G Letter - FALL 2019 - Feed Your Confidence Not Your Fear

“Fear can be effectively cured by forced repetition of acts of courage” Napoleon Hill

“I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” Mark Twain

Napoleon Hill said that the power of your thoughts are the only power you can control and rely on.  Your mind is a powerful machine that can work to your benefit or work against you. Most of us begin to let fear drive our decisions and actions when we’re children especially in school trying to avoid criticism from teachers or ridicule or rejection from our peers.  One of the main strategies people use to avoid ridicule and rejection is avoidance or inaction, which people mistakenly believe is a way of ‘playing it safe’. This is the equivalent of the animal that tries to blend into the background in hopes that a predator won’t notice them. The problem is that human beings don’t achieve safety, security or self-confidence through inaction.

Everything begins with your thoughts and the good news is that you can train your mind to think positive thoughts and give yourself the benefit of the doubt rather than always assuming the worst.  It’s just as easy to imagine positive outcomes as it is to imagine negative outcomes--your subconscious mind will act upon either positive or negative inputs.  As the Indian philosopher, Jiddu Krishnamurti put it, “where your attention goes, your life follows.” Nobel prize winner, Nicholas Butler said, “optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress."

Movement is the key to achieving results and your actions reinforce your thoughts.  Inaction breeds doubt and fear but action breeds confidence and courage. Accomplishing anything no matter how small gives you an endorphin boost which helps feed your confidence and diminish your fears.


G Letter - SUMMER 2019 - Beware When People Tell You What You Want To Hear

“The worst of all deceptions is self-deception” Plato

 

Within all of us are psychological vulnerabilities that skilled sales people, con artists, politicians or anyone with a premeditated agenda may look to exploit. 

 Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for information in a way that confirms preexisting beliefs.  Sometimes described as wishful thinking, people display confirmation bias when they gather or remember information selectively or in a biased way. The effect of confirmation bias is more powerful for deeply entrenched-beliefs and emotionally charged issues.

Many people seek out psychics and view psychic claims as confirmatory evidence whether there is any evidence to support them or not—conveniently, psychic visions are all impossible to validate.  Cold reading is actually a set of techniques used by self-described psychics, fortune-tellers and mediums to convey that the reader knows much more about the person they’re reading than the reader actually does.  Without prior knowledge, a practiced cold-reader can quickly gather a great deal of information by asking questions and analyzing observable characteristics pertaining to a person's body language, age, religion, level of education or place of origin. Skilled cold readers consciously make high-probability guesses, quickly picking up on signals that reveal whether their guesses are on target, and then by emphasizing and reinforcing chance connections and quickly moving on from incorrect guesses. The truth is that people seek out psychics because they want to believe them.

 How do you protect yourself from this phenomenon?  It starts with your own self-awareness—being mindful of your own biases and recognizing that thoughtful insight is much more helpful to you than having your ego stroked by someone with an ulterior motive.  Beware of people who tell you what you want to hear.  It’s ok to placate children, but adults need the truth in order to make sound decisions.

G Letter - SPRING 2019 - Make Observations Rather Than Assumptions

“The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct.”―William of Ockham

We all naturally use patterns to help us understand the world around us.  Making assumptions allows us to use past experiences to recognize patterns and save time and mental effort when we make decisions.  In fact, the reticular activating system (RAS) in our brains helps us filter out things that aren’t important to help us preserve energy and focal power.  Without this ability, we’d likely by overwhelmed by all the stimuli and information we encounter every day.

Despite their obvious usefulness in our daily lives, assumptions are imperfect short cuts that are often inaccurate.  We can overuse assumptions or make an inaccurate assumption about a person or a situation. Assumptions are often driven by emotion instead of actual evidence which is why assumptions can retard our ability to think, discern and make good decisions.

If all our preconceptions and assumptions turned out to be true, life would seem to be more stable and predictive than it really is.  Like it or not, nobody can predict the future. It takes more effort to look, listen and ask questions than it does to sit back and make assumptions.  To make matters worse, after we make assumptions, we often feel the need to defend them. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what we thought was going to happen or what was supposed to happen because in life we will always be forced to deal with what actually happens. Prioritize discovering the truth over protecting your ego.  Assumptions limit your inquiry and cloud your judgement, so whenever possible make observations rather than assumptions.


