Modern Jedi NLP Mind Mastery

Archive for January, 2009

If you think you are not being influenced by the hypnotic choice of words in the media, think again.

Here is a short video of what appears to my eye to be a beautiful, symbolic traditional ceremony. The Reuters news agency chooses the word “Bizarre” to describe it and comments on the local illiteracy and superstition.

Here’s the text that accompanies the video ”

Jan 26 – In India’s eastern Jharkhand, villagers ‘married’ off a young girl to a stray dog to ward off an evil spirit.

The locals at Munda Dhanda village performed the ceremony as they believe it will overcome any curse that might fall on the family

Interestingly, the girl is free to get married later in life to a man without even seeking a divorce.

Superstitions are widespread in India, especially in rural areas where literacy is scarce.”

There’s quite a bit of Western arrogance and condescending judgment here.  Please be aware that when you watch or listen to the news you are being subtly and or not so subtly influenced and one might even go so far as to say hypnotized.

As an NLP practitioner, it’s entertaining and amusing to see this stuff go on all around. The mental manipulation by the media is so prevalent that It boggles my mind why more people don’t learn NLP just to protect themselves from being unconsciously manipulated.

As always I welcome your thoughts and comments!

- Mark

p.s. But you can’t argue with the grabbing power of that headline can you? What is it about us that is so susceptible to sensational head lines?

"A man is most efficient and will more quickly and easily succeed when engaged in work that he loves, or work that he performs in behalf of some person whom he loves." Napoleon Hill, "The Law of Success" p.80

I've been thinking a lot lately about the journey I've been on and what lessons there may be not only for myself but for those of you who, like me, seek to make a positive difference in the world at the same time that you support your self and your family doing meaningful work that you enjoy and even love.

(I've posted an inspirational song today that relates to this post over at www.MarkShepardSongs.com as well)

In his book "The Law of Success" Napoleon Hill shares a story from his own life. He had turned down many lucrative offers for employment in order to pursue his passion of researching and writing the law of success. His wife and family were opposed to it. There was no steady income. No guarantee. They openly or not so openly insinuated that he was being foolish and selfish.

At one point Hill had a conversation with a prominent business man, Don Mellett, who came right out and asked him. Now that you've done all this research on the Law of Success, how much money have you made?

Hill was embarrassed to admit that he had be so deeply absorbed in the research and writing that he had not turned his knowledge yet to the task of bringing in money. Here was the author of the Law of Success basically broke! He felt like a failure. He felt what we in NLP call "incongruent". He was "walking his talk" but it had yet to show up in a tangible form in his external reality.

"What?" Mellett exclaimed, "a failure?

"Surely you know the difference between failure and temporary defeat," he continued. " No man is a failure who creates a single idea, much less an entire philosophy, that serves to soften the disappointments and minimize the hardships of generations yet unborn."

Mellett and Hill became business partners that day and formed a "mastermind" that literally created the "breakthrough" Napoleon Hill had labored for so many years to prepare the ground for.

The whole point of Hill's essay was two fold.

1. There is truly a difference between failure and temporary defeat.
2. He was trying to express the notion that one should always do more than one is paid for because eventually the law of the universe will return the investment exponentially.

Last Saturday I performed for free at my local Starbucks. There was a time when the background noise and the coming and going of people would have thrown me off. I would have chosen to make myself feel bad about any number of things in the past. But for me last Saturday it was awesome! In every way it was a triumph!

All the personal work I've done with NLP on my internal beliefs and filters were perfectly tested by the evening. What was important was that I sang for 2 hours without a break and it felt like 10 minutes. I sang song after song from memory and the experience was fun. In the past it was like walking on glass. but I actually had fun. Any of you out there who have overcome a major fear or phobia can relate. The old resistance was totally gone. There was no nervousness. I was totally relaxed.

