Imagine thirty thousand menacing obstacles in your path to success.

You’re dehydrated. Hungry as hell. And wobbling like a drunk on too much Guinness. Your eyes hurt, your head throbs and your will is all but broken. You’re not even sure you want to go on.

You feel like Frodo.

As in the character Frodo, in the final episode of the ‘Lord of the Rings-The Return of the King.’

Terror and dismay gleam from Frodo’s big, expressive blue eyes. In the distance, he can see his goal. But it seems to him like he’ll never get there. He turns to Sam and says in a defeated tone, “Sam, it’s the Eye,” referring to the eye of Sauron – the enemy he must destroy.

And Sam turns to Frodo in a soft, encouraging voice and says, “Let’s just get to the bottom of this hill, Mr.Frodo.”

Let’s just get to the bottom of this hill, Mr.Frodo.

I spoke at the World Internet Summit in Sydney, Australia, a few years ago. And I saw about two hundred and fifty Frodos in the audience.

Confused. Weary. Inundated with dozens of tactics and strategies about the Internet, their eyes stared into nothingness. Frozen stiff at the task of having to build an Internet business from scratch, almost all of them seemed to have a cross too heavy to bear.

And they didn’t exactly have Sam to egg them on.

I said to them, like I say to you. “Let’s just get to the bottom of this hill, Mr.Frodo.” Then we’ll do the next hill, and the next and the next, till we get to our destination.

You’re bound to be struggling. I struggled at Yoga class. I’m a first-class doofus. Five minutes after we start the class, I wonder when it’s all going to end. I look at the ‘human pretzels’ twisting and turning to the left and right of me, and I can’t ever see myself being so flexible. And I despair.

But I’ve got my own personal Sam. I simply say to myself:”Let’s just get to the bottom of this hill, Mr.Frodo”

And hurrah, yippeee yahooey, I actually made it past
Yoga session No.2.

Share your ‘Frodo Story’ here.

1) How do you create presentations that enthrall, hold and move  an audience to action? Find out more…

2) Are serious about getting your business to the next level in 2012? Have a look at 5000bc. http://www.psychotactics.com/5000bc

1) Do You Often Hit A Wall Called ‘Writers Block’?
Learn how the core elements of outlining can save you from the misery of writing your next article.

2) Do you know that visuals immediately improve your sales conversion?
Learn how to create drama and curiosity and help improve your web page conversion with visuals.

3) Do your websites, brochures, presentations, etc… confuse your clients?
Put some sanity into your design, even though you are not a designer?

4) Chaos Planning
Year after year you sit down and create a list of things you want to achieve. Then suddenly it’s January 2012, and you’ve not really moved ahead as you’d expected!
Learn Why Most Planning Fails: And The Critical Importance of Chaos in Planning.

5) Nothing bugs you more than a painful client.
A client who hassles you at every step of the way. Learn how to use the power of the ‘six critical questions’ to get incredible testimonials—and attract clients that make every day an absolute joy.

I noticed something very unusual when I went for my 7 km walk.
I noticed that as I passed the liquor store, my brain would start to wander.

And it wasn’t the liquor. It was just the point in my walk.

You see I’d pass the liquor store at about 40 minutes into my walk. And no matter what I was listening to on my iPhone, I’d find it hard to concentrate on. Even on days when I was really trying hard to pay attention, my mind would wander.

So I tried to listen to music instead

Same thing. Around the 40 minute mark, my brain was off for a walk of its own. And there’s a reason why this happens. It happens because of the blood flow to your brain. When the brain has to concentrate on an activity, it fires up its pumps and hey the blood comes rushing in.

To find out just how much you’re paying attention, University of Cincinnati researchers tracked mental activity using transcranial Doppler sonography (TDS). The device measures blood flow velocity in the brain. Joel Warm, Professor of Psychology at University of Cincinnati, believes the reading could be an indicator of sustained, or non-stop, attention, also known as vigilance.

“The velocity goes up, it means that blood is being rushed to an area to carry away the waste product.

The more mental activity, the more the waste product,” he says. During various 40-minute tests, researchers saw a decrease in blood-flow velocity over time, and, therefore, a decrease in attention.

“Sometimes in the first 10 minutes,” Warm says. “That early.” And he says many times the participants didn’t realise it was happening.

What this means is simply that our brains can’t sustain the intense pressure

But it depends. If the brain has to tackle stuff that is well within our comfort zone and mildly challenging, it will hold out for a lot longer. But if we’re learning something new, or doing something that is challenging, the brain feels the intensity. And after a while it just needs a break. In everyday terms this break is often termed as exhaustion.

We don’t know why we’re feeling so drained, but drained we are.

And of course, we don’t want to appear lazy, so instead of taking a break, we soldier on. And the brain doesn’t co-operate. Which is when you find yourself checking email, hovering endlessly on Facebook and doing activity that tires you even further.

You’re not dealing with good ol’ resistance here. You’re dealing with a brain that just can’t function at that level. And of course, the more you push it the more resistance you feel.

But it gets worse

Just focusing on a task is hard enough. But when this focus has to be run over the term of a project, we have to put in tremendous self-control. And as you accurately guessed, self-control is extremely draining. And the reason it’s so draining is because self-control seems to be in limited supply.

So if you’re on a weight-loss diet AND completing an article that needs to meet a deadline, you need twice the self-control. If you add another factor to that list, you would need thrice as much self-control—and so on. So if you use up self-control completing the presentation, you’re more than likely to chew on the chocolate cookies—despite the diet.

What seems like resistance is really a factor of exhaustion

What seems to be a factor of giving into resistance is actually just an inability for the brain to sustain continuous control over the situation. Not only is it battling with tiredness, but the self-control is adding another level of intensity.

Something has to give. And that’s when you officially lose the plot. That’s when you think you’ve lost the battle to resistance.

Which is why rest matters

Every 40 minutes or so, you need to take a break from what you’re doing. On a day to day level that helps you prevent this endless back and forth bounce between Facebook and back. But remember what’s also happening when you’re resisting Facebook.

You’re using up your self-control.

You actually like ambling around checking what’s happening around the Internet. So don’t resist the Facebook temptation. Give in to it. Allocate a fixed amount of time, e.g. 5-10 minutes doing something that makes you happy. Then when your ten minutes are up, and you’ve had a bit of a rest, go back to what you’re doing.

But surely no one has time to take these crazy breaks all the time

No one does. And that’s the point. Your brain is going to stop being attentive. And though you may be sitting at your computer pounding away at the keyboard, it’s not going to do an hour’s worth of work in an hour. It’s going to do just 20-30 minutes.

And then it’s going to have drop outs in your attention. As it gets more tired, you get more inattentive. By the second hour, you’re pretty much drooping.

