The Heist

The other night I watched another Derren Brown program, this one called The Heist. In it he offers a motivational seminar to middle managers. The true purpose of the seminar is to lay the groundwork for turning these normal people into criminals. His use of language and color is brilliant. Instead of saying "What I want you to get out of this experience.. " he says "What I want you to take away from this," or even "steal from this." Green is all over the place, and clearly is the color of money. Derren Brown is a genius. Everything I've read about NLP on paper seemed too good to be true, or just totally sterile. In his hands it seems possible to do anything.

I'm very excited to start using these tools myself. I've created three anchors, one for clearing my head, one for motivation, and one for calming myself. I hope to develop these and possibly introduce musical attachments to them. An anchor is essentially a physical movement which you connect to an experience you have had. If for example, you wished to create an anchor for calmness, you would have to first remember a time when you felt completely calm and re-experience that time, imagining the colors, sounds, and smells you were surrounded by and as you feel completely calm, touch your thumb to your index finger and thereby create an anchor.

Now when you use this initially you will need to think of the experience, but as it is used more often it will become tied to the physical motion itself.

Back to the Heist. After 3 weeks, from a pool of 16 people, Derren selects four, and then has them meet him at a location in London which has been cordoned off by the police where the four people will each individually walk to meet him and pass by a security guard who is carrying two cases of 50,000 pounds each. Three of the four people rob him. Three weeks is always cited as the time it takes to build a habit, or break one, so I do not think this is a coincidence. If people can be manipulated in such a way, it is important to beware of the anchors surrounding us. Advertising uses anchoring prolifically. Instead of being manipulated to feel insecure, or unhappy, manipulate yourself to accomplish your goals.

I am currently reading Introducing NLP by Joseph O'Connor. It is well-written and easy to understand.

Contemplating my tattoo

After skydiving and realizing and truly understanding the importance of death in my everyday life I have been interested in finding a constant reminder of my mortality. Not because I forget and nearly get killed, but because I forget and sit around accomplishing very little of what I wish to accomplish.

At some point I stumbled upon Kali as a possibility. She is a Hindu goddess who's name means black time, or she who devours time. After asking around, someone mentioned that I ought to read Tantric Quest. The book is phenomenal and the beliefs within it are powerful and perfect for our time. When I get around to it as I have been meaning to I will write a complete review. In Shivaic Tantricism Kali is the goddess of everything, she is the mahadeva. She is symbolic of time, death, and the consuming aspects of reality (thanks wikipedia), but sometimes she is a symbol of triumph over death.

I plan on getting the sanskrit काली tattooed to my shoulder soon after my birthday. It may end up being something I regret but the subject of the tattoo will always be important to me.

Are you sure those ideas in your head are yours?

This is Derren Brown and if he can single-handedly trick this normal looking man into believing what he really wanted was a BMX bike then what does that say about the power of suggestion? What ideas and beliefs do you have about what you want to accomplish? Where do they come from?

I'm not saying everything you want is one big mind-fuck. I'm saying you should think about it. I want to experience life in a state of awareness. I do my best to be aware of what I am doing and what I am thinking. I see people pursuing goals blindly without any motives. Achieving goals is important, but I sincerely doubt that advertising or any other form of brainwashing wants anyone to feel a sense of achievement for too long.

After learning about NLP I always thought the physical anchoring aspect seemed a bit obvious but with some showmanship and the proper situation it seems very easy to integrate. Derren Brown anchors the man's feelings of positivity to Derren tapping his shoulder which he does repeatedly, amping up his state over and over. I'm sure there are more qualified people to analyze this trick but seeing a master at work is inspiring.

What do want and why? What will it feel like to achieve such a goal? When will you feel a sense of accomplishment? How achievable is it?

Remaining calm in a sea of anxiety

All around me there are people freaking out creating hysterics over nothing. I work at a pretty slow pizzeria, and there's a cook who routinely complains about having to cut onions, saying insane shit like " this isn't an onion farm."

When one thing goes wrong or people need to push themselves they panic. I can't get this done, I'm so fucked. There is no way this is going to work. When really, if they just took that energy and put it into their project they would be WAY more successful. There really is nothing gained by thinking negatively, it just gets your head out of the game and leaves you focusing upon your weaknesses instead of your strengths. Failure has such a sting to it, but really all that is is your ego. If I believe that I am a good basketball player, and then miss a key shot I am left with a conflict between my identity and my surroundings.

This can be remedied by reframing the way you view yourself. I am a person who does my best and learn from my mistakes without dwelling on them. I haven't reached where I want to be but I know that and I am always taking steps to reach the goals I have.

Remembering old lessons

I remember every year of college, right around finals time I would realize how much more productive I became in every aspect. My stress levels usually were even lower than during the middle of the semester since I was actually getting shit done. I graduated in December and since then I've been working only 33 hours a week. I haven't been really productive. Some days the only thing I do is hit the gym which is dismal. After reading Tyler's post last night I re-remembered this aspect of me. When I have time to kill I kill it, but when my time to myself is limited I value it and make better use of it.

Today, I worked eleven hours, had a great conversation with my friend, wrote this, goofed around in the morning with my girl, and maintained all other aspects of my life. I am going to start working 8 extra hours a week for my friend and hopefully that will kick me into appreciating and managing my time properly. If not, in a week I can add catering to my work and then really be kicking ass. I want to find the right balance, where I value and have enough free time to be productive but not so little that I'm not able to fully apply my momentum. If I'm going to work for myself I need to view my free time as time where I need to obey that voice in my head saying, get stronger, get faster, get smarter, integrate yourself more fully, get amazing ninja!

After seeing that I may be able to make some extra money I realized how heavily my increasing money loss had weighed on me. I feel so good knowing that I will be able to start to add money to my bank account and really start saving to travel or move. It had me really depressed, I mean the plan was to work at this pizzeria and make enough to save and travel when I was done. I'm 1k in the hole so far, but heating this winter and random bills helped bring on the money loss. I also began paying more of my own bills. Enough narcissism. Night, I'm going to read and get ready for another rock star day.

Progress Review

April was a bust in terms of writing daily. I need to stop looking at writing as something I should be doing and just do it every morning or every night, whichever is most convenient. It also was not a great month financially. I am down again in money but I should begin catering / working for Mick to generate more money. However, I have realized that I've been unhappy with aspects of my life and I need to change my attitude and start really pursuing what I want out of life. I have a more holistic understanding of my direction and hopefully the tools to pursue it.

About a week back I posted about Planet Earth and how depressing our ecological destruction is. Our world is changing rapidly and it will never be the same. Nothing stands still everything is growing or being destroyed. Again Tyler has a more optimistic take on it. He sees the ever-changing world as being an aspect which forces people to stay mentally flexible and avoid dogma. With everything changing there is no way you can allow yourself to get stagnated. Stagnate your beliefs and in a week nothing you believed is accurate. There are the immutable laws of the self but really it becomes clear in a tumultuous world how many factors are influencing identity. Who would you be if you didn't live in the US? What kind of life would you have?

I just checked his blog again and he's got pictures up of Hawaii. I fucking envy this dude. Rock on Tyler. 15 hour days 5 days a week and 8 hour days on the weekends where he still spends 6 hours outside. I gotta throw out the tv. Later.