So as I look back over my life I can choose to see 30 years of missed opportunities or I can look back and see that I was doing exactly what I most needed to be doing to prepare me for the moment when "all of who I am" lined up behind the single idea that I was placed here on this earth to share a message of hope, empowerment, healing, love, learning, and transformation with whoever is ready and open to hear it. My music is simply a method of delivery that engages the emotions as well as the ears.

And ultimately it is not the end goal of millions of people hearing the music and the music positively impacting their lives that is the measure of "success" it's the process and journey itself that is success.

In NLP we have a belief "there is no failure there is only feedback" Anthony Robbins made the now famous analogy of the Jet airliner flying from LA to Hawaii is off course most of the time. It gets to it's destination through the constant adjustments and corrections along the way.

So this week I ask you, no I implore you, to have some faith in your own process of learning and growth. Look back at your life and instead of seeing "failures" and "mistakes" see lessons and learnings and experiences that led you to new insights and understandings. Write down what you've learned. And ask yourself again and again the powerful questions that will lead you where you most want to go.

"What can I learn from this?"

"How can I use this lesson to move forward?"

"Why does it work out better than I can possibly imagine?"

We are all in this together. No one has all the answers. No one has it "easy". Our muscles grow stronger through resistance. The "resistance" in your own life and work can serve a great purpose if you will only allow it to.

Napolean Hill went on to make a fortune with "The Law of Success" and his even more famous book "Think and Grow Rich" his words are still inspiring millions long after his passing.

If he had gone the "safe" route and gotten a steady job to satisfy all those well meaning people in his life, the world would have been a poorer place.

So those are my thoughts today. If you found any of this helpful please share it with a friend who could use some encouragement in these challenging times. It also helps to spread the word if you'd take a moment and "Stumble" or "Digg" or "facebook" or "twitter" this post

Courage!

Mark

I found a great site today that I think you might want to check out. It's called Anxiety Culture www.AnxityCulture.com in particular there was a great article on "How To Stop Worrying" that offers some very helpful techniques along with quite a bit of welcome humor.

Because I know you have so much to worry about right now and probably won't click through to read the article I'll do my best to summarize it for you.

According to the author, there are 2 obstacles to getting over worry.

1. Happiness has to be earned and therefore we don't "deserve" to be happy:
   "Centuries-old cultural conditioning has given us a nasty neurosis: the belief that happiness must be "earned". It can be "earned" only by enduring unpleasantness (eg work, pain, misery). But how do you know if you've endured enough unpleasantness to deserve happiness? Another unspoken game rule: "responsible adults" can never endure enough unpleasantness to truly deserve happiness."
2. The idea that worrying serves a purpose.
   "You won't stop worrying if you think it serves you. So it's a good idea to distinguish the fight-or-flight response (a healthy bodily reaction to immediate danger) from worry (a psychological problem). By making this distinction, you're less likely to overrate the value of worrying."

In my own experience with anxiety (really just a more intense form of worry) as well as working with hundreds of anxiety sufferers over the years is that one of the key beliefs is that "if you care about someone then you will worry about them." This is particularly true of parents and their children. Nobody wants to be thought of as "uncaring". My mom used to tell me she would lie awake worrying about me imagining me lying in a pool of blood...Essentially that kind of worrying is like a "negative prayer." So letting go of some of these old beliefs and cultural "programs" is essential in worry and anxiety relief.

The author of the article then goes on to give two techniques to reduce worry.

The first one is:

"The trick is that whenever you feel plagued by a worrying thought, note it down on a "worry sheet" (a piece of paper set aside for the purpose) – you can then forget about it, knowing that you plan to worry later."

I have not personally tried this technique but I'd love to hear from any of you out there in cyber space you might want to give this a try.

The second one is based on the understanding that  your mind can't process a negative (something I've said about a gazillion times before). Even though you consciously don't think you want it, telling yourself to not thinking about crashing the car causes your unconscious mind to think about crashing the car. So the Anxiety Culture author uses the analogy of drinvg a car with one foot on the brake and one foot on the accelerator...and your feet are tied together. So in order to stop one you have to stop both but your mind refuses...so the author suggests the solution is

"You somehow have to persuade (or con) your brain into thinking it's safe to lift both feet from the worry pedals."

