It all started one bright summer day. I was walking through a residential area. I saw the shoulder-height fences around the houses, and thought “What’s with those fences? They would never stop me if I wanted to actually rob the place.” I didn’t give it much more thought then. But the seed of the idea stuck somewhere in my subconscious.

It turns out I was absolutely right. The fences aren’t there to stop burglars. They’re there to stop people’s compulsive behavior - like teenagers spraying their signatures on the houses. If the teenagers see those fences, they’ll go “Ah, whatever, let’s go do something else.” They decided to spray something on a whim - and they will lose interest just as easily.

The fences simply raise the activation energy for impulsive behavior. (They’re also there because having a bigger fence around the house makes us guys feel more manly. But that’s a topic for another day…)

What is activation energy

I like pictures. So here’s one:

(just because I like pictures doesn’t mean I’m great at drawing)

In the above picture, you want to roll the rock down the hill. Once you get it rolling, you’ll be fine. But you first need to overcome the small hump. The rock represents an action you want to do (like cleaning your room). The hump represents the activation energy - how much effort it takes to get you started. Also notice that once you get going, it’s easier to keep going than stop.

Activation energy for bad habits

Let’s say you have a bad habit you’d rather not do. For example, I sometimes waste time on reddit.com. Yet if I had to drive into town and go into an internet cafe just to check reddit, I definitely wouldn’t do it. It’s all about the activation energy. I could try redirecting reddit.com to goatse in my browser’s configuration.  (if you don’t know what goatse is, you’re a lucky person).  Then, every time I would want to actually read reddit, I would either have to mess with my browser’s configuration files, or install a different web browser, or whatever. The activation energy would be hopefully high enough to stop me.

So if you have a bad habit you would like to stop doing, try raising the activation energy. It works really well for certain kinds of bad habits.

But that isn’t the most awesome thing about tweaking activation energy. The real power comes with good habits!

Activation energy for good habits

Leo Babauta has a great recipe to get himself running. He says he simply focuses on putting on his running shoes and stepping out the front door. The rest takes care of itself.

That’s an awesome application of activation energy. How much effort would it take you to get out of the house and run for 20 minutes? Now, how much effort would it take you to put on your running shoes and just step out of the front door?

In my case, the second scenario definitely takes a lot less mental effort. But wait! Look at the diagram of activation energy. Once you overcome the initial hump, the rock will get rolling without any effort on your part! So once you’re standing outside with your running shoes on, it takes almost no effort whatsoever to go to the park and start running. (It definitely works in my case. Though I don’t really like running.)

So if you want to use activation energy to improve your life, here’s a quick summary for you:

1. Think of a good habit you’d like to do more often

2. Figure out how to make the first step easier to accomplish (make it smaller, or more fun)

3. Focus all your energy on doing the first step. The rest will take care of itself.

Cheers!

If you looked at this mysterious sheet of paper on my wall, you would find it’s very simple. There’s a date for each day, followed by a few bullet points. The bullets points are my most important tasks for each day.

Most Important Tasks (aka Big Rocks)

Leo Babauta makes a great analogy in his article on Big Rocks. Your day is like a bucket. The big rocks represent the most important tasks in your life. But unless you’re careful, the bucket will quickly fill with sand and small pebbles (unimportant tasks), and you’ll find you can’t fit in your big rocks anymore. So you wait for the next bucket (next day). Yet somehow, you again end up filling it with sand and run out of space for the big rocks. It doesn’t help that other people are more than happy to help you fill your buckets with their own sand.

If you want the big rocks to fit, you will need to place them in your buckets well in advance, to make sure there’s enough space. You can then fit the sand around them.

And that’s exactly what my piece of paper on the wall does. I write down the most important tasks for each day. The tasks I simply WILL accomplish, no matter what. The tasks that will really make a lasting difference to my life. If, on some day, I finish my most important tasks, and then spend 8 hours straight playing computer games, I will go to bed happy. (ok, it’s not really possible to feel good after 8 hours of playing computer games, but you get the general idea.) Because I know I got the really important stuff done. Getting the life-changing stuff done in a few hours and wasting the rest of the day is better than doing mildly useful things all day long.

How to recognize the important tasks

Lots of tasks seem important, but once you pause to think about them, they’re just urgent. Like returning a DVD to the rental store on time. So what if you don’t return it today… just return it tomorrow and pay the late charge.

Or at school - I think understanding the stuff is important. Homework is merely urgent. So throughout school I often ignored homeworks. (And, at university, I still do. I often hand in a homework with only half the questions answered, with “boring” written next to the rest.) Some high school teachers used to hate me for treating homeworks how they deserve to be treated - as merely urgent, not important - and gave me some really bad marks during the year. Yet, in the final exams, I always got great marks, because I understood the subject.

So how do you recognize important tasks from the merely urgent? Here are a few helpful questions:

1. Will this matter 5 years from now?

If something will have lasting positive effect on your life even 5 years from now, it’s probably important. And if it won’t, it’s probably not that important. (cumulative things, noted in number 3. below, are an exception.)

2. If I accomplish this today, will I go to sleep happy and content?

I often delay important decisions (like booking airplane tickets) for days or even weeks. Then, once I finally get off my lazy butt and actually do them, I suddenly feel so free. Like a big weight has been lifted off my chest. So learn from my mistakes. Schedule your important tasks in as soon as possible, and get them done. You’ll be going to bed every day with a sense of accomplishment and happiness.

3. Is this cumulative?

It might not seem like a big deal to skip one exercise session. Or to sleep late one day when you’re trying to switch to waking up early. But every time you skip your habit, it makes the subsequent days harder to maintain.

Conversely, it might not seem like a big deal to give a small speech in front of 20 acquaintances. But the confidence and experience you get from it will carry along with you. You will feel more confident and comfortable with public speaking EVERY SINGLE TIME after that. It’s like compound interest - every little bit matters, because it builds on itself forever after.