But if you took the break, and don’t constantly strain the leash on your self-control, you give your brain it so richly deserves. That blood-flow velocity reduces naturally. And you’re more refreshed to take on the next hour, and the next and the next.

When I’d go for my walks past the liquor store, I’d fight my brain.

I’d want to keep concentrating. But now I don’t. I realise that I’m fighting two pitched battles: tiredness and self-control. And if I just play along with my brain’s natural rhythms, I stand to learn more and achieve more—while still resting more. And what’s more, I don’t feel bad that I’m just giving in to resistance.

Interesting, huh?

Research source: Science Daily + ‘Switch’ by Dan and Chip Heath

The Brain’s natural rhythms help us achieve and learn more. Do let me know what you have learned from this article?

Resistance loves a loner.
Because loners have limited energy.

They start out on a project, all excited about what’s about to unfold. Then, for some reason or the other, they lose their way. And that’s when resistance gangs up on the loner big time. It’s not much of a fight.

The loner is already exhausted. One tiny tap on the head from resistance, and the loner falls into a heap on the floor. But this miserably one-sided bout could be avoided with the understanding of group work.

In Africa there’s a saying:

If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go with a group. And resistance detests groups. And there are several reasons why a group helps you get a project done with far more efficiency and a lower failure rate:

So how do groups help?

1) Release of Pressure
2) Exponential Learning
3) Support

1) Release of Pressure

The toughest part of a project is dealing with the pressure. And a release of that pressure is needed to give you a breather.  When you rant and rave alone, it’s kinda depressing. When you’re suffering alone, you think it’s something to do with your talent, or your genes, or that you’re a freakin’ loser (yes, everyone feels super-lousy often enough).

And having someone to just listen to your rant is amazing therapy. You rant, you’ve been heard and now it’s time to get back to work, because you have a ton of mistakes to make, and learning to look forward to.

2) Exponential learning

Mistake making is frowned in our society. We love to get things right the first time. And yet all of us know that it’s impossible to learn without making a ton of mistakes on any project, no matter how familiar we are with the project. The problem is that mistake-making, instructive as it is, is also terribly depressing.

When you’re going round in concentric circles, your exhaustion builds up rapidly. However when you’re in a group, you learn from someone else’s mistakes, thus getting a bit of respite from the exhaustion factor.

When a group shares its learning and mistakes, everyone learns and everyone gets a little samba in their steps because you’re not just learning, but it’s exponential learning. You’re learning from four-five mistakes every day, and guess what? Most of those mistakes aren’t yours.

3) The third factor is just one of support

While resistance can take on a loner, it’s a lot harder to take on a group. If someone falls, there’s usually someone to pick you up. If someone is struggling, there’s someone to help. If someone has questions, there are answers that help you move along.

Working by yourself, you not only miss the ongoing support, but the struggle wears you out. And inevitably you give up.

Now this kind of group support doesn’t necessarily work for all kinds of projects

Sometimes the project is just to clean your desk. You could do with ranting and group support, but it’s an overkill. Besides it probably takes under an hour to get even the messiest desk tidy.

But if this seemingly mundane desk has to go on over a longer period of say, six to eight months, then you definitely need the power of the group.

In fact at Psychotactics, groups form a critical part of the project experience

If we take just the Copywriting Course for instance, the three months of learning and implementation are physically exhausting. If you were to try and replicate the same pace by yourself, you’d give up in a week or less.

But with a group, 75-80% make it to the finish line. When you consider the sheer intensity of the Copywriting Course, you should have the figures the other way around (namely 75% should fail to make it to the end). And yet it’s the group that helps you through.

But how do you work with projects where the group doesn’t have a common goal?

Admittedly it’s harder to pull off a project where everyone is headed in different directions. When the African saying suggested you go a lot further with a group, they were indeed suggesting the group had a common goal.

And if everyone in the group isn’t headed towards the same deadline, or using similar tools etc., then they have nothing in common. Then it’s relatively easier for the group to be counterproductive, as no one is learning from group-mistakes, and everyone has their own agenda.

It’s important for the group to set out a common agenda and at least have some common guidelines. So even if you have ten different writers, writing ten different types of books, they should ‘meet’ online every day and post their learning for the day, as well as a minimum of 800 words.

If they’re a group working on a gardening project, there needs to be the shared learning, the shared support moments, and shared implementation.

But don’t you need the right group for things to work?

Yes, having the right group is important. But how do you choose the right group? Groups need to be chosen primarily on the basis of attitude. Which is why for instance, at Psychotactics, we call our courses the World’s Toughest Courses. This weeds out the excuse-makers and ensures that you get the cream of the attitude crop.

And just as you get a great group, you can also get a lousy group. Then whining, whingeing and depression will be constant, and progress will be impossible. So just having a group isn’t enough.

You need to put in some filters to ensure that at least 75% (or more) of your group will make it to the finish line. And it’s a bit of work putting a group together, but hey it’s a lot less work than starting endless projects only to see them go up in flames.

Resistance likes fires

All this namby-pamby, touchy-feely stuff makes resistance look really bad. If prefers the loner. And most projects are done by loners. And resistance is happy. Now it can wield it’s little finger and push you over.

And resistance laughs and walks away contentedly.

When a group shares its learning and mistakes the learning is exponential. Do you have a story to share about how groups work? Share it here..

“Before I bought the Brain Audit I felt lost & like a desperate salesman.” I was one amongst a million more service based businesses. But now with the psychological marketing tactics I learned from the Brain Audit, I feel confident. And I fell especially unique when it comes to advertising and marketing because most of my competitors don’t know the marketing principles taught in the Brain Audit! I feel like a real professional marketing expert. Luis Depazos, Entrepreneur, Miami, Fl. USA Find out how The Brain Audit can help you “I was wary of signing up and paying for a forum or another membership site.“ “Because of previous less than impressive experiences with sites that are all sizzle and no substance run by flaky gurus. Sean’s free advice and articles are so good I didn’t think that he could come up with something even better. He does. When I joined, I found a wealth of practical information and advice on all sorts of topics related to small business, marketing (both online and offline), interviews with experts, critiques of members’ websites and their marketing material. Sean is there answering queries and questions, sometimes even turning advice that into an article. Mixing with people from all over the world which allows you to get a truly international response to your questions or requests for help is one of the big bonuses of belonging.The 5000bc members are really friendly and there seems to be a complete absence of ego which is often the bane of a lot of online forums. Free resources available to members which you don’t read or hear about outside 5000bc, not to mention free access to articles which later become paid products are added bonuses of being a member. You also get information about classes and workshops which Sean is planning before the general public is informed. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend 5000bc as a valuable resource to help you with your business and the free coaching.” Stephen Trevarthen Melbourne, Australia Judge for yourself http://www.psychotactics.com/5000bc Products: Under $50 1) Do You Often Hit A Wall Called ‘Writers Block’? Learn how the core elements of outlining can save you from the misery of writing your next article. 2) Do you know that visuals immediately improve your sales conversion? Learn how to create drama and curiosity and help improve your web page conversion with visuals. 3) Do your websites, brochures, presentations, etc… confuse your clients? Put some sanity into your design, even though you are not a designer? 4) Chaos Planning Year after year you sit down and create a list of things you want to achieve. Then suddenly it’s March, and you’ve not really moved ahead as you’d expected. Learn Why Most Planning Fails: And The Critical Importance of Chaos in Planning. 5) Nothing bugs you more than a painful client. A client who hassles you at every step of the way. Learn how to use the power of the ‘six critical questions’ to get incredible testimonials—and attract clients that make every day an absolute joy. NEW PRODUCT! Black Belt Presentations: How do you create presentations that enthrall, hold and move an audience to action?