No solution is given on how to do that...which is fine because that's where I come in. In my r experience, the way to persuade your mind to lift both feet off the pedals is available through the combined modern jedi mind mastery tools of NLP, Time Line, EFT and Hypnosis.

Of course if you're like most anxiety sufferers you worry that NLP, Time Line Therapy, EFT and Hypnosis are effective for other people, you worry that you won't be able to afford it...or you'll worry that you'll pay a lot of money but not get the relief promised...do you see how worrying just messes with your mind?

If you sincerely can't stand being controlled by the worry, anxiety, panic monkey on your back any longer and are willing to let go of some of the old notions that "worry" is noble or good or whatever. Then drop me an e-mail at mark [at] MarkShepard.com or call my office at 203-495-8808 (9-5 Eastern US Time)

In the meantime if you're curious how the media feeds your worry every day check out www.AnxityCulture.com

or Read the full article "How To Stop Worrying"

As always, please leave a comment below and share this post with "Stumbleupon", "Digg", Facebook etc.

Yours truly,

Mark Shepard, NLPT

An old Zen Koan or story:

There was a farmer who had a beautiful Mare. One day the he she got loose and ran away with a herd of wild horses.

The farmer's neighbor said "Oh. What bad luck!" To which the farmer replied. "Good luck? Bad luck?"

Some time passed.

One day the mare returned and it soon became clear that she was going to give birth to a foal.

The Neighbor said, "Oh What good luck!" To which the farmer replied. "Good luck? Bad luck?"

The mare gave birth to a strong colt and the colt grew fast.

Some time passed and the colt was ready to be trained. The Farmer's son began to train the colt and one day fell off and broke his leg.

The Neighbor said, "Oh what bad luck!" To which the farmer replied "Good luck? Bad luck?"

Some time passed.

There was a war and the army came around looking for young men to be soldiers. Because the Farmer's son had broken his leg and walked now with a bad limp, he was not taken to fight.

Good luck? Bad luck?

Whatever happens in our lives we are the one's who decide what it means.Often the very things that seem like the worst things turn out to lead us or push us to where we most need to go.

If you are overworked and overwhelmed in your business it could be the best thing that ever happened to you if you consider that it might be a message to approach things differently.

To find out how you can get high quality help with no financial outlay join me on an informational call Wednesday, January 14th at Noon Eastern time. I will be interviewing Michelle Demers and Julie Braun of www.SuperInterns.com to find out how they use college interns to literally run their businesses and how you can too.

Register for the Noon call here (it's FREE!)

If you can't make that call they will be doing another one at 7:00 pm eastern the same day, Wednesday, January 14th

Register for the evening call here (it's FREE)

Remember every challenge carries with it the seeds for even greater success! Good luck? Bad luck? Only you decide!

Please leave a comment below or share this post with someone who may need to hear it's message today!

Thanks!

- Mark

What is The Biggest, Huge-est, Most GIGANTIC Mistake Business Owners Make?

• It's not about having an inferior product or too much competition.
• It's not having too little capital
• It's not having some wacky idea that no one wants and then trying to get every friend relative and innocent passerby to "drink the kool-aid".
• It's not having a great idea that people don't "get" or a great idea that's ahead of it's time.
• It has nothing to do with how smart or creative you are.
• It's not starting a business with absolutely no clue how to sell (although that's a biggie and if selling is a problem for you check out www.ReluctantSales.com )
• It's not any of the dozens of personal and professional challenges most self employed entrepreneurial types struggle with.

The Biggest, Huge-est, Most GIGANTIC Mistake Business Owners Make is simply this:

Trying to do everything. Not knowing how to delegate. Not having systems in place so that other people can do the things you are not good at. Spending precious time on tasks and projects that could be delegated instead of focusing your energy on what you do best and on what brings in the money.