What you can do RIGHT NOW

Want to get started immediately? After all, every day you delay doing important things, you miss the compound interest!

The easiest way to get started is to grab a pen and a piece of paper. Then just spend a few minutes thinking about important tasks in your life you’ve been delaying. Or even come up with new tasks you haven’t thought of. Maybe you could call or e-mail someone with a business offer. Maybe there’s a book you’ve wanted to read for a long time. Maybe there’s a hobby you’ve always wanted to try out… and all you need to do is a quick google search to find a local club!

Only you know what are the really important things to you. So take a few moments to figure it out. Then write down when, within the next 7 days, you’re going to accomplish all the things you came up with. You won’t believe how fast you can transform your life if you make sure you get done the truly important tasks.

Cheers, and good luck!

Some of the following random thoughts are kind of serious, some are just random observations I find amusing. If I have more of them in the future, I might make this into a static page instead of just a blog post. Anyway, here’s the first batch of my random thoughts!

Infinite staircase

I love walking up long flights of stairs. One of my favorite tourist spots is the Eiffel tower, where I walked as far up as I could using the stairs (unfortunately the stairs don’t lead all the way to the top).

So I was thinking - why stop only as high as the Eiffel tower? Or Burj Dubai, or any other man-built staircase. How about making an INFINITE staircase, for a freak like me? (Or at least the illusion of an infinite staircase). Well, never a man to be stopped by logical impossibilities, here’s what I came up with:

Imagine a long escalator. Really long. No, not infinite, just long enough for this to work. Now imagine you go and start walking up the escalator. Let’s say it’s basically in a tunnel. Just the escalator, and nothing else. Then, the whole tunnel fills with mist, so it’s more mysterious, and you can also see only a few meters ahead.

A person will be watching you from a surveillance room, using hidden cameras. Then they will start the escalator into motion. Moving in the opposite direction than you’re walking. So if you’re walking up, this escalator would be going down. It would be built so that it gets moving VERY gently, so you don’t feel it. It would take a while to match your speed, but after that, you would be in one spot, just treading the stairs. In the mist. Maybe with some cool soundtrack playing. Walking for EVER. MUHAHAhahahahaaaa…

Laugh-out-loud funny indeed

The other day, I was walking down the street and saw a movie ad on the side of a bus. One thing that struck my eye was the reviewer quote on that ad. It said:

“Laugh-out-loud funny!”
- some reviewer

I, being a geek, of course immediately translated the quote into an abbreviation - “LOL funny!” and burst out laughing. Using the abbreviation literally transformed a serious reviewer quote into something that looked like a YouTube comment left by a 12-year old.

Splitting the maths teachers

I’ve been a university student for over a month now. I’ve noticed one thing - most maths lecturers suck. The thing is, maths teaching is composed of two bits - maths and teaching. Most maths lecturers are great at the maths bit, but crap at the teaching bit.

In high school, I had a very unique maths teacher for one year. He was so bad at teaching, stuff actually made LESS sense after he explained it! (No, seriously.) I haven’t met anyone quite like that since… until now. One of my lecturers is just like that. The stuff makes some sense, then the lecturer talks about it for an hour, and by the end you’re more confused than when you came into the lecture!

This got me thinking. To make a good maths teacher, you need both the maths and the teaching. Unfortunately, finding both in the same person is very rare. But hey, what if it didn’t have to be the same person…

What about having two lecturers in each lecture? One would be great at maths, the other would be great at teaching. The teacher would by default do most of the teaching, and the maths expert would be there to correct any mistakes, and answer the students’ questions if the teacher can’t cope with them. That way, the students get the best of both worlds. Good teaching with clear explanations, but also an experienced mathematician to answer any random questions they might have.

Six Random Things about me

I got recently got tagged by fairyhedgehog in the Six Random Things meme. It’s a blogging version of those annoying chain e-mails. You know, the ones that go “If you don’t send this on to 10 people, a zombie girl will come at midnight and eat your brains”. (I actually got an chain e-mail like that once. “Sweet!” I thought. Finally a chance to test this out! So I deliberately didn’t pass the e-mail on to anyone. All excited, I stayed up until midnight. I even left the window right next to me open, so the zombie girl would have an easy entry. Unfortunately, she never showed up. I guess someone she was visiting earlier that night had eaten a garlic sandwich or something. Sigh.)

So… I won’t be passing this on, since I’m not a fan of pointless chain e-mails (or chain blog posts, in this case). But since the idea of writing six random things about myself goes well with this post’s theme, I figured I might include them :). Without further ado, here are six random things about me:

1. I can’t stay still while brushing my teeth. So I walk around, or browse the web, or whatever. Last week, I was reading a book in my bed. Suddenly I feel toothpaste trying to drop out of my mouth onto the bedsheets. I barely avoid it, and realize I still have my toothbrush in my mouth. It’s been there for at least 10 minutes, and I completely forgot about it. (the book was a Terry Prachett).
2. I once solved the Rubik’s cube with my feet.
3. I love walking barefoot through grass. I love it so much, at several points in my life, I went out in the middle of the night just to do it.
4. I spent more time pimping out my computer’s operating system than pimping out my room. Orders of magnitude more.
5. I once tried learning to count in hexadecimal. No, I mean really count in hexadecimal. I invented six new symbols for the extra digits (ABCDEF just wouldn’t cut it for me), and then spent days practicing basic addition and multiplication. I got bored before I could become proficient at it. But one of the symbols I invented made it into my “evil overlord sign”, and it’s now even part of my official signature.
6. I sometimes read books upside down. It makes me read about 5 times slower, so I can savour the book more. For example, I read the whole last book of the Harry Potter series upside down.

Wait up! If your reaction to the words mathematics is “Oh, it’s that really annoying boring thing”, or “Oh, it’s that really hard and complicated thing”, we’re not talking about the same thing. In fact, if you think like that, you probably never experienced REAL mathematics.

