“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou, poet and actress

“Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.” – Mark Twain, highly quoted writer

“You can close your eyes to the things you do not want to see, but you cannot close your heart to the things you do not want to feel.” – Anonymous

“I am involved in all of mankind.” – John Donne, 16th century poet

One midnight, I had just finished another shift at a job I didn’t like so I was alive with energy. I smiled, my eyes were open, I felt good about myself. I said my usual goodbyes to a friend and sprung into my car. My friend reversed his car just before I had the chance to leave my car park so he had beaten me this time – it was an unspoken game that took place each time we left from work. I waited for him to get out of the way before I reversed to make my way home.

As I was leaving, the open car park gave me an invitation to have a little fun with my car. If landscapes could talk, this one was whispering into my ear that I should spin the wheels. “Besides, it’s late at night. No one is around and you’re feeling great. It’s an open car park with no danger. Do it!” said the persuasive voice. Like a vulnerable teenager succumbing to peer pressure, I accepted the invitation.

The car became an extension of my body as it began to mimic my ecstatic mood. I put my foot down hard on the accelerator as I spun the wheel left around the first corner. As the rear tires lost their stability and the car went side-ways, I entered the next turn and spun the wheel right. The sound of screeching tires was like water fertilizing my increasing smile. Smoke filled the rims of my tires and a shot of adrenaline filled my body.

Following the consecutive drifts, I straightened the car and approached a set of traffic lights on the main road that would take me home. Had this been during the daytime, about seven cars would be in front of me before the upcoming traffic lights. I decided to keep complying with the road’s persuasive voice as it told me to “be a little adventurous” so I decided, or rather I let the road decide for me, that I should turn left instead of my usual right turn. Not exactly an Indiana Jones adventure, but it was different.

My friend who had left before me had just gone through the traffic lights a few seconds before me so the lights were still green. Keeping in the mood, I put my foot down on the accelerator to catch the green light. I would make it. I turned around the corner with a soft screech of the tires and there, 20 meters in front of me, on the side of the road were two police officers beside their vehicle.

They pulled me over. Opposite to what you might be thinking, I was not concerned. I was still in my elevated state. I wound down my window and an angry officer came charging at me, yelling, “What the hell are you thinking? What the hell is going through your mind?” I paused momentarily, unaffected by his aggressive state. I said smilingly, “I’m just happy, I guess”. Not a smart response.

It just hit me that I was out of it. I knew I should have said something else. I gulped. My mind rushed to think of some communication techniques I could use as a life boat to save me from drowning in the conversation. The moment was intense and all that came to mind were some techniques on getting out of a speeding-ticket. I thought to myself that I’ll give the techniques a shot. After all, I had annoyed the officer enough already.

As I was thinking how to approach this difficult situation, I was still happy of course. My happy mood seemed to pour fuel on his already raging fire. “Bloody hell mate! I could just give you a ticket right now!” My smile began to lower. I no longer made eye contact with the officer. The officer’s raging mood began to infect me and cause me to feel angry. It was as if my body had been overcome by an emotional virus the officer had given me.

I thought of the techniques to get out of a speeding-ticket and realized I was already beginning to use them. Well, it was too late to make the officer feel safe as he approached the car, but I needed to no longer act oblivious to my mistake. I needed to show respect as officers are in a clear position of authority and often experience disrespect throughout their day that only makes them more determined to convict guilty citizens. “You’re right.” I replied. “I was stupid and careless.”

The officer was still enraged and continued to threaten me with a ticket. I knew he could easily write me a ticket, but he wasn’t writing one possibly because officers hate the paperwork created from citizens breaking the law. I kept myself aligned with the officer’s reality by remaining in a “Yes I’m wrong, stupid, and shouldn’t have done that” mood. I continued to play psychological judo, and match my mood with his own, until two minutes later he said to drive off. And oh, I got no ticket!

I drove off – though feeling pleased I had beaten a reckless driving ticket – in an irritated state. The officer had destroyed my happy mood. It took two minutes of talking with the officer to completely transform my happy state into a joyless, gloomy mood. All it took was two minutes to convert my mood and there I was, in an unhappy state for the remaining two hours until I went to bed.

The story I just described is probably a perfect depiction of your reality with emotions. Everyday you are interacting with people at different mood levels. Sometimes you’re happier than people you are talking to, other times they are happier than you. Whatever the case maybe, emotions are being transferred to various people. This is a fascinating peculiarity with emotions. Have you ever noticed how we feel in our interactions is not just dependent on our internal state?

• How did you feel when someone really annoyed began talking to you? You became more annoyed.
• How did you feel when someone unhappy began talking to you? You began to be unhappy.
• How did you feel when a charismatic person talked to you? You felt his energy and you began to feel happier.

Psychologists call this phenomena “emotional contagion”. It is a psychological and physiological process – a transference of emotion that can occur from mimicking body language. Elaine Hatfield, a professor at the University of Hawaii, in a study with John Carlson and Christopher Hsee had college students watch a videotape of a man describing two very emotional experiences: his life’s happiest and saddest events. While the college students watched the tape, they were taped so the researchers could record the students’ emotional responses. The students were also asked what feelings they experienced for each story at the end of the video. The researchers found that students showed and expressed the recorded person’s emotions. The student’s felt happy when they watched the person describe his happiest event and sad when they watched the person describe his saddest event.

Hatfield and her two colleagues, John Cacioppo and Richard Rapson, in their co-authored book Emotional Contagion, say the psychophysiological phenomena occurs from automatically matching facial expressions, vocalics, postures, and movements. Hatfield says, “People tend to experience emotions consistent with the facial, vocal, and postural expressions they adopt.”

When you are empathetically listening to a friend, true empathy puts you in their shoes so you experience the events they are talking about. The friend describes the argument with their ex-partner, the yelling, the misunderstandings that took place. You can vividly see what your friend is talking about. From this experience you come to feel how your friend feels. As you empathetically listen to a friend discuss a painful event, you will experience a similar pain. Well-known psychologist Albert Bandura says the shared experience results in a shared feeling. That is the price of listening: not only can you catch a cold, but you can catch an emotional cold.

Mirror Neurons: The Mind’s Mirror

There is a scientific explanation behind how our emotions – an experience of mind and body – transfer over to somebody else. In 1980s, three Italian researchers made what is said to be one of the greatest neuroscience breakthroughs in recent times: discovering the mirror neuron. In an experiment, the three researchers had electrodes attached to a macaque monkey’s brain which enabled the researchers to determine what movements caused the neurons to light-up. As the monkey reached for food, the researchers took note of single neurons being fired. When the researchers were handing the monkey some food, they unexpectedly saw the monkey’s neurons fire. By accident, the researchers discovered that when they picked-up a piece of food, the monkey had the same neurons light-up as if it were picking-up the food. They came to name these neurons “mirror neurons” because they were like the mind’s mirror.

Mirror neurons get triggered from an action or observation of someone who is doing the same action. It may not appear as a significant finding, yet the breakthrough discovery has lead to a better understanding of autism, empathy, altruism, and general learning because the mirror neurons are responsible for tuning-in to another person’s behavior. The neurons are responsible for an awareness and shared-feeling between two people. One neuron is responsible for the significant role of learning, understanding, and feeling.

An amazing, almost mystical link, takes place to connect the brains. A signal sent from either individual in the psychological connection travels via the link to similarly affect the recipient. Hatfield says, “We reflect what they feel.” Smile at a baby, or almost anyone for that matter, and the baby’s mirror neurons will be fired to trigger an automatic smile. That is why the age-old saying, “smiling causes the whole world to smile with you”, is true. Not only is emotional contagion a replication of another’s emotions, but it is a biological dance – a shared physical connection. It is an interlinking of mind and body.

The biological dance is an important part in group dynamics. Janice Kelly, a professor of psychological sciences at Purdue University, says emotional contagion causes people to converge into an affective homogeneous group. In other words, group members begin to experience the same emotions overtime as their fellow members. Kelly says that people with highly expressive body language are more able to impose their emotions on others. The distinctive nonverbal signs allows individuals to pick-up on the person’s emotions and become infected by their emotional state. Here we see another age-old saying, “Monkey see, monkey do.” is real.

Another age-old theory of staying away from toxic people – because they will pull you down with them – is now a physiological and psychological fact. Being around suppressing or uplifting people directly affects your body and mind. We were born for interaction and connection with one another. We are a social animal.

You’ve heard that you should make friends with wealthy people if you want to be wealthy because the technique works. If you want to be happy, you make friends with happy people. If you want to be confident, you make friends with confident people. If you want to be funny, you make friends with funny people. Being around people you want to be like is a secret of self-transformation to stimulate that emotional desire needed for growth. Athletes are able to play their sport better upon watching superior athletes excel in their sport through the magic of transference. Observance creates transference. You come to pick-up the characteristics you see in others because they infect you with their style, knowledge, and emotions.

Whether you intend to be infected by someone or not is irrelevant because mirror neurons are responsible for imitating other people. You don’t make a choice as to what you are exposed to that causes your mirror neurons to fire; it’s an automatic process. Our parents told us to avoid hanging out with the wrong people for a reason. “People are like dirt.” said the classical Greek philosopher Plato. “They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.” It is reality that you come to absorb the characteristics of people you observe.

Put yourself in a group where the individuals are depressed and you will become depressed. Put yourself in a group where the individuals blame others and you will come to blame others. Put yourself in a group where the individuals are prejudice against blacks, and you will come to be prejudice against blacks. Or in my case: do something stupid on the road in front of a police officer to make him angry so that you become angry.

Mirror neurons are not all bad news. Mirror neurons do not have to be the only source of influence on your mood or way of thinking. You can still be with depressed, blame-filled, or prejudiced individuals without taking on their characteristics. Therapists, social workers, and doctors are just a few people who need to work with people in the “don’t infect me with your emotional disease” category. Even so, people in such professions and positions will have a harder time in making themselves immune from emotional diseases because mirror neurons are a part of the brain every moment of our lives.