When you try to do everything in your business you are bound to fail. Even the smallest business is a ravenous, many headed serpent that one person can never hope to keep fed.

Note: Even though a key concept of NLP is that "there is no failure only feedback". In Business, the "feedback" of less money coming in than going out or of the owner rushing around from dawn until the "wee hours" can only go on for so long until something has to change. Either

• the business ceases to exist due to lack of money or
• the business owner gets totally exhausted, burned out or sick or
• the business owner finally wakes up and does something different.

We also have a saying in NLP: "The most flexible communicator controls the system." As the owner of a business (even if you are a Reiki master if you are working with clients you are a business owner), it is your communication to yourself, your clients and the people who work in and with your business that must lead and control the direction of your enterprise...(beam me up Scotty! I just wanted to help people!)

Here's the catch 22!

When you are starting a business on a shoestring and a prayer, how do you get the kind of help that can enable you to grow your business if you have no extra wads of cash laying around?

You need the help to grow your business but you can't pay for the help until your business grows! Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place! (In NLP We call it a "double bind")

Can i share a personal example?

Last year. September of 2007 this idea hit me really hard between the eyes and it wasn't pretty. For 25 years I've been self employed and always struggling. In retrospect I was close to major success and breakthroughs several times but I literally got worn out and burned out to the point where I just couldn't personally sustain things and then it would all fall apart. Then I would give up in disgust and go start a different business from scratch and make the same mistake all over again.

July of 2007 I taught my first full blown NLP practitioner certification training to a small group of students. It was great! I loved teaching the class. I loved sharing the powerful life changing concepts of NLP and Hypnosis and  Time Line Therapy™ but the gargantuan effort of preparing for the class, creating workbooks, cd sets and ordering all the other supplies and finding a place to have the training and getting the students in the seats and all the registration procedures and then correcting the exams and creating certifications and sending them out and then preparing the Master Practitioner level program and teaching that one weekend a month in addition to performing and booking all my own gigs and cleaning my house and seeing private clients and going to networking meetings and taking courses on how to do all this stuff better...

left me...

totally...

and...

completely...

exhausted...

and while I was so busy doing all of that stuff. I didn't always have time to keep an eye on the bottom line and so all of a sudden even though I was working my brains out...I was out of cash flow....oops! (

Does any of this ring a bell with any of you out there? Are you getting the picture? Can you grasp my concept here?

I mean you can have all the Modern Jedi Mind Mastery training in the world, but if you try to run a business, any business, all by yourself you will eventually crash and burn....

Yup. I know what I'm tawking about...uh huh and it ain't pretty...

Now, there is no failure. There really is only feedback and so we "passionate ones" pick our selves up off the ground and dust our selves off and start asking ourselves some really good (if hard) questions.

Like "What is the weakest link in my business?"

"Oh... Shit.

It's..................

....................................................ME!"

Now stay with me here because I will get you to a powerful solution and it's going to solve a bunch of your challenges all at once.

So last year, I started a master mind group. Michael Guerin and Rob Bronson were the charter members and we began meeting every Monday just to run ideas by each other and to challenge and support each other and to learn with each other and to help each other see the stuff that we were too close to see in our own businesses.

And it made a huge difference. It was the first time in 25 years that I wasn't alone trying to figure stuff out. I had a team.

For example: At one point Rob Bronson "pushed" me kicking and whining and complaining to move all of my websites to GoDaddy.com and saved me $6,000 per year. At one point I pushed Michael Guerin repeatedly until he fired his web designer and started taking charge of his online marketing. Mike and I "pushed" Rob Bronson to get his butt out of a really negative situation in his life and business and on and on and on...

So at some point you must form your own Jedi Council or Master Mind Group.