Sure, you did a thing called mathematics at school. But I could just easily make a subject at school called “sex” where you would memorize sexual positions and human anatomy and pass exams and get a degree. And yet it wouldn’t be anything like REAL sex.

So let me tell you what I love about real mathematics. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll make you curious enough to give it a try.

What real mathematics is like

If you only experienced mathematics at school, you might think it starts with some boring formal definitions, then some boring formal algebra, followed by a boring formal proof, from which you get a mildly interesting result.

In reality, mathematics starts from the other end. It always starts with a riddle.

Here’s a riddle you might have heard before:

A farmer has a fox, a goose, and some cabbage. He wants to cross a river on his boat, but the boat is small, so he can only take one item with him at a time. He can’t leave the fox with the goose, or the goose with the cabbage, because the former would eat the latter. How can he cross the river?

The answer is quite simple, so I won’t even tell you. And the answer is where it would end for any normal human. But not for a mathematician. As mathematicians, after we enjoy the glowing feeling of having solved the riddle, we wonder what would happen in similar cases. Let’s say the genetically modified cabbage suddenly becomes conscious and decides it loves eating foxes. Is there still a solution?

(The answer is yes. Screw the goose and the fox! You’ve got frickin fox-eating cabbage on your hands! Get on national TV, become famous, then sell the cabbage on e-bay and never have to work again. Or, alternately, build up an army of fox-eating cabbages and try to take over the world. Or kill the cabbage before it turns against you, because you’re obviously starring in a  third rate horror flick.)

Then, if we feel like it, we might go on to make some generalizations. How many animals could we transport like this if we had two places on the boat? How about three places? What about the general case of having n places? What if the relationships between what animal eats what were more complicated than a simple top-down chain?

Here’s the fun thing. No one is forcing us to do this. If we get bored, we can just leave all the gooses and fox-eating cabbages behind, and go weigh balls on a balance scale, or square a circle with just a compass and an unmarked ruler (which is impossible btw).

But what are the applications?

I can hear some of you thinking… “But what are the applications of knowing how the farmer can transport his stuff across the river?” Let me give you a long and complicated answer:

None.

Ok, now on to the short and simple answer…

What are the applications of paintings? Of playing music? Of playing chess?

Sure, painting skills can be used to make advertisements more effective, music can be used to add soundtracks to make movies sell better, chess can be used… well it can’t :). But anyway. The point is, we don’t paint, or play music, or play chess, because it can give some actual results. We just do it for fun. We enjoy it. To paraphrase Richard Feynman:

Mathematics is like sex. It can give practical results, but that’s not why we do it.

Get over the idea that mathematics is just something used by engineers and physicists to solve problems. Mathematics is an art in itself, just like music or drawing.

Some more examples of real mathematics

Here are a few more examples of mathematics. I’ll give you an easy example, a moderately hard example, and an evil example.

1. “The two kids” riddle

Imagine you’re chatting with a friend about one of your common acquaintances.

“I heard she has two kids,” you say.

“Yeah, that’s right. By the way, I met her yesterday at the supermarket, and she was with a small boy. We started chatting, and she told me it was her son. So at least one of her kids is a boy.”

What’s the probability that both of her kids are boys?

(Hint: Think hard. It’s not as straightforward as it seems.)

(Update 28/10/2008: Well, it turns out my original answer to this riddle was wrong. Check out the comments for more detail. Hey, you get to see me being proven wrong! )

2. The coin tossing riddle

Imagine you’re tossing a coin, and recording the results in a row like this: TTHTHHT…

I’d like you to consider two cases. In the first case, you keep tossing the coin until you get HTH, and then you stop. In the second case, you keep tossing the coin until you get HTT and then stop.

If you tried both of these cases a few thousand times, you would find that, on average, in one of the cases you will stop sooner than in the other. Which one and why?

3. The famous ball weighing riddle

This riddle is satisfyingly hard. (no, satisfyingly wasn’t the first word I thought of). It took me personally a couple of days to solve it.

Imagine you have twelve balls. One of them is either heavier or lighter than the rest, but you don’t know which ball, and whether it’s heavier or lighter. Can you find out which ball it is, and whether it’s heavier or lighter, by doing just three weighings with a standard balance scale? (one that simply tells you whether the balls you put on one half are heavier than the ones on the other half, but nothing else). You can number the balls for reference.
I won’t give you the answers to the above riddles. In fact, my favorite site for riddles is wu riddles. And you know why? Because it doesn’t tell you the answers (Yes, that’s a good thing. Look out for an article about “activation energy”, in which I will explain that in more detail.)

I’ll just let you enjoy thinking about the riddles.

Where are the numbers?

Wait a second. I’m writing an article about mathematics… and yet I haven’t written a single bit about numbers yet? (apart from the two kids riddle). Surely mathematics is all about numbers?

That’s because I don’t think numbers are the essential part of mathematics. It’s logic.

“When a problem has a correct solution, and the solution can be PROVEN to be correct, that’s mathematics.”
- Me

In other words, what I like about mathematics is the 100% certainty that a solution is correct. And if there is no solution… then there is a way to prove that with 100% certainty.

Sure, I still enjoy riddles that rely on real-world intuition. Where the answer makes a lot of sense, and any other answers are either unlikely, or too complicated. But it’s the 100% certainty that I really love about mathematics.

Is mathematics for you?

Did the riddles above make you think? Did you enjoy it? If yes, you would enjoy mathematics (the real mathematics, anyway). If not… then mathematics is not for you. And that’s fine too.

I hope I cleared up some misconceptions about what makes mathematics mathematics. (god, that was a pain to spell :p “mathematics mathematics mathe… argh! maths! why can’t I just call it maths!!!”)

If you think mathematics sounds like fun, and want to try some more, just google around a bit. I’m sure you will find plenty of interesting math questions out there. Or, for more fun riddles (that aren’t necessarily related to maths, or have a single solution), visit wu riddles. Cheers!

Afterword

If you’re a math geek, you might be shouting at the computer screen by now.

