59 Seconds is a triumph of scientifically-proven advice over misleading myths of self-hel – Derren Brown, illusionist

59 Seconds topics

The book is divided into the following key sections including:

1. 59 Seconds Mind Map
2. Happiness
3. Persuasion
4. Creativity
5. Attraction
6. Relationships
7. Decision making
8. Parenting
9. Personality
10. Conclusion

59 Seconds Mind Map

Happiness

Want to become more happy?  One of the scientific proven way is to keep a pencil between your teeth. As simple as it sounds. Indeed this action will force you face muscle to smile and will make you happier.  Other ideas Richard mentions is to remind yourself to be grateful, perform acts of kindness and write a thank you letter to a love one.  All this small actions can have a huge impact on your happiness level.

Persuasion

Want to become more persuasive and make people listen to you more. Ask them for a small favour and they are more likely to agree when ask for someone bigger.  Other interesting persuasion concepts include the Franklin effect, the pratfall effect and the baby effect where having a cute small child photo in your wallet can hugely improve its return if stolen.

Creativity

In this section Richard gives us proven and useful tips to increase your creativity such as being surrounded with plants.  Another idea if you want to solve a complex problem, is to spent a few minutes on a non related puzzle or quiz, as it will enable the creative part of your brain to come forward afterwards.

Attraction

Want to become more attractive? The simple act of touching someone on the upper arm while talking to them may have a huge impact on how they perceive you. 
Want to have a good first date? Don’t be too nice at the beginning but gradually become more positive, mimic your date’s body language and try to focus on things that you both dislike

Relationships

Want to have a honest relationship? Make sure you both keep a picture of your partner in your wallet, as it will reduce any infidelity temptations.  Another suggestion is to avoid any negative comments as it takes up to five positive ones to balance each other.

Decision making

Not sure if someone is lying? Ask them to email you, as usually people are more reluctant to put false affirmation on paper.

Parenting

Want to be a good parent and make sure your kid do well at school.  The simple act of giving them a name starting with A can have a huge impact on their academics career.  Another essential element he shares is that we shouldn’t praise our children based on their ability but rather on their effort.  This will implicitly make them to understand that in life most of the results are based on efforts, and more sweat will bring more results.

Personality

When in an meeting, try to sit in the middle of the group and not on the extremities, as it will give you a slight psychological advantage.

Conclusion

If you are looking to improve some aspect of your life, will it be finding your perfect partner, obtaining your dream job, or simply be happier, this book will give you the answers.  Those answers are backed by psychological experimentation, which the authors found across numerous research papers.  Let me close this article by citing a story found in the first chapter of 59 Seconds.

There is a very old story, often told to fill time during training courses, involving a man trying to fix his broken boiler. Despite his best efforts over many months, he simply can’t mend it. Eventually, he gives in and decides to call in an expert repair man. The engineer arrives, gives one gentle tap on the side of the boiler, and stands back as it erupts into life. The engineer presents the man with a bill, and the man argues that he should only pay a small fee as the job only took the engineer a few moments. The engineer quietly explains that the man is not paying for the time he took to tap the boiler, but rather the years of experience involved in knowing exactly where to tap. Just like the expert engineer tapping the boiler, the techniques described in this book demonstrate that effective change does not have to be time consuming. In fact, it can take less than a minute and is often simply a question of knowing exactly where to tap.

We’re embracing a factory instead of a tribe

Tribes topics

1. An introduction to tribes
2. Tribes Mind Map
3. Leadership doesn’t need a step by step formula
4. Lead from the bottom
5. The one single leader trait

Tribes mind map

This is the mind maps  of some of the essentials topics cover in Seth Godin’s latest book: Tribes.  Please click on it to open it full size in a lightbox.

Leadership doesn’t need a step by step formula

Every tribe is different.  Every leader is different.  The very nature of leadership is that you’re not doing what’s been done before.  If you were, you’d be following, not leading.

Leadership is about creating change that you believe in.

Lead from the bottom

Thomas Barnett changed the Pentagon.  From the bottom.  He had not status, nor rank – he was just a researcher with a big idea.

The one single leader trait

Finally he mentions that there is no characteristic of being a leader, because they differ so much, all depending on the tribe.  The only element, the one single trait leaders have in common is the decision to lead.  Have you took the decision yet?