We have the curse of knowledge. We all do.

We know what we know, and we know it so well, that we assume that everyone else knows it just as we do. So for instance, I understand a concept like ‘uniqueness’ and it’s almost second nature for me, so it’s normal for me to assume that anyone can just sit up in bed and create a uniqueness for their business.

It doesn’t matter what you do.

If you’re a chef and you cook great dishes, or a web designer that designs nice-looking blogs—or whatever your profession. You’ll soon get to the stage where you believe that what you know is very simple for the other person to understand.

And the other person doesn’t have a clue.

Well that statement isn’t entirely true. The other person does understand the concept intellectually, but needs examples. And they need examples, because they need to see a picture in their heads. This picture is created in many ways, but let’s choose three ways.

1) Using an industry case study
2) Using a client example
3) Using a story from your own experience

1) Using an industry case study

People love case studies. So if you have a case study, you are immediately able to demonstrate how something worked in your industry. So let’s say for instance, you’re an expert in ‘creating change.’ And you’re writing an article on how to speed up change in behaviour in less than a week. Now you have to get a case-study of how that change happened in that industry. And when you give the reader such case-studies, they understand the concept a lot better.

But what if you don’t have an industry case study?

The problem with industry case studies is that it requires a ton of research. And you have no time to go digging. In this case, you use a client example as your case-study.

2) Using a client-example as a case-study

This type of case-study is much easier to pull up. If you read The Brain Audit, you’ll find that every chapter ends with two sets of case studies. They’re not fancy case studies, they’re just client-examples. And they do just as well, because the reader now gets a solid understanding of how the concept is being applied.

The problem, however, may be that you can’t remember any client case-studies and you’ve got this deadline that’s killing you. In which case it’s time to pull out an example from your own experience.

3) Using a story from your own experience

No matter what you do, you have stories from your own experience. So if you’re a professional speaker, you’ll have speaker stories. If you’re a dancer, you’ll have dancer stories—and so on. You run into clients, you speak to them and you have a story to tell as a result of your interaction with them.

So pull a story out of your hat. And put it into the article. And you not only add a ton of sizzle to the article, but also bring greater clarity to the reader.

Time for examples, eh?

Example 1: Industry-Case Study

In August 1992, Hurricane Andrew went bananas. Like a drunk on one too many Tequilas, he tore into South Florida with wind gusts of 175mph, redrawing the landscape as he stomped onwards. Approximately 600,000 homes and businesses bore the brunt of his menace.

By the time Andrew left, he had run up a tab of $26 billion dollars and the curses of some very, very angry insurance companies. Andrew had single handedly run up the highest insurance recorded payout in history , if you don’t count September 11.

Many an insurance company looked gloomily into their crystal balls and decided the future was too dicey. So while they grudgingly forked out the costs required to cover the claims, they refused to renew customer policies.

State Farm Insurance Had a Different Opinion. The biggest reason Hurricane Andrew blew the roofs off the houses was because contractors had not anchored them to the frames. State Farm not only happily forked out the policy claims but also paid its customers more to bring the houses up to code.

Amazingly, this insurance company was willing to overpay just to make sure their customers have peace of mind should Andrew or one of his family come visiting.

Example No.2: Client Case-Study

Jane was having a hard time working with her clients. You see Jane’s clients are teenagers with low self-esteem. And one of the many ways to get these teens to have a higher self-esteem is to foster goal setting.

But Jane runs into a solid wall of problems when she brings up the concept of goal-setting with the teenagers. They can’t write down any goals at all. And it’s not hard to understand why. These teens have no self-belief. How would you expect them to believe that a goal would come true? So here’s what we did….

Example No.3: Using a story from your own experience

Here’s what I do when I’m presenting the ‘Brain Audit’ presentation.

I set a chair in the centre of the room.
I then proceed to sit down on the chair.
Then I stand up.
Then I sit down.
Then I stand up.
Then I sit down.
Then I stand up.

It doesn’t matter what the audience was doing/thinking about/fiddling with before I put that chair in the centre. Now they’re looking at me. And in an instant, I’ve got their attention. They’re wide-awake. Aha, and it’s all because of the prop I’ve used.

So which type of example ranks as the most important?

There’s no rank when it comes to using examples. You may think that the story from your own experience may have the lowest rank, but that’s not the case at all. A story from your own experience ranks just as high as a case-study from your industry.

The only difference lies in specifics. An industry case-study is more than likely to have specifics, and for some crazy reasons we love figures. So if you have industry-based case studies, then use them. And note the fact that you need to have them in advance. Searching for industry case-studies while writing an article is a huge waste of time.

It’s better to keep a swipe-file of interesting case-studies on an ongoing basis and then use them in the article. If you try to find case-studies at the last minute, good luck to you. You won’t just be spending a ton of time, but you’d also miss the point.

So what’s the point?

The purpose of the ‘example’ is to bring clarity to the reader. And because all of the three types above bring clarity, that’s all you really need.

In summary:

1) The examples/case-studies clarify concepts.
2) All three types of examples have similar weight.
3) If you want to use industry case-studies, make sure you file them away in advance. It’s a massive waste of your time to go looking for them at the last minute.

So yes, use examples.

You can use them pretty much anywhere in the article. You can start with an example, or push the example to the middle of the article. Or let it sit nicely at the end. A lot of writers tend to put in the example at the end, but you don’t have to. Your goal is help the reader get the point, and the example removes the fuzziness almost instantly.

We have the curse of knowledge.

We consider the things we know, to be easy. And they may well be. But the reader still needs an example. And it’s your job to put that example in and bring amazing clarity to your articles.

Don’t forget to leave your comment below

There are two ways to learn something
You learn it. OR you unlearn and then learn.
As you’d have worked out, the second way is a lot harder.

To learn means to have little or no fear
To unlearn means to erase the fear, and then put in confidence. This requires twice the effort and builds twice the pressure. And pressure doesn’t teach you much at all. In fact, pressure tears you down.