“What the hell is this guy talking about? Mathematics is about numbers, and their sequences, and beautiful patterns, and wonderful geometrical theorems. Not some silly riddles! Aaargh!”

And you’d be right. Mathematics IS about all those things. But when they were first discovered, they started as a riddle. As a nagging question inside some mathematician’s head. Is the sum of angles inside a triangle constant? How long is the circumference of a circle, compared to its radius? Can the diagonal of a square be written as a fraction?

I believe mathematics isn’t about the knowledge. It’s about enjoying the thinking. And I just wanted to introduce the concept to non-math folks. Cheers!

From the dawn of history, unknown used to equal danger. Eating unkown berries or mushrooms could easily kill you by poisoning. Unexplored caves could contain sleeping beasts. Which would kill you if you went there. So sticking to the known and familiar evolved as a survival trait. Those silly people who liked to try new things died before they could pass on their genes.

But today’s world is vastly different. Eating Chinese food once, instead of going to the same old steak house you used to go to for the last 10 years won’t kill you. Trying new hobbies won’t kill you. Meeting new people won’t kill you (unless you go meeting them at night, in dark alleys of poor urban areas). Yet many people still act like the unknown is full of dragons.

Sticking to the familiar feels safe. It’s natural for us humans. But it won’t let you grow anywhere near as much as exploring the unknown. It’s time to stop hiding from the imaginary dragons, and find out what the outside world REALLY looks like!

You can overcome your instincts

Try this experiment. Grab a friend, and wave a hand in front of his face. He’ll blink. Next tell him not to blink, and do it again. He’ll be able to stop himself from blinking. Blinking when something moves close to your face is a natural instinct. And yet you can consciously stop it, if you decide to.

Now the fun thing is, imagine you grabbed another friend, and waved a hand in front of his face. He would blink. Then, without saying anything, you would do it again. He would blink again. You could probably repeat this four or five times until he would go “Hey, stop!”, stop himself from blinking and push you away. He would first need to become consciously aware of what’s going on, and then consciously decide to stop it.

Fear of the unknown works the same way. Your natural reaction is to fear the unknown and stick to the familiar. And if you’re not consciously aware that you’re doing it, you’ll keep on being run by your instincts. But once you become consciously aware of your instincts, you can override them. You can then go out and seek new experiences, because you realize there’s no REAL danger out there. It’s all imaginary dragons on your map of the world.

The Three Kinds of People

Wayne Dyer, an enormously successful self-help author, talks about three kinds of people. Neurotic people, normal people, and what he calls No-Limit people. You can think of these on a spectrum, with neurotics being at one end, normal people around the middle, and No-Limit people all the way at the other end. The point of personal growth is to keep growing towards the ideal of being a No-Limit person.

When faced with the unkown, the neurotic immediately becomes defensive. He feels threatened by it. A normal person is ok with the unknown. If it comes, he will deal with it. But a No-Limit person… a No-Limit person actively seeks the unknown!

So imagine there’s a new gay club, with transvestites in it, in the neigborhood. The neurotic will immediately go “What! Transvestites in my neighborhood! Never! I will never accept such freaks!” and form a petition to get them out. A normal person would be “Ok, cool.” and do nothing. Whereas the No-Limit person would go “Hmm, gay club, that sounds interesting. And transvestites. I wonder what that’s like.” So instead of being offended, a No-Limit man would put on a bra and go check it out. Just for the fun of it.

(Now that I think of it, I’ve never been in a gay club myself. Awesome! Another piece of personal growth I can do soon )

Not too surprisingly, the closer you get to the No-Limit end of the spectrum, the more happiness, success, and FUN you have in your life! So go seek out some new experiences right now

Start conquering the dragons TODAY!

If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you will keep getting more of what you’ve already got.

Here are some specific to-do steps that you can do TODAY to expand your horizons. Of course, feel free to invent your own ways to kill dragons on your world map. This is just to get you started.

1. Try out some new hobbies

There’s probably a dozen totally awesome hobbies out there that you love. You just don’t know about it yet. And you’ll have a hard time finding out if you never try them!

With all this talk about trying new and unknown things, you might think I always keep searching for new experiences, never find peace in what I do. I’m not like that. I keep trying new things, but every now and then something grabs me so strong it nearly pulls me off my feet. Some hobbies I absolutely fell in love with are parkour, rock-climbing and Jiu Jitsu. I went through at least a dozen sports that were like “Meh. Ok, but not great.” until I found the ones I love.

So don’t be afraid to try new things. Even the stuff you don’t fall in love with will be a fun experience.

2. Break your daily routine

This was in fact one of the first things I wrote about on my blog. Check out the original article. The fact is, routine literally KILLS your brain. It reduces brain activity, like what we call “just switching off”. Breaking your routine, on the other hand, excites your brain cells and creates new connections. In other words, it’s fun and it makes you smarter!

Here are a few quick routine-breaking tips:

• take a new route to work/school
• swap around the order of your morning tasks. Maybe shower after breakfast.
• do your whole showering-and-getting-dressed morning routine with your eyes closed (careful in the shower). This will literally light up whole new regions in your brain you haven’t used for ages. Amazing fun. And amazing results.

Slay the dragons! Yaaaaay!

He came back after about two minutes, laughing about the whole experience. Later on, when we were sitting at a pub talking about the day behind us, the talk turned to that incident.
“Remember how I approached those two women pretending to be deaf-mute?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve recently been working on my limiting beliefs a lot. Whenever I spot a limiting belief, as in ‘I can’t do that’, I immediately go and do it. So when we were out, I thought ‘Hey, how about approaching someone pretending to be deaf-mute?… No, I can’t do that, that’s crazy… Ok, here I go!’”

Those simple words had a huge impact on me. Ever since that day, I try to have the same attitude as my friend. It works like a charm.