Even though you and I will always be around less-than-optimal people, we need to put ourselves around people who have the characteristics and emotions we want to take on. We naturally gravitate towards these people. They have a set of likable characteristics that draw us into them to bring out the best in ourselves. As Mark Twain said, “Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

The Brain’s Low Road and High Road

While emotional contagion is an important part in transforming yourself to who you want to be, it is important that you don’t rely on other people to make you feel good. Letting the emotional parts of your brain – mostly the almond-shaped amygdala, which is located near both sides of your temples – roam like a child on the streets is dangerous. Neuroscientists say that you can control emotional responses – to a certain extent.

When our ancestors were faced with a dangerous predator, they had to make a quick decision, an emotional response void of time-consuming rationalization that puts the person’s life at risk. Their eyes would widen and pupils dilate to visually take-in more information. They receive a shot of adrenaline to increase the supply of oxygen and glucose to muscles for strength and speed. Unnecessary bodily functions like digestion becomes suppressed. Additionally, the brain detours the slow responding high road – taking the low road to produce a quick response. Going straight to the more primitive amygdala produces reflexive, unconscious decisions. It is these primitive parts of the brain that neuroscientists say is difficult to change.

One low road response could be your reaction to a loud bang. The loud sound causes all the adrenaline responses mentioned earlier – such as widened eyes, dilated pupils, increased supply of oxygen – in the first few milliseconds you hear the sound. You quickly look towards the sound to rapidly figure out if the sound is a signal of danger. If you can’t see the sound, you rely on social proof as you look at people’s faces to see their reactions and how you should respond.

In a low road response, the sensory signals bypass the cortex and go straight to the amygdala to produce a reflexive response. If your brain puts too much emphasis on the low road in everyday living, you would live spontaneously and quickly destroy your life from poor decision-making. If you screamed and sprinted away each time you heard a loud bang, you would be an emotional wreak. This is where the high road, a neurological path in your the brain, comes in to better control your emotional responses.

As the first few seconds – or even less – pass after hearing the loud bang, you transition over to the high road as you begin to analyze the situation. While the low road is responsible for reflexive decisions beyond your control, the high road can jam a cognitive wedge in the low road to better adapt and survive.

The high road is a slower response path that uses parts of the brain like the frontal cortex and the hippocampus (your memory) to respond appropriately to stimulus. These parts of the brain are vulnerable to neuroplasticity, physical changes of the brain. Over time your brain physically shapes itself as it learns that all loud bangs are not dangerous. A cooking saucepan dropping on the hard kitchen floor doesn’t automatically make you run to the neighbors for help. (I recommend you grab Daniel Goleman’s Social Intelligence to better understand the neuroscience behind emotions).

Shaping Your Emotional Responses

While some neuroscientists say it is impossible to control all emotional responses, due to the brain’s low road producing a quick response for survival, you can better utilize the high road. Thinking about an emotional response uses the prefrontal cortex of the brain to override the signals received by the amygdala. This is where neuroscience meets personal development. One of my favorite techniques to do this is reframing. In reframing you are changing your initial interpretation, often a quick-response, in a situation to produce a response that is beneficial to you and your relationships.

One of the most powerful reframes I describe in the second edition of my communication secrets of making people like you program is positive intention framing. In positive intention framing, you identify the positive intention relevant to the limiting situation. Let’s say you are in a serious argument with your spouse. Most people in such an argument let: 1) the low road control the argument as they react impulsively and later regret the things they said during the heated disagreement, and 2) emotional contagion infect themselves with a negative mood for hours following the argument. You can have a degree of control over impulsiveness and emotional infections by reframing.

A positive intention reframe could identify your spouse’s yelling at you as their need to be heard, understood, and received; instead of a personal attack. Alternatively, you could positively reframe your spouse’s yelling as a welcomed release of their frustration so you can listen to what concerns him or her. The purpose of this type of reframing is to help you better utilize your mental resources without having them work against you. The reframing helps you use your prefrontal cortex to take the high road and interpret the situation in a way that lets you act in a resourceful manner. Because of this, reframing is proven by research to be one of the most effective anger management techniques.

Happy people are the experts of reframing. They may not have learned reframing techniques from a book or online article, but I guarantee you they use the technique. Happy people are logical people. They are logical in the sense they reframe, interpret, and use their prefrontal cortex to take the brain’s high road – and live a more fulfilling life. What happens outside of them does not matter as their mental attitude is what matters. “Happiness doesn’t depend on any external conditions,” said Dale Carnegie, “it is governed by our mental attitude.”

Let’s say an aggressive person is talking to someone with effective communication skills. The effective communicator is able to defuse the aggression through their communication style even though the emotional aggression is still received. A good communicator feels the aggression, but they reframe their response which enables them to control their emotional contagion and destructive low road reaction. They see it in frames such as, “Oh, he’s just trying to get me to understand him.” or “I enjoy the problem coming to surface instead of it remaining hidden where it eats away the relationship.” From these frames the effective communicator is able to use his or her own mental resources very efficiently.

When you express anger, you give it a pathway to infect your relationships and escalate the emotional infection. Expressing your anger gives it to someone who gives it back to you in a greater quantity. Happy people get angry; but their anger is a momentary feeling, a function of the low road which is later controlled by the high road. Happy people reframe their anger instead of expressing it and letting it grow.

In terms of depression, emotional contagion and reframing is no different. Depressed individuals seek isolation to feel better about themselves. The isolation compounds their depression – an ironic effect. Those with depression are better off forcing themselves to interact with other people who are more happier than they are in order to beat depression. They need to reframe their negative states to put themselves into an empowering state. Similarly, they should make mirror neurons benefit themselves by smiling – even if it feels artificial – as it forces the person’s body to feel happy. Emotional contagion can work for you or against you if you let it.

Shaping People’s Emotional Responses: The Emotional-Leveling Technique

We see that reframing controls our responses to the situation, but what about other people’s responses? Are we suppose to let other people react in whatever way they happen to react? Is there a technique we can use to uplift other people and have emotional contagion help our relationships?

Generally, you do not need to worry about people’s responses because your response is what matters. Worrying is a powerless concern for the future. That isn’t to say that people’s responses and emotional states are irrelevant; because they are vital as you will soon see. You need to observe people’s emotional states and adjust yourself accordingly instead of worrying about people’s behaviors that are beyond your control.

How do you shape a person’s emotional response? You maybe thinking that if negative emotions can be injected into people to spread into further harmfulness, is it just a matter of being positive to decontaminate individuals from negative emotions?

In many cases, positiveness and forcing your emotions on an unhappy, negative, or angry individual is more counter-productive than useful. When I was happy and smiling to the angry police officer, he became more infuriated. Seldom does positiveness alone overrule negative emotions. The next time someone around you is angry, look them in the eye, smile, and tell them what a beautiful day it is. Their anger will be overpowering to your mood – making the technique unsuccessful and possibly increasing their anger. They will likely become more angry saying something like, “It’s a disgusting day”, with an even unhappier face.

Other times your happy attitude may change their unhappy perspective, but the technique does not create a reliable solution that you can depend on because anger builds on itself. Anger is like a good investment that builds on itself, though of course, it’s a harmful emotion. What is an effective communicator to do when emotional contagion is working against him or her?

Let’s review what occurs during emotional contagion so we can convert it for our own benefit. Emotionally destructive conversations all start out with one person injecting a state into their conversational partner. When the conversational partner is a poor communicator who reacts impulsively, letting his mirror neurons mimic the person’s harmful state, the two individuals experience intensified emotions. The newly infected person becomes a carrier, reciprocating the infection to the original carrier who’s emotional disease worsens. Once the emotional infection has become too much for the individuals, they leave the conversation only to contaminate other people. A simple disagreement escalates into a large – sometimes life-threatening – conflict with innocent people. An emotional infection outbreaks.

You can probably think of other scenarios in your relationships where one person injects a bad emotion into the relationship. The partner becomes infected and the relationship goes downhill. It’s a downward spiraling cycle that damages relationships. On one level you need to prevent yourself from becoming a carrier, while on the other level you need to prevent other people from becoming carriers. Doing these two things will control emotional contagion to build happiness, power, and healthy relationships.

When talking to a friend in need, on one hand you are faced with the challenge of empathizing with your friend’s pain. This involves drawing yourself into your friend’s struggle, feeling the same pain, and allowing yourself to be infected by their emotional state. Other times, you will need to shape your friend’s pain into an emotionally empowering state. You will need to emotionally lift-up another person from their destructive state. Being focused on personal development and bringing out the best in yourself everyday, means you are faced with these mood challenges.

Reframing minimizes the likelihood of becoming a carrier of a dangerous emotional virus, while a technique I call “emotional-leveling” helps you to prevent people from remaining carriers of destructive emotions. The emotional-leveling technique firstly adjusts your emotions to reflect the other person’s harmful emotions, followed by slowly raising your emotions – and simultaneously their emotions – until the person reaches your desired level.

To decontaminate harmful emotions in other people with the emotional-leveling technique, you firstly connect at their level. This is opposite to immediately imposing a positive state on someone in a negative state. If the person is aggressive or depressed, you should not reciprocate their aggression or depression, but have a lower emotional level to build empathy and help them feel more understood. Verbally fighting back at a person isn’t going to do anyone any good.

For an aggressive person, if they are walking around, you should also be walking around. If they are talking fast, you should also talk at a fast rate. For a depressed person, you can show you are also feeling depressed without really developing depression. Be slower in your movements, speak softer, and have similar facial expressions as the person. Your goal is to enter their state without escalating the problem.

Once you have connected at the person’s level, begin to raise your emotional state. Make a joke or use a reframe on the situation. Because you are in the person’s emotional state, your reframe will not be rejected! If you were happy and told an unhappy person who recently experienced a break-up that they should lighten-up because their break-up is not that serious, they will reject your reframe and hate you. On the other hand – and this is where the power of emotional-leveling comes in – if you are also unhappy after talking with and listening to the person such that the person knows you share the same emotional state with them, they will accept a reframe like, “I see now that break-ups are a part of life. It’s not like everyone stays with one partner for their entire life.”

