Alchemy For Life

Author Mark Bradford
  • 4.8 (18)
  • MENTAL HEALTH
  • UPDATED MONTHLY

Welcome to the Time, Energy, and Resources Coaching and Podcast! Our coaching style and podcast are all about helping you make the most of your time, energy, and resources so you can achieve your goals and live a more fulfilling life. Whether you’re looking to improve your productivity, reduce stress, or simply make better use of your time, we have the tools and strategies you need to get started. Join us on this journey and discover how to take control of your time, energy, and resources and unlock your full potential.

  1. 3H AGO

    Music, pattern matching, and good storytelling.

    Well, hey there. Welcome back. Do you like music? The Hidden Magic of Good Music It’s a silly question because everyone likes some form of music and sometimes when someone asks you, “What’s your favorite kind of music?” sometimes that’s really hard to answer. I recently went down yet another rabbit hole which I want to share with you. I wanted to know why certain songs and certain sounds made you feel genuine feelings. When I was writing the sword and the sunflower, I stumbled on a number of different pieces of music and one of them became the theme song for the heroine. So it came down to this question. What makes a song likable? What makes a good song a good song? What makes a song stick in your head? And as it turns out, it’s predictability. No, it can’t be that. That’s boring. No, not boring. Predictable. Why Predictability Drives Great Storytelling Let’s switch gears to storytelling. What makes a good story a good story? Is it the subject matter? And I’m going to talk specifically about fiction here. Is it the subject matter? Is it the way it’s told? Is it uh-oh? It’s predictability. And again, you’re going to say, “No, I don’t want to read a predictable fiction story. Do I?” And there’s a part of your brain that’s going, “Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on. Let’s switch back to the music. If something is too predictable, then it’s boring. We get the pattern and we’re done. We are pattern matching creatures. We sense patterns and things and we typically act on them. Sometimes we have other programs running in our brain that cause us to ignore a pattern and sometimes we get burned for ignoring that pattern. If you’re jumping rope or running, riding a skateboard, boxing, and countless other physical activities, there’s all a pattern that’s occurring. a pattern you are recognizing. And the more you can recognize this pattern, the more you can act on it and feel comfortable with it. The Balance Between Pattern and Chaos But obviously running for 10 or 20 minutes left, right, left, right, left, right, can’t possibly be the same as listening to music, right? But it is. When you listen to a song and you can predict what’s about to happen next, it gives you a certain level of comfort of security. you say, “Yeah, that’s how the beat is going in this song.” But then when it does something slightly different that still makes sense, that gives us excitement. If it just did the same beat over and over again, droning on and on for 5 minutes, yes, it would be very boring. But when it takes some liberties, when it gets a little creative, and still maintains the pattern, that’s when it’s fun. Too much predictability and it’s boring. Too much chaos and it’s simply chaos. You think it’s not worth your time. Well, this is just a bunch of random stuff. I don’t want to listen to this. This story goes all over the map. The characters do not respond the way that characters should respond. The author was crazy. The story is way too predictable. I knew exactly what’s go what was going to happen from the very beginning. It was I was just plotting through and just going through the motions. Those are the extremes that keep us from enjoying those forms of media. Breaking the Pattern: Muscle and Diet Confusion And even exercise is that way. You get fatigued with it. In fact, there’s a concept called muscle confusion that sort of counteracts what happens when you do the same thing over and over again. If you just run in a circle over and over again, your body goes, “Oh, wait. I’m getting this. I know what to do. This is easier now. I’m not getting anything out of it.” So, you have to break it up. So you have to have muscle confusion in the 4-hour body. Tim Ferrris talks about a sort of diet confusion in which you confuse your metabolism by not eating exactly the same things. Once a week you eat something crazy. You eat all the stuff that you were craving and it messes your system up to the point where your system goes, “Wait, I’m not going to adapt to this anymore. I’m not going to suddenly reduce my metabolism because I know what you’re going to eat.” The Anticipation of the “Drop” But I know, I know you’re still thinking about the music, right? You’re still thinking, “No, I don’t like songs because they’re predictable.” But this is what makes them catchy because your brain says, “Yeah, it does that stuff I want. It does that stuff in the order that kind of makes sense in a really cool way.” I mean, we’re not just talking about a repeatable pattern of one, two. It could be 1 2 7 9 1 2 7 9 and here comes that nine. How many songs have you told someone, “Hey, no, no, no, listen. