Archive for September, 2009

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How To Increase Your Vibratory Rate

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

I believe that the entire concept of attracting the things that you desire and living the life you want is based on the ability to increase your vibratory rate. When you are able to generate higher frequency vibrations, you’ll have the wind at your back when it comes to working with the universe – you will generate ideas, find energy to work on those ideas, and discover that you ‘magically’ meet the people you need to turn your idea into something more concrete. The opposite is also true; if you remain at the same vibratory rate as you have always maintained, you will keep manifesting the results you are used to.

So how do we increase our vibratory rate? The broad guide to use, is to do the things that make you feel good, excluding the things that leave you in pain at the end, like drugs, where you feel great for a little while only to find yourself in misery after the high has worn off.

I am certain that there are many more strategies for increasing your vibratory rate, but here are some of my favourites:

  • eat wholesome foods that give me long lasting energy with one of my favourites being a nice, green salad with salmon or chicken.
  • move, or in other words, get some exercise, even if it is just going for a walk
  • listen to audio books and read the actual books by the authors that inspire and motivate you – it’s hard to feel down when Tony Robbins is talking about his personal story
  • read articles and watch documentaries and movies about different entrepreneurs, their achievements, and how they overcame different obstacles and challenges (or something else that is inspiring to you)
  • be grateful for what you have in your life right now and for what is coming – I like to say that my next car is ‘clearing customs’, as it has been shipped from overseas and has not been released for delivery yet
  • visualize and generate the feelings of living the life you want to live – living in that dream house, being with that ideal person, driving that babe of the car
  • use affirmations and Affirmation Triggers (excuse the plug, but this did make a difference in my life)
  • and last but not least, get some sun!

I hope that you can apply some of these strategies in your life, but I wonder, what strategies do you use?

Until next time,

V

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High Frequency Vibration And Results

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

One fundamental principle of our universe is that everything is energy; another fundamental idea, that I want to talk about today, is that everything vibrates – everything has a frequency.

If you think back to your high school chemistry (or maybe you covered this in the physics class), you may remember a lecture on the atoms and how the electrons buzz around the nucleus. In fact, if you look at something, like a piece of metal, at the atomic level, you’ll find that the molecules (molecules are made up of atoms) shake and vibrate. As you raise the temperature (you can think of increased temperature as added energy), the molecules vibrate more violently, eventually splitting up and turning solid into liquid and then liquid into gas. As you lower the temperature (again, think of lowering the temperature as taking the energy away), the molecules vibrate slower, eventually ‘freezing’ in place when the temperature reaches the absolute zero (-273.15 degrees Celsius).

Now, we’ll talk about the physics of waves a little bit. Every wave carries within the same amount of energy, regardless of how big or small the wave is. If you look at the electromagnetic spectrum you’ll find that gamma rays have much shorter wavelength (0.01nm vs 100 nm ) and higher frequency than UV rays, meaning that gamma rays pack a lot more energy since you can fit more gamma rays in a given distance. That is why gamma rays will penetrate a lot deeper than UV rays, and consequently are more difficult to stop (think of putting on a shirt to protect against UV and the protection required when working with radioactive materials).

This is precisely why self-help gurus, like James Arthur Ray and Bob Proctor, talk about putting yourself in a state of a higher vibratory rate. When you increase your frequency of vibration, you increase the amount of energy in your body. With more energy in your body, you can motivate yourself to do something productive instead of being idle, you are in a position to take higher quality action, and you increase the likelihood of achieving the results that you are after.

How do you increase your vibratory rate? Well, that is a whole different topic, but one of the ways I touched on yesterday – get some sun!

Until next time,

V

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Why Do We Feel Better On Sunny Days?

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Have you ever noticed that, all other things being equal, you feel better on a sunny day than on a cloudy one? Have you ever wondered why? I have…

For a while I just thought that maybe it is because on a sunny day it is generally warmer (and I like warm weather), the sky is prettier (my opinion), and you can do more things outside. I didn’t like that explanation very much because these were highly subjective reasons and, even then, they did not answer the question to my satisfaction.

It wasn’t until I grasped the concepts of quantum physics that I came up with an explanation that satisfied my brain. On Friday I wrote about how everything in this word is energy. So what does that have to do with the sun?

Well, quite a bit actually, since solar radiation is energy. Weather we are talking about the light itself or the UV radiation, they are all part of the electromagnetic spectrum – a range of frequencies and wavelengths of different electromagnetic waves ranging from radio waves to gamma radiation. When it is cloudy, or during the winter, only a reduced portion of those waves gets to us. That means that our bodies will absorb less energy on a cloudy day than on a sunny day (again, provided that all other things, like your clothing and the time you spend outside, remain the same).