This was so cool that I started inviting some other people to join us and one of them was this amazing woman named Julie Braun, she calls herself the  "Marketing Guru". www.juliebraundesign.com

Julie was doing huge, major, multiple  marketing projects on a scale that made my head spin. She was doing events and PR and entire marketing campaigns for small to medium sized businesses. She was providing services that would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. But she wasn't working with Fortune 500 budgets. She was affordable. How did she do it?

It turns out that years ago Julie mastered the art of engaging INTERNS. UNPAID INTERNS.

Now these are not slaves. These are not college kids who come to your business to do all the yucky work like filing and photo copying (you just may have to pay for that kind of stuff. Do not even think about doing that crap yourself. You can't afford it any more).

Julie was setting up specific projects, real honest to goodness projects and allowing students to truly get hands on experience. So she was able to do often times 10 times the work that she would be able to do alone.

She had learned a way to not only leverage her knowledge and expertise but her time and resources in a way that enabled her to Work "on" her business as well as "in" her business. Her only investment was her time and attention and she developed exactly the skills working with interns that all of us entrepreneurs MUST develop any way if we want our businesses to succeed. The ability to delegate intelligently. The ability to manage other people. The ability to lead. The ability to generate and incorporate intelligent feedback.

All without a huge financial risk putting pressure on your learning curve.

I got so inspired by that I immediately found a Yale student who wanted to learn NLP, he ended up editing my first year's NLP training audio series.  He got to expand his knowledge base and I got a project accomplished that I just didn't have time to do. That was my "big toe in the water experience"

Now over the years, Julie has really fine tuned all of the details and concepts of using unpaid interns in her business to the point where it was just obvious she had to share the goods with those of us who were struggling with this whole "solopreneur" thing.

So Last summer she and her business partner Michelle Demers www.totalbusinessfitness.com created SuperInterns.com it's what I call a "Turbo Booster Zoooom  course" designed to get you up and running with unpaid interns fast.

To be honest, I signed up for the first one but because I was too "burned" out from teaching my 2nd NLP training and some personal stuff going on in my life, I never got to class. BUT they recorded every call and I finished the course later while driving in the car. My point is you can learn this no matter how busy you are.

(BTW Michelle met Julie in a different Mastermind group - are you getting that you need to "mastermind"?)

The Super Interns Crash Course will be offered again in a few weeks and if you are in business for yourself (or if your employer doesn't have the budget to hire the help you need to do your job right) THIS IS REQUIRED. You owe it to yourself to take this.

This is:
"Save Your Business (And Possibly Your Sanity) 101"

Are you with me on this? I know we all have the attention spans of 2 year olds these days but this is vital so PAY ATTENTION:

Whether you take the course or not this is so important that you MUST at the very least know about it. I could not live with myself if I didn't share this information with you. It's that important to your success and sanity.

So I've invited Julie and Michelle to share their stories with me on a telephone call next Wednesday, January 14th from noon to 1:00 PM eastern time.To Register Click Here

They are also doing an informational call of their own that evening, January 14th at 7:00 pm eastern time. to Register Click Here

• The Call at Noon will be me interviewing them (you will also be able to ask questions).
• The call in the evening is totally their show. So you have some choices.

The calls are free and whichever one you can make, it will be well worth your while to take an hour to find out how you can get some relief from the grind of being the sole practitioner or sole proprietor or solopreneur. It could save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars and possibly enable you to truly catapult your business to the moon. It's also one very creative way to move forward even in spite of the dire economic forecast and the worst economy in 100 years.

It is also of interest if you have college age kids or know some college students of any age because many colleges require internships precisely because the right internship could make all the difference in whether your children get a dull, low paying, soul crushing job right out of school because they have no experience in the "real world" or get to work closely with the CEO of a growing international company.