Being at a person’s destructive emotional level allows you to bring them out of their emotional hole. Instead of reaching down to pull them out of their emotional hole – only to have them reject your assistance – you are jumping in the hole and letting them stand on your shoulders to climb out.

Combining the reframing technique and the emotional-leveling technique will have you in control of your own emotions and thoughts, as well as helping other people get in control of their emotions and thoughts. These two techniques are great for bringing out the best in people, but they should only be a sample of an array of conflict management techniques in your communication bag. Having these skills will help you remove emotions you do not want infecting your relationships.

Knowing how to decontaminate poor emotions in your relationships will give pathway to positive emotions. Effective communication skills will present you with a profound ability to further destroy poor emotions in your relationships. Adjusting your body language and words to empathize with the other person and using other effective communication techniques is a great way to improve the emotional outbreaks that damage your relationships.

Emotional contagion is a fascinating topic. You can make it work for you instead of being a victim of it everyday. Interact with people that you want to be like. Make other people’s mirror neurons come to mimic your rising state and their biology will force them to become like you. Do the same for yourself and you’ll be more happier. Once you know how to adjust yourself to fit the person’s state and use powerful reframes, you’ll be well on your way to mastering emotions for better relationships and happiness. When you do this, you’ll be amazed at your control over emotions and thoughts. It will seem like magic.

This is a book review of Writing Works: A Resource Handbook for Therapeutic Writing Workshops and Activities edited by Gillie Bolton, Victoria Field, and Kate Thompson.

Writing Works specifically deals with writing in various forms, mostly poetry, for a therapeutic effect of self-awareness. It contains many contributions of exercises and stories from over 40 experts in the fields of psychotherapy, poetry, creative writing, social work, and psychology, put together by the three editors.

The book doesn’t go anywhere near psychoanalysis and analyzing a person’s writing; as it specifically deals with helping people help themselves, and helping you help yourself. Once the writer overcomes the initial hump of getting pen to paper, the writer goes through much powerful exploration. Usually the writer is completely unaware of one’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences until written on paper. This is really the purpose of Writing Works.

Though the majority of the book’s exercises are focused on working in groups, they can be easily done one-on-one or alone. The book is just as applicable to someone interested in self-discovery on their own as opposed to working in a group.

People involved in therapeutic writing will always work with others who have no experience in writing. The book compensates for this well by having simple exercises and the basics of writing poetry. The exercises do not require writing experience. They aren’t about literary brilliance; rather, building self-awareness. As the authors say, “The writer will always write the right thing. It is impossible to get it wrong.”

The first thirty pages provides insight into what you need to do when conducting a writing activity. Confidentiality, building trust, respect, and pacing are all things that need to be considered. In terms of writing processes that are discussed in the remainder of the book, most people, including myself, are a bit weary of writing things like poetry. As a result, plenty of exercises throughout Writing Works are given on how to break the ice and begin trust building for an effectively intimate group that openly participates in all activities.

I really just have two criticisms of the book. Firstly, after the introduction till about half-way through the book, the information could have easily been condensed into one tenth the size. You are given simplistic exercises in each authors’ experiences that seem given to “fill the book”. Exercises seem repetitive as writing exercises are demonstrated under various stimuli like the outdoors, fantasies, or animals. Anyone could come up with these exercises, though they do serve as some good ideas to get your own creative juices flowing.

The second criticism I have is the lack of discussion about the example writings that I was expecting. Writing Works is about knowing how to run activities to help people discover themselves; not analysis. Apart from the interesting discussion on using Carl Jung’s masks in writing for self-discovery, I felt “empty” wanting to explore solutions to people’s problems.

The book does a wonderful job of getting someone to explore themselves through writing, yet don’t expect any deep insights into what is going on. I’m not sure if this is typical in the field of therapeutic writing, though it would seem so if it is all about self-awareness, but one time the authors mentioned that they had one group of ladies together for years doing their activities and making no progress. Perhaps this was encouraged within participants, at times, from loathing in their problems. Nonetheless, I see the power in techniques discussed in this book for self-awareness and personal growth.

Other than those two criticisms of the book, I was moderately pleased. I have no doubt in the power of therapeutic writing and in the authors’ vast knowledge. Writing Works provided me with my first eye opener of therapeutic writing and will enable me to use writing as means of discovering myself and helping other people discover themselves. I still don’t like poetry, but a few other exercises that involve story writing or the unsent letter are brilliant. I now have a great technique for safely expressing emotional steam. You can get your copy from Amazon by clicking here today.

“One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.” – Sophocles, 496-406 B.C.

“What most people need to learn in life is how to love people and use things, instead of using people and loving things.” – Author Unknown.

“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” – Bible, New King James Version, 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.

You’ve been told by teachers, counselors, relationship experts, self help experts, or religion, that you should at least love your family, friends, and others who are important to you. Though you and I know, it’s not that easy! It is hard to love someone who hurts you. At times you’d rather punch a family member in the face to knock them out so you can live in peace.

This article will help you to love others whom you would like to love. It isn’t about falling romantically in love with someone, though the advice can help you in that sense. It is more about the type of love experienced in a close family. I will give you a logical five lesson plan that you can easily follow to begin loving who you want to love. Loving others will bring an abundance of love, among many other great things, into your life.

What is Love?

Just hearing about the subject of “love” at times gets me cringing. Love gets twisted by society, not just younger generations who are often picked on in this area, into a form that destroys its most pure meaning. People think they are in “love” because they feel attraction or have been in a relationship for many years. Feelings of affection or attraction are a type of love, but they do not comprehend pure love.

Love is a tough subject for anyone to address. Not many people agree with a common description of love. As Haddaway’s classic hit is titled, “What is Love?” Some say it is a willingness of sacrifice, some say its blindness to flaws, while others say it is unexplainable. Some say it is an intense devotion or affection, but that can just be neediness.

I’m not particularly fond of most material about love as the subject has a tendency to get categorized into romance, “Do nice things like give gifts and the person will love you.” Romance doesn’t describe love – not even an act of love, because romance by itself can be a very superficial and manipulative subject. Love is beyond actions. Something is at deeper work in pure love.

Psychologist Robert Sternberg developed the triangular theory of love. The theory is applicable for interpersonal relationships. It categorizes love using three scales: 1) Intimacy, 2) Passion, and 3) Commitment. Basically, variances in the three scales produce different types of love. It is only when all three are present that a pure form of love, known as “consummate love”, can develop. Consummate love is the ultimate form of love an individual can desire.

A more applicable description of love to the style of love I’m writing about in this article is explained by Susan Hendrick and Clyde Hendrick in their love attitude scale:

1. Eros love is based on physical appearance. It describes superficial love.
2. Ludus love is a game based on conquest. Pick-up artists (PUAs) often experience this type of love.
3. Storge love is gradually built from similarities and friendship. The transition from friendship to love is often unclear.
4. Pragma love is more rational than other type of loves as it is based on practicality. An extreme form of Pragma love is prostitution because of the rationalizing financial gains.
5. Mania love is very possessive and unstable. Strong feelings of insecurity, neediness, and jealously are experienced.
6. Agape love is selfless, unconditional, and often spiritual.

Agape love most accurately describes the type of love we wish to have towards family and friends. We want to be able to unconditionally love those who are important to us; not just when they do something nice or when we are in a good mood. It is our goal in this article to develop an agape form of love.

The power of agape love is it doesn’t change when the mood or circumstances change. Agape love even remains when the person you have agape love towards does something mean to you. It is unconditional and withstanding – almost divine. We want to, at minimum, unconditionally love our family as they are our own blood. You are apart of each family member. When you hate others, you are really hating yourself.

The selflessness in agape love we wish to develop is one beyond sacrifice. It is beyond confining boundaries and a lack of concern in fulfilling one’s needs. Selflessness is about focus, attitude, and action towards others while retaining self-love. It isn’t about sacrifice and ignoring yourself. You are more likely to hurt a relationship from resentment by “humbling” your core needs than if you were to act selfishly. Resentment is an unusually powerful emotion that builds in size when ignored.

Acting unselfishly is often thought of as overlooking personal desires. However, selfless acts don’t ignore the giver. This is a very important concept to understand. You can only act truly selflessly when you love yourself. Unselfish actions that overlook the giver’s needs, such as a love-starved wife who cooks for her family, builds emotions like resentment that destroy the selflessness in the action.

Before you can be selfless, you need to be selfish. Keep in mind that being greedy is not the same as being selfish. In mathematics and life, you cannot give what you don’t have. There is nobody more unloving than one who does not have self-love. Unfortunately, we are taught by parents and teachers not to be selfish. I believe this is a big reason for hate in the world.

Unhealthy selfishness worsens by its supposed solution of selflessness. By being selfless in an area we lack resources, we ultimately become miserable and develop unhealthy selfishness. We need an ongoing supply of external emotional energy from our failure to tap into the infinite source of abundance within ourselves. The neediness and lack of love comes from a lack of self-love. It is in the selflessness of Agape love that we get our first lesson on how to love someone:

1) Love yourself to love others

To give love you must firstly have love. If you’re not into religion, the most reliable source of love you can get is from yourself. You do not need to approve of everything about yourself, but you do need to accept yourself. You will always have flaws that you do not like – accept it. Only by loving yourself can you love others. Consequently, love yourself to love others in order to be loved. You cannot expect others to love you if you do not love yourself.

Give-take Relationship of Love

As babies, we were entirely dependent on our parents or guardians. We would cry to get feed, cry to get warmth, and cry to get love. We wanted whatever we could get our hands onto without giving a single thing. Sure, a baby can create a smile on its parent’s face and bring a warm comfort into people’s lives, but it doesn’t give in the sense that it fails to transfer something from itself to others. Perhaps the only thing a baby gives is its regurgitated food!