Buy the Book now.

Did you ever dream of a better life? Did you ever wish more power to accomplish all your goals and ambitions? If that is the case, this article is for you and will change your life by providing you with so many opportunities that you never dreamt possible.
Unlimited Power is one of the most powerful and well known self-help book by one of my favourite author and motivational speaker Anthony Robbins. The first edition was release in 1987, when Tony was only 25 years old and he claims that the first draft was written in only one month. In his first book, Robbins show us the way to use our mind more effectively to achieve specific goals and success. He puts a lot of emphasis on Neuro-Linguistic-Programming (NLP) methods and writes about different self help topics including health and energy, how to overcome fears, persuasive communication, and bettering your relationships.

Unlimited Power

Book Overview and what answers does it provide?

Anthony Robbins starts his book with a famous quote about success from Ralph Waldo Emerson. (Please click here for other Success Quotes)

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

Unlimited power is divided into 3 different sections, where Tony gives us a complete methodology on how to achieve unlimited power by providing us answers to the following questions:

• How to model human excellence?
• What is the ultimate success formula?
• What is true Leadership?

In this post we will focus on the first section of the book and try to understand modelling of human excellence in order to achieve Unlimited Power. Please come back later or subscribe to the blog, to discover the other sections about the success formula and leadership.
Here is a summary of the questions that we will answer in this post:

• What is the commodity of Kings?
• What is the element that makes a real difference?
• Did you know your state affects everything?
• What makes birth to excellence?
• What are the 7 lies (truth) of success?
• How can you run your Brain and master your mind?
• What is the syntax of success?
• How to elicit your model strategy?
• What is the avenue of excellence?
• How to fuel excellence?

What is the commodity of Kings?

Tony starts the book, by showing us how privileged we are to be living in those time where the commodity of kings is information. Historically, only a few of us had power as it was directly link to either strength, status or money. Now, everything have shifted and the only real power you might have is knowledge. This is even more true today in the 21st century (then it was when the book was first published in the late ’80s) with the internet revolution enabling virtually everybody to collaborate and share information.
However, he continues information is not enough and need to be acted upon to bring real value. You need to become a master communicator to be able to produce the desired results by changing your thoughts, behaviour and actions.
He studied (or should I say modelled) many successful people and came up with 7 characteristics that enabled them to do whatever they dreamt. Those
7 traits of successful people are:

• Passion
• Belief
• Strategy
• Clarity of values
• Energy
• Bonding Power
• Mastery of Communication

Finally he concludes the chapter by saying that the only way to accelerate the success learning process was through modelling people that already achieved their specific goals.

What is the real difference that makes a difference?

Tony was for a long time curious about what really makes a difference in one person’s life. How come their are some people that have everything including talent, fame, money and end up overdosing on drug at an early age. By opposition, there are other people that bad luck seemed to have stroke them numerous time in their life but still end up a real success adding value to their life and to others. He found the answer when he discovered NLP and the infinite power that comes when you are able to control your thoughts. Based on the creator of NLP himself, there are 3 key elements that need to be reproduced in order to model human excellence:

• Belief system
• Mental Syntax
• Physiology

Once we take those factors into consideration, there is virtually nothing that is impossible.

The meeting of preparation with opportunity generates the offspring we call luck.

Did you know your state affects everything?

Understanding your state is the key to change and the first step to achieve excellence. If you can understand and be aware of your current state, you will be able to change it to a state that best fit your goals. Once you are able to change your state, it will automatically have an impact on your behaviour. It will affect what you say, what you do but also your breathing and might even change your skin colour.
Your state is created based on your physiology and your internal representation. Therefore if you change your physiology such as you posture, breathing, muscular tension (or relaxation) you will be able to change your state. A similar impact on your state will have changing your internal representation, including not only what you say and picture in your mind but how you do it as well.

The ancestor of every action is thought

-Ralph Waldo Emerson
The ultimate goal is to be able to control our state at any given time

What makes birth to excellence?