1. Action

Tim Ferris, famous for his book “Four-Hour work week”, once told the following story. He was giving a talk to college students about his success and how he achieved it. A lot of his success comes from simply going for what he wants. At the end of the talk, he gave the students a simple-sounding challenge: Contact three seemingly impossible-to-reach people (like the CEO of Google), and get answers to some personal questions from them. Whoever did best would win a round-trip ticket to anywhere in the world.

Of the 60 or so students present at the talk, do you know how many managed to get some answers from some important person?

Not a single student.

And do you know why?

Not one of them even TRIED!

They all thought “Oh, it’s going to be really hard to get answers from an important person. And somebody else is going to do better anyway. There’s no point in even trying.”

They all grossly overestimated the competition. They just gave in to their limiting beliefs.

All it would have taken to win a round-the-world trip was a bit of action. Bit of going “Oh I can’t do that… yeah, right. Let’s see about that!” So the next time Tim gave a similar talk, he gave the students the same challenge. But he also told them about what happened last time. This time, a bunch of students actually tried. And most of them got some answers!

A few days ago, I was at a bus station, waiting for a bus to my Jiu Jitsu training. I had 15 minutes to spare, so I wandered to a grocery store. I spotted some white seedless grapes and I was thought “Mmmm, I’d like some of those. Too bad I can’t really buy them, since I’m taking the bus, and have nowhere to wash them, and then I’ve got the training and…” Bam! A thought broke that rant, saying “O RLY?” (pronounced “oh, really?”) So I bought the grapes, then took them to a public toilet, where I washed them in the sink, then I put them in a plastic bag, so the water wouldn’t leak all over the place. Voila! I had my grapes, and I had a great day.

The above story is meant to illustrate two things. Firstly, I really like to talk about myself. Secondly, most limiting beliefs you have are about mundane everyday things. Like in my article about not taking yourself too seriously. There I talk about how I broke my limiting beliefs regarding going out into the rain. Hey, you’re not hurting anyone by going out to the park when it’s raining, and running around barefoot! (Unless you have a gingerbread man living on your shoulder. In which case, limiting beliefs should be the least of your worries.)

So if you say “But I can’t go out in the rain!”, do exactly that! (Of course, if you’re saying “Well, I don’t feel like going out in the rain.”, then don’t. Just pick another limiting belief.)

Here’s the three-step formula:
1. Spot limiting belief
2. Say “O RLY?” (Or, if that’s not your language style, say “Let’s see about that!”)
3. Do it!

2. Visualisation

Another big class of limiting beliefs comes from the kind of images you make in your head. My article on visualisation was originally meant to be a part of this one, but it turned out to be longer than I thought. Read it.

Sometimes, all of the above advice won’t be enough. If you have serious limiting beliefs about yourself, you might need professional therapy. No amount of self-help can substitute a real psychiatrist, if you need one. But the good news is, 99% of the time the above advice will be enough!

Now you have all the tools to conquer limiting beliefs. So next time you spot a limiting belief, just apply the three-step formula. And if you find the images you make in your head limiting you, apply the visualisation techniques. Happy no-limit living!

First imagine standing awkwardly in a corner, surrounded by people you don’t know and have nothing in common with. Your least favorite type of music is playing way too loud in the background. How much do you want to go to the party, on a scale from 1 to 10?

Now imagine standing there comfortably, surrounded by people who are interested in spending time with you. Your favorite type of music comes on in the background at just the right volume. How much do you want to go to the party?

If you felt any difference at all between the two scenarios, you can see how visualisation can seriously affect the quality of your decisions.

Visualisation is very simple. It’s just images in your head. You can control them, and thus control the quality of your life. Yet most people aren’t even aware that they’re visualising, let alone that they can change the images!

Paul McKenna, a British psychiatrist, told a story of one rockstar he used to work with. The rockstar had an intense fear of flying. If you look at the pictures he made in his head, it becomes obvious why:

As soon as he even thought of going to the airport he’d make a big picture of the check-in desk in his head and say to himself, “This is going to be bad!” Then he would imagine boarding the plane. As soon as the door closed, he’d say to himself, “I can’t get out!” He’d imagine the plane taking off and the cabin filling with smoke, everyone screaming as it crashed to the ground in a ball of flames, and then his little daughter sitting at home saying “Where’s daddy?”

Ugh! No wonder he was bloody terrified every time he had to fly somewhere!

Paul took him through changing the images he was visualising, and soon the rockstar was looking forward to every flight! You’ll learn how to change the images in your head to achieve durable change later in this article.

Visualisation rocks your skills

Some time ago, American researchers did a study about visualisation on basketball players. They took a team, and measured everyone’s skill at shooting hoops. Then they split the team into three groups. One group would practice shooting hoops for an hour every day. Another group wouldn’t practice. And the third group would only imagine themselves shooting hoops for an hour every day, visualising successful throws.

After a month, the researchers measured how much the players improved. The first group improved. The second one didn’t. But, to the researchers’ surprise, the group that visualised successful shots improved almost as much as the group that actually practiced shooting.

Visualising success works at a subconscious level. It reinforces the neural pathways in your brain (like the right hand/arm/body movements for shooting basketballs). Positive visualisation also stops you from subconscious self-sabotage, which is a surprisingly common thing.

Lots of people say things like “Nah, I’m not going to try shooting the basketball, I would miss anyway…. Ok, ok, I’m going to try, but I tell you, I’m going to miss! … Ah, damn! See? I told you so!” - No wonder a person with that kind of attitude misses!

Visualising effectively

How you imagine the pictures in your head can dramatically change their impact. Like the sprinter who visualised himself winning from a third person perspective - essentially telling himself the winning was for someone else. And whenever he thought of his opponents he imagined big bright pictures of them looking confident. Not too surprisingly, he wasn’t doing well in practice. The day after he changed the way he visualised the above scenes, he went out and beat his personal best in practice!

