sometimes “moochers,” “panhandlers,” or “bums.” Of course, in tiny Henrietta, Texas, where I grew up, the town was too small to have an official panhandler, so the town drunk filled in part time.

Friends of mine as I grew up didn’t seem to like the word “Begger,” though it would seem to be accurate. And I guess the phrase, “Buddy, can you spare a dime?” from that older time had mutated into “Spare change?” by the hippie period in the 1960’s.

THE SPARE-CHANGER

The writer in “Evolving Times” was describing what we’ve all felt in that situation. You’re walking along and you are suddenly asked, “Spare change?” Which as we all know, means “Do you have any spare change, that you could give to me?” (I guess those beggers are either very lazy, or they are astonishingly efficient.)

And then what happened?

Well, as you know, the common reaction is that you say “No, sorry,” and you hurry a bit more to get past the place where you just told a lie.

The writer of that blog is someone who follows the “Law of Attraction,” which states that what you think and imagine in your mind tends to manifest in your life. And the key thing there is that it doesn’t matter whether you think about something you do want or something you don’t want. In either case, you’re picturing something, and you tend to attract more of what you are “picturizing,” and so more of that is likely to show up.

So if you’re following the Law of Attraction, it greatly behooves you to pay attention to what you’re thinking and picturing. And the writer suddenly realized that, telling that lie to the spare-changer, because the writer didn’t want to stop and give away money, was in fact a statement to the Universe that “No, I do not have any money at all that I could spare.”

Which, according to the Law of Attraction, would tend to bring you that very thing. A shortage of money so acute that you couldn’t possibly spare even a quarter!

Bummer.

And even if a person didn’t try to follow the Law of Attraction, even so, you’d be programming your own habitual thought that you don’t have any money whatsoever to spare. And this kind of thought, repeated and made habitual, would cause you to experience the emotions that would be reasonable for a person who had no money whatsoever beyond the strictly necessary. And those particular feelings aren’t much fun.

So whether you follow the teachings of the Law of Attraction, or whether you follow the Law of NFL Football, either way, letting yourself get in the habit of telling this particular lie to the spare-changers is a losing proposition for your own prosperity and enjoyment of life.

A RAY OF HOPE

Now, having shown you a veritable hell on the sidewalk, it’s only fair that I show you how beautifully we can escape these torments and have a delightful day, and it’s just warm enough.

Here’s how –

Realize that the spare-changer is, in his or her own special way, saying “Hello!” to you. Watch them and you’ll realize that they greet everyone with this same phrase. It’s their greeting to other humans. And that’s OK. They are free to greet the other humans any way they choose.

And you have the same right.

So when they greet you, saying “Spare change?” you can just smile broadly and greet them right back, saying “Hello!” or “How ya’ doin?” or “Nice to see you!”

And what you will discover is that quite often they’ll simply say, “Hello,” or “Fine, thanks.”

Other times they’ll repeat their greeting, “Spare change?” but you’re already past them now. And so if getting past them without stopping, and without giving away money was your goal, then you’ve succeeded.

And other times they’ll just stop, silent. Gave them pause, you did. Probably not many people greet them back.

Or, you could just stop and give them some money.

It’s your call, and you have a perfect right to do it any way you choose.

As you may recall from the movie, that young man started out hating the pirates, and yet, in the course of his adventures, he’s become bolder and he has dared great things, and by golly he has become a pirate. And that’s a good thing.

And so … why is it a good thing to be a pirate?

Here’s an idea to consider –

“Personal growth only takes place outside your comfort zone.”
– Tony Robbins

Think about it. Think about moments when you’ve attained major personal growth. Think about the moments just before you attained this personal growth. Would you say those moments were “comfortable?”

Probably not. We grow the most when we’re challenged. Funerals. Difficult contests. A breakthrough moment. When you go beyond what you know. That’s when it happens.

While it’s not always street-smart to “live on the edge,” it is usually exciting. And while the path of wisdom does not lead us to endanger our lives, our loved ones, or that which we hold dear, it is also a fact that living a life in which there is no challenge, no “danger,” no spice, nothing new, the same every day … well, I suppose it’s good for some folks, but I question whether it’s good for you.

Wouldn’t you rather be a pirate?

There. Didn’t that feel good, just thinking about being a pirate?

Why is that?

DILEMMA OF THE DAY

Mankind, and men (and women) have it in them to both (a) seek safety, and (b) seek novelty. I suppose evolution built that into us. I mean, some folks living way back when who didn’t seek safety left no descendants! And other folks who avoided anything new couldn’t adapt to the first change and they didn’t leave any descendants either!

So you and me, and all the rest of humankind, are the descendants of those humans who did both (a) seek safety, and (b) seek novelty.

So that means it’s a natural fact. We’re built that way. That’s just the way it is.

Go with the flow, and live well. Rebel and become like those way-back folks who left no descendants.

HOW DOES IT PLAY TODAY?

How does it play out? Look around you. One common scenario is a guy who works at a boring job, doing something he finds less than inspiring — it never occurred to him to create something inspiring, because his attention was fixed on renting an apartment and he needed some cash each month — and he’s seeking safety.

He’s a human, so he’s also seeking novelty.

How will he find it?

Television, I reckon.

Synthetic adventures. Stuff that happened to everybody else but him.

When he gets to the end of his life, lying on his deathbed, and maybe he’s thinking back, and he’s saying to himself, “Man, what a great life. I watched me some really good TV!”

So if that’s the obvious outcome of that behavior pattern, then why did he follow that pattern of behavior for 40 years? I can think of only one answer. He just didn’t know any better. He never looked. He never examined the path, and the outcome. He was too busy seeking safety, and finding his novelty cheap and easy.

Personal growth only occurs when you’re outside your comfort zone.

HOW TO HAVE PERSONAL GROWTH

It’s simple: Just operate regularly outside your comfort zone. Make it your habit to do so.

In other words, be a pirate.

You know you want to.

Perhaps you are now asking yourself, “But how?”

Well, you’re a grown person. Figure it out. That’s your first assignment.

There. You’re outside of your comfort zone right now.

Keep it up.