Tony Robbin's Personal Power II helped me a lot to re-program myself and my life. One technique that particularly got my attention is the Swish Pattern. Here is an example from this post about anchoring in PPII. Finally, how about another great way to change a pattern? This is called a Swish Pattern. 1). First, identify the behavior you wish to change and then see the undesirable behavior in your mind's eye. Let's say you want to change biting your nails. 2). Next, create a picture of yourself performing the new behavior. (Not biting your nails and letting them grow) ...

Years ago I created a collection of my favorite Quotes from Warren. I think investors like him and Charlie Munger are great aggregators of wisdom because it's a requisite of long-term investing in my opinion. And with investing I don't just mean money, time is the most important investment we all make, whether we do it intentionally or not. “You really should take a job that if you were independently wealthy that would be the job you would take,” "If you risk something that is important to you for something that is unimportant to you, it just doesn't make sense," ...

Mark Cuban loves to learn. He just enjoys learning new things. He likes to build a foundation of knowledge which he then can use to build businesses. The premise is, you have to have a basic understanding of what you are going to do business with. In an interview, he talks about how he is studying Machine Learning and AI. I didn't expect him to go into something so far outside his experience. But I do perfectly understand his passion for learning and won't be surprised if he takes advantage of AI in new business. In my character strengths profile ...

Yesterday I sat down to enjoy Elon's interview at Air Force Space Pitch Day and wrote down some notes. Elon is brilliant at distilling business to the core principles. It's his way of applying first-principles thinking. Make something that print's money At the 2019 Earnings Call Elon explained his business model for Tesla's Solar Energy. So, it's kind of a no-brainer. It's really, do you want something that prints money? And if it doesn't print money, we'll fix it or take it back. It's kind of a no-brainer. — Elon What he means is this.
(Your electric-bill with Tesla's Solar ...

Today I'll finally share the gist of Neuro-Associative Conditioning or NAC. NAC is a form of (re) programming habits. I learned about NAC in Tony Robbin's Personal Power ll which according to Wikipedia "is the best-selling personal improvement program of all time with more than 35 million tapes distributed worldwide." The audio program is really old, my digital copy is recorded from tapes, probably from the 80's or early 90's. How did I end up listening to such an old program? I just had a strong intuition that there was something important to learn from Tony, and the books -- ...

Have you ever read a book that gave you the impression that the author held nothing back? That she gave her all? That's how I felt while listening to Tony Robbins' Personal Power. I listened to his program because I felt that there was something important to learn from Tony for me. My instinct turned out to be right, his unique ability to change mental state fast was something so new and fascinating for me. In this post I want to share a simple exercise to intensify the two driving forces of human behavior, so that you can use them ...

A while back, all the craze about productivity seemed to reside on Willpower. There are several good books about that topic. But what if willpower is overrated? I started to think more about the alternative when I saw a video about Optimizing the defaults. But actually, where I learned about this principle for the first time was in the book The Happiness Advantage. The author shares a great story about someone who finally got himself to practice playing an instrument, you can read about it here; Using the path of least resistance to build new habits. What optimizing the defaults ...

In a recent Tea Time with Tim, he got asked how to find a Mentor. I made some notes because his advice was the best I've encountered on this. First, let's re-frame the question "The question is “How can I encourage people I aspire to be like, who are 10, 20, 30 years ahead of me to respect me and want me to succeed?” That’s a better question. “How do I get people say, 5, 10, 20 years ahead of me whose paths I might want to emulate? How do I get those people to respect me and want me ...

The first habit you should form if you have a ratio of positive/negative emotions equal to or lower than 1:1 -- that is you feel at least as many negative emotions during the day as positive ones -- is exercise. As Tim Ferris noted in one of his interviews with Tony Robbins, at a point in his life he wasn't able to cope mentally with his negative mental state: "first I decided well if mind over body isn't working maybe I can use body over mind and so I made it a real point to focus on athletic training." The ...

I want to share this gold nugget from the Tim Ferris podcast. The episode is about Q&A and the question someone asks Tim is if he has ever felt like he was stagnant.
Tim's response from the transcript:
Tim Ferriss: I’ve had that feeling at many points in my life. So the first thing I would say is that it is a normal experience, and in fact at your exact age I was having that feeling. 27 I would have been in the process of traveling, trying to figure out what I was going to do next. So I would ...