So if you have images in your head and you want them to have LESS impact on you (like the rockstar’s fear of flying, or the sprinter’s opponents), here’s what you do:

Making your visualisations less powerful:
1. Freeze it
If you’re imagining a movie in your head, freeze it. Still pictures have less emotional impact.
2. Step outside yourself
Now step outside yourself, so that instead of looking at the scene through your own eyes, you’ll see it from a third person view. This dis-associates you with the scenes a bit.
3. Drain the color
Now drain all the color out of the scene until it’s black and white.
4. Shrink it and send it far away
Take the image you’re making in your head, shrink it down until it’s the size of a postage stamp and send it far away from you.

Then just imagine the scene this way a couple of timesuntil you do it automatically. You’ll find it has far less emotional impact now.

And for visualising positive experiences, you want to have the emotional impact as strong as possible! So here’s what you do:

1. Step inside yourself
See it through your own eyes, hear it through your own ears, and feel all the feelings in your body.
2. Make the colours brighter, the sounds louder, the feelings stronger
Big bright images and loud sounds have more emotional impact. That’s why movies look so awesome in cinemas. On the same note, you can also add soundtrack to your visualisations. It’s fun, and it actually further increases the emotional impact
3. Make the images bigger
Expand your visualisation until it fills your whole viewing area.

I used to suck at basketball. Now, I’m a tall guy, so everyone (including myself) thought I should be great. But I just couldn’t hit the basket for the damn of me. I succeeded maybe one time out of ten, even at close ranges.

Then I learned about the above visualisation techniques. I realized I always thought about the past failures before playing. So I took those images, and took them through the technique for reducing their emotional impact. Then I started visualising myself doing successful shots from everywhere around the basket. I essentially changed the kind of images that automatically popped out in my head when I thought of shooting basketballs. Which is often exactly what you’ll want to do - take out one set of images, then substitute another. And my success went through the roof!

It comes back to focusing on the right things. Don’t dwell on past negative experiences. Just play through them once or twice to extract useful lessons, and then instead play through your ideal success “movie” the next few hundred times.

So there you go. You now know how to reduce the impact that negative past experiences have on you, and how to rock your life through positive visualisations! Enjoy!

Loads of people are letting the outside world control how they feel. They look to the weather, and to their friends, and to the news, to tell them how to feel. They get to feel miserable because the weather sucks. And because the economy is in trouble. And because there’s a traffic jam, because someone said something they disagree with, because politicians lied to them, because, because, because…

Stop!

Mark the words of a wise man:

The traffic doesn’t care.

There. It really doesn’t care if you scream your lungs off. And neither does the economy. Or the weather. So stop letting outside events control how you feel.

Psychoanalysts have thing concept called internal locus of control. It basically means letting stuff INSIDE you decide how you feel and what you do. As opposed to letting the outside world control your mood, actions and feeling of self worth. Having an external locus of control.

What motivates you?

Loads of people are motivated by outside things. They want more money, and a bigger house, another car. They want other people’s approval, they want to be better than other people…

And they want all of those things to achieve happiness. Aw, but they’re doing it all wrong! If they want happiness, then that’s what they should focus on! Just take the guy who works 60 hours a week at a stressful job… in order to achieve happiness!

What motivates you? Is it outside things? Blingy jewellery and a big car? Other people’s approval (or envy)?

Or is it happiness? A feeling of self-worth? A sense of purpose?

Don’t worry if a lot of what motivates you is external stuff. You’re literally bombarded every day by advertisements and news telling you to let outside thing control you. “Let a receding hairline motivate you to buy! Let other people’s envy motivate you to buy! Base your self-worth on how many blades there are on your razor!”

Just focus on moving your consistently moving your locus on control inside, rather than outside. Be motivated by inside things.

Here’s a story from Paul McKenna:

In one of my seminars a man did [an excercise to discover what his values are] and discovered that the most important thing in his world was money. When I asked him what having money would give him, he took some time to imagine himself having lots and lots of the stuff. When he opened his eyes, he said, “Having money will give me a feeling of security, and if I have money, people will respect me.” What was really important to him was security and respect - those were the states of being he was pursuing money to try to experience.

Can you see how this man’s locus of control shifted inwards? Instead of being focused on the exernal thing (money), he was now focused on feelings of security and respect. Now he just needs to discover that feeling respected comes from respecting oneself.

Who controls your self-image?

A couple of years back, I used to really enjoy listening to classical music (Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin etc.). So I did that, and I let others know that, and all was good. Lots of acquaintances knew me as “that tall guy who listens to classical music”.

And then, one day, I listened to some pop music. And I was like “Hey, that’s pretty good.” And then my next though was like “No, I can’t like pop, I like classical music!” - and I wouldn’t let myself to listen to pop. And I would meet some acquaintances, and they would go like “Hey, still listening to Mozart?” and I would go like “Yeah.”

And for several years, I would listen to classical music only, and whenever I would catch myself listening to something else and liking it I would think “No, I can’t like that! I like classical music and only classical music!” And when I would occasionally listen to a pop song, and someone would come along and go “Hey, what are you listening to?” I would go “Oh, that’s nothing… that’s just… I don’t know how… don’t really like it…”

Basically, I let other people’s opinion control my self-image. And it SUCKED (though I didn’t realize that at the time). I had a completely external locus of control. I actually let the label that I was “the classical music guy” dictate what music I would listen to!

That was before I did a lot of personal growth. Nowadays, I just listen to what I enjoy listening to. I still enjoy classical music, but I also enjoy some pop, and bits of techno, and a bunch of other stuff. And guess what. No one cares. No one says “Oh my god! I thought you were the classical music guy and now I hear you listening to The Ting Tings! From now on you’re my worst enemy and I hate you and I’ll go and tell everyone you’re a jerk and…”

So don’t let other people’s opinions of you control you. Because their opinions are just that - their opinions!

Here’s a story by Wayne Dyer, a highly successful author of self-improvement materials:

My little daughter came home from school one day. As she was talking about her day, one of the things she said was “Billy said he doesn’t like me.”
Now, instead of going “Alright! Let’s do something about that! Let’s figure out how to get Billy to like you…”, I said:
“Well, do YOU like you?”
“Yes, of course…”
“Then what does it matter what Billy thinks?”