People say: “Oh pressure is great to get things done”
And they’re right. It’s great to get things done. But only things you already know how to do. Not things that you don’t know at all. Because if you didn’t know how to ride a horse, and I put pressure on you to ride, then we’re more than likely to see you in a ‘spot of trouble’.

If this horse is one you find in a rodeo then the pressure is even greater.  And learning is not done under pressure.

Learning is done under conditions of diligence
There’s a difference between pressure and diligence.  Diligence is when you take a specific topic and break it down into component parts. So if you took article writing and broke it down into parts, you’d get connectors, disconnectors, sandwiching, headlines and a whole other bunch of elements.

If you took copywriting and did the chop-chop bit, you’d get similar, yet different elements.

And then every element has to be taken and learned
Which is not what’s done on most courses. It’s not what you can quickly absorb from most books. And certainly not something you can magically replicate with some ‘instant’ system. On most courses, what you have is this factor of pressure. You are introduced to one element e.g. headlines, and then you’re moved along.

You’re barely getting started, and you’re moved from element to element like as if you’re on a tour from hell. And that’s not the way most people learn at all.

People don’t learn by getting pushed along madly
People learn by taking one element and then getting it wrong. Yes, they get it wrong. Then they are helped to fix it. They get it wrong again. Then they’re helped to fix it. The process is arduous, but it’s a process not of getting things right. It’s a progression of ‘wrongs’. Learning isn’t about getting things ‘correct’ the first time.

That’s just a ‘fluke’. Learning is about getting things wrong and having someone be around to help ‘you’ fix it. Or of course you learn how to fix it yourself, but as you know that process of learning, takes time.

That’s because you don’t know what the heck you’re doing wrong in the first place. So there you are merrily chugging ahead—or hitting your head against the wall, as the case may be—and all you know is that you’re struggling like crazy. You have no clue why you’re struggling to do something like ‘write a sales page for instance’.

And the reason you’re struggling is because you:
1) Don’t know what you’re doing wrong.
2) If you do know what you’re doing wrong, you aren’t sure how to fix it.
3) If you know how to fix it, you don’t know if it’s a makeshift fix or a permanent one.

And so you plod miserably ahead
But the plodding stops if you have a teacher, a system, and discipline. The first two are tough enough to find. Great teachers are rare. Greater systems are rarer still. But discipline? Heck we’ve gone down that road before, haven’t we? We know what we should be doing, but we can’t be disciplined.

Can’t? No we can
You see the reason we give up isn’t because we can’t achieve something. Or because we aren’t disciplined. It’s just that exhaustion sets in. We run into so many obstacles that it’s like fighting a sandstorm for months on end. One day, we can handle. Two days, five days, even a week or two—we’ll take the crap. But then it gets to a state of madness. And we give up.

And this is where the teacher and system come into play
The system is just as important as the teacher. A well-designed system creates a factor that I like to call the roller coaster. This means that a student does something easy, then hard, then easy, then hard. Up, down, up, down. And a lot of flat lines to just relax as well. This system needs to take every one of those elements and break it down. And then the student works on it. For the whole week.

So when we teach the Article Writing Course for instance, it’s about taking one concept, e.g. connectors. And we spend the whole week on one thing. Over and over again. Learning how to get it wrong, then right. Then wrong, then right.

And we work in a group. At which point the learning becomes exponential. You can only make seven mistakes a week. A group can make seventy. There are now seventy ways ‘not’ to do something. So the learning speed up a lot, as you can imagine.

Then there’s the teacher…
The teacher needs to know how to manage the students, manage the course, manage half a dozen things. This isn’t about the teacher being smart, and the students being underlings. As Thomas Carruthers once said: “A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.”

That’s the role of the teacher. Because when the exhaustion sets in, diligence leaves the building with Elvis. This is when the teacher has to push, pull and get the student to move ahead.

Learning isn’t something you just pick up in a book
You can’t make mistakes by reading a book. You can only make mistakes by making mistakes. And you have to make a ton of mistakes before you learn something well. Learning is about mistake making, and fixing those mistakes.

Pyschotactics Courses are called the toughest in the world. There’s a reason why
It’s a mistake-making course. Mistake after mistake is made and eliminated. And it’s exhausting to make mistakes. So the system must be robust. It can’t be just an information dump. Hah, you learn nothing‚ well almost nothing from an information dump. It has to be one element at a time. One. Just one. Then the other. Then the other.

And for this you need a good teacher. A good one will do. A great one is even better, but a good one does the job as well.

And then we finally get to pressure
Once you know that one element e.g. connectors, and you have made about seven mistakes (and learned from seventy) then you are ready to put that element to the test. You’re ready to get on the pressure rodeo.

And heck yeah you’re going to be thrown off. That’s what pressure does. It throws you off. But instead of being a clown at the rodeo, you’re the person that stays longest on the horse.

But what if you’ve been thrown off that horse before?
Now there’s fear as well. You remember the fractures and the broken arm. You remember the despondency in your brain. Now to get on that horse requires a good teacher, a good system and a ton of mistake making (and fixing).

And you need a bit of pressure as well.
And that’s how you learn.

That’s how we all learn
It’s just that when we want to learn how to do copywriting or article writing for instance, we want to learn that skill in three months. We could learn it well in three years, for sure. People fly planes and do complex surgery after three years of training.

But three months? That requires a lot more diligence. A lot more mistakes. And someone to guide you, watch over you and make sure you don’t just read or listen.

But actually learn
And be able to implement under pressure.

That’s what will get you ahead. Now all you have to do is find the right teacher, the right system and then diligence becomes part of who you are.

Happy searching

———————
Next Step: “Before I purchased the Brain Audit, I thought this is just crazy, I’ve got so much marketing material that I still haven’t implemented.“

But right from Sean’s first story and metaphor, I could see this was different. I was hooked. The Brain Audit challenged virtually every principle of marketing I’d grown up with. Like selling benefit or never starting with a negative or problem.

And it’s this refreshing, innovative approach that makes the Brain Audit a must buy for anyone who is really serious about challenging the status quo and taking their business to new heights.

Already we’ve applied the principles to one of our workshops and the response has been fantastic. The Brain Audit and our ongoing association with Sean has been one of the best business decisions we’ve every made.

Paul Mitchell, Managing Director, The Human Enterprise, Australia
Judge for yourself The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy And Why They Don’t

———————
“The membership fee is less than what I pay for my annual chamber of commerce dues, but the value I get is so much greater.”

“5000bc has some amazingly brilliant, successful and inspiring business people from all industries. I can’t believe how helpful and friendly the forum members are.

One of my objectives when signing up was to be in the company of business people more successful than me so I could learn from them. I definitely found an abundance of them here. I am also impressed at Sean’s involvement in the day-to-day conversations taking place in the forums.