G Letter - WINTER 2018-19 - If You Follow The Herd, You’ll End Up Scraping Shit Off the Bottom Of Your Shoes

Social proof is a powerful heuristic that drives human behavior and fuels social media giants like yelp. Following what everyone around us is doing is easier than thinking independently and in the short run may seem like the smartest and safest thing to do.  

Human beings are social creatures and we follow others and seek consensus for very practical reasons.  For example, avoiding a poisonous food by copying the behavior of the majority of our peers made perfect sense for hunter gatherers trying to survive in dangerous surroundings.  Furthermore, being ostracized or banished from our peer group at that time may have been a near certain death sentence.

Nevertheless, you don’t have to examine human history for very long to see how dangerous groupthink can be.  Although human beings generally live in less threatening times today, the instinct to conform is still with us and can have very negative consequences for us when we blindly follow peers when we invest our money or make life’s most important personal choices about how, where and with whom we live.   

You often hear adults implore children not to succumb to peer pressure by derisively asking, “if your friends jumped off a bridge would you follow?”  Sadly, adults are generally no better than children when it comes to blindly following their peers whether it’s buying the same car they saw the Jones family drive by in or frantically buying their kids the same toy they saw the Jones family kids playing with.   

Following the herd may have been a necessity in our recent evolutionary past but as we ideally improve our lives by climbing Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we have to ask ourselves if we really want to live or just exist?  For those of us fortunate enough to live comfortably outside of famine-ravaged or war torn areas, life is for living...not just surviving. Really living requires making decisions deliberately not accidentally by using the analytical and decision-making abilities we all possess rather than mindlessly following all the other lemmings over the cliff.


G Letter - FALL 2018 - Never Underestimate Your Potential Or Overestimate Your Competence

Most people never come close to realizing a fraction of their innate potential.  When we’re young we naturally look to adults for validation and guidance. It’s during these formative years where major damage can be done to us psychologically by someone in authority like a guidance counselor who may try to predict our future or decide what we can or can’t do or accomplish.  

The only person who gets to decide what you can accomplish is you. Fortunately, other people’s opinions have absolutely no bearing on what you can achieve. Your potential is limitless, however, there’s a catch….the realization of your goals requires skill and competence that you must painstakingly develop over time.  Your actual expertise is determined by experience which is driven largely by your focus and work ethic.

You don’t become competent in any endeavor through affirmation, you develop expertise through sweat and hard work.  Tangible progress is normally achieved through trial and error which necessitates doing the best you can every day then looking at your results and making appropriate adjustments.  It’s self-destructive to delude yourself into believing you are experienced and competent in some area when you are not. Just because you’re good at one thing doesn’t mean you’ll be good at something else-competence is not universally transferable.  For example, there are many men I know who think they can do home renovations only to find out how difficult it is to do anything for the first time. Over time you can certainly become competent in most areas because your ultimate potential is limitless but not before you put in the work to turn that potential into expertise and tangible accomplishments and results. Onward and upward!

G Letter - SUMMER 2018 - Now Is Always The Right Time

“Procrastination is opportunity’s assassin” Victor Kiam

 

The biggest obstacle to accomplishing your goals isn’t lack of money, personal connections, skill or experience.  The biggest obstacle to you getting what you want done is procrastination. Every goal or task you set out to accomplish can be broken into 2 parts: 1) part one is thinking about doing it 2) part 2 is actually doing it.  Part 1 is easy and effortless, part 2 creates more natural resistance that you must confront if you really want to get something done.  Waiting for the 'right time' is an escape and an excuse--a procrastination enabler.  You're either going to do it or not--if you decide to do it, there's no reason to put it off til later.

This is precisely why now is always the right time to begin doing what you want to get done.  Not tomorrow, next week or next month--now, period. Delay is the enemy of getting things done.  Delay reduces your desire and therefore the likelihood that you will do anything at all.  This starts a vicious cycle where you procrastinate and delay and then feel guilty about doing so.  The irony is that it actually takes time and effort to procrastinate-it takes time to think about something and then choose to postpone it once again!  The next time you're tempted to delay, try this instead: as soon as the thing you want done enters your mind, stop what you're doing (assuming you're not driving a car!) and start doing it right then and there.  Then immediately block out time on your calendar on a regular basis to devote to that goal or project until it's completed if it's a one time thing or until it becomes habitual and secondary if it's an ongoing goal like exercising.  After it becomes a habit, action doesn’t require as much self-propelled motivation because starting creates momentum!  If you’re thinking about doing it, proceed immediately to part 2 and get 'er done. But in order to get 'er done, you have to get 'er started. Don’t wait, just think then act...not later....NOW because now is always the right time!