As we begin to age, we become more “independent”. We can feed ourselves, make ourselves warm, and put a shelter over our heads. However, our growth and independence sometimes doesn’t go beyond that. We are still that crying baby who wants everything without giving. When we do give, it is solely on the basis that we receive something of equal or greater value in exchange for our gift.

A part of this problem comes from our teachers and parents advising us to avoid people who take advantage of us. We get conditioned to not be conned by someone who doesn’t return the favor. As a result, our giving comes from reciprocation.

The principle of reciprocation states that humans have an inherent desire to return favors. When something is seen as a favor, not an obligation or expectation, we react by reciprocating something to the person of equal or greater value. By giving we usually receive more than what we gave. Give love to others and you will receive things that you cannot comprehend.

Unfortunately, when we do give and do not instantly receive, our giving stops. The expectations we create are the demise of our giving. Our expectations which exceeds results makes us dissatisfied. If you think you need to receive love from others, in order to give love, you are living reactively. The more you get, the more you want. Neediness disables a person from loving others.

When we love others, they in turn love us but not necessarily in the same form as our love. It is much easier to love someone who first loved us. The purpose of loving yourself is to create love in your life so that you can love. An active creator of one’s personal universe doesn’t wait for the right circumstances. The person goes and does what he or she wants done.

Agape love isn’t dependent on firstly receiving love. Agape love doesn’t have limiting conditions. It gives without receiving. Mildred Norman Ryder, also known as the “Peace Pilgrim”, nicely said, “Pure love is a willingness to give without a thought of receiving anything in return”. This gives us our second lesson of loving someone:

2) Give love without any expectation of receiving love.

I know people fear giving love out of a concern for not receiving love. What a scarce and fearful mindset. Needing to receive love in exchange for your love is needy and approval-seeking. Reducing your need for someone’s approval empowers you to love the person. It is contradictory to common thought. Desperately wanting love reduces the love you both give and receive.

Daniel Goleman in his revolutionizing book Social Intelligence, which looks at the science of human relationships, emphasizes the need to go beyond ourselves. When we overcome self-absorption, we are able to connect with and love people. “When we focus on others, our world expands.” says Goleman. “Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection – or compassionate action.”

By loving someone without the expectation of them loving you back, you go one step closer towards unconditional love. You become immune to the potential disappointment when others do not love you. Giving love without any expectation to receive love creates radical personal responsibility as you prevent yourself from blaming or becoming angered towards others. When you do get to unconditional love, you will permanently love others. That is something I love.

Scarcity and Abundance of Love

The thought of giving without receiving comes from scarcity which immobilizes our ability to give. Giving on the basis that you will receive creates a fearful mind. We fear being conned, taken advantaged of, and not being treated fairly. The world becomes finite in its mental, emotional, and physical resources. Scarce thinking of love assumes it is a limited resource. It means there is a finite amount of love in the world so you had better keep what you want to yourself. No wonder we keep what we can to ourselves because our survival becomes “dependent” on it.

Loving yourself isn’t enough. It is just one step of loving others. You need to extend your self-love to others. Giving from love is empowering; compared to the limitations of giving from guilt, ego, and scarcity. “Love wasn’t put in your heart to stay.” said the singer Michael Smith. “Love isn’t love until you give it away.”

While scarcity can work against us in loving others, it can also work for us. The principle of scarcity states that we more highly value a resource when it is rare. Realizing love is scarce and that it can be lost will make you value it more. Thinking like this uses the pain component of the pain-pleasure theory of motivation which states that we do things to avoid pain or gain pleasure. It is great to acknowledge the scarcity of love and how it can be easily lost, as it makes you value love. You avoid taking love for granted.

Those who have experienced loved ones passing away know the value of love. Unfortunately, some people are too late at expressing their love and greatly regret not having done so. Don’t become someone who doesn’t value what is in their life until it is gone. A loving person knows their love in a person’s life counts. Gratitude gives us our third lesson to love someone:

3) Be grateful for everything in your past and present.

Transforming Pain Into Pleasure

If you have trouble feeling grateful, something that always helps me feel grateful is thinking about the meaning of “appreciate”. To appreciate is to increase in value. Therefore, to be grateful for everything in your past and present you need to increase your feelings of value towards your experiences and the world around you.

You will need to overcome feelings of anger, blame, and resentment first before you can feel grateful and begin loving those who hurt you. When you experience these feelings, you fight an uphill battle that discourages you from loving the person who “caused” you these feelings. Remove the pain to experience the gain. Eliminating emotional pain gives us our fourth lesson on how to love someone:

4) Remove anger, blame, and resentment to make love possible.

Any anger or blame you experience towards someone is a sign that you lack radical personal responsibility. Men who complain that women are “bitches”, and women who complain that men are “jerks”, are examples of those who need to accept radical personal responsibility. Once you accept radical personal responsibility, you no longer blame others and possess feelings of anger towards people.

Recently I was blaming something for making me stay up late which left me feeling tired and unproductive the following day. My youngest brother who is thirteen said, “Josh, don’t blame. You had a choice and you choose to stay up late.” Yikes! What a profound statement that caught me in my tracks. Hearing this shifted the responsibility onto myself, and made me proud of my brother!

Will this technique of accepting radical personal responsibility remove all your anger? No. You will feel anger towards someone sooner or later, but that is just a sign that you lack personal responsibility again. Every second we make a choice as to how we respond to the world. Use your Higher Self, the part of you which gets you acting beyond everyday annoyances, to help you accept radical personal responsibility.

Resentment really just comes from blame, but it needs a mention by itself because of its destructive capabilities. Resentment builds when you fail to forgive someone or when you do not take radical responsibility. Learning the art of forgiveness will erase any resentment you currently have in your life. We think we hurt others when holding resentment against them, but we only hurt ourselves.

Seeing Abundance

Here is a useful exercise to help you become grateful for everything in your past and present. You have probably heard that in every problem is an opportunity. Well, we know that in every problem exists a lesson.

Think of the significant positive and negative main events in your past and present. Summarize them on a piece of paper in separate rows. If you have a painful memory of how your parents brought you up, you could summarize it as “I dislike my upbringing by my parents”.

Once you’ve listed the significant events, write down what you are thankful for about the event besides its summary. What is it you appreciate about the “negative” or positive event? If you disliked how you were raised by your parents you could be thankful for: the independence they created in you, your new knowledge on how not to raise children, or the desire they gave you to lovingly raise your children. Seeing a lesson in a problem is difficult, and you may need to think about it for sometime, but it does exist.

People who value lessons and opportunities, instead of seeing pain and problems, are sometimes accused of being delusional. Negativity and pain isn’t any more real than positiveness and pleasure. You have a choice as to whether you want to be grateful for everything in your past and present – every moment of your life. Being grateful for everything in your past and present removes pain. It makes you aware of the wonderful abundance in your life that you have been blinded from. This gives us our fifth and last lesson on how to love someone:

5) See abundance and you will be exposed to an abundance of love.

Love is everywhere we go. “Although humans inherit a biological bias that permits them to feel anger, jealousy, selfishness and envy, and to be rude, aggressive or violent,” says Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan, “they inherit an even stronger biological bias for kindness, compassion, cooperation, love and nurture.” It is your choice as to whether you see the abundance of love because it is real. It is also your choice as to whether you use your biological gift of compassion and love to bring an abundance of love into your life. “Only when we give joyfully, without hesitation or thought of gain,” says love expert Leo Buscaglia, “can we truly know what love means.” That is love.

We fear being alone; we fear being crowded. We fear the doctor; we fear living with health problems. We fear the opposite sex; we fear not knowing the opposite sex. We fear making decisions; we fear of not making an impact. We fear problems; we fear opportunities. We fear failure; we fear success. We fear job interviews; we fear unemployment. We fear asserting ourselves; we fear not asserting ourselves. We fear being pushed; we fear being pulled. We fear breaking up a relationship; we fear staying in the relationship. We fear meeting someone; we fear meeting no one.

Wow! Talk about a crazy list of contrasting fears! The truth about fears is they are crazy and irrational. What fears do you experience which you think are unique to you? What are the fears that drive you crazy?

As you’ve seen in the beginning of this article, we fear one side of the story while at the very same time we can fear the other side of the story. It is possible to fear talking to someone new, and fear not meeting new people, at the same time because fear hides the truth.

The experiences fear gives you are a smoke screen. It makes you irrational. Fear hides the truth from you. Literally, the acronym for fear is False Evidence Appearing Real. Fear doesn’t want you to know the truth about itself and yourself.

The fears we experience are immobilizing. They paralyze us from taking action and achieving what we want. We can want something, but fear sends what seems like the equivalent of a massive electromagnetic pulse through our body as it shuts down our physical functioning.

According to Susan Jeffers, Ph.D. in Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, there are five truths about fear. Whatever it is you fear, provided that the fear is not physically dangerous like doing drugs, the following five truths apply:

Truth #1

The fear will never go away as long as I continue to grow.

Our ancestors experienced fear because they were threatened from dangerous animals or life threatening environments. Fear has its evolutionary purpose as it serves to protect. Whatever it is you fear, the fear tricks you into thinking it is danger. It tells you the thing you fear will cause pain. It tricks you into thing you won’t be able to handle it.

Don’t be one of those people who expect to live a fearless life. As Thomas Leonard so bluntly and wonderfully put it, “Fear is natural. Be with it.” Fear can, and will, diminish in the things which you immerse yourself. However, once you explore new unknown territory, new fears will arise. I know it isn’t nice to hear that, but I’m hear to tell you the truth about fear that fear doesn’t want you to know. It is far more comforting and exciting to experience growth and live in fear than to live paralyzed by fear.

Truth #2

The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it.

Truth number two sounds contradictory to truth number one, but be assured that both truths are still truths. Fear will always exist in your life, but it doesn’t have to exist in the things that you do. When we do the thing we fear, whether it was a facade or not, we come to build confidence in our ability to handle the situation. Fear decreases.

We fear because uncertainty looms in our ability to handle what gets delivered to us. “Fear comes from uncertainty.” said William Congreve. “When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear.”