The quality of interaction and the caliber of the other members makes this a great place to visit and be inspired to improve my own business.”

Natalya Murphy
Washington, DC, USA

Judge for yourself http://www.psychotactics.com/5000bc
———————
Products: Under $50

1) Do You Often Hit A Wall Called ‘Writers Block’?
Learn how the core elements of outlining can save you from the misery of writing your next article.

2) Do you know that visuals immediately improve your sales conversion?
Learn how to create drama and curiosity and help improve your web page conversion with visuals.

3) Do your websites, brochures, presentations, etc… confuse your clients?
Put some sanity into your design, even though you are not a designer?

4) Chaos Planning
Year after year you sit down and create a list of things you want to achieve. Then suddenly it’s March, and you’ve not really moved ahead as you’d expected.
Learn Why Most Planning Fails: And The Critical Importance of Chaos in Planning.

5) Nothing bugs you more than a painful client.
A client who hassles you at every step of the way. Learn how to use the power of the ‘six critical questions’ to get incredible testimonials—and attract clients that make every day an absolute joy.

I remember sitting in a queue at JFK airport in New York waiting to take off
As I sat in the plane, I could see our plane stuck behind about six or eight other planes.
 They were all waiting to take off. And as we waited the weather conditions changed, causing the planes to keep taxiing till they got the right runway for takeoff.

The control tower kept moving the planes to the best possible location—a runway where the weather wasn’t against us. This meant we spent well over 45 minutes on the ground going from runway to runway following that queue of planes. Then finally we took off. Once we got the right weather conditions, it was easy to take off and we had no problem all the way to sunny Barcelona.

But things aren’t looking so sunny for you, right now are they? 

Suddenly you find you’re losing focus, and you’re not sure why.

Let’s just say you’re not a lazy person.

Let’s imagine you’re a reasonably hard worker and have not problem concentrating.

Yet suddenly things aren’t going your way. Suddenly, you’re struggling to focus. Should you fight through the problem? Or should you take a break?

I’ve stalled on many projects before, and part of the problem is chaos 

The only way to fix the problem is to fight through it, or find another way out. I’ve tried to fight through it in the past, but it doesn’t work.

This is more psychological than anything else
When something occurs on a frequent basis, the brain starts to create what is called a “brain map”. Think about it this way. Hold a cup. You’ll see that your thumb jumps out first, then your forefinger. The a millisecond later, the three fingers jump out. It all looks like one action, but in fact is about half a dozen or more actions in your brain.

If you do that often enough, the brain forms a map. If you try to reach for the cup with your middle finger first, it not only makes rude signs at you, but it’s also almost impossible to pick up the cup quickly.

This brain mapping is what we’d call a “habit” but in fact it’s quite temporary unless we make it permanent 

Again, “permanent” is just a throwaway word, because the brain is highly plastic. Anything learned can be unlearned. However in the short term the way “through” isn’t the way at all. The way out is to take a clean break. To go someplace where the “crazy brain map” is unable to function as it has been doing in the short term. When this happens, the newly formed habit gets “lazy” and of course a new brain map starts to take its place.

This is interesting, most interesting of all: The new brain map taking the old one’s place.

The brain loves to lose what it won’t use, and so as you step away from the behaviour that’s driving you crazy, you allow the brain to now take over that brain real estate with a sense of calm relaxation. And the behaviour that’s been agitating you slows down, then finally stops given adequate time.

Trying to fight through the system is never productive. You have to create a whole new brain map (this is akin to Albert Einstein’s quote: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”). So “getting away” is the best thing to do. It reorganises your brain, gives it time to relax and then allows you to come back re-energised.

Which brings us to the topic of getting away

Getting away could be a break away from home. Or away from work. But it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes it’s not tiredness that’s wearing you down. What’s wearing you down is the lack of progress. In which case you need to look at the same problem from a different angle. e.g. Learning article writing is like learning a new, difficult language.

Often it’s easy to get stalled in the process of writing. Taking a break under these circumstances rarely helps your brain. On the contrary it puts it under more pressure because once you get back you have to “catch up”. In this case the method of learning has to take a different approach.

You have to have put yourself, or be put in a learning environment where there’s little chance to get “crazy wind”. Where’s there’s as minimal frustration as possible.

Just like a plane taking off
You can’t fight the weather. You can’t battle the winds. You have to find a different runway. A runway that will enable you to take off without too much drama. And head off to a whole new brain map: your “sunny Barcelona”.

———————
Next Step:
“Before I purchased the Brain Audit, I thought this is just crazy, I’ve got so much marketing material that I still haven’t implemented.“

But right from Sean’s first story and metaphor, I could see this was different. I was hooked. The Brain Audit challenged virtually every principle of marketing I’d grown up with. Like selling benefit or never starting with a negative or problem.

And it’s this refreshing, innovative approach that makes the Brain Audit a must buy for anyone who is really serious about challenging the status quo and taking their business to new heights.

Already we’ve applied the principles to one of our workshops and the response has been fantastic. The Brain Audit and our ongoing association with Sean has been one of the best business decisions we’ve every made.

Paul Mitchell, Managing Director, The Human Enterprise, Australia
Judge for yourself The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy And Why They Don’t

———————
“The membership fee is less than what I pay for my annual chamber of commerce dues, but the value I get is so much greater.”

“5000bc has some amazingly brilliant, successful and inspiring business people from all industries. I can’t believe how helpful and friendly the forum members are.

One of my objectives when signing up was to be in the company of business people more successful than me so I could learn from them. I definitely found an abundance of them here. I am also impressed at Sean’s involvement in the day-to-day conversations taking place in the forums.

The quality of interaction and the caliber of the other members makes this a great place to visit and be inspired to improve my own business.”

Natalya Murphy
Washington, DC, USA

Judge for yourself http://www.psychotactics.com/5000bc
———————
Products: Under $50

1) Do You Often Hit A Wall Called ‘Writers Block’?
Learn how the core elements of outlining can save you from the misery of writing your next article.

2) Do you know that visuals immediately improve your sales conversion?
Learn how to create drama and curiosity and help improve your web page conversion with visuals.

3) Do your websites, brochures, presentations, etc… confuse your clients?
Put some sanity into your design, even though you are not a designer?

4) Chaos Planning
Year after year you sit down and create a list of things you want to achieve. Then suddenly it’s March, and you’ve not really moved ahead as you’d expected.
Learn Why Most Planning Fails: And The Critical Importance of Chaos in Planning.

5) Nothing bugs you more than a painful client.
A client who hassles you at every step of the way. Learn how to use the power of the ‘six critical questions’ to get incredible testimonials—and attract clients that make every day an absolute joy.