The birth of excellence is in the power of your beliefs. He says that there is no more powerful force guiding human behaviour then belief. He proves his arguments with some of the most known historical and religious characters such as Christ, Mohammed, Copernicus, Columbus, Edison and Einstein. What is important here is not belief in religion as such, but more importantly believing in something will that be in truth, people , a new continent or electricity.
There a five different elements that creates belief including:

• Environment
• Events (small or large)
• Knowledge
• Past results
• Through visualising in your mind the desired experience

He also mentions that to create a specific result it all starts with your belief and attitude.
The process is the following (going in a loop): Belief/Attitude > Potential > Action > Results. Of course having specific results based on your attitude will only increase your beliefs.

What are the 7 lies (beliefs) of success?

Before describing the 7 lies of success, I would like to quickly explains why he decides to use the word “lie” instead of truths. It is a way to be on the safe side as we won’t never know for sure how things really are, it all depends how we perceive things. But in order to produce results here are the 7 beliefs that one should follow:

• “Everything happens for a reason and a purpose, and it serves us”
• “There is no such thing as failure. There are only results.”
• “Whatever happens, take responsibility”
• “It’s not necessary to understand everything to be able to use everything”
• “People are your greatest ressource”
• “Work is play”
• “There’s no abiding success without commitment”

How you can run your Brain and master your mind?

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
-William Shakespeare
This is the chapter, where Tony Robbins talks about submodalities which “are the precise amounts of ingredients required to create result”.
Everyone of your internal representation takes the form of specific submodalities will that be visual (movie or still frame, colour or black and white…) audtiory (volume, cadence, rythm…), kinesethic (temperature, texture..) and for pain (tingling, hot-cold…). The aim is to replace the submodalities of something you are wishing to accomplish (your goals and ambitions) with the submodalities of your most successfull accomplishments. Doing so, you are like a very important movie director conrolling every aspect of a movie and knowing exacly how the audience will react to a specific scene. The more you can control the submodalities of your thoughts, the more powerful you will become. One must be in control of his kingdom (his mind) to acheive great victories.
Going into more technical depth he discribes the swish pattern, how to automatically trigger a success image in order to change a specific behaviour. Using this method it is possible to easily eliminate a painful behaviour or phobia, as it will become unnatural in your mind. Running your brain more effectively will quickly enhance your life.

What is the syntax of success?

Our five senses are the building blocks of syntax, and can automatically trigger the state you are in.
If we are able to reproduce exactly the syntax of success we may model it and therefore achieve the same results.

How to elicit your model strategy?

In this chapter, Tony Robbins got into more depth with NLP which he claims is the nuclear physics of the mind. Therefore a good understanding of NLP technologies enable you to easily accomplish any goals.

What is the avenue of excellence?

The avenue of excellence is physiology. By simply changing your physiology you can achieve enormous results. You may achieve ecstasy just by using your face muscles and smile. The same reasoning goes into why people use external elements such as food, cigarette, alcohol or drugs. All those substances directly affects their physiology and has an impact on their state.
By copying the gestures of a successful person you will be greatly improve your chance of attaining success. He even add that there is no faster way for successful modelling as through philology.

Our bodies are our gardens, our will are gardeners.

-William Shakespeare

How to fuel excellence?

This last chapter in the modelling section is all about energy which is the fuel of excellence. The question is now how to make sure that your energy level is always at the maximum capacity. Tony Robbins give us different tips on how to have a powerful physiology and live in healthy way.
Those keys to fuel excellence are the following:

1. The power of breath – which is the single most important element that will produce the most impact. Breathing properly will assure that your body is fully oxygenated and have a healthy bloodstream. Successful breathing consists of the following ratio: 1 count inhaling, 4 count holding and 2 count exhale. Tony also emphasize on daily physical activities such as swimming and trampolining
2. Eat water-rich foods – which is basically fruits and vegetables – will enable your body to run more efficiently
3. Effective food combining – which basically shows how some foods should and should not be combine with other foods
4. Law of controlled consumption – which states to live longer you need to eat less (can’t get more simple then that)
5. Effective fruit consomption – which states that fruit should be consumed on an empty stomach as it is digested not in your stomach but in your smaller intestin. The best fruits you may eat are fresh one or freshly squeezed one. It should also be the only thing you eat before noon.
6. The protein myth – which claims that protein might not be the best thing for your body and level of energy as anyone might thing. Some of the greatest mind where actually vegetarian.