Yeah, he goes on to say she wasn’t exactly happy with that kind of answer :).

But the point is clear. What YOU think of yourself is the only thing that matters. Yeah, I know, it hurts when others say something bad about you. I also get a twinge of bad feelings every time someone leaves a negative comment on my blog. But I quickly bounce back, because I realize that it’s just their opinion. I enjoy my own blogging, and that’s what matters.

Achieving internal locus of control

So how do you go about it?

1. Don’t try to control the uncontrollable

You don’t control the traffic. Or the weather. Or other people’s opinions. They’re not out there to spite you, or hinder you, or to have a good time annoying the hell out of you. They just are.

2. Take control of what you DO control

Another face of having external locus of control is letting outside things control you. Don’t just let the TV tell you what to wear, your friends tell you where to eat, the world tell you how to feel. You have your own opinions! You fully control your own preferences. You control your own actions.

You can also indirectly influence other things - by advertising your opinions. So you don’t control other people’s opinions, but you can still tell your friends that you think Firefox 3 is an awesome web browser, and they should try it. You don’t control their reaction. Maybe they’ll stick to using IE 6, like they have for the last 5 years. But at least you gave them a chance.

And finally…

3. Don’t take yourself too seriously

Adios, and have a good day! (If YOU decide to)

Then you come on stage. You can choose to open either Box A, or Box B. If you open Box A, you get to keep what’s inside. If you open Box B, you get to keep both the contents of Box A, AND the contents of Box B. Sounds easy so far?

Now comes the tricky bit. Maestro Petriciosa is an excellent judge of human character. In fact, he’s so awesome, he’s right EVERY SINGLE TIME. If he judges you’ll open Box A, he’ll put the million dollars in there. If he judges you’ll open Box B, he’ll put the piece of paper in Box A.

So here we go, you come on stage. The moment of truth! Which box will you open?

Think about it for a moment.

The answer is completely obvious. The problem is, about half the people think one answer is completely obvious, and the other half think the other answer is completely obvious.

The group that would open Box A argues like this: “If you open Box A, you get a million dollars. If you open Box B, you get half a million. Duh! Get box A!”

The group that would open Box B argues like this: “The boxes are already on stage. The contents are sealed. If you pick Box A, you get what’s inside. If you pick Box B, you get what’s inside Box A, and also an extra half a million dollars! Duh! Get box B!”

It comes down to one fact. Do you believe that something you do now can influence something in the past?

SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM. (I don’t like spam!)

Enlarge you penis! Online casino! URGENT: NEED YOUR HELP TO TRANSFER $20 MILLION!!! You know, junk e-mail. SPAM.

There’s lots of it. It’s annoying to you, and it’s expensive to internet providers. Apparently, about 80% of all e-mail is SPAM (I read it on the internet. So it must be true.). So who can we blame for SPAM?

The obvious solution is to blame the spammers. I don’t. (and I’ll explain why later). You could also blame the internet providers for letting them SPAM, or blame cheap e-mail, or blame the government, or your annoying neighbour from down the street. (I actually kinda like the last one )

But there’s one huge reason why SPAM exists. Get ready for it…

SPAM works!

In other words, I blame the people who buy from spammers! Yes, those people must be out there somewhere - because SPAM still exists! If no one bought from spammers, they would lose money and stop spamming.

The trouble is, e-mail is as cheap as salt water. I don’t have any exact figures (and I’m too lazy to look them up), but my guess is that if one person in 10 000 buys from a spammer, they’ll turn a good profit.

Why am I writing the whole thing here? Let’s say you buy from a spammer. You just caused a couple thousand e-mails to be sent a few days ago. (Or you caused them to be sent in the future. Depending on your point of view.)

Oh and, I wanted to quote Monty Python. That’s the REAL reason I wrote this bit :p

Related: cows!

<SaxxonPike> mmm, steak
<SLASHSPIT> you guys don’t respect the environment, do you?
<SaxxonPike> I respect a good dinner
<SLASHSPIT> how can you eat that? cows are like one of the largest contributors of methane gas
<SLASHSPIT> which contributes to global warming and stuff
<SLASHSPIT> so what are you all doing for the environment?
<SaxxonPike> I eat the fucking cows

See a problem there?

By now, if you’re following my logic, you should see the obvious problem! The only reason the cows were grown was to have SaxxonPike eat them.

Depending on your view of the world, you could say that his eating the cow NOW caused the cow to be bred three years ago. Or, more naturally, that his eating the cow NOW causes more cows to be produced in the future.

In any case, eating a cow only makes the environmental problem worse. Which brings me to my next point…

How to save the world

Want to get rid of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas? Stop global warwing? In other words, save the world?

Demand more wood!

Trees are great at capturing carbon from the atmosphere. They’re over half of carbon by mass. So cutting down trees lets you store the carbon as a piece of furniture. Problem solved!

Yeah, I know. Cutting down trees without replacing them won’t solve the problem. Here’s my step-by-step plan:

1. Pass an immediate worldwide ban on cutting new trees.
Only let companies cut down trees if they plant two new trees in exchange. Or let them get wood from private tree-farms.
2. Use more trees!
Do you use recycled paper? Then you don’t care about the environment! Do you use wooden furniture? Excellent! You are saving the world!

A bonus! Other common materials are huge emitters of carbon dioxide. Concrete, plastic, or metal - producing them releases tons of greenhouse gases. Only wood actually CONSUMES carbon dioxide when it’s being produced!

Now I just need to get all the political leaders to agree. Hmmm.

Summary

So, you can save the world by cutting more trees, ruin the world by killing cows, who are big emittors of greehouse gases, and you can make yourself richer by taking the contents of Box A, rather than taking the contents of both Box A and Box B.

Whoever said cause and effect were straightforward?