Do you remember what you’ve learned? Or are you a Sponge Bob?
Soak a sponge with water.
It will absorb all the water willingly.

And as you pick it up, the soaked sponge will drip.

A good chunk of the water will drippity-drip all over you if you’re not careful.

But let’s say you are indeed careful

Let’s say you then go on to squeeze the sponge.

Let’s give it a good squeeze, shall we?

And here’s what happens…

Most of the water, gets squeezed out of the sponge. Yet the sponge is still wet. That means the sponge retains a minuscule part of the moisture. Kind like your brain does when going through a new learning experience.
 You know the feeling of being in a workshop.
 You learn one fact, then another, then another.

If you start learning a new concept by 9am, your brain is pretty tired by 11am.
 Of course you don’t realise this if you look around you. After all, everyone’s happy, smiling. And everyone’s keen to get new information.

But here’s what’s happening in your brain
Your brain can’t process a whole bunch of facts without rocking back and forth between understanding and application. So even as you get new information, the brain is trying to work out the overview, as well as the details required to implement the information. And at the very same time, it’s trying to find the relationship between what you already know, and how this new information relates to the old information.

Hah, you had trouble processing that last paragraph, didn’t you?

Now imagine what happens when you go to a seminar or workshop, and there’s speaker after speaker. Your brain keeps getting new information, and it absorbs the information like a sponge. Most of this information doesn’t sink in at all. In fact, most of the information can’t be recalled by you, even if you tried.

Which is why as a trainer/coach/teacher you need to understand the importance of time

- The brain needs to learn a concept.

- Then play with it.
- Discuss it.

- Make mistakes.

- And see the connections between the existing concepts and new concepts.

Most seminars have no such review process
Most books swing wildly from one chapter to another.

Most training courses (and we’ve had quite a few at Psychotactics in the past) have so much information, that the concept of time is ignored.

And when the concept time is ignored, real learning fails to happen
To learn, the brain literally needs to boot down.

Take a nap.

And restart.

What’s weird is that this time isn’t just required for educational purposes. It’s also critical for sport, or learning a new language. In fact all learning requires downtime.

If you don’t have downtime, you have sponge learning.

Most of the information drippity-drips away.
Which is a shame, really.
———————
Next Step:
“There are marketing books and there are marketing books – I bet there are not many you have read many times over?
The Brain Audit really teaches you the art of persuasion because it gives an insight into how people’s brains work. I have used the principles in writing WebPages, writing articles, making presentations, networking, negotiating and even writing submissions for a judge!

But the best bit about the Brain Audit is that it actually works.The principles are easy to understand.

Would I recommend it to people serious about getting on in business? Absolutely.”

Michael Smyth, approachablelawyer, Auckland
Judge for yourself The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy And Why They Don’t

———————
“The membership fee is less than what I pay for my annual chamber of commerce dues, but the value I get is so much greater.”

“5000bc has some amazingly brilliant, successful and inspiring business people from all industries. I can’t believe how helpful and friendly the forum members are.

One of my objectives when signing up was to be in the company of business people more successful than me so I could learn from them. I definitely found an abundance of them here. I am also impressed at Sean’s involvement in the day-to-day conversations taking place in the forums.

The quality of interaction and the caliber of the other members makes this a great place to visit and be inspired to improve my own business.”

Natalya Murphy
Washington, DC, USA

Judge for yourself http://www.psychotactics.com/5000bc
———————
Products: Under $50

1) Do You Often Hit A Wall Called ‘Writers Block’?
Learn how the core elements of outlining can save you from the misery of writing your next article.

2) Do you know that visuals immediately improve your sales conversion?
Learn how to create drama and curiosity and help improve your web page conversion with visuals.

3) Do your websites, brochures, presentations, etc… confuse your clients?
Put some sanity into your design, even though you are not a designer?

4) Chaos Planning
Year after year you sit down and create a list of things you want to achieve. Then suddenly it’s March, and you’ve not really moved ahead as you’d expected.
Learn Why Most Planning Fails: And The Critical Importance of Chaos in Planning.

5) Nothing bugs you more than a painful client.
A client who hassles you at every step of the way. Learn how to use the power of the ‘six critical questions’ to get incredible testimonials—and attract clients that make every day an absolute joy.

Two people
There are two kinds of people on the planet.
Those who make excuses.
And those who don’t.

The ones who make excuses don’t start that way
No one is ‘born talented’ at making excuses. But over the years they learn to get out of things. They learn how to blame the weather, their parents, their teachers, the system, the chewing gum—yeah, pretty much anything that can deflect the blame. And give them the excuse they need.

And then there are those who don’t
Or rather won’t.

We all have our difficulties and some days we feel like making excuses. And we start mumbling, but stop before the mumble pushes itself into a rumble. And we get the job done.

Amazingly all of us have similar capabilities. Similar capabilities to get stuff done.
Or completely screw up our lives with excuses.

When you wake up in the morning you get to choose which route to take. As one wise person said: The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that smart people hate doing the same things that unsuccessful people hate doing—but successful people do it any way.

As you go on this journey, you get the chance to back out.
To make excuses.
To blame the chewing gum.
Or not.

You have the choice.
You decide.

———
Product Offers: Links you should visit
1) The Brain Audit: Why Clients Buy (And Why They Don’t)
2) Business Products : Under $50
3) NEW! Introductory Price: Black Belt Presentations Series
4) 5000bc: Exclusive Membership

Are too!
Are not!
Are too!
Are not!
Are too!

You’ve played this game as a child.
And no matter which side you were on, you simply stuck to your position, without budging an inch.

So how do you win the battle of perception?

You do what Grizz Wylie does. Grizz, a well-known coach for the New Zealand All Blacks, is considered by many to be gruff and abrasive.

If you ask Grizz if he’s gruff and abrasive, he’d be more than likely to say ‘no’.

But you see, that doesn’t change the public’s perception

If the public sees a person to be gruff and abrasive, that person is indeed gruff and abrasive.

And so Grizz, grizzles.
He growls on radio. He says, “Don’t expect me to smile.”

And the crowd loves him for his gruffness.

Now let’s flip this Grizz scenario around 180 degrees

Let’s assume for a second, Grizz said he wasn’t gruff.
That he didn’t scowl. Or rumble.

Suddenly Grizz would be a lot less-loved

You see, when your customer thinks you’re a small business–you’re a small business. When your customer thinks you live too far in the boondocks–you do live on another planet.

Whatever your customer believes to be true–is true.

Heck, this doesn’t sound like you’re winning the battle

Which is why you need to take two distinct steps, to make customers like you more than ever before.

Step 1: You need to accept your ‘negative’ perception

Adam Gordon, Profits Leak Detective, works out of Darwin, Australia. That’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Consider this: Darwin is closer to the capitals of three other countries, than to the capital of Australia.