I sat down one day and figured out that I need about 10 interns in my business right now.

so if you know anyone who is interested in or is actively studying these or related fields:

• Arts Management
• Internet Marketing
• Psychology, NLP, Hypnosis, Personal Transformation and Change
• Music,Theater, Storytelling
• Graphic Design
• Direct Marketing
• Sales Skills
• General Business
• Health and Healing
• Peak Performance

Call me! 203-495-8808 or e-mail me at mark [at] markshepard.com

Registration page for 12 to 1 pm call –
“How to Get Free Help for Your Business” hosted by Mark Shepard Click Here

Registration page for the 7 to 8 pm call – “Unpaid Interns to the Rescue!”
(Super Interns general call) Click Here

Just for registering for either/both calls you’ll get a free ebook “251 Great Internship Projects!” .

If You already "get" that you need the course you can click here to: Register for the Super Interns Crash Course: How To Put Unpaid Interns To Work For Your Business - early bird special ends Friday 1/9!

BTW when you do decide to take the course, be sure to mention my name and you will get $50 bucks off of the already too cheap price of the course.

Please leave a comment below and share this with as many people as you can

Thanks!

Mark

Well here we go again. The New Year officially feels like it begins today with everyone heading back to work after the holidays.

For me the last few weeks have been all about choices and the direction I'm being sometimes led and sometimes pushed in (okay sometimes it feels like being shoved).

I've gotten a number of moving e-mails inspired by my last two posts so I thought it would be appropriate today to share a few thoughts about goals, and living your dreams and interpreting the events of your life in such a way as to make sense of things...

Ever since I was 8 years old I've wanted to be a singer/songwriter. You all know that by now. You also know that for some strange reason the very personality traits that made me really good as a song writer in only about 2 years of applying myself to it, took me basically the next 30 years to learn how to live with and how to get out into the world. Sensitivity and creativity don't always make the best business partners.

In my 20's a friend gave me a copy of the classic book "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill.

This is a book that basically says the same thing as "The Secret" but about 50 years earlier.

One of Hill's main points is Persistence. If one is pursuing a worthy goal there will be obstacles. There will be setbacks. The main difference between the people who achieve greatness and those who don't is the willingness and ability to push on even when it looks like nothing is working.

In example after example Napoleon Hill tells of people who gave up inches away from the mother lode. Those very same people, having learned that lesson moved on to create riches and success in their lives despite having missed great opportunities earlier.

So when nothing seems to be working, when you think you've exhausted all your resources following your heart that's the moment to pick yourself up, dust your self off and keep asking the powerful questions.

• "How can I get to where I want to go?"
• "What is it I'm not seeing that when I see it will unlock this block and let me move forward?"
• "What's the one question I need to ask that will give me access to all my resources?"
• Who can I ask for help who would benefit as much from helping me as I will from being helped?
• "Why does it work out better than I can possibly imagine?"

Sometimes persistence means taking a step back. Sometimes what looks like a "retreat" is really an advance in a different direction. Sometimes the best way through a wall is to take the long way around.The point is whatever happens we are the ones who attach meaning to it. So it's always up to us to decide whether something is a setback or an opportunity to learn and change our approach.

So today, as you think about the year ahead. What do you truly want for your life? What kind of year would be so awesome and wonderful for you that you will look back 10 or 20 years from now and think, "2009 was the pivot point. 2009 was the year when it all started to come together"

All the experts tell us to write out goals down. Create a "vision board". Focus on what we want daily. So  get out a sheet of paper and in your own handwriting write out at least 3 things you want for yourself this year.

In the next few posts I'll share with you some powerful tools from NLP and Time Line to literally "program" your future.

but before you grab the paper and pen.

go ahead and play the victory song video below and let it play in the background while you write. It's all about this and is filled with powerful questions to get your unconscious mind working with you...

Keep writing those goals and resolutions. In my next post I'll share the next steps...

Please leave a comment or share this with a friend!

Thanks!

-Mark

BTW This song can be found on my Thirsty For the Sky CD. If you'd like to invest in some of my music CD's (and support the "Life In Song" Project) just click this link: Mark Shepard's CD's