More energy makes you feel really good; less energy makes you feel not as good. And this should be pretty intuitive. What would you say is a more ‘energetic’ state, excitement or depression? So when the sun is beaming, your body gets more energy making it easier to feel good. This is not to say that you cannot feel as good on a cloudy day, but in this case you need to draw on energy from other sources to compensate for the reduced portion of energy from the sun.

What do you think? Does that make sense?

Until next time,

V

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Everything Is Energy

Friday, September 25th, 2009

I would say that my current understanding of how things work in our universe began with the understanding of this very concept. This concept has some very important implications when it comes to understanding the Law of Attraction and our interaction with our world. The best part, to me anyways, is that this concept is based on science. The hard part is to move past intellectual understanding, to a state that I will call ‘emotional understanding’ (more on that later).

Let’s talk science…

The First Law of Thermodynamics states that the amount of energy in the universe is constant; energy cannot be created or destroyed – it merely changes form. Then we have Einstein who gave us one of the most profound and elegant of the equations, E =mc2, that states that energy and mass is interchangeable.

Stay with me here…

If mass, in theory, can be turned to energy and vice-versa, then what are we but energy? What is the screen that you are reading this on, but energy? What is the house that you want, but energy? I can keep going like this for a while…

Also, if the amount of energy in the universe is constant, then anything and everything that you want to manifest in your life already exists. It just may be in a different ‘energy form’. What we need to learn, is how to turn that different ‘energy form’ into the the ‘energy form’ that you desire. But since it’s Friday, I don’t want to give you a brain cramp over the weekend. I will talk more about energy next week.

Until Monday,

V

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Switchwords

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

Here is something very interesting that I came across the other day – switchwords. The concept is based on the book The Secret Of Perfect Living written by James T. Mangan (1896-1970), according to Wikipedia, in 1963. I did a google search on it and a book result came up with a 2006 copyright, so you may be able to find it in stores.

Switchwords are single words that represent whole ideas in your brain. They are like connectors between a concept and an action or a certain behaviour. Over the years of conditioning, while we are growing up, our brains make these connections and we can learn to use them to our advantage. The hard part is to discover those connections, but it seems like James Mangan did that for us.

Here are a few examples of switchwords that I found online:

To create new ideas: ON,
To remember something forgotten or to find lost or misplaced article: REACH,
To keep a resolution: DONE,
To act on good impulse: NOW,
To avoid poverty or debt: CANCEL,
To eliminate procrastination: DO,

and the Master Switchword:  TOGETHER.

You can do a search to find more switchwords or try to locate the book.

I would imagine that different languages and cultures will have different switchwords. If you grew up outside of North America, do you feel like the above examples still apply to you? Have you heard of a similar concept in your own culture? Let me know!

Until next time,

V

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10,000 Hours

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

I was reading a book by Malcolm Gladwell entitled Outliers. This is his third book (at least the third well known book). The other two books are The Tipping Point, that he wrote first, and Blink! that followed. I have not read The Tipping Point yet – it’s in my current ‘to read’ pile – but I have read Blink! and found it very interesting and very well written. I expected quite a bit from the Outliers, but I was quite a bit disappointed.

Gladwell brought some very interesting examples and the book was very well written. The book’s main point was that people do not succeed only because of their talents and abilities, but because they have other things that happen to them in their environment. For example, part of Bill Gates’ success was the fact that the personal computer industry was just emerging and that at no other time in history would he be as successful doing what he did.

Well, d’uh! Of course our environment and people around us can help us succeed (say if you have connections with important and influential people) and not having those advantages makes success more challenging. Maybe I get this point on a very fundamental level and that is why I was not too impressed with the book. That being said, I did find one thing very interesting – the 10,000 hour rule.

The 10,000 hour rule basically says that to become an expert at anything, you need to spend 10,000 hours focusing on that thing. If we are talking about basketball, you need to spend 10,000 hours playing and practicing to become very good. To become an expert in the field of marketing, you need to spend 10,000 hours studying marketing. Gladwell brought this example up when talking about sports and musicians. He said that unless you get noticed at an early age, which in many cases, like in hockey, is a function of when you were born, you will not get enough opportunities to practice enough to get 10,000 hours of experience by the time you have to get noticed (17 – 18 years of age) for the big leagues, like the NHL. To see how becoming an NHL player is a function of the month that you were born in, please read Gladwells book.

If you think about it, 10,000 hours is significant amount of time. It is 5 years worth of full time work – 40 hours per week. And if you cannot commit full time to whatever it is that you want to be an expert in, it is 10 years of 20 hours per week. And that is how long it usually takes to become really good at something – 10 years.