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Quincy Jones said that Nat King Cole used to always tell him: ‘Quincy, your music can be no more or no less than you are as a human being.’ 
The more biographies I read, the more I'm convinced that there are no magical steps to become successful as people often want to believe. Why do we romanticize easy to-do steps instead of personal-growth in general? I'm not sure why but I suppose because it is much easier to communicate certain isolated steps than a whole, complex story. Especially with the Internet and those click-baity headlines. I learned this through ...

...intent is the only thing that matters the reason I'm not scared of anything is I know where my intent is GaryVee Why is this so powerful? That's what I asked me when I first head Gary talk about intent. Then I realised, our actions are flawed, we make mistakes, lots of them. So if we screw up we feel bad. But we don't have to if our intent was good from the get. We just have to set our intent right and say sorry if we screw up. It is really as easy as it sounds. Intent is not ...

Mel Robbins' perspective on confidence rings so true with me. In her interview on Impact Theory, she explains that confidence isn't a personality trait as many people think. I used to think that confident people were outgoing, extroverted, in other words, it is their personality. But Mel's explanation makes much more sense. But then why some extroverted people are also very insecure? If you are outgoing but don't believe in yourself, you aren't confident. Believing in yourself and your ideas is confidence. There are lots of introverted people who are uncomfortable putting the attention on themselves but they are very ...

At that point of the video I paused the video, stand up walking and smiling, that's how strong it clicked with me. Difficulties, challenges, even tragedies can lead to great growth. That's why GaryVee sees being born with nothing as an advantage. Psychologists call it post-traumatic growth. So maybe instead of wishing we were born into this and that, we should be grateful for the quests we have to face.
...

Thinking that something is your fault isn't fun per se. But the byproduct it brings gives you choice. If you are responsible for something, the implication is that you can change it, that the circumstance is at least in part under your control. "You put accountability on a pedestal, your life will change. Do you know how liberating it is to realize everything is your fault?"
~ GaryVee Now if you think that there certainly are things that are outside of our control, you are right, this isn't about blaming victims. Bad things do happen to us. But you will ...

Absolutely sure that one of the most important things I learned about lately is perspective. Let me clarify that statement, I didn't experience perspective the first time, already did that years ago through difficult experiences, but it wasn't until listening to GaryVee that I understood perspective is really a big, huge thing. "If you can have macro perspective and micro practitionership, you will be happy and win." ~ Gary V. Having humility and audacity at the same time and other 'contradictions'. Why are they a game changer? Can't answer that question but I suspect that perspective protects us from delusion, ...

Sometimes my meditation consists of just sitting and thinking, often while listening to music. Yes meditating with music is awesome, heck, I can meditate even with Heavy Metal. This is unlike most people think about meditation, most think about it as calming thoughts, and that is certainly a byproduct of this activity too, but not necessarily the goal. This style is very helpful because no expectations means not getting frustrated about doing it right. Call it 'lazy' meditation. This method worked in a very sustainable way for me over the years. It also often gives me new ideas and insights ...

With the level of self-awareness, confidence, kindness, and practicality of Gary Vaynerchuk exudes, and his great ability to teach, have made me a big fan of him. I absorb his content like a sponge. But how did he become that way? He says that he got lucky and has good DNA. Besides that, he put in a lot of work, work on himself, that’s how I believe he got to that point. I’d usually recommend people to meditate if they want to achieve Gary’s qualities. Certainly, I felt getting more of those, and many other qualities over the years from ...

If you are in a situation where you feel stuck and bad because it seems like you can’t get where you want to be while other people seem to easily make it, highly recommend you go watch this interview with Gary V. and a 22 yo girl called How One Video Can Change Your Life. It is one of the iconic talks that woke up many young people.
I was there and for sure to a degree still am, where that girl was. Wondering why I couldn’t get where I wanted, succeed in what I most wanted, and be ...

In his book How to Win in at the Sport of Business, Mark shares some of his insights he gained over the years while becoming one of the most successful Businessmen. Everyone is a genius in a bull market Do you remember the crypto hype a while back? All of a sudden everyone seemed to be an expert in investing and crypto. Therein lies the lesson, in a bull market everyone is a genius. The same applies in Business which is why you have to practice to be brutally honest with yourself. It might just be that your business is ...

