Our friends have an impact on whether we smoke, how much money we earn, our lifestyle… even our happiness itself. For example, an obese friend increases your risk of obesity by 171% – that’s far more powerful than even genetics!

Thank the next happy friend that you think of. Each happy friend increases our chances of being happy by 9%. An extra $5,000 in income only increases our chances by 2% so each happy friend we have is worth about $22,500

And check your profile picture on Facebook. People who smile for their profile picture have 15% more close friends than the rest. Yep, I’d bet that your social networks has a huge impact on your life.

As my mother says, smile and the world smiles with you, frown and you’ll frown alone…

The research shows that the ‘degrees of separation’ effects weaken to nothing after three or four levels (so your friends, their friends and even the friends of your friend’s friend are likely to have an impact on you) – that’s a whole bunch of people you’ve never even met!

So: Who are your closest friends?

(based on my article on TheGeniusProject.com)

We found how “Perceptual Positions” help us understand things from the other person’s perspective – especially when we take the time to really step into their shoes and experience things from their model of the world. It’s a pretty easy process, at least once you learn it. We used the Dilts Meta Mirror exercise.

The subject of “presence” came up a few times, in particular how important it is to spend time totally focused on the other person… in this age of short attention spans, having the undivided attention of another person is perhaps even more precious and valued than ever before.

If you really care about someone, it’s pretty smart to let them know! Not just to feel that way, but to let them know that you feel that way, and to communicate it in a way that they’ll understand. So we explored love strategies, the specific experiences that can help us feel loved. For one person, it involved receiving money (really!!!); for another, it just took a certain look or a touch on the shoulder. We’re each unique, but understanding ourselves can help us better communicate our needs and to better understand those we care about.

More generally, use what works for you…

It’s been more than a dozen years since I discovered NLP and I’m still enjoying learning more…

Of course if you’re interested in learning more about Wendy’s studies into intimate relationships, see Dao of Love

Sometimes they’re stupid. Sometimes they’re continually asking for me to help them but failing to understand the concept of reciprocity. Sometimes they’re just obliviously obnoxious.

Yet I’m finding that these people disappear when I bother to really listen to them. Sometimes they disappear because they find other people to annoy and so stop bothering me. Sometimes they disappear when I confront the part of them which is annoying and I realize that it wasn’t them at all.

It’s like these people show up to teach us lessons. And, once the lesson is learned, those teachers move on.

Now I don’t know if that’s really true – that there’s some cosmic conspiracy to help us grow and transcend – but I know that I’m happier when I think like that… to honour these annoying, frustrating, pains-in-the-butt as my teachers.

Though maybe like that teacher that taught you a lot but whose class you were glad you had finished.

1. You want her to feel good. The content of interactions is not irrelevant, yet only offers a context in which you can guide and even lead her imagination.
2. Tell stories… Stories designed for her to experience specific emotions that serve you.
3. Care for her.
4. Trust comes from commonality; respect from difference. You need to add something… Make her life better for you being part of it… Connect and associate with her hopes, dreams and values.
5. Most important: be picky and patient… There are millions of beautiful women in the world and only one of you!

Hope that helps…

The photo that I uploaded here wasn’t terribly different from any photo that I’ve uploaded previously. Yet this time it has sparked a bunch of comments – whereas my ‘average’ photo on Facebook struggles to even get a caption or tagged correctly. And it wasn’t the first comment that ‘did’ it either, but rather it was the stream of comments that compounded together to create momentum.

Momentum like that is difficult to predict, a combination, I think, of there being so much random variation (aka “chance”) involved and there being so many semi-opaque variables that even if you did know all the things that you would need to know to figure out the answer, it would be too much of a pain for you to figure it out anyway.

It is like a trend – there are just so many things that contribute to a trend’s success that it is immensely difficult to predict. Why did JR Rawlings become a billion-dollar miracle while David Eddings’ or Robert Jordan’s endless volumes of high-quality fantasy remain merely popular?

Rather like intimate relationships at times…

Of course, there are externalities involved at times and conspiracy theorists have been making other books out of this for years (a la The Da Vinci Code), yet the gap between the .00001% that makes a fortune and significantly impacts the lives of millions of people, and being “just another” seems so grotesquely small.

It doesn’t seem to be “skill” (eg Ayn Rand).

It doesn’t seem to be “originality” (eg The Secret).

However, it is a form of genius. Perhaps the most important lesson that I can take from this is to pursue what you personally feel passionate about… firstly because that is what is most likely to yield an outcome that is sufficiently unique and able to adequately connect to the hearts of those that you strive to impact that it gives you a chance of “winning”, but more importantly still, because even if you don’t “win”, you will still be doing what you love.

1. Independence
2. Non-attachment
3. Power-ambivalence

Independence means that you think for yourself. It requires an individual to choose their own path rather than choosing the path that is given to them or the one that others would choose for them. Independence demands that an individual take responsibility for their conditioning and their thought processes, and to take responsibility for their experience of life. Sooner or later, great people have to leave the ‘tribe’ that gave them their foundations – that is the only way to start your own tribe.

