Philip Zimbardo explains us how to use time in a more optimal way. He describes the optimal use of our past, present and future thoughts. We will answer those questions to give you a comple

• What are the Principles behind Adam’s apple temptation?
• NOW
• yielding
• impulsive

What are the Principles behind Adam’s apple temptation?

Adam'a apple temptation

• YES
• NOW
• yielding
• impulsive

Past focus

• NO
• LATER
• Resisting
• Reflective

Life is temptation

What is The Mashmalow experiment

The Mashmalow experiment was a now famous experiment done many years ago on 4 years old children. It consisted of giving the kid a Mashmalow and give him/her the choice between having it now or waiting until they get back so they can have another one.
The results showed that 2/3 of the participants decided not to wait and have the first treat, and only the remaining third decided to resist tempation and wait for the second one.
Further studies come to explain the difference with the minority kids that resisted. It revealed that on average those kids were better students (scored 250 points higher on their SAT’s), got less in trouble and more importantly they were future focus instead of present foucs.

The mashmalow experiment

What is time perspective?

Philip Zimbardo defines Time Perspective as “the study of how individuals divide the flow of human experience into different time frames or time zones- automatically and non-consciously“. Those time frames vary between different cultures, social classes, nations and people and might become problematic when some are underused and other overused.

What determines you decision ? Present or past Focus?

Every decision is on the idea of taking an action. For some the decision time frame will be based on the present with what is going now and only the immediate situation and stimulation will be relevant. For others, their decision will be based on past memories. But finally for some the time zone will be in the future, by anticipating conequences and doing a benefit analysis.
This is the time paradox, that you are making constant time decision that you are unware of.

Time Frame decisions

What are the time perspective factors?

Philip claims that their are 6 time perspective factors

• Past time perspective where you focus on the positives
• Past time perspective where you focus on the negatives
• Present time perspective where you focus on the positives – hedonism
• Present time perspective where you focus on the negatives – fatalism
• Future time perspective where your focus on life goals
• Future time perspective where your focus on the transcendental and life after death

I would like to add theat those time perspective modalities will vary. Please click here to understand and change your modalities.

What is the optimal temporal mix?

The optimal temporal mix is about having the ability to fluidly change from one time perspective to an other depending on the given situations.
He also give an the optimal temporatl mix profile:

• Past-Positive – High – gives you roots to connect to your identity & Family and be grounded
• Future – Moderate High – give you the vision and wings to get to a new destination
• Present Hedonism – Moderate – gives you the energy to explore people, places and self

What do futures sacrifice for success?

The people always in the future and only focusing on one aim will eventually sacrifice things such as:

• Family time
• Friend time
• Fun time
• Personal indulgences
• Hobbies
• Sleep
• They live for work, achievement and control

The importance of balance

He concludes his presentation with the idea of balancing. Yes you need to focus on the future but you also need to live and enjoy the present.
He also says that a proper use of time perspective may be applied to different world problems including diminishing drop out rate and addictions, enhancing the physical and psychology health of teens and improving family life.
Time perspective is a really simple notion but the consequences can be really profound.

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.

To have a bigger picture, it would be interesting to compare to other networks. From experience, I think the system is better then let say Paris or the NYC subway, which might be a quite scary experience for the first time user. However, to compare it to one my home town Montreal “Metro” it doesn’t have the same charm. The fact of the matter is that is shouldn’t be compare because of the huge difference in history and netwirk size and volume. Yes indeed, more then a billion passengers traveled in 2008/2009. Which is quite an astoning number, but nonetheless the Montreal metro is more beautiful, lot more simpler and packed with students.
Going back to how the attitudes of cummuters might vary depending on the passenger load. At some times it can be squeezy inside the wagoin, but when I think that in Japan they have actual staff members to push you inside, it is not that bad. I am also not immune to the rudness of some people, but overall the best solution is to let it go and try not to to affect you. I know it’s hard, especially fo high temparent as mine, but isn’t what patience is all about. Remaining calm no matter the situation. A good tip is to what yourself outside of yourself. In the sense that you aren’t you thought or emotions, you are much more then that. So next time you feel the pressure, think yourself of an angel watching the commuters. It is only temparary , and soon you’ll experience joy based on the fact that overcome it. Finally make it a habit, the more you practice it the easier it becomes and even after a couple of weeks of daily practice it becomes natural

The second thing if it really affects me that much and I’m thinking that there is no way I can control it (this is obviously just a wrong assumption, as in theory you could have complete control over whatever you set your mind on )

Some Useful tips to let it go

The real question is how do you make external things not affect you. Here are som tips that I’ve experiment
-be aware of it and make it a habit to change yout thoughts route as soon as anything affects you
-take deep breaght and count to 3 (1001, 1002, 1003) to relax your habit
-thing of something pleasant. I always have this scene in the famous drug movie where Johnny Depp is search at the borders. He has a number kg of white substance in his suitcase and his advice is to divert your mind and think of something pleasant like making love to your girl.
-remind yourself that this situation is nothing and will not affect you in any ways. You will soon forget about it, so don’t even bother.

• Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk
• When you lose, don’t lose the lesson
• Follow the three Rules: Respect for self; Respect for others; and Responsibility for all your actions
• Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck
• Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly
• Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship
• When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it
• Spend some time alone every day
• Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values
• Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer
• Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time
• A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life
• In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past
• Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality
• Be gentle with the earth
• Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before
• Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other
• Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it
• Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon

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.

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.

Most of my writing is about discovering and living success in a non-traditional way. In other words to be able to fully live and experiment funky success.
My target audience is people who are not afraid of thinking outside the box, not afraid of failure and like to try different and new approaches. I would say that entrepreneurs by definition should fit this description. But it is also for people searching for a more adaptable to their needs lifestyle design. Therefore a lot of travellers are part of the community, as many of Funky Success articles involves discovering new places.
So a part from entrepreneurs, lifestyle designer and travellers this is also for blogger, web artist and developers and anybody that dare to be remarkable and is not afraid of following an unbeaten path.
I just want to make sure that I will not pretend to have found the whole truth, and am not forcing anyone to adhere to my views, this may be taken only a as inspiration. Yes, most of the opinions will be controversial, so if you don’t agree by any mean, only focus on the ideas that make sense to you . I am not trying to convert you, my main objective is to find the best available way to my funky success and in the process if I can actually inspire you then great. Finally, one shall never forget that by definition Funky Success is totally subjective, and one must adapt it to its personal style depending on the needs, wants and objectives that you might have.

An introduction to the author

For those of you who might not know me yet, I am a writer, project manager, entrepreneur and world traveller among other things. I also like to consider myself as a solution maker, a visionaire.

Why?

The whole idea of Funky success was the traditional success was hard to define. Many people when asked this questions responded that real success is about having lots of money, or having a big house or nice cars …and so on so forth. But is it really about that? Ask someone who is dying what money means to him, is it really what success is about? Or is it more a question of living your life to the fullest, make the best of what you have.

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