Anthony Robbins said, “Do what you fear, and the death of fear is certain.” Action will conquer fear any day of the week, month, and year of your life. By acting in the face of fear, you transform the uncertain into the certain as the unknown becomes known.

Truth #3

The only way to feel better about myself is to go out and do it.

When filled with a fear, we reason to ourselves that we will take action when we feel better about ourselves. “When I’m ready, I’ll…” “If I can… then I’ll…” “I’ll wait till I’m…” Stop waiting for whatever it is you are wanting to change. Change your ability to take action.

While self-esteem boosts you ability to take action, go the quicker and more direct route: take action to boost your self-esteem. The feelings of confidence will then build on themselves, like a good financial investment, leading to more and more positive feelings about yourself. Stop wanting to be a fearless public speaker before doing public speaking. Do public speaking to be a fearless public speaker.

The myth of truth number three, “I’ll feel better about myself before doing it”, is reverse thinking to the truth. You will not feel a better person, or have more self-belief in your ability, until you do the thing which you fear. It is when you dive into action that you begin to feel good about yourself; not the other way around.

Truth #4

Not only am I going to experience fear whenever I’m on unfamiliar territory, but so is everyone else.

It is very comforting and reassuring to hear truth number four. Reassuring statements have a danger to delude one from reality and the hard truth. Nonetheless, it is truth that everyone else experiences fear in unfamiliar territory. Every public speaker and writer I have known suffers, or suffered, from fears and insecurities of the judgments of others.

Fear is hardwired into the human mind. Fear wants you to think that your fears are unique psychological problems. Fear is an educational problem. Draw comfort from knowing that those around you, and those who you envy, also experience or once experienced the very fear you feel is unique to you. It is the insecurities we feel and deem unique to us that unite us.

Truth #5

Pushing through fear is less frightening than living with the underlying fear that comes from a feeling of helplessness.

Although fear encompasses uncertainty, the certainty of living a fearful life is more scary. The fear of being ill is more scary than seeing a doctor. The fear of having a divorce is more scary than addressing a tough relationship problem. The fear of having no friends is more scary than approaching someone. “Courage is not the absence of fear,” said Ambrose Redmoon, “but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”

Repeat each of these truths at least 20 times every morning and night. When you continually affirm the truth, you will accept it as truth. You will no longer be tricked by fear. I’m excited to have finally revealed the truth about fear to you.

Don’t let fear fool you. It is after all False Evidence Appearing Real. Follow the five truths in this article and you will see the light which fear hides from your eyes. The truth exists, you just need to see it. Live a fear-filled life!

This is a book review of Michael Hall and Bobby Bodenhamer’s Mind-lines: Lines for Changing Minds.

You’ve been to told to see the glass as half full, but how do you do it? Have you ever wondered how your worries, fears, disagreements, interpersonal conflict, anger, and misunderstandings can be reinterpreted so that they empower you; instead of disempowering? L. Michael Hall and Bobby G. Bodenhamer’s Mind-lines will show you exactly how using the magical neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) technique of reframing. Moreover, the art of reframing is far more powerful than just being positive.

A father sees his son watching television while lying on his bed. The father begins to give his son’s behavior a meaning of “laziness”. As a result, the father starts criticizing his son out of the lazy frame. On the other hand, let’s take a look at another father and son in the same scenario. This other father sees his son watching television while lying on his bed. The father gives his son’s behavior a meaning of “relaxation”.

The premise of reframing is that the world exists with no meaning. “By mind-lines we refer to the lines (the linguistic constructions) that we connect and associate to things that create meaning formulas” says the authors. “By the changing of meaning, our emotions change, as do our behaviors, habits, moods, attitudes, skills, health, etc. and our life.” What you see around you means nothing until you give it meaning. By acknowledging that we are the ones who give the world its meaning, we become empowered to transform our world. Learning to reframe gives you the magic to overcome self-limiting beliefs and communicate more effectively in your relationships. The book is helpful for your personal development and relationships with everyone around you as it changes everyone’s felt sense of reality.

In each of us exists what the author’s call a “map”. Our map is our understanding of “reality” that provide us with a direction in this world. The map is only a construct of reality; it is not reality itself. Mind-lines will have you analyzing your map, seeing its many faults, and then helping you construct a map that is more healthier for your mental, emotional, and physical well-being. The same very lines can be used in your communication with others to change their behaviors, habits, moods, attitudes, skills, health, and life.

In the fifth edition exists a large 26 reframing techniques. These 26 reframing methods are conceptualized in the meta-model – a model introduced in part one that illustrates how the reframing methods fit together. I found myself slightly overwhelmed at the beginning of the book as the first of four parts focuses on the theory aspect of reframing.

However, once I had finished reading the first part, I realized the foundational material gave me the framework for understanding, and more easily, using the 26 reframing techniques discussed in the second part. When you read this book, if you have a similar experience, don’t let this small hurdle stop you from the power it has to change your life and those who you touch. Neuro-linguistic programming has some complex terminology which means it will take more time to read than your average self-help book, but it is still very understandable and life-changing.

It is a practical book. All 26 reframing techniques are applied to six specific statements plus a few additional statements scattered throughout the chapters. You are definitely encouraged to try and reframe using the specific technique before reading on and comparing your own answer to the authors’ answer. I personally encourage you to apply your self-limiting beliefs to each reframing technique as you read the book and observe the magic that begins taking place in your mind.

To give you an idea of how reframing used and the power it possesses, I’ll give you an example of the eighth reframe, positive prior intention framing. The purpose of positive prior intention framing is that every behavior has a positive intention behind it. There is a hidden positive intent even behind hurtful behavior. A reply using this frame to “I hate it when you treat me badly” would be “It’s good to hear that you want to be treated well. What can I do to treat you better?” This is drastic and powerful change to a reply most people would use, “I don’t treat you badly. You’re the one who is mean to me.”

Here’s an example of the fourteenth reframing technique, criteria and values framing. This reframing techniques puts into perspective what the person deems important. You are giving people, or yourself, motive to change. A reply using this frame to “You’re rude for not washing the dishes” would be “When you tell me I’m rude for not washing the dishes, it hurts me which makes me dislike our relationship. Is our relationship more important than the dishes? Would you prefer to tell me about the need to do the dishes without hurting our relationship?” What a wonderful example of reframing a person’s behavior.

Another interesting aspect of the book is something called a “meta-state”, which is a term that describes a state about a state. For example, you can be angry about being stressed. Our meta-states can get very confusing and multi-layered. Let’s say you experience guilt from hurting your partner. You then “wrap” the guilt with anger by becoming angry about the guilt. The anger leads to depression about the anger. The methods in this book allows you to overpower these “lower levels” with “higher levels” that give you more productivity, efficiency, a better mood, relieve stress, and generally anything else that is beneficial for you.

I have experienced the NLP technique of reframing in changing my own behaviors, moods, fears, etc., as well as helping other people change, to be far more powerful than other NLP techniques like the swish pattern. Knowing how to reframe will give you a skill for life that you can use anywhere at anytime to improve something about you or another person. It is a great book that teaches a great technique.

The six pages straight after the preface and before part one of the book, titled “Mind-lining a Toxic Idea”, is worth a thousand times the book itself. I say this with absolute confidence that reading those six pages will change your life. In those six pages, the 26 reframing techniques are applied to “failure”. The word “failure” will be eliminated from your life for good if you apply the simple reframes, but it doesn’t stop there. The reframes will not only cancel out the bad emotions and thoughts towards failure, but the reframes transform the concept of failure into a power energy source for better behavior, mood, skills, and health. Is living a life absent from seeing yourself as a failure important to you? Imagine the happiness and success you would experience when failure isn’t even a concept in your life?

To wrap this review up, I want to use the mind-line of story-telling. There was a poor illiterate man who lived by himself out in the woods. One day out in the woods he stumbled across a piece of paper. It was written in Chinese with a few strange diagrams that he couldn’t understand so he just through away the paper. Years later a few Chinese tourists were visiting the area and found the same object. With a scream of excitement, the tourists realized they had accidentally stumbled upon an ancient Chinese document. The tourists later sold their discovery to a collector for a large amount of money.

The map which is your understanding of reality can give you far more things than wealth if you no longer ignore it. Learn to alter your map and you empower yourself to change your own, and other people’s behaviors, habits, moods, attitudes, skills, and health. I know you want what is best for yourself and your relationships, so I recommend you grab your hands around a copy of Michael Hall and Bobby Bodenhamer’s Mind-lines: Lines for Changing Minds. The little price of the book is nothing when you consider that everything you experience in this world is dependent on how you frame it. You can get your copy from Amazon by clicking here today.

Alexander Graham Bell said, “What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.” Napoleon Hill said, “The starting point of all achievement is desire.” Abraham Lincoln said, “You can have anything you want – if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.”

For over a century man has tapped into this mysterious emotional state that gets him want he wants. This power isn’t the law of attraction which requires you to be in harmony with the universe, rather it is a power that will get you anything when you damn well want it bad enough.

Days, weeks, months, years, or decades have past since you had a large goal you wanted. When you were 10 years old, maybe you dreamed of playing basketball for the NBA. When you left school, maybe you dreamed of running your own business and achieving financial freedom. When you left college, maybe you dreamed of finding the love of your life and having a great family. Recently, maybe you dreamed of a promotion or a great holiday.

Take a moment now to think of your dreams or goals that you had in the past but did not achieve – not what you want now; but what you had in the past. They don’t have to be childhood goals. As I teach communication, try to make it an aspiration you once had in your relationships or a communication skill. Perhaps you wanted a happy and intimate relationship with your husband or wife, or to have open communication with your children. Maybe it could have been to confidently talk to the opposite sex, give public presentations, or to socialize. Nonetheless, your aspirations can be from last week when you desired to go on that elusive holiday or attend a club.

