However, it’s easy to become misled about this. You don’t need to know everything. “You don’t have to see the whole staircase; just take the first step.” And likewise, if you’re driving from Los Angeles to New York, just knowing that you’ll drive to the East is actually enough to start making a plan. In fact, you could just gas the car and start driving East.

And, lots of times, you simply cannot know everything.

Sometimes you cannot even research things very well. And if you take no action because the complete details of your plan are unclear, then very possibly no beginning step will *ever* be taken. And you’ll not reach the end of the path unless that first step is taken.

There are excellent ways to make a plan. [See STEP TWO for information on Targeting.]

But there’s a step that must come first! And, often, it’s overlooked!

What must come first is … Decision.

If you’re going to Do Something in the world, the very first step is to DECIDE that you’re going to do it. This harkens to the oft-quoted Law of Attraction. So often, discussions of the Law of Attraction center on how you can “get a lot of stuff.”

This is all very well and good. There’s nothing wrong with being, doing, and having things that interest and inspire you. In fact, the ability to be and do and have what interests and inspires you is a wonderful way to live. But let’s ignore “the stuff,” for just a moment.

::: YOU MUST DECIDEÂ

The first thing that happens — that must happen — is that you’ve got to CHOOSE what you want. You’ve got to SELECT your target. You’ve got to DECIDE what you want.

Now maybe you decide and then do some research. Or maybe you decide and then ride off madly in all directions, and by observing your results you can correct your direction and eventually arrive at your target. The wisdom of your plan, the cleverness of the details, and the speed of your arrival are not the point.

The point is that the first thing that has to happen is that you DECIDE.

Sometimes people are afraid to decide, because just thinking about such things triggers habitual unpleasant mental responses (failures and flops and embarassments!). For more about how this becomes built into the brain, see my articles “How to Approach a Woman” and “Breaking Up is Hard to Do.”)

To shy away from wanting to re-experience unpleasant memories is an understandable human aversion to further pain. However, shying away from something you’d like will just never get you there. And the first step is to DECIDE.

::: WHICH CAME FIRST — THE DECISION OR THE EGG?

It was the Decision.

Do you want to, in general, improve your life? Do you want to be more, do more, have more?

Then your first step is to decide to be more, do more, or have more.

If you’re not quite sure exactly how you’ll do it, that’s fine.

Ghandi didn’t know exactly how he would get the British out of India. Columbus didn’t know exactly how he would land on the shore of the Americas. They had to first decide, and then, in a way, everything else was just details.

If your targets aren’t exactly clear, or if you have an idea what you want, but no clue how to go about getting there, don’t worry. Just decide. That’s the first step.

::: FIVE STEP ABUNDANCEÂ

And, (ahem!) of course you could always use the Five Step Abundance method. It has five parts:

In the first part you learn how visualization and the Law of Attraction can be put to work for you.

In the second part you learn how to set targets and then work backwards to make a plan for getting there, and how to continually increase your energy, time, and money power.

In the third part you’ll learn how to simply and easily tune your body so that you maximize your energy, and enhance your health and your outlook on life.

In the fourth part you’ll learn how you can tweak your diet so as to avoid disease, extend your life, and feel better all the time.

And in the fifth part you learn two methods for clearing out all the old stuff from the past. This not only feels good, but produces increasing calm and focus in your life, and many physical ailments are often improved.

But, although this sounds like a plan, it’s not the first step.

The first step is … decide.

Weed, California, November 16, 2010 — Last night I was reading “Use Your Brain for a Change: by Richard Bandler, and he was describing how people motivate themselves to do things … such as how we wake up in the morning.

In the book, one fellow described using anxiety (how he’d be late, etc) to get himself up, but then this woman described how she thought about the pleasant things she would be doing. And when there were no pleasant things she liked doing, she thought about how pleasant it would be to have them *done*.

So this morning, I tried to think of things I’d enjoy doing today, but found little joy in the doingness of most items on today’s priority list: the Jackson Wellsprings booking followup, writing up listings to place ZenTappers on EBay, and some administrative things.

Rats! I didn’t really want to do them! Oh, what to do?

So, I decided to try what was described in Bandler’s book. Here’s what I mean …

That is, I decided to think about the pleasure of having those things *done*. For example, it was pleasant to think of having the Jackson Wellsprings booking confirmed and done, the ZenTapper listings complete and up on EBay, and the administrative tasks done and filed away and bugging me no longer!

And it felt great! I wanted to get up! I felt great pleasure thinking how those things would have been *done*!

This is a good strategy! Thank you Richard Bandler! Thank you Universe!

At breakfast time, I resisted doing my Five Rites. I wanted to just eat some toast and coffee. But again I thought how good I’d feel when the exercises were *done*!

And this made it fairly easy to start, which I’ve not done for several days. And as I did each one, I thought how pleasant it will be in my body when they’re done. Cool!

To celebrate, in the Champion juicer, I grated sweet potato with fresh ginger, which I fried in olive oil as potato cakes, crispy, with coffee. Yumbo! What a treat!

—

So I learned two things early today –

1. I can look forward to my to-do activities, some for the doing, and others for the pleasure of having them *done*. I can do the same within the little steps of these activities.
   xxx
2. I can look forward to the pleasure I feel after my exercise is *done*.

Did quick self-hypnosis session, and programmed these actions to be my new strategies for getting up in the morning, for processing my to-do list, and for doing/enjoying my exercise! That is –

• When it’s time to wake up, my unconscious mind (Roger) will bring to my mind the pleasure I’ll feel at doing the to-do items I enjoy doing, and also will bring to my mind the awareness and experience of pleasure I’ll feel when my to-do items are *done*.
  xxx
• When it’s time to do my to-do items, my unconscious mind (Roger) will bring to my mind the pleasure I’ll feel at doing the to-do items I enjoy doing, and also will bring to my mind the awareness and experience of pleasure I’ll feel when my to-do items are *done*.
  xxx
• When it’s time to do my exercise, my unconscious mind (Roger) will bring to my mind the pleasure I’ll feel experiencing the exercise that I enjoy, and also will bring to my mind the awareness and experience of pleasure I’ll feel when my exercise is *done*.

Thank you Richard Bandler! Thank you Roger! Thank you Universe!

[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.

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.