G Letter - SPRING 2018 - Stop Saying Yes When You Want to Say No

“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything.” Warren Buffett

 

Saying yes too often results in overbooking your time.  When flights get overbooked, passengers get bumped--it’s that simple, because there are a fixed number of seats on a plane just like there are a fixed number of hours in a day.  What this means practically speaking is that you will disappoint other people whether you say no upfront or later on.  It’s better to disappoint people up front than to pull the rug out from underneath them down the road when you are forced to renege after making a commitment you shouldn’t have made.  

Saying yes to too many people makes things harder both for you and for the people you’ve committed to.  It can create resentment that can manifest itself in lots of toxic ways and it puts the people you say yes to in a tough bind if and when you have to back out at the last minute.

Cultivate the willingness to say no in the face of social pressure.  As Napoleon Hill said, “fear, the worst of all enemies can be effectively cured by forced repetition of acts of courage”.  Start small, say no to things that aren’t very important so you’ll be comfortable saying no when it really matters.  It’s natural to not want to disappoint people, particularly the most important people in your life.  Fear is at the root of this fear--fear of being judged, rejected or disliked.  Unfortunately, not setting healthy boundaries almost always results in disappointment, so learn how to say no with kindness from the beginning.

3 Tips For Saying No:

  1. Be honest, direct and polite.  Don’t apologize but make clear that you don’t make commitments unless you are sure you can live up to them

  2. Don’t waffle, be firm and final

  3. Practice saying no in situations where you’re dealing with people you don’t know--this will make it easier when you are confronted with saying no to people who are an integral part of your life

G Letter - WINTER 2017-18 - Personal Growth Should Be A Lifelong Pursuit

"One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again."-- Abraham Maslow

 

Personal growth is the foundation of emotional health and is a vital part of maturation, success and happiness.  Personal growth is an ongoing process that should continue throughout your life not just when you are very young or in school.  Richard Branson said that “every success story is a tale of constant adaption, revision and change.”  Becoming a better person not only benefits you it also benefits the people around you as well.

Sometimes other people misinterpret change and growth as a threat and may act as an impediment to your personal development.  Jim Rohn insightfully said that “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”  If the people around you aren’t willing to commit to grow with you, it’s time to replace them with those who can.  Cutting back and redefining your relationship is often more productive than cutting people off completely but you can’t afford to allow others to retard your progress.  

Personal growth starts with a positive mental attitude.  This positive mental mindset inspires us, increases our energy level and confidence---it gives us an avenue to become the greatest version of ourselves possible by expanding our awareness of the possibilities and opportunities that surround us every day.

G Letter - FALL 2017 - Do The Toughest Thing First Every Day

“It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world.”

- Og Mandino

 

Why is it that although everyone has the same number of hours in a day, some people seem to consistently accomplish more than the rest of us?   One of the biggest challenges we face in the 21st Century is managing our time with an ever increasing number of potential activities that can use up that limited time.   In order to overcome procrastination and get the most important things done, you have to take a disciplined, systematic approach, which is why it’s best to start your day by working on your toughest task while your energy level is still high and before other issues and people start to distract you.  Procrastination can only be defeated when you attack it head on, so focus on your toughest task first with laser focus.  

Multitasking is a myth.  Despite the fact that you can do more than one thing at a time (i.e. walk and talk), you can really only focus and concentrate on one task at a time.  Every time you switch from one task to another task, you lose momentum which ultimately wastes time and delays completion of both tasks.  We face the greatest psychological resistance from the things we fear most, which are often the tasks that are most challenging.  You aren’t forced to do anything, you choose the actions you take at every moment of every day.  If you choose wisely and take an ax to the toughest task as early in the day as possible, you’ll be rewarded with a sense of accomplishment that will energize you for the rest of the day and give you momentum that will make the rest of your day more productive and satisfying.  