I’m a big fan of Gary V., particularly his message. But don’t like how some people try to copy him and other succesful peole 1:1. You might get better at some things copying people, but it isn’t really the best thing you can do. The best asset you have is being yourself. I learned this from experience and because other succesful people repeatedly preach it. It is almost common knowledge by now but I still am surprised at how easy it is to try to be fake just to impress people or being accepted. But it is foolish. Most perceive ...

2018 was the second year of daily meditation practice. It was the year I was able to get out of the dark hole, and things started to get finally a little easier. It was a year where I accomplished great things professionally at my job, but had to sacrifice a lot of free time in order to maintain my meditation and workout routine. Speaking of training, I slowly started to arrange equipment and routines that allowed me to have a more consistent training schedule. Training with weights was once a big part of my life which I neglected for years ...

This post was inspired after listening Tai Lopez talk about how most people are delusional or over-confident, what he calls the American-Idol syndome. The problem of course is that when people are over-confident they don’t listen, don’t learn. He names Michael Jordans coach Dean Smith who said that he never met somebody more teachable than Michael Jordan. But Michael Jordan also was very confident, but that confidence did not sabotage his ability to LISTEN. Michael became one of the best basketball players not because he was talented – he wasn’t, he actually got kicked out of his college basketball team ...

When having problems with latency the first advice is to check the distance of the server and issues with your Internet Service Provider. But there is something that might cause you problems if you have a slow Internet connection, bandwidth (BW) usage. To illustrate how BW usage can cause a rise in latency lets take a look at the following graph. First I made a download with a 2Mbps connection limited by a Mikrotik queue speed limiter, as we can see the ping from the local network was about 35ms on average. Then I set the queue limiter to 10 ...

Even though optimistic people live more successful lives, pessimism has its place in the short term. Pessimism can support the realism we so often need. Confused? Think about a pilot, for instance, you’d rather have him an upbeat outlook at security or a mercilessly realistic one? Let’s call it practical pessimism because it serves us well. It is pessimism in the short term. You can still be optimistic about the end goal. But as Tai Lopez says, practical pessimism will lead you to your optimistic end goal. Charlie Munger, the Billionaire who is known for his wisdom about decision making ...

Do you remember how you felt as a kid playing your favorite games? I do, and for me, it is like one of the best feelings I’ve experienced in my life. Somehow I’ve to a great deal, unlearned the skill to enjoy games as I did back then. I have a much better PC now which lets me play the newest games on high graphical specs. But It has become harder for myself to submerge so deeply in a game that I forget everything else. But I’m convinced this problem can be remedied. Especially after watching Jane McGonigal’s TED talks ...

In this video Eli the Computer Guy talks about something I’d love more people to understand. He explains that most people expect to get money out of their first business idea. But most people don’t see beyond that initial decision. We have to consider things like: - Will people be interested in my solution/service or whatever I offer? - If I can execute my idea successfully, will I like doing it all the time, for a prolonged time? In other words, will I still love doing it next year? Wouldn’t it be much better to start something you love to ...

Normally I'm suspicious of list of steps to success because success is very hard to sum up like that. Even if you get it right, it's likely to be misread by people. But these points come from a Software engineer which I admire for his deep insights. [video] Here are my personal comments on each habit. Take ownership of your life This point is far more important than most of us think. Sometimes we have to hit rock bottom to finally take charge. Once you take charge your life will improve radically. Accept failure If you wither about failures you ...

In this last year, I noticed my social media usage dropped roughly inversely proportional to my meditation practice. I found that very interesting. It wasn't that I hadn't heard or read about the harm of heavy social media usage, but I didn't consider myself to be a heavy social media user at all. I think meditation helped me to become more aware of my daily habits and one thing I noticed was that I would check my phone regularly without really expecting something important, it was like a subconscious habit. Or more like an anxiety. Cal Newport brings up these ...

In this talk, Justin Searls breaks down the basic process a programmer follows while coding. Suppose we have a big, very complex problem. So much complexity scares us, we feel overwhelmed. So it's much better to not tackle all at once. Bottom-up programming Let's break the problem down into its parts by asking, what do I need for the resolution of this problem? Once you have an idea, start coding on the first one of those components. Once you work on it, you suddenly realize, Oh! This thing actually won't align with the other component I need. So you make ...