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Here’s where the drop happens. Wait, wait, wait. Here’s the chorus. Oh my god, I love that. Just, just wait for it. And someone doesn’t quite get the song because you went through the song a few times and your brain went, “Oh yeah, this is happening in that order. I know it’s going to happen now and this is cool.” And they’re not waiting. They they listen to a few notes of it. They go, “It’s just not for me.” And then maybe later they come to you and they go, “Yeah, it’s kind of a cool song.” It’s the same thing with a story. In fact, an epic, a big giant book requires even more attention than a song that’s 3 minutes long where you start to read it and you say, “Okay, I’m getting what’s going on here. This is a slow burn. This is a book that moves in a certain direction and I have to pay attention to it.” or this is kind of a fast book and it’s going to be humorous, but there’s still going to be good points made. Jokes and parables typically take you down a journey and then there’s a sharp left turn at the end. Oh, it was this person the whole time. Now that makes sense now that I’ve read the whole story. Oh, I get it. Haha. That’s what makes it funny that it’s predictably a crazy 90° turn. You need more convincing. Structure and Predictability in Non-Fiction and Presentations Non-fiction is the same way. How many times have you gone to a presentation, someone does it for your networking group or for school or what have you, even your business, and you’re watching and you’re thinking, where is this going? I is this an important fact or is are we just building to the important fact? I can’t tell the difference between the major facts I should be writing down and just some anecdote that’s related to it. Are we are we half done? Like wait, what what really are we learning here? So, if you can’t predict what’s happening, and again, I know every time I use the word predict, you’re like, well, that means I already know it. No, you’re recognizing the pattern in place. Do you want to talk about how that works in relationships too or are we covering enough bases here? Okay, fine. So, back to presentations. If you can understand the segments of a presentation, okay, here’s a major fact and facts underneath it, which leads us to the next fact that we’re building up to, and the facts underneath it, which then builds us to the next one, and so forth. And then we finally have an outcome at the end. I’m all ears. This is interesting. And I will tell you when I write my non-fictions, I follow that as well. I don’t say, “No, no, no, no. Listen, guys. Guys, sit down. Listen, listen, listen.” And then babble on and on. Don’t I know what you’re thinking. No, I really don’t babble on and on. And I’m really not babbling here. I’m following the same procedure here. But again, in my non-fiction, I follow the pattern, the predictable pattern of I’m going to introduce to you some concepts, and I’ll I’ll touch on them a little bit in case you’re not up to speed. And then I’m going to introduce my concepts. And then I’m going to build on to the next ones and next ones. And then I’m going to say, well, what do you do with that? And that should sound remarkably like this podcast in which I do exactly the same thing. I introduce something to you. we talk about it and then I say,”Well, how does that affect you in the real world?” Leveraging Pattern Matching in Real Life So, we’re actually getting to the part where we say, “How does this affect you in the real world? And what can you do about it?” Well, the first thing you need to do is recognize the fact that pattern matching and pattern recognition are not bad things. It’s what our brains are designed to do. So if you’re going to fight that, you’re going to have a lot of friction and stress in your life. If you accept it and use it and use it for good and enjoyment and productivity, it can be a really awesome thing. It can help you and say, “Hey, you know, we typically see these patterns with these clients, so we know what to do here, right? I have this pattern and I know it’s going to lead me to be lazy in this particular way. So, I know what to do here. Do you see how you can use patterns to adjust behavior, adapt to client needs before they even know they need things and so forth? Think of how powerful that is. And I’m not telling you anything new, right? You’re you already know that pattern matching and using patterns and systems and procedures and all those beautiful words that I love. You know how useful those are. But what I’m saying is it happens on a level that you may not realize. And it happens in things that you’re getting enjoyment from. So go listen to some of your favorite songs again. Think about what I’ve said about predictability. Go read some books. Think about predictability. And I’ll see you next time. Outro which you knew I was going to say because you recognize this pattern. Take care.