So, if you are not yet considered an expert in your field, ask yourself if you have spent enough time practicing whatever it is that you want to be an expert in. And if you have not, do not despair – spend some more time and you should become the expert!

Until next time,

V

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Benefits Of Creating Your Own Affirmations

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

There are many websites out there that offer you long lists of affirmations, whether in written form or in an audio format. Some websites will sell you CDs with affirmations recorded on them, while others offer you an email service where a random affirmation will be emailed to you daily. In many ways, and this is just my humble opinion, these services offer a good value, but they all miss a big aspect of affirmations.

Affirmations are supposed to be personalized, positive statements stated in the present tense. The more personalized the affirmation are, the more effective they become. To me, as I said in one of my earlier posts, affirmations are synonymous with intentions as well as with goals. James Arthur Ray talks about how he likes to set intentions instead of setting goals, since the term ‘goals’ is overused and we, as a society, are somewhat accustomed to hearing it. Then, after thinking about it, I decided that affirmations and intentions are really the same thing. And you are supposed to use them in the same way too – you are supposed to keep your mind focused on them as much as possible by doing whatever your need to do (saying them out loud, writing them down on a card and reading the card regularly, etc). In other words, affirmations, intentions, and goals are all positive statements about something that you want to accomplish in your life or statements about the way you want to be and act.

So here’s my problem with the pre-made affirmations. They may sound personalized, but they are not personalized since you did not come up with them. Now don’t get me wrong, I think that it is possible to take an affirmation that someone made, make it feel personal, and internalize it. That being said, I think that it’s a lot easier to internalize an affirmation that you made yourself as opposed to an affirmation made by someone else.

You can use Affirmation Triggers to come up with a list of your own affirmations and then use this FREE service to send your own affirmations to your phone at regular time intervals to make it easier to keep them fresh in your mind. I would love to know what you think of the service.

Until next time,

V

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Stay Younger. Live Longer. With Affirmations.

Monday, September 21st, 2009

During the last week I wrote about the three traps of diagnosis, or decision making, and about the accompanying examples. Today I want to talk about how affirmations can make you live longer and age more gracefully. This post was inspired by a segment in one of the chapters in the book Sway.

This will be that last post relating to material from Sway. To remind you, the book was written by Ori and Rom Brafman. You can check out their website, www.swaybook.com. It’s a fascinating read, so if you found last week’s posts at all interesting, check out Sway: The Irresistible Pull Of Irrational Behavior. Rest assured, I do not get a commission from you purchasing the book. Maybe if I made an arrangement with the publisher…

On to staying younger and living longer.

A team of researchers from Yale University performed an interesting experiment with a bunch of people living in a retirement community. The researchers administered a simple hearing test and recorded people’s scores.

Then they asked each person to say the first five words/phrases that came to mind when they thought of an old person. The researchers classified people’s responses into four categories: positive, negative, internal (ie. experienced), and external (ie. wrinkly).

Three years later the researchers came back and administered another hearing test. They found that people who mainly described an ‘old person’ with the words falling into the ‘negative’ and ‘external’ categories experienced much greater hearing loss than people whose descriptions fell in the ‘positive’ and ‘internal’ categories. How much of a difference does this self-talk make? Well, after all the factors have been accounted for, people’s hearing deteriorated by approximately eight years worth during those three years when they described ‘old age’ with the help of words falling into ‘negative’ and ‘external’ categories.

In fact, having negative associations to aging cause you to age faster and live an average of 7.5 years less. So the solution, then, is to start seeing ‘getting older’ in a good light. Create some positive affirmations and some inspiring intentions about aging (I prefer just saying ‘acquiring experience’). And put Affirmation Triggers to good use!

Stay Younger. Live Longer.

Until next time,

V

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Sway: Another Example of the “Chameleon Effect”

Friday, September 18th, 2009

Yesterday I wrote about how the trainees enrolled in a leadership course in the Israeli military were affected by the Chameleon Effect. Today I want to talk about another fascinating experiment described in the book Sway that demonstrates the ‘Chameleon Effect’ in action. Just to review, the ‘Chameleon Effect’ takes place when a person, or people, get influenced and change their behaviour based on how another person, or people, label them.

This experiment consisted of two parts. During the first part, fifty-one women were supposed to have a brief conversation with a men randomly assigned to them. These men and women signed up for a study on communication. The time allotted to the conversation was not long enough to engage into anything much deeper than chit-chat about the weather, past education, current work, and maybe some interests. The women were just told to sit by the phone and wait for it to ring. Each man, on the other hand, was given a sheet of paper, several minutes before the call, with the brief biography and a picture of a woman he was about to talk to.