Yes, it sucks to die a premature death. Yes, you’ll be leaving behind a bunch of great people, and that sucks too. But underneath that, there’s something more fundamental.

There are two kinds of people, when facing death. Most people are afraid of death. On their death bed, they’re anxious and they wish they had done more with their lives.

And then there is a second group of people. Those people, on their death bed, are happy and content with how they’ve lived their life. They say to themselves - “Well, boy, it’s been good. It sucks I have to die now, but I’ve done my best and I’m happy with what I’ve achieved.”

The difference between the two kinds of people is in how they have lived their lives. The first group of people has simply lived nice comfortable lives. They had a good job, kids, and a house. But on their death bed, they wonder -  “what have I really achieved?”

The second group of people lived differently. They had a burning desire to achieve a specific purpose in life. They devoted all their passion and energy to attaining it. Even if they didn’t quite achieve their purpose, they lived a good life.

They had a mission in life.

Why have a mission in life?

Here’s the story of a doctor from Florida, who found his mission in life and started acting on it.

I decided I would work to introduce inhaled general anesthesia into mission hospitals in developing countries (most surgeries are done under spinal or ketamine anesthesia).  I resigned my 6 figure paying job after careful consideration and realization that I was letting my boss’ desires define what my career should be.  I told him I was quiting, he begged me not to quit, said I was making a mistake, and offered me the leave of absence I had been asking for for over a year. I have saved/invested enough over the past 2-3 years to handle my mortgage and medical school loan payments while being unemployed, and will rent out the house to a fellow hospital worker while I’m gone.  I moonlighted during a week of vacation after I found a job that payed nearly twice my usual salary to help pay for the first anesthesia machine that will need to be purchased (that place liked me so much they offered me a job! I turned them down.).  I  then signed a part time locums job in a nearby state… again, for nearly twice what I was making, and for fewer hours worked each day, where I will work until the visas and paper work is all completed to allow me to work and teach in Africa.

When I was on the verge of finally walking away from my job, not knowing if/where I’d get another permanent one, how I’d pay my ongoing financial obligations… it was indeed VERY lonely.  No one but me could tell me I was doing the right thing.  But I just knew, this is what I wanted.  After the decision was final, and I told people what I was doing… EVERYBODY wanted to come with me!  “Who are you going with,” they ask.  I’m going solo.  “Who’s paying you,” nobody, I say.  Yet they all want a part of it!  But you know what?  None of them will.  They don’t want it bad enough.  They have their own jobs, their families… their lives.  And they don’t have the boundry, the will, or the knowledge to do what I’m going to do.  That’s why it’s MY MISSION. 

Now there’s a guy who knows where he’s going!

Your mission gives you a sense of direction in life. It’s what makes you passionate and excited about life.

It makes you feel great about your life. It makes you jump out of bed with a smile on your face, ready to tackle the day ahead! It makes you lie down at night happy with what you’ve achieved, and looking forward to the next morning.

Your mission in life is a big part of who you ARE.

By the way, have you ever wondered why so many men have an existential crisis when they turn forty? The so-called mid-life crisis?

I believe it is because of their mission in life. Or, rather, a lack thereof. They just wake up one day, find out they’re halfway through their lives, and they haven’t done any progress on their mission in life yet. Hell, many haven’t even found out what their mission is!

What IS a mission in life?

In the movie 300, the main character has a solid mission in life. To protect the freedom of Greeks, and unite them against a common enemy. And he was not afraid to DIE to achieve his mission. Because if you betray your mission, you betray your whole life.

Or take Martin Luther King, whose mission was to gain equality for black people in America. Did he completely finish his mission? No… but he achieved incredibly much just by going for it. He raised awareness, organized protests, and gained the blacks a lot more recognition, even if he didn’t achieve complete equality by the time he was assassinated.

Your mission in usually some great goal. Something larger than life. Something you’ll be working on your whole life, and still might not achieve it. But you will make so many great things happen along the way, it will be well worth it.

Your mission in life is unique to you. It’s something special, based on your specific abilities and skills. No one else can have quite the same mission in life as you.

Once you discover your mission in life and start going for it, you might see some resistance from people at first. Like “You’re crazy, you’ll never achieve that. Go get a good job, a nice house, a big car and live a boring pointless life.” Our culture isn’t used to people having a REAL mission in life. But if you stick with it for a while, everybody will see how much better your life has got. How much more happy and passionate about life you feel. And they’ll want to join you.

Of course, you’ll have to be careful about who you allow on your team. On your “mastermind group”. But that’s a topic for another post.

Finding your Mission in life

Finding your mission isn’t something you do overnight. It took me roughly a year to realize what my mission really is. I’ve known it in the back of my mind for most of that time, but I let doubts hold me back.

The trouble with Mission in life is that it seems completely unrealistic to others (and yourself, at first). If you tell people, some might laugh and discourage you from trying. But others will be like “Yeah, the world really needs that! Awesome that you’ll go for it!” Don’t be discouraged by the pessimists. You are more important than someone’s opinion.

Do you think Martin Luther King’s friends believed him when he first said he wanted to stop racism in the US? I don’t think so. But he peresevered, and soon he had thousands, even millions of followers. He didn’t live to see the end of racism in the US, but he brought us much closer to his dream. And that is what a Mission in life is all about.

So what’s your mission in life? Here are a few pointers:

• What do you love doing?
• What makes you come alive?
• If you won a billion dollars, how would you use it to make a difference in the world?
• If you could be anything in the world, what would you be?

For now suspend all judgement. Don’t worry about how realistic your dreams are. The whole point of your Mission in life is that it seems out of all proportion to everyone around you. Only you truly know what you can achieve.

“It’s better to shoot for the stars, and land in the mud, than shoot for the mud and make it.”

And don’t worry if it takes you some time to figure out what your Mission is. As I said - it took me personally about a year.

So what’s the next thing you can do? Just spend some time thinking about your Mission, and figure out what it is.

Until next time. Adios!