This interview with Firas Zahabi popped into my feed casually, didn't know him but I'm glad I watched it. Damn, he has a lot of wisdom. The main message he explains is that it's consistency over intensity when it comes to training. I learned this in the last year from natural bodybuilding channels mostly. Here some quotes from Firas. Training should be fun, it should be addictive. It should be like a pulling force for you. The volume is far mor important than the intencity. High intensity needs to be done periodically. Bodyweight exercises are very easy to recover from ...

I recently made a post about Daphne's Ted Talk about how the brain benefits from video games. I loved that talk but Jane McGonigal's talk is as good in a different or shall I say more epic way. The things she talks about are just brilliant, go watch the video after reading this. I'll just briefly list the key points here. Jane is a game designer, and her goal as she explains in her talk is, to make it as easy and exciting to save the world in real life, as it is in games. I'm awestruck from this idea ...

YouTube is another big learning place for me besides books. Today I casually watched this video and wrote down a quote which is very much how I think. So much so that I thought it worthy of a post. "When you're faced with a decision that says this-or-that and you don't like either choice, refuse them both and create a third way. The realization, that your options are never just exactly what people say they are, and that you can break free from the options that are presented to you is going to be valuable for the rest of your ...

I'm into improving my brain through meditation, exercise, and nutrition. Now I found another great way to improve my brain, by playing video games. What? Yes! And a fun way it is. I'm sure fewer people would object to playing video games than to sit down and meditate, lol. This Talk from Daphne Bavelier gives a great oversight to the changes in our brain that result from the concentration we put into games. Here shortly the main points she mentions:

• Not only 90% of kids play games, also 70% of the heads of households and their mean age is 33 ...
  
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I live in Paraguay where labor is cheap. Everywhere you see people performing work which could easily be automated or done more efficiently. That is what I noticed when I moved to Germany. There weren't security guards in front of every medium to big business, not even in the banks. Sure, it is safer over there, but the staff in markets, service stations etc was also less numerous than in Paraguay. In Germany, labor is expensive so businesses try to automatize everything they can. For instance, when there was something going on on the road, you would often see a ...

Today I felt very good in the morning, not that I usually don't, but it may have something to do with this plant, Camellia sinensis. All the most consumed teas — white, green, oolong, and black — come from the leaves of the same plant, Camilla sinensis. We will focus on green tea because it is the least processed tea made with camilla sinensis. As Dr. Greger points out in one of his older videos, the world is obsessed with the tea plant. It is the most consumed beverage on earth. But there are hundreds of thousands of plants on earth, why are we drinking ...

The general way education works in our society is that we learn X amount of years and then we execute on the acquired knowledge. In many cases, this methodology is necessary. Doctors and pilots need to learn a lot of things before they start practicing. Buf often careers are only partially useful and applicable in the real world. A different approach is learning while you are doing something. I started to use this widely while working in technology. While I have finished a computer science degree, it was only useful to a limited degree. Most of what I learned I ...

Let's discuss the pro and cons of technical vs fundamental analysis. I'll list the arguments made in the book Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets and add my own thoughts. Quotations from the book are marked in italics. What is technical analysis? Technical analysis is the study of market action, primarily through the use of charts, for the purpose of forecasting future price trends.  There are three premises on which the technical approach is based:

• Market action is reflected in the price.
• Prices move in trends.
• History repeats itself.

Market action is reflected in the price charts Technical analysis ...

In this talk to Nebraska students, Warren Buffet explains how we should think about designing our world. This is how he explained it in mostly his words. "Let's assume it is 24 hs before you are born. And you get the great opportunity to design the world you are going to live in.  You pick out the political rules, the economic rules, the social rules, you design the world in which you will be born in. So what is the catch though? Well, you won't know whether you will be born black or with, male or female, rich or poor, bright ...

I've been guilty of only seeking positive feedback too. But I really have to change this bad habit and so should you. Don't blame, blame Elon Musk. He thinks it is the most fundamental advice for every entrepreneur striving for big things. Elon thinks that setting up good corrective feedback loops is the biggest challenge in life and I'm convinced that it is his learning/success secret. This time he talks about negative feedback. In this interview from 2012, the interviewer ask's Elon for a piece of advice he would give someone who is just starting out in entrepreneurship. Elon: "I think in ...