G Letter - August 2017 - Resist Adult Onset Laziness

"Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength."

- Betty Friedan

I often hear people say that they are too old to do one thing or another.  They’ll say, “I’d do it, but I’m too old now.”  I can’t help but speculate that many of these same folks at some point in the past used being too young as an excuse not to not take some action.  Being sick or injured is a legitimate reason not to engage in certain activities, but having been walking around on the planet a little longer than other people is not a legitimate reason to stop living.

Age is a relative measure and has little meaning in an of itself-it’s just a number.  A nine year old is old to a five year old--so what.  The only two states that matter are alive and dead.  If you are alive, you have more time and aren’t too old to do what you decide to do.

Despite what many people mistakenly believe, our brains are elastic and flexible throughout our lives.  As neuroscientist, Michael Merzenich said, “you name the ability and you can drive improvement out of it independent of age.”

Why would we ever tell ourselves that we’re too old to do what we’d like to do?  There are enough barriers in the world already, there’s no need for you to invent more out of thin air.  

The real problem we face isn’t aging, it’s excuse-making.  When we are children, we have less choices--we normally don’t get to decide whether we want to go to school for example.  As adults, we can choose to be lazy and unfortunately many of us do.  In order to thrive and lead fulfilling lives, we have to resist adult onset laziness.

G Letter

November 2016

Nov2016 G Letter.jpg

Tuesday, November 8, is Election Day — not a day too soon for many of you! It’s easy to get jaded and pessimistic about our elections. I often hear people of all political stripes gripe about

how corrupt politicians are, how bad their choices are, and how their vote doesn’t matter. There is some truth to those critiques. Although circumstances could always be better, remember that they also have the potential to be a whole lot worse. Democracy can be slow and frustrating, but if you study history, you’ll find that the alternative to democracy is normally worse.

It is OK to complain though — you can voice your complaint in the voting booth. Politics are much simpler than many people think. Convince enough other people of the merits of your position, and you can make a change. It’s easier said than done, but certainly not complicated. People who look like me used to have to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar or bubbles on a bar of soap to register to vote. Luckily, many very brave people risked their lives to remove those barriers.

Regardless of who or what you support, remember that, as George Jean Nathan said, “Bad officials are elected by good citizens who don’t vote.” If you don’t vote, you lose the right to complain. Voting boils down to simple math. If you don’t vote, you magnify the vote of everyone else who does. Elections are decided by the people who show up, so vote like your right to vote depended on it. You never know; it might.

Onward and Upward!

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If you’re coachable, open to instruction, and will take what I share and put it into action immediately, complete the application by visiting www.tinyurl.com/glcoachingapplication.

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G Letter

October 2016

‘Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.’

– Thich Nhat Hanh 

October 7 is World Smile Day, a holiday established by Harvey Ball, an artist who created the smiley face in 1963.

The act of smiling activates neural messaging that benefits both our health and our overall happiness.

Smiling is literally contagious — when you smile at someone, they can’t help but smile back because the part of your brain that is responsible for your facial expression resides in the cingulate cortex, an unconscious automatic response area.

Smiling makes us appear more attractive to others. Researchers at the Face Research Laboratory found that both male and female subjects were more attracted to images of people who smiled than those who did not.

Smiling also lifts our mood, and current research suggests that smiling makes us healthier and may even lengthen our lifetimes. Smiling releases neuropeptides that fight stress. When we smile, dopamine and endorphins — the body’s feel-good neurotransmitters — are released, which in turn relaxes our body and can lower our blood pressure and heart rate. These endorphins relieve pain naturally and the serotonin released when you smile can act as an antidepressant. Take that, big pharma!

So, as the late, great, Zig Ziglar said, “Be helpful. When you see a person without a smile, give them yours.”

Onward and Upward!

I’m Looking for an Elite Group to Reveal My Most Profitable Real Estate Investing Techniques To

If you’re coachable, open to instruction, and will take what I share and put it into action immediately, complete the application by visiting http:// tinyurl.com/glcoachingapplication.

After you complete the application, here’s what will happen:

I will personally review your application to make sure you’re a good fit for my program.

If your application passes, then either I, or someone from my office will call or email you to set up a one-on-one interview and strategy session with me.