The reason I’ve asked you to take a look at the goals and dreams you’ve failed to manifest into reality is to help you identify an underlying cause as to why you have failed to achieve what you once desired. I’m helping you discover the few reasons, which are hidden to you and most people, that prevent you from obtaining your goals as I’m a strong believer in learning from my mistakes and the past – as well as other people’s mistakes and their past. Identifying repetitious behaviors that cause you to fail allows you to categorize those behaviors as the “enemy”. Once you’ve identified and investigated the enemy: you know its strength, how it attacks, and the moves it makes – all information you need to formulate a strategy to destroy the enemy and become victorious. (For more information, I recommend you read an article I’ve written on how to set achievable goals with the SMART method. The article lists the common reasons why people don’t set goals and how to correctly set them.)

Over the years, I’ve come to realize a repetition in my own behavior that has prevented me from achieving past goals. These natural tendencies still affect me today – though to a much lesser degree. Two common enemies that I face in achieving my goals is the fear of criticism and fear of failure. One deals with getting people’s approval, the other is based around having wasted time in trying to achieve something that I did not end-up obtaining. For the latter, I’ve felt that I was better off not trying to get something if I was not going to get it in the end. Guess where this reasoning got me?

Talking to myself that I should not bother getting something that I really want because I won’t get it had conflicting effects. On one hand, here is something I wanted. On the other, was this little voice saying, “You’re not going to get it so don’t bother.” I still wanted what I had desired (but obviously not bad enough) so I did little things to help me get closer to that goal or dream, but I never got there because it was a half-ass effort that came through the thought that I could not achieve what I wanted. Moreover, these two problems I have when I fail to achieve a goal come from a lack of this emotional power I am speaking of throughout this article. “A person should set his goals as early as he can and devote all his energy and talent to getting there.” said Walt Disney, famous motion-picture producer and pioneer of animated cartoon films. “With enough effort, he may achieve it. Or he may find something that is even more rewarding. But in the end, no matter what the outcome, he will know he has been alive.”

When facing problems upfront, they look like a boulder. One aim of goal setting and this article is to pull you back from the boulders in your life to make them a little pebble in the distance. Changing your perspective from short-term to long-term transforms a large obstacle into something small and manageable. Keeping perspective in difficult times allows you to continue moving forward and easily overcome obstacles that exist between you and your desired destination. The negative self-talk, actions, surroundings, or people in your life that act as the predictable “enemy” in preventing you from achieving your goals and dreams are a boulder. The boulder can be transformed with a change of perspective, which I hope to have already given you in this article.

As you can tell, I’m not beating on the usual goal setting techniques – like ensuring you take action – but the unique psychological and emotional destruction that goes on in your mind that displaces you from what you want. This is where the real secret of achievement lies. The majority of people know the vital need to take action on anything they want; though few act on the advice because they end-up discovering they don’t want the goal bad enough to achieve it.

In achieving your communication and personal development desires, goals, and dreams, I believe there are two characteristics that need to be emphasized in the goal setting process. Both deal with passion and having a fire in the belly attitude. Actually, I don’t like to use the word “goals” in combination with words that signify a deep desire because when you want something bad enough you don’t need to set goals. Your desires automatically become something you want without you having to sit down and write them as goals.

Think of something you wanted so badly that nothing stopped you from getting it. This is the passionate desire I want you to cultivate. Contrast this passion to something you thought “would be nice”, but didn’t achieve because you didn’t want it bad enough. Maybe you wanted to learn the guitar because you thought it would be a nice skill to have, but you didn’t reach the goal because you didn’t have desire. Of all things in achieving your goals, your desire is the ultimate determinant of success; though I’ve come to notice their vital importance in ensuring you improve yourself in realizing your communication and personal development goals.

1. Defining What You Want

“You will suddenly realize that the reason you never changed before was because you didn’t want to.” – Robert H. Schuller

“When you know what you want, and want it bad enough, you will find a way to get it.” – Jim Rohn

“Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.” – Erich Fromm

The first step to achieving what you want in your personal development journey is knowing exactly what you want. I’m guessing that you already think you know what you want, but you probably don’t. Perhaps it’s even a vague desire which creates a slow, unenergized pursuit. It is only when you accurately define what you want that you can get what you want. You will aim with precision when focusing on a target that is clear to you.

Let’s say that you want to be able to make small talk with anyone. You would love to have the skill of being able to approach someone and start a conversation. However, wanting to make small talk with anyone isn’t what you really want. What you really want is a host of things that small talk fulfills. Meaning, you don’t just want the skill of being able to talk to anyone for the sake of being able to talk to anyone. Your desire to talk with anyone has motives beneath that desired skill. Successfully being able to approach someone and start a conversation is a means of fulfilling that want.

One reason you could want to make small talk with anyone is to be able to control your fears when meeting new people. Another reason is to network more effectively so that you can grow your business. Another is feeling more secure around people. All these are emotional motives that drive your decision making.

Do you want to raise happy children and other things that are best for your family? If you want what’s best for your family, you are probably lying to yourself. I’m not saying you don’t want what is good for your family; what I am saying is the underlying motives behind the reasoning “I want what’s best for my family” deals with your personal desires.

Perhaps seeing your family safe and secure makes you feel happy and comforted. Knowing your children are happy validates your parenting skills. Other parents seeing your successful children make you feel proud. Maybe you want successful children to make up for the failures in your life, or you don’t want to be frowned upon and humiliated by other parents. These outcomes are probably what you really want when desiring the best for your family.

I want you to do an exercise now. It is a wonderful catapult to achieving your goals and successful personal development. Get out a paper and pen, and draw two columns. You will want the second column to be twice the size of the first column. This exercise is large and will take several hours. You may want to do it in two-sittings, but the goal setting process should be energizing to you and so you may be able to get it done in just the one-sitting.

In the first column on the left, label it “What I Want”. Obviously, under this you will write down what you want. To help you determine what you want, remove all constraints around your desires. Forget about what you know or have. Stop letting the past limit your future. Remove financial, intellectual, and relationship constraints.

It’s absolutely necessary that you remove “buts” in reasoning to yourself what you want because I don’t want you to reason to yourself what you want. The analytical part of our mind can hurt the emotional part of our mind. For example, “I want to work as a public speaker… but I’m not good at speaking. But I don’t know how to get started. But you can’t make money.” All these stupid constraints trick you into avoiding your desires. Most of these limiting thoughts are created with the your limiting beliefs. Using the public speaking example of not knowing how to get started, have you actually asked a public speaker how they got started? If this is your goal, I’m betting you haven’t. It’s crazy how we remove ourselves from our desires through this silly rationalizing process.

In determining your career path, ask yourself what you would do if money wasn’t a consideration. Ask yourself what you would do if you had the necessary training. Ask yourself what you would do if you knew the right people. Remove all constraints and find what greatly turns you on. I’m talking about a desire of 100 on a scale from 1 to 100 where 100 is the most intense.

Another thought to help you accurately define what you want is to not fall into the illusion of wanting what other people want. Society has norms and expectations that can mold your desires. I understand that not everyone will want to enter into marriage. Think deeply about what your goals really mean to you. Passion is more about caring than finding the right thing. You’ll be surprised at the many things you can be passionate about once you start caring.

As a verification step to knowing what you want, you can test to see if this desire is truly what you want by running a mental theater of what it will look, feel, smell, hear, and taste like when you achieve the goal. Those experiences that excite you are what you want. They are your goal. Don’t ask yourself, “What are my goals?” Ask yourself, “What would excite me and why?” See what excites you by running through intense visualizations. The things that excite you are what you hungrily pursue in life and ultimately achieve.

Once you have defined what you want, do the exercise by writing these desires down on the piece of paper under the heading “What I Want”. In the same column, I encourage you to go one step further by using the SMART method. You write down your desire, but then next to it you also write down it in a specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and tangible form. Write no more than five goals for now, unless you otherwise want to, because of the time it will take to correctly do the exercise.

If you’re still struggling to figure out your desires, don’t forget to remove all constraints. Also, stopping the exercise for a few hours will allow your subconscious to go to work and define what you want. Additionally, I recommend you get Jack Zufelt’s program How To Use The Conquering Force Within You to learn more about defining what you want (I earn nothing from referring you to Jack’s program).

If you’re finished, well done. You’ve defined what you want. Not many people will ever do what you just did which sets you apart from others. This will do for now as you will use the second column in the second step of this article.

Having accurately defined what you want, the next step is stimulating an intense hunger to get what you want. This second section could be said as unnecessary, because if you really want something than you will already have an intense hunger. Nonetheless, we experience demotivation from failure and have our down-days for everything, which the second section is aimed to solve. If you didn’t hunger, you would hardly eat. Consume the advice in this following section and you’ll successfully be devouring your passions.

2. Creating An Emotional Craving

“The starting point of all achievement is desire.” – Napoleon Hill

“You can have anything you want – if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.” – Abraham Lincoln

“Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The process of arousal begins by thinking about someone you find attractive. Thoughts create vivid images that lead to a growing intensity of feelings. As your feelings intensify, blood flow increases to certain parts, breathing heightens, and your skin becomes sensitive. If you continue to immerse yourself in such imagery, eventually you will feel the need to act on those feelings.

What if you could create an equivalent – if not more intense – desire as physical arousal to achieve your personal development goals? The process of achieving your goals isn’t very different to arousal. Thoughts lead to vivid imagery which creates intense feelings. Soon enough you just have to act on those feelings because it becomes too much for you to not chase your goal.

You can stimulate passion using the various techniques in this article, but I want you to keep in mind that your goal must be what you defined in the first stage of the article because intense desire comes from a result of pursuing something you want – though passion can always be increased using a variety of techniques. By learning how to create a desire for what you have clearly defined, you will pursue your goals with a passion. Once a human being becomes passionate and persistent towards a goal, not many events in the world can stop him or her from achievement.

Nelissen, Dijker, and de Vries in their 2007 study titled Emotions and Goals: Assessing Relations Between Values and Emotions emphasis the importance of emotions in achieving goals:

“An emotional state is characterized by a motivational tendency to the attainment or maintenance of a particular, emotion-specific end-state. Some [studies] have further proposed that the goal-directed nature of behavioral consequences of emotions is adaptive, thus portraying emotions as solutions to obstacles and opportunities of physical and social survival.”