#Garyvee nailed it once again in one of his podcasts. Someone in Hong Kong asks's Gary about Silicon Valley and if China, Singapore etc should copy Silicon Valley's values and standards. Gary responds basically like this: That would make me really sad... if asia started Silicon Valley's standards... All that happened in the last seven years of venture capital business mindset to the forefront is that we've thought a lot of people how to not be entrepreneurs... We thought a lot of people of how to worship fundraising not business building... the number one mistake asia would make is to ...

Today I came across a review on Goodreads which pretty well sums up the notion most people have about self-help books: This book reminded me of why I stopped reading self-help books. I found this one particularly overwhelming. Filled with great inspirational advice I will just ignore because all I want to do is keep reading books... I caught myself in this situation too where I was reading useful books, but I did little to implement what I learned from them. Instead, I fell into the trap of feeling satisfied by just reading them. But the whole point of books ...

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One night while I was walking through the streets of Asunción and listening to the audiobook Becoming Steve Jobs I picked up a gold nugget which I really liked. I had seen his commencement speech at Stanford before but somehow this idea hadn't stuck with me before. I'm talking about, I guess you can call it Steve Job's approach to spirituality or his approach to life. If you read his biography, you will notice that he does not really have a fixed plan at the beginning. Somehow he just goes ahead, trusting that the dots will connect. This mindset is ...

First destiny, Milan I wasn’t so interested in visiting this city but my travel partner chose this city as the first destiny. After all, I liked the city, it has a lot of very beautiful architecture. The city expresses a romantic vintage ambient. The street running is from 1890 or something and has incandescent light bulbs which barely illuminate the wagon. Vienna This is the cleanest and best-organized city I’ve visited so far. Perhaps only rivaled by Luxembourg. I felt the parallels to Germany in architecture and engineering with some differences. There was no control in the subway whatsoever. And ...

In this post, I want to comment on Eli J. Finkel's article How to Fix the Person You Love. I'll just change the focus and use the title, how to grow in a Relationship. Eli elaborates on two different types of relationships. The first one represents a partner which makes us feel loved and valued, the second one represents a partner which helps us discover and actualize our best self. These two types of relationships work in very different ways. The problem is that it is often hard to help someone grow without a sober and critical eye on that ...

[pdf-embedder url="https://www.karlbooklover.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/What-works-what-doesnt.pdf" title="What works what doesnt"] ...

I'm one of those happy guys who participated in the legendary 2011 Stanford MOOC, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. That course made me (and thousands of students around the world) discover a whole different and revolutionary method of learning. I think today there is no question that Online Education works, but sometimes the question still comes up, is it enough to just learn online? I think it depends heavily on the subject, CS happens to be particularly well suited for self and online education. I did a little throwback today by watching this talk from Sebastian Thrun where he mentions how ...

I went with a pretty high expectancy [,] to pursue a Master's degree in Computer Science at one of Germany's best Universities in Computer Science. Soon I found that the education wasn't at all as good as I had expected. The main reasons are unnecessary complexity or pretended knowledge and academic arrogance. I will briefly explain some of these points here without going into much detail. As you may have heard, German education prices itself by an inherent theoretical complexity. Initially, I was amazed by that apparently great and deep understanding the classroom material and professors brought to us. That was until ...

Over the years I've observed two bad things when it comes to computer science education. First, it simply is bad in general, with bad I mean badly structured and incomplete. Focusing on one thing but missing many other which are necessary to grasp the whole picture. In case the education is good, it still is mostly focused on a single area. I'm a holistic thinker “The more basic knowledge you have the less new knowledge you have to get.” - Charlie Munger I'm a holistic thinker which means I always like to understand the whole picture. I don't just want ...

In one of his latest Interviews at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Elon Musk got asked the question of what his biggest challenge in life was. Elon took some seconds to rank and filter all his challenges and then responded: "One of the biggest challenges I think is making sure you have a corrective feedback loop, and then maintaining that corrective feedback loop over time even when people want to tell you exactly what you want to hear..." - Elon Musk Corrective feedback just means that something or someone tells us if/how/why we mess up, and if we are ...