Unless they’re from around Darwin, clients may be more than reluctant to work with Adam, because of the remoteness of his location.

Crocodiles. Aboriginal art. remote Katharine Gorge. (Yes, we know it’s not that remote and there aren’t any crocs crossing main street–but hey, you don’t want to fight the perception, right?)

So the first step for Adam is to highlight how remote he is from everyone else.

Step 2: Telling customers why that ‘negative’ works to their advantage

Any negative can be quickly worked to an advantage. Adam can quickly show clients how he runs a successful business out of ‘the boondocks,’ and hence his clients can run their businesses out of just about anywhere on the planet.

By accepting the ‘so-called’ negative perception, you immediately agree with your client.

And when you’re agreeing with your client…um…they’ve got to agree with you. Once both of you are on the same page, you can quickly turn it around, and show the benefits of being who you are.

The worst thing you can do is try to be who you aren’t.

Trying to be bigger, smarter, taller, faster, than you are only ends up with the age-old game.

Are too!
Are not!
Are too!
Are not!
Are too!

It’s a game with no winners.

Next Step: Read More Psychological Tactics? Subscribe : Get UpDates via RSS | Get UpDates via Email (Fill in your details in the top-right hand form)

Imagine I asked you a question.

A simple question where you could choose the answer.
And if you chose the right answer, you’d end up with about $20,000 more per annum (theoretically, of course)

Imagine that.

You’d have twenty thousand more buckeroos in the bank.
But instead–strangely–you’ll choose to forfeit the $20,000.

How could this be true?

Why would you choose less money? Let’s find out shall we?

Option 1: What if I told you, you could earn $100,000 in the next year, and have no months off.

Option 2: What if I told you, you could earn $80,000 in the next year, and have 3 months off.

Now don’t tell me which one you chose, because I already know You chose Option 2.

Because most of the audiences I ask this question to, choose Option 2.

And that’s because your brain instinctively knows what’s good for you.
Your brain knows the power of ‘enough.’

But admittedly the example above is theoretical

What if were to make it real instead?

Let’s take the Website Masterclass Workshop that we have in Campbell, California every year.

In the first year, you got 33 participants.
The second year, voila, it’s 33 participants again.
The third year, encore, it’s 33 participants yet again.

What would you do in the fourth year?

I’ll tell you what most businesses would do.

They’d increase the size of the room.
They’d create space for 40 participants in the coming year.

And 50 participants in the year after next.
And onwards and forward they would go.

But we chose to stay at 33.

So is this a dumb philosophy or what?

It is–when you consider you could make far more money.
It is–when you consider that you could get far more customers.

But when it comes to evaluating the benefit of customers, you’ll notice something quite quickly.

The bigger you get the less value the customers get.
The more you expand, the less you stay within your own brain’s boundaries of ‘enough.’

So how do you define ‘enough?’

You go back to the start.

Why did you start up in business?
To get control of your life, right?
To get less stressed; less hassled by an overbearing boss; more time to take off on holiday.

That’s why you set up your business.

So are you less hassled?

Are you less stressed?
Are you in any position to take a vacation at all?

So yeah, your business keeps growing and growing, but what’s really enough?

‘Enough’ is simply what you set out to do in the first place.

That’s enough.

But let’s face it, some of us are still struggling

And we struggled too, when we started up our business.
And frankly, there’s no way out of the struggle than to educate yourself and apply what you learn.

But eventually you’ll get out of the struggle.
And then you’ll crave more. And more. And more.
At which point you’ll get everything you didn’t set out to get.

You’ll get the stress. The hassle. And no time off.
Oh sure, you’ll have lots of cash in your bank account, and so what?

Defining what is ‘enough’ enables you to stay sane and happy

And bring value to yourself and your customers.

Option 2: It’s why we got into business in the first place anyway.
Option 2 enables us to stay sane and happy. And give us ‘enough.’

Because as they say: Enough is enough.

Next Step: Read More Psychological Tactics? Subscribe : Get UpDates via RSS | Get UpDates via Email (Fill in your details in the top-right hand form)

I remember sitting in a queue at JFK airport in New York waiting to take off.
As I sat in the plane, I could see our plane stuck behind about six or eight other planes.
They were all waiting to take off. And as we waited the weather conditions changed, causing the planes to keep taxiing till they got the right runway for takeoff.

The control tower kept moving the planes to the best possible location—a runway where the weather wasn’t against us. This meant we spent well over 45 minutes on the ground going from runway to runway following that queue of planes.

Then finally we took off. Once we got the right weather conditions, it was easy to take off and we had no problem all the way to sunny Barcelona.

But things aren’t looking so sunny for you, right now are they?
Suddenly you find you’re losing focus, and you’re not sure why.
Let’s just say you’re not a lazy person.

Let’s imagine you’re a reasonably hard worker and have not problem concentrating.
Yet suddenly things aren’t going your way. Suddenly, you’re struggling to focus. Should you fight through the problem? Or should you take a break?

I’ve stalled on many projects before, and part of the problem is chaos.
But part of the problem is just getting away and doing nothing. The only way to fix the problem is to fight through it, or find another way out. I’ve tried to fight through it in the past, but it doesn’t work.

This is more psychological than anything else.
When something occurs on a frequent basis, the brain starts to create what is called a “brain map”. Think about it this way. Hold a cup. You’ll see that your thumb jumps out first, then your forefinger. Then a millisecond later, the three fingers jump out.

It all looks like one action, but in fact it is about half a dozen or more actions in your brain.

If you do that often enough, the brain forms a map. If you try to reach for the cup with your middle finger first, it not only makes rude signs at you, but it’s also almost impossible to pick up the cup quickly.

This brain mapping is what we’d call a “habit” but in fact it’s quite temporary unless we make it permanent.
Again, “permanent” is just a throwaway word, because the brain is highly plastic. Anything learned can be unlearned. However in the short term the way “through” isn’t the way at all. The way out is to take a clean break. To go someplace where the “crazy brain map” is unable to function as it has been doing in the short term. When this happens, the newly formed habit gets “lazy” and of course a new brain map starts to take its place.

This is interesting, most interesting of all: The new brain map taking the old one’s place.
The brain loves to lose what it won’t use, and so as you step away from the behaviour that’s driving you crazy, you allow the brain to now take over that brain real estate with a sense of calm relaxation. And the behaviour that’s been agitating you, slows down and finally stops—given adequate time.

Trying to fight through the system is never productive. You have to create a whole new brain map (this is akin to Albert Einstein’s quote: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”). So “getting away” is the best thing to do.

It reorganises your brain, gives it time to relax and then allows you to come back re-energised.

Which brings us to the topic of getting away
Getting away could be a break away from home. Or away from work. But it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes it’s not tiredness that’s wearing you down. What’s wearing you down is the lack of progress. In which case you need to look at the same problem from a different angle. e.g. Learning article writing is like learning a new, difficult language.