Some of those 6 rules of a healthy living might be in opposition of what you belief (and it was for me), so the best thing is to actually try it for yourself for a month and see the results. He terminates by saying to imagine what would happen if you had the energy you never dreamed was possible. What would you do then?

A conlusion on how to model human excellence

Hope this post gave you some concrete answers on how to model human excellence. These are of course only my perception of what I found relevant in the Unimited Power book. My role is to trigger you interest in one of my favorite authors, Tony Robbins and NLP.
Want to know more? Click here for some more details or to buy the book.

purple-cow

This week I had the chance to read this wonderful book from Seth Godin, The Purple Cow. I came across the book and the author many times before but never actually bothered to read anything…and what a shame, because even tough the book is now already a couple of years old, it is still really actual and I would even say “remarkable“. What Seth Godin actually says is that your business, in today’s world (and even more now then a couple of years before when the book was first written) needs to be “remarkable”. Being the best in an industry was once more then enough to succeed but it is definitely not the case any more. Being very good is ok, but will that make you remarkable, will that make anybody remember you or come back? Unless you are one of those big players that had the chance to build their business empires in the last century using traditional marketing, you will really struggle to survive. Being remarkable does mean you need to risk a lot , but as he explains throughout the book playing risky is actually your safest bet.

New marketing mix

The Purple cow, which is the latest P of the marketing mix (and I remember from my marketing class that there are only 4 Ps) is not an option anymore and became a necessity in our very competitive economy.
I would also like to draw the parallel with the funky success lifestyle. From its own definition, Funky Success is a purple cow. It might employ many techniques of traditional success but all of its force is taken from creating something unique and clearly remarkable. Money as a single ingredient is not enough. A need of so much other ingredients is necessary , such as outside the box thinking, lifestyle design, creativity, world travelling…just to name a few. But once again, with Funky Success, the actual recipe is entirely yours, it is planed, designed and implemented by its author and therefore have so much more chances to be remarkable.
It is also important to notice that a disadvantage can be turned into a purple cow. What I mean by that is being raised on Canadian soil, my name became a purple cow on its own. Yes, at the beginning I spent a lot of tough moment, because of the difficulties of spelling and pronunciation, not to mention how mean the kids can be. But what happened is it almost always created discussion, something to talk about. Therefore most of the people that I’ve met remembered me, just because my name was remarkable. Now hopefully people will remember as somebody remarkable, somebody living funky success.

279 days to overnight success

I just discovered a new blog author that trully inspired me. Chris guillebeau, someone, who just as Tim Ferris, has the capability to trully inspire. He has an overall vision but also has a really pragmatic, really hands on approach. I am currently reading his “279 Days overnight success” which explains how to make a carreer out of blogging. If you are looking for a quick rich scheme, this is definitely not it. Chris suggest that it take a year or even two to build a solid community of followers around your blog.

Here are some key elements that will make your blog project a success

• What? A remarkabke story
• Why? What is in it for the users. As far as I’m concerned I think it is the most important question to answer. A good approach is to put yourself from the user perspective. What they have to gain? Inspiration, education, entertainment….there must be something. The answer will change over time, so you always need to have it in mind.
• Prioritze Writing and Marketing. To be honest, this is one I still struggle with. It is important here to differentiate between what is important instead of what is urgent. Yes it is hard, especially for a person as me that is so good at multitasking. Yes sometimes it is beneficial to be able to do many different things, but the best way to get something done well, is to have your focus entirely and only on this thing. What Chris is suggesting is have a schedule and stick to it (no matter what urgent matters come up) time for writin your 1000 words post (something substansial) and also time for 5 marketing actions such as reaching to experts, affiliates or journalist (using the web, emails, twitter…)
• Be bigger then you are
• Build long term relation. No empire was build in a day. Therefore you need to bet on the long run. You are building a relationship and it takes time, it takes patience, it takes persistency.
• Strategic introduction of product and services. You need to be carefull with your blog.

Much more quality answers can be found in the “279 Days overnight success” ebook.   Please click here to download it or click here to go to Chris Guillebeau The Art of Non Conformity Blog.

Chris Guillebau