The biographies were accurate, but the pictures were bogus and were carefully chosen by the researchers before the experiment. Half the men were given pictures of very attractive women and the other half were given pictures of ordinary looking women. As you can guess, the men gave the bio snapshot a quick glance and paid a lot more attention to the attached picture.

After reviewing the profile of the women they were about to call, the men were asked to fill out a questionnaire about their expectations regarding women’s personalities. Regardless of what was written in the bio snapshot, the men who were given pictures of very attractive women expected to talk to “sociable, poised, humorous, and socially adept women.” The group of men who were shown pictures of ordinary looking women, thought they would be chatting with “unsociable, awkward, serious, and socially inept” women. Women, of course, had no idea that this was going on.

As you can imagine, once men formed their opinions about the women they were about to talk to, they brought that bias into the conversation. When the men started talking to their women, the other, even more interesting, part of the experiment started.

During the second part, the researchers recorded the conversations of all the pairs. They then isolated women’s voices and played them to a group of twelve ordinary people who knew nothing about the study and have not met any of the participants. These twelve people were asked to fill in the same questionnaire about women’s personalities. Remarkably, they attributed the same traits to the women based on their voices alone, as the men attributed earlier based on their fake pictures.

This is an incredible example of how expectations of one person are picked up on, and, in turn, acted out by the other person. While fascinating, it is somewhat disturbing to know that once you form the expectations, they are difficult to change. My hope is that being aware of this will help me avoid this trap in the future. Or at least, by expecting the best from people, I can hopefully bring that side of them out into the open more often.

Until Monday,

V

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Sway: Third Trap Of Diagnosis (or Decision Making)

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

Last week I talked about the three traps of diagnosis (or decision making). Just to recap the three traps,

Trap 1: Ignoring Objective Data
Trap 2: Giving Credit To Irrelevant Information
Trap 3: The ‘Chameleon Effect’

Earlier this week I gave you examples of the first and second traps in real life. The examples included the NBA, with how the draft pick order affects players’ careers, and the standard job interview procedure, which produces a lot of irrelevant and useless information about prospects future performance. Today I want to give you a more detailed example of the third trap of the diagnosis bias. This example, much like the other ones, comes from the book Sway, and it is about the Israeli army and a cool psychological experiment performed by Dov Eden.

The third trap is known as the ‘Chameleon Effect’. The ‘Chameleon Effect’ takes place when a person, or people, get influenced and change their behaviour based on how another person, or people, label them. This is counter-intuitive, but we are not talking about rational behaviour, are we? We are exploring irrational behaviour after-all. Now, let’s talk about this awesome experiment.

Don Eden approached the training officers who would soon be instructing a leadership development course for junior officers – pretty much grooming the leaders of tomorrow for the Israeli military. Mr. Eden informed these training officers, that based on the accumulated data on all the trainees, which included “psychological test scores, sociometric data from the previous course, and ratings by previous commanders”, each trainee was put into one of three ‘command potential’ categories: ‘high’, ‘regular’, and ‘unknown’ (for trainees with insufficient data). The training officers were told that they had to learn the names of their trainees and the associated ‘command potential’ profiles.

Now, since you know that this is an experiment, you probably figured out by now that the trainees had no idea that this was going on and that all the ‘command potential’ scores were assigned at random based on completely bogus data.

But here is the fun part. Fifteen weeks later, at the end of the course, all the trainees were taking a written test based on the materials they learned during the program. Dov Eden analysed the results of the tests and found that the trainees “whom the training officers thought had a high CP [command potential] score performed much better on the test (scoring an average of 79.98) than their ‘unknown’ and ‘regular’ counterparts (who scored 72.43 and 65.18, respectively). Simply being labeled, however arbitrarily, as having high leadership potential translated directly into actual improved ability – improved by a staggering 22.7 percent… Without realizing it, the trainees had taken on the characteristics of the diagnoses ascribed to them.” The ‘Chameleon Effect’!

Pretty cool, isn’t it?

I am sure you have heard of a similar experiment conducted in a school with ‘excellent’ teachers assigned ‘gifted’ students and achieving much better results with them than ‘average’ teachers teaching ‘troublesome’ students. Of course, like in the Mr. Eden’s experiment, teachers and students had their labels assigned at random.

So labeling is dangerous and can really affect performance. What experiences do you have with labeling? Have you labeled others based on your initial impression or some bogus statistics? Or maybe, have you been labeled in the past by someone else and suffered, or excelled, as a result?

Tomorrow I will talk about another fascinating example of the the third trap at work; this time it is about men and women!

Until next time,

V

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