As a basic example of the importance of emotions in goal-attainment, let’s say you are on holidays visiting some beautiful landmarks and you are driving-up a steep mountain. You get to the top of the mountain and make your way to an eye-grabbing location that is right on the mountain’s edge. There’s no fencing or boundaries placed that control where you can walk on top of the mountain. As you approach the mountain’s edge, you see the steep fall and quickly take a few steps back to be safe.

The emotion in this example is fear of danger to ensure you achieve your goal of safety. If you had zero fear of falling off the cliff, the chances of you falling – and failing your goal of safety – increase because you are closer to danger than if you stepped away from the cliff. Your emotions helped you obtain your goal. The process of arousal is exactly the same.

Behind each goal you have, there exists an emotional void that you seek to fulfill. Aristotle taught that the desire for happiness is the reason for each of our own actions. It is the ultimate goal
every human being pursues. Though knowing that you desire happiness, for example in wanting to make small talk with anyone, isn’t much help.

Anthony Robbins made famous the pain-pleasure theory of motivation. The theory states that what we do is either to gain pleasure or avoid pain. Pleasure involves going towards something. Pain involves going away from something. “The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you.” he says. “If you do that, you’re in control of your life. If you don’t, life controls you.”

Jim Rohn also summarizes the primary emotions and desires that bring about change, but into four categories:

1. Disgust – This is the pain component of the pain-pleasure theory. Disgust can occur when you’ve had enough and are sick of certain things from occurring. You can have had enough of being shy around people, arguing with people, or being controlled by people. The pain leads to change.
2. Decision – There comes a time in our lives that make or break us. These are fork roads where we need to choose the path on which to travel. Make a decision and move forward in life. A wrong choice can be corrected. It is often outside circumstances that force us to make a decision, such as a partner laying-down an ultimatum that sets the conditions if you are to continue in a relationship.
3. Desire – Outside influences are motivators towards your emotional state. We are influenced by outside things, but we must have an internal desire: a purpose that originates from within.
4. Resolve – Defined by the decision to commit to a circumstance no matter what. Jim Rohn says, “When confronted with such iron-will determination, I can see Time, Fate and Circumstance calling a hasty conference and deciding, ‘We might as well let him have his dream. He’s said he’s going to get there or die trying.’” Nothing can replace commitment. When you know what it is that you clearly want, resolve can automatically happen.

Pain, pleasure, disgust, decision, desire, or resolve. How do you go about stimulating these emotions and actions so that you have the emotional strength to endure the complete journey towards attaining your goals? I believe an awareness of these states are sometimes enough to create them. That is, knowing about disgust can help you create an emotional desire of disgust to change your behavior and achieve a goal.

I feel there is one technique, which I’m about to share with you, that is amazing for building a burning desire to achieve your goals. With this technique you will remove any lack luster efforts and reluctancy to pursue what you want. It is one of the best goal setting techniques you will ever use. The technique is simple, but very, very powerful.

The technique to trigger, spark, and amplify your emotional desires to really hunger for what you want is listing 20 reasons why you want what you do. If there is one method that I frequently depend upon for stimulating a hot passion so that I can pursue my goals with vigor, it is this technique. No other technique gives me a kick of enthusiasm as this one does.

On the piece of paper where we started the exercise earlier, we are now going to fill in the second column. Label the second column as “Why I Want It” and come up with 20 or more reasons why you want what you listed in the first column. Take your time in coming up with the list. 20 reasons or benefits is a lot of work, but the list created from the hours of work in this exercise will be your psychological fuel for achieving your communication and personal development goals in the weeks, months, and years to come.

If you’re having trouble in coming up with good reasons for your goals, then expand on ideas and ask other people for ideas. You can also try to think in themes like: feelings you will experience, how others will see you, physical outcomes, and pain.

Let’s say your goal is to not become angry at family members during family conflict. Here are 10 possible starter points as to why you want that goal:

1. I want to be a good role model for my children.
2. I want my family to feel safe.
3. I want to ensure we have open communication and that no one is scared of talking about certain issues because of my anger.
4. I’m sick of fighting with my family.
5. I want my family to love me as much as possible.
6. I want my family to be relaxed and calm when talking to me; instead of being provoked by my anger.
7. I hate feeling the shame when people in public see my anger.
8. I want to increase intimacy with my partner.
9. I want other parents to look up to me with how I manage my emotions towards my children.
10. I want my children to think back in 10 years time and be grateful on how calm I was towards their difficult behaviors.

The above is a great example of things you can list in your goals. Once you’ve listed at least 20 reasons, I guarantee you that you will be filled with fiery emotions to help you achieve your listed goals.

The exercise works because you create a list that summarizes the sale points which make you “buy into” pursuing your goals. I encourage you to look at your list on a daily basis because of its emotional power in hooking you to achieve your communication and personal development goals. Look at the list frequently and you will remain focused and persistent to your goals.

I believe that one technique by itself is enough to create a burning desire. Regardless, I’ll share more great advice in bullet format on how you can stimulate an emotional craving for your goals so that you pursue them with a dedicated persistence:

• Dress for Success – How often do you see yourself in a mirror or reflection, or look down at what you are wearing during the day? 5 times a day? 5 times a day is 1825 times a year. That is a lot of subtle mental programming. The power of clothing on your mood is amazing. Wear clothing that makes you feel confident and other areas of your life will improve accordingly.
• Using Aggression – Having an important goal should stimulate aggression. Misdirect that aggression and it can become costly. Don’t create another problem with your aggression. Channel your aggression towards a productive goal – what it is intended for – and watch the steam condense into hard results.
• Relive Past Success – Think back to your past successes and relive the experiences in your mind. Past successes are not only stored in your mind, but at the very cellular level throughout your body. Linked to the successes is a winning feeling that you can use to experience more success. On the contrary, think of past failures and you begin to stimulate feelings of failure. For a more in depth teaching of this method and other mental reprogramming techniques, I highly recommend Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s The New Psycho-cybernetics.
• Here and Now – Focus on what you can do in the present to allow your creative imagination the potential to develop solutions.
• Details – The purpose of defining exactly what you want is to assist you in the right direction. Visualizing, feeling, smelling, tasting, and hearing the intrinsic details of your desired state will put you in that winning state. Just as it is with the process of arousal, you can become aroused by experiencing the details of your goals. It is similar to reliving your past successes except you are free to create what you want with this technique. You aren’t controlled with the past.
• Feed Your Mind – You’ll be surprised at how uplifted you get by reading about other people’s passions and successes. Also, consume at least 15 minutes a day of motivational material from the likes of Zig Ziglar, Jack Canfield, and Anthony Robbins. “People often say that motivation doesn’t last.” said Zig Ziglar. “Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”
• Create an Ultimatum – Use the desire of resolve that Zig Ziglar explains to create change in your life. Make an absolute condition that if something doesn’t happen, so-and-so consequences will occur. Tell others about this to hold yourself accountable. Sun Tzu in the Art of War knew soldiers fought their hardest when it was a matter of life or death. When soldiers provided the enemy with an escape route, they were given another option to winning or dying, so the enemy soldiers did not fight their hardest. Alternatives and exit strategies make it okay to fail. Do everything in your power to create an ultimatum such that you must succeed or suffer very severe consequences.
• Team Work – Team-up with someone else who wants the same goal. I’m continually amazed at the power of collaboration. When you make your goals known to others and when they have the same goals, the two of you can work together towards a common cause. Each of you becomes more accountable for his or her own actions as you don’t want to let the other person down who is also trying to achieve a similar goal as you. This technique is frequently used in exercising where trainers encourage newcomers to workout with a friend.

Using the many methods and techniques I’ve provided above for stimulating an emotional craving, you’ll be left hungry to devour your goals. You’ll be starving for your goals and begin to pursue them at once.

Be Careful with Your Desires

It may shock you to hear that you need to be careful with what you want and desire. Our goals are usually just one-side of the story. On the other side is a harsh reality that comes attached to your desire. Not all goals you set will have a dark-side, though many aspirations are latched onto a hidden negative aspect.

A person who aspires to develop the necessary skills to build attraction in the opposite sex needs to be prepared to turn people down, hurt people’s feelings, and be hated. A person who wants to be in a high hierarchal position in their company needs to be prepared to downsize, turn down the unemployed, and endure envious colleagues. A person who works towards being a well-known expert in their industry needs to be prepared to endure endless criticism.

The last thing I want to do is scare you from pursuing your personal development goals. My purpose in telling you to be careful with your desires rests in notifying you that the problems you presently have will morph into a different form when you achieve your goal. You can’t expect all your problems to disappear.

Let’s say you achieve a job promotion due to your newly developed and effective communication skills. Your once friendly colleagues, with whom you worked on many projects together as an equal, may despise you. Your problem of wanting a better position in the company for more money and status can change your friends.

The subtle nature about being careful with success is other people’s envy about your achievements. Envy is one emotion a person will not admit. If your colleagues are envious of you, they will rarely admit it. Pride and feelings of importance are powerful. Your achievements can belittle others. You used to be one of them, but now you are a growing person for the better. They see you as a hatched bird flying away from the nest where they permanently remain flightless. The flightless birds sit envious in watching you fly away, chirping for you to come back.

Seeing someone change is discomforting to most people. They may begin to feel inferior and see you as superior to them. The only comfortable resolution to this envious problem is sabotaging your efforts. I’ve heard several stories of husbands secretly sabotaging their wife’s hard work to lose weight and look great, so the husband can remain comfortable in knowing his wife is less attractive to other men which helps him keep her in the marriage.

On one level we have the influential effects of those around you affecting how you behave. On another level these people can be more direct at controlling your behavior through sabotaging your efforts and cutting your wings. You will have people around you who want to hold you back from achieving your goals. They sometimes need to be removed from your life. Don’t have them assassinated. Sometimes it is best to leave your friends.