Non-attachment means that while you can work towards goals and objectives, you do so while remembering that most things that seem to matter don’t. They might act – even ferociously – as if what they were doing mattered, yet when their work is done they retreat in the peace that comes from knowing that it doesn’t. Money, relationships and our reputation are powerful motivators for those who are not living at this level.

Power-ambivalence means that you do not try to control others. Self-actualised people do not live to manipulate or control others, but instead proceed along their personal path, honouring their truth as their truth, rather than trying to impose their beliefs or ideas upon others. While leaders are called upon by communities to provide guidance, self-actualised leaders do so without becoming attached to the perks, privileges or prestige attendant thereto.

Separation of Powers in Education: A pillar of the Rule of Law is the separation of powers between the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. In the same way, I believe that such a separation would benefit education. Let us have one body that defines the desired learning outcomes, another body responsible for assessing performance against those outcomes and a separate domain for those who prepare the learners for the assessments offered. This would necessitate clear and specific definitions of the desired learning outcomes that would – I believe – be facilitated through cognitive competencies.

Cognitive Competencies: What is an MBA worth? What about a law degree? Heck, what does it mean to get an “A” for maths? Much education is focused on measurements devoted to delivering a matriculation score – a measure that has enough superficial validity to permit discrimination between students. Yet they usually don’t mean very much.

Learning outcomes are so ill-defined that we resort to relying upon the tacit knowledge of our educators to transform them into something useful. Fortunately, this has worked adequately. However, with increasing competition, it is about time that we replaced this centuries-old process with a measurement of the mental operations that we want to see developed. Firstly for the sake of the students: Let them focus their energies upon correcting their mistakes rather than spending endless hours not really knowing what they need to work on. But also for our society, so that we can fast-track prodigous learners towards more suitable challenges and more effectively direct the energies of our teachers and our students.

Selective Reinforcement of Spontaneous Behaviour: My concept of ‘genius’ is that individuals exhibit a large range of behaviours, some of which are reinforced; reinforcement leads to the development of clusters of skills that tend to work together to create talents and, especially when developed early, the development of an identity that works to offer a sustainable advantage.

For example, I learnt to perform split-attention tasks and to work quickly when I was doing my homework on my lap inside my tidybox in primary school (since if I did ‘homework’ at school, I didn’t have to do it at home!) – a spontaneous behaviour – and kept doing it because the first few times I received the reward (free time) without punishment (being told not to do it – as I was later, though largely ignored having experienced the reward!). Very small shifts yield massive long-term changes…

Open-Hearted Relationships of Unconditional Love: Intimate relationships take many forms, but one of the most challenging is where two people come together in a spirit of openness and complete acceptance of each other and themselves. These tend to bring out the greatest challenges and fears of each, but in the context of the safety that comes from knowing that the other is committed to staying ‘in the room’ and seeing through whatever ups and downs might happen along the way. Where one of the relationship feels attracted to someone outside of the relationship, that attraction is brought up and discussed, with a view to understanding the nature of that attraction – rather than denying that attraction – and by doing so, allow for the embracement of the whole of the other person and a fuller appreciation of oneself.

I am considering writing further on these, though have been thinking or writing about them since at least 2003. Let me know if you’re interested… I like encouragement

Somebody – somehow – found my old blogger blog this morning and made a comment on something I wrote two years ago. She felt called to correct inaccuracies I had made.

And I agreed with her – the simplifications that I had made for the audience that I was addressing the post towards impaired the accuracy of my depiction of the overall message… I wouldn’t have phrased it that way today!

Yet I am grateful for her comment… and that I can notice the difference.

Isn’t it funny how it is often only when we can notice “the difference” that we can see our own progress?

(The post was about David Deida’s Way of the Superior Man, a book you will probably want to read at some point. It’s not for wusses – but it’s got great material. Check out my notes here…)

While they’re part of one of the biggest electronics companies around, they took the time to make sure that everything went wonderfully smoothly for my precise requirements amid returns, order changes and changes in destination. It’s a great thing to run a company that is mostly online – and they’re great at delivering top quality for a great price – but this experience has brought home to me that those rare occasions that you can interface with your customers make a disproportionate impact on the customer experience.

It’s like family. Most of the time you don’t see each other. Maybe an email or a card from time to time… which makes those rare occasions that you do get together all the more memorable and important. And makes it even more important to make sure you get it right when you do get the chance to make contact.

While “the virtue of selfishness” might be very unpopular as a phrase, I was transformed by this book and still have it together with my Grandfather’s copy of Atlas Shrugged in a special place in my bookcase at home.

It’s not a complete philosophy. Assumptions arrogantly taken for “axioms” are adopted by ignorant idealogues undermine the intellectual integrity that Objectivists purport to uphold. However, as James M. Kilts is quoted as noting in the NYT article, Ayn Rand’s works uphold a very important value that has few other sources:

“that excellence should be your goal”

Spiritual masters, NLPers and psychologists are largely and unusually in agreement (though they won’t let you know!): Self-actualisers, prime mover geniuses and happy “ordinary” people everywhere live in accordance with the vision that Rand had for the world… rather than being the victim of what other people want for you or think of you, may we all take personal responsibilty for how you feel, what you think and the life that you live.

Be excellent.