Often it’s easy to get stalled in the process of writing. Taking a break under these circumstances rarely helps your brain. On the contrary it puts it under more pressure because once you get back you have to “catch up”. In this case the method of learning has to take a different approach.

You have to have put yourself, or be put in a learning environment where there’s little chance to get “crazy wind”. Where’s there’s as minimal frustration as possible.

Just like a plane taking off.
You can’t fight the weather. You can’t battle the winds. You have to find a different runway. A runway that will enable you to take off without too much drama. And head off to a whole new brain map: your “sunny Barcelona”.
—————–
Next Step: Do you sometimes wonder if planning books are written just for the ‘organised’ people?

Learn Why Most Planning Fails: And The Critical Importance of Chaos in Planning
—————–

Have you ever wondered how you acquire skills?
Have you ever wondered how some people seem to learn better than others?
Well, so did a researcher Pascual-Leone.

Way back in the early 1990s, he did a series of experiments that taught us how we learn skills.
And Pascual-Leone didn’t just theorise. Instead he used high end technology called TMS to map the brains of blind students who were in the process of    learning Braille. And in doing so, he stumbled on the Friday-Monday learning phenomenon.

What was this Friday-Monday learning phenomenon?
As you already know, the blind students were learning Braille. They had to spend two hours a day, five days a week in the classroom (that’s Monday to Friday). They also got about an hour of homework.  In short, they were doing about three hours of study every day from Monday to Friday.

And Pascual-Leone measured their brain maps on Friday.
And then again on Monday. And he found something dramatic after each weekend. The changes in the brain map were different for Friday and completely different for Monday. The Friday brain maps were vast, sweeping changes. There was huge expansion as the map grew bigger. But by Monday, these brain maps had returned to their baseline size.

Six months of frustration followed
Every Friday the brain maps would show rapid expansion. Every Monday it was back to baseline size.  And six months later the Friday maps were starting to slow down a bit, but the Monday maps started to change. The Monday maps started to grow (for a change) all the way to ten months. And then they took a break.

So what’s so interesting about this Friday-Monday learning phenomenon?
We know that the Monday changes weren’t dramatic, yet their learning of Braille co-related to the Monday maps. Somehow the Monday maps were the real benchmark of learning. What this told Pascual-Leone is that daily training led to extremely powerful changes during the week. These were short term changes.

The long term changes seemed to co-relate completely to Monday.
Pascual-Leone believes the difference in the results are because of the plastic nature of the brain. The Friday changes strengthened existing learning. The Monday changes seemed to be the foundation of new pathways, new bridges in learning.

And there’s a simple analogy that goes way back to school.
In school you crammed for a test. You then did a brain dump on your  test, and then you quickly forgot most of what you learned. It was easy-come, easy-go learning. And the connections in your brain’s neurons were not permanent at all. To make permanent connections you needed to keep at the learning till it made sense. You had to go over it again and again, always making mistakes, always learning from the mistakes. This method was slow, frustration-laden and wanted you to pull your hair out in despair.

And yet this is the most efficient way the brain learns
It learns slowly. You may well dart ahead but the real learning isn’t going to kick in till about six months down the line when the Monday phenomenon jumps in big time. For about five months and 29 days, you seem to move one step forward and two back. Then the practice pays off.

The lights go on.
Suddenly all the effort seems to make sense.
What you’re experiencing is the Friday-Monday learning phenomenon. It’s why some of us are so good at learning, while others are just hopeless.  Those who are really keen to learn have to persevere for months on end, because their brain needs the solid daily effort to keep moving forward.

They have to put in at least two-three hours a day.
Every day.
Yes, every day from Monday-Friday.
And that’s how your brain learns.

How far away are you from the six month mark?

Source: “The Brain That Changes Itself” by Norman Doidge. (Yes, I borrowed heavily from this book). And yes, I really wanted to learn about the brain and how it works. I’ve been reading this book for a long time. First I read the book in paperback version (and forgot about 99% of what I’d read). Then I bought the Kindle version and read it on my iPod and Mac. And then I bought the audio book and listen to each chapter as many as three-five times. As you can tell my progress is frustratingly slow. But meet me after six months

——————–

“Up until about a week ago, I thought that I could get by using only the newsletters. That was a huge mistake!”

I happened to run across Psychotactics.com a couple of years ago while searching for ways to market my new business.

I signed up for Sean’s newsletter right away. Since that time, I’ve gotten tons of great newsletters. Up until about a week ago, I thought that I could get by using only the newsletters. That was a huge mistake! As it turns out, the newsletters were great at helping me see things from a new perspective.

But what I really needed next was to take ACTION. For that, I needed to know exactly what to do, step-by-step. I’ve gotten more stuff done in the two days after I read the Brain Audit than I did during two years of reading newsletters alone. Don’t fall into the vsame trap I did, thinking to yourself, “I get the idea,” or “I can figure out the details on my own.”

Order the Brain Audit now and put it to work in your business, before your competition does!

Stephen Webb, 
Owner,
Next Step: Are you losing tons of potential business because you don’t know how the brain works?
Read how The Brain Audit can help you…
———————
5000bc—Get on the 5000bc Waiting List:
5000bc now has a Waiting List. The waiting list joining time is approx. 30-60 days. So if you are serious about getting your business to the next level, get on the waiting list now.

“To join or not to join. That was the question weighing on my mind for weeks.”

What was I going to learn by joining a forum? Were my questions really going to be answered? Would my life be better because of this forum? Was Sean really active in the forum?

I’ll tell you this much: I can’t imagine NOT being part of the 5000bc family!

As a matter of fact, being inside The Cave is like being inside the brains of the universe.

My understanding of how people think and communicate has forever changed how I think and communicate; from conversations, interviews with others to solving problems and writing posts from my blog. Plus, there’s access to amazing interviews from innovative and thought-provoking people and mini-series on practical topics.

Would I recommend joining 5000bc? In a heartbeat.

Thomas R. Clifford | Filmmaker | Fast Company Expert Blogger
CT, USA
Judge for yourself http://www.5000bc.com
———————
New Products: Introductory Price

1) “Lazy Testimonials” Attract The Wrong Clients. Learn how to use the power of the ‘six critical questions’ to get incredible testimonials–and attract clients that make every day an absolute joy.

2) Do you sometimes wonder if planning books are written just for the ‘organised’ people?
Learn Why Most Planning Fails: And The Critical Importance of Chaos in Planning

3) Does your websites, brochures, presentations, etc..confuse your clients? .
Put some sanity into your design with some really simple tweaks.

3) Yes, you need visuals on your sales page, but how do you use visuals to immediately improve your sales conversion?
———————