You are a growing person with a changing life. Be careful with what you wish for because you can get it by following the advice shared in this article. Know exactly what you want, why you want it, and how to stimulate more passion to get it. This is how you can achieve your goals. I have just given you the secret of success. If you haven’t done the exercise yet, you’re only cheating yourself. Go back and do it now.

This is a book review of Mel Helitzer’s Comedy Writing Secrets: The best-selling book on how to think funny, write funny, act funny, and get paid for it.

Mel Helitzer is a professor at the Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. Though a humorous professor seems like a bit of an oxymoron, he has been described as the “funniest professor in the country” by Rolling Stone magazine. After reading this great book, he definitely seems like a funny guy as I found myself laughing on many occasions so the material he teaches definitely works.

I purchased this book because I had heard great things about it and I wanted to be able to teach others how they can be funnier in conversations. The book’s title doesn’t do it justice as it isn’t just good for writing funny. It’s also a good door stop. (Okay, I’ll have to work on my understatements in humor.) It is a great book for becoming a funnier person in general. If you’d like to be able to write a few funny jokes for your speeches, have funny conversations, cheer up your spouse, or make your team at work laugh, then you’re bound to find this book a great read.

Some people will be skeptical of this book and any book that teaches people to be funny. These people say things like “you can’t teach people to be funny” and “you’re either naturally funny or not”. If humor can’t be learned, it would be impossible for comedians to improve their acts as they wouldn’t be able to become funnier. Humor is a communication skill that can be learned like any other and is extremely valuable like any other.

Comedy Writing Secrets starts off by addressing these issues in the first section plus a few other issues commonly related to humor like uncovering why we laugh. You are given many techniques in the second section for being funny like using understatements, exaggerations, play on words, paired elements, triples, and realism to name a few. The third and last section deals with creating humor for specific situations like speeches, cartoons, cards, salesperson, radio, television, newspaper columns, sitcoms, and stand-up comedy. Those who aren’t interested in comedy writing can skip the third section of the book. The meat and potatoes of learning how to be funny is in the powerful second section.

It is said to be the number one book on learning to write funny so it is a quality book that primarily deals with content. There a few tips on how to deliver humor like not giving away the surprise part of your joke away with your body language and using silence to build tension, but the book is mostly about constructing the right words to be funny.

The book is filled with hundreds and hundreds of classic examples from comedians like Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, and Chris Rock, plus many other lesser known persons. The examples are well fitted with the techniques the author is describing so you’re sure to clearly understand how and why jokes work while getting plenty of laughs yourself.

The power behind this book is in the exercises you do at the end of each chapter. If you do the given exercises, which can take a minute to 30 minutes per exercise, I can almost guarantee you that you will be developing your own original jokes. Keep in mind that the book isn’t just about developing jokes, but learning how to construct humor such that you become more natural at it. Once you do the exercises, you’ll find yourself naturally using the techniques in conversations. The exercises provide a step-by-step guide to writing funny jokes. For your convenience, here’s one I came up with by myself in an early chapter:

My wife always complains about the two of us not having luxurious meals. We sit down at the dinner table and she’ll nag me about wanting to have a nice meal in a restaurant. One angry night she told me, “Come on! Take me out!” I finally had enough of her nagging so I agreed and took her out… with a shotgun.

It ain’t the best joke, but like all humor, some people will find it hilarious while others will think it’s stupid. The joke is from someone who has never made up a joke before and who can’t even remember more than 10 jokes. If I could do it with the step-by-step exercises, then so can you.

Overall, I was very impressed by the book. This is my first book I’ve read on becoming funny as I’ve always naturally been a funny person (humor must be the only communication skill I am naturally good at), but now I understand why things are funny and how to be funnier. It is a great book that I recommend for you if you’d like to become a funnier person. You can grab your copy of Comedy Writing Secrets from Amazon by clicking here today.

This is a book review of Richard Bandler and John Grinder’s Frogs Into Princes: Neuro Linguistic Programming. It has been referred by many as the book to read for somebody starting out in neuro-linguistic programming and rightfully so.

Richard Bandler and John Grinder are the founders of neuro-linguistic programming so you can expect a fair in depth discussion on the topics within the book. Frogs Into Princes is a transcript from a live seminar conducted by the two presenters. It is divided into three main sections which were presented on three separate days in the seminar:

1. Sensory Experience: Representational Systems and Accessing Cues
2. Changing Personal History and Organization: Anchoring
3. Finding New Ways: Reframing

The first section has quite possibly the first ever discussion on accessing cues. It involves amazing body language reading techniques and appropriately adjusting your own body language to create rapport with people. If you’ve seen a movie where an investigator knows the suspect is lying because of the suspects eye movement, then you’ve likely seen the very basics of accessing cues. It is more complex than simply which directions the eye moves because the way we access information is dependent on the questions asked.

Representational systems involves the language used in communication and matching the person’s representational system to build rapport. (I touch on this in the second chapter of my communication secrets of making people like you program.) Matching a person’s representational system is also an effective and extremely underused technique to prevent conflict. The authors are extremely confident in their techniques’ reliability to create rapport and with the sheer popularity of their methods having spread throughout the world, it is an indicator that their communication modeling works very well.

The anchoring section deals with classical conditioning and learning to associate certain actions, mostly kinesthetic, to evoke specific emotions and thoughts. The extreme basics of the technique involves touching someone while getting them to elicit specific emotions. When you touch them in the same manner at a later time, they will experience the same emotions. (That is a very brief description of anchoring and if you try it based on what I told you, it’ll likely be ineffective.) The section mostly discusses anchoring in the context of overcoming fear and therapy, but it can be easily used in relationships, healing painful memories, negotiations, sales, leadership, and seduction. The list of applications for every technique in the three sections are endless.

The last section of Frogs Into Princes gives an exact formula for reframing. The neuro-linguistic technique of reframing involves changing the way you see an event to change its meaning. I have found it to be one of the greatest techniques for overcoming fears and having unstoppable confidence for myself and other people I’ve helped. I feel reframing is a must have technique for any person who is interested in getting past problems and obtaining the most out of life.

You would think that because the book is a transcript, the language used would be easy to understand like the simple language used in face-to-face communication, but it isn’t. This is the greatest downfall of the book. Most parts of the book are difficult to understand because of the terminology used so a lot of “newbie” communicators will have extreme difficulty in getting the most out of the book. Even I found myself rereading some sections up to five times to just understand what was being said. However, I found the sections to loop into each other where the understanding of certain parts were clearly understood in later sections. When reading this book, don’t get caught up in understanding everything that goes on as you’ll likely later figure it out while reading the rest of the book.

The seminar was for therapists so most of the techniques’ applications are discussed in a therapist-patient scenario. Therapists and psychologists would find the applications of the techniques extremely useful for improving therapeutic communication with patients.

If you don’t mind more “complex” reads that includes terminology or you think your communication skills are pretty advanced, then you’re sure to get a lot out of this book and I recommend it for you. The last time I checked, the book was out of print, but fortunately it is still made available to you in a quality second-hand condition through Amazon. Once you get your copy, hold on to it as you’ll find it a very valuable addition to your personal development and communication library. You can grab your copy of Frogs Into Princes from Amazon by clicking here today.

This is a review of Brian Tracy’s Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life: How to Unlock Your Full Potential for Success and Achievement. He is best selling author of Create Your Own Future.

Straight off, Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life needs to be in your personal library. It has been hailed by many people as being one of Brian Tracy’s top books (he has published over 30 books) if not his best book.

The basis of the book is about improving the way you think to get stronger relationships, become better at your career, increase your happiness, and generally achieve more success. From having role models, goals, dreams, and developing excellence in your chosen field too listening, strategic thinking, time management, getting “the edge”, and earning more, it all stems from changing the way you think and is in the book.

The author provides references to several university studies and other types of research to back up the principles he provides and to help explain his lessons. I think this gives great insight and sets the book apart from the others he has written.

Those who have experience in personal development will know most of the principles mentioned in this book. Nonetheless, if you know the principles and haven’t achieved the goals you want in life then you really do not “know” them . Therefore, you need to read this book and follow it up with taking action. Reading and rereading this book yearly will remind you of the principles I’m sure you already know of that you haven’t yet implemented in your life.

Like his other books, this book is one with simple, easy to understand, and to-the-point lessons. You’ll find yourself constantly reading impacting lessons instead of stories that slightly relate to the lessons that many other authors provide in their books. Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life is a definite read for those interested in improving their life. I highly recommend it. You can grab your copy from Amazon by clicking here today.

This is a review of Brian Tracy’s Create Your Own Future: How to Master the 12 Critical Factors of Unlimited Success.

Brian Tracy is known for his simple, concise, and easy to understand books. Create Your Own Future is no exception. Every chapter is explained in a simple manner that makes learning the principles Brian teaches very easy. I know of many people who have read this book and experienced a wonderful life-change as a result.

The chapters that will interest most people who want to improve their communication are chapter 1 (Success Is Predictable), chapter 5 (Attitude Is Everything), chapter 7 (Relationships Are Essential), and chapter 13 (Fortune Favors the Brave). This is not to say that these are the only relevant chapters to communication but they are the most powerful.

In chapter 7, Brian shares effective principles on how you can successfully network with the big players in your career. If you don’t already know, networking is the key to many successes. Having the people and resources available to you at your request greatly increases the likelihood of your success. Brian shares the secrets of how you can get influential people on your side to help you succeed in your chosen career path.

The focus of Create Your Own Future appears to be on succeeding in your career though the principles like attitude, clarity, and knowledge are definitely adapted to many situations. Brian provides interesting insight into the conscious, subconscious, and superconscious mind and how you can use each mind to improve various areas of your life.

If you have read several of Brian’s books on personal development then you’ll find a lot of teachings in this book are within his other books. Nonetheless, you are bound to learn a few life-changing principles from this book that I know many people have. Brian Tracy includes materials from his other works and the likes of Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie because it works.

With the many easy to understand and concise personal development principles in Create Your Own Future, it is a book worth reading to improve yourself. You can grab your copy of Create Your Own Future from Amazon by
clicking here today.