    11 min

  2. APR 19

    Timing it Makes it Valuable.

    Oh crap. I have to take care of this. Well, hey there. Welcome back. How Time Dictates Perceived Value This podcast episode is about 10 minutes long. If it was about 30 minutes long, would you find it to be more valuable or less valuable? And do you ask me then? Well, Mark, it depends what’s inside of it. It depends what the content is. Okay, what if it was an hour and a half? Well, you again, you’d probably say, well, what about the content? Uh, what’s the intent? But you would have your upper limit based on what you would think the value was of what it contained, right? We do tend to assess value based on time and we do tend to set time based on value. Everything is about that. Your 30-cond elevator speech, uh, giving a talk of a certain length, introductions, if you go to a networking event and they say, “Well, give us your 30-cond or your 1 minute introduction.” And so forth, even your video calls are of a certain length, you have in your brain preset amounts of time that you think have a certain value based on certain activities. So, knowing that, you may not be surprised by what I’m about to tell you. And what I’m going to tell you is that timing gives something more value. The Connection Between Time and Energy And what do I mean by that? I mean, if you say you’re going to, and again, I like to use housework because it’s universal. If you decide you’re going to clean up your kitchen, you have already decided how much time you think it’s going to take, how much time you’re willing to donate to it, right? If you look at your kitchen and go, “Oh my god, this is going to take 2 hours. How did this get destroyed? And and why am I so backlogged on what I need to do in it?” You’re going to say, “I don’t want to do that. Maybe I can do a shortcut. Maybe I can only do a piece of that that will take a certain amount of time. Which is interesting because as I say, life is made of three things. Time, energy, and resources. And in that case, you’re not even really choosing the amount of energy involved. You’re choosing time. But time and energy are connected. Because the longer you do a thing, the more energy you use. So by assessing the time, you’re kind of assessing the energy. But in this case, you’re focusing more on the time involved because you don’t feel like you’re necessarily going to run out of energy. You feel like, look, I don’t want to do this for that long. I have other things I want to do. And obviously, we do that also in our jobs and our focuses in our life that say, “Hey, I’m going to do this. This, this takes a certain amount of time.” And we juggle time and there’s calendaring things. And that’s an entirely different episode. So timing obviously plays a part. But what do I mean when I say timing gives it value? How Constrained Time Increases Your Effort What I mean is this. If you say you’re going to do a certain kind of cleanup or a chore or what have you and you tell yourself that you only are allowed to do it for 5 minutes, you will find almost invariably that you put a lot more effort into doing it because you’re up against the timing. And now you have tangibly measured the task. You’re not telling yourself you’re going to clean a kitchen. You’re telling yourself you’re going to give yourself 5 minutes of effort. And what do we know about the way humans handle effort? We do things iteratively. And you can listen to the episode live your life iteratively. Oh my god, that’s a hard word to say. And basically that just means you grow on top of something. you you do something and then you you base it on top of that and you you keep building these layers on top of that until it gets really really good and better and better and better. So, you know, if you give yourself 5 minutes to do a certain thing and it’s the fifth time you’ve given yourself 5 minutes to do a certain thing, you’re going to do a lot more in that fifth time you do it for 5 minutes. But let’s get back to the whole give yourself a certain amount of minutes. What you will find is that you focus so much on the time that you don’t focus on how overwhelming something is. You don’t focus on how actually long it takes or rather in actual English, how long it takes in actuality. The Mundane Task Challenge To understand what I’m talking about, I strongly suggest you play this little game with yourself. the next time you have to do something, a chore, whatever, something that’s mundane in your life, something that’s repeatable, something that is never going to get finished. And that lends us to something else I talked about, which is UPS, upkeep, productivity, and self-care. The upkeep part never is finished. You You don’t wash your hands for the last time. You don’t empty the dishwasher once. You It’s a continuing effort. So it gets to be a bit mundane. So pick one of those. You pick one of those and then you say, “Okay, I only have x amount of time to do this.” You’ll find that you will focus pretty hard on what you’re doing. And it depends, again, as I said in the very beginning of this, it depends on how much time you give yourself. If you give yourself too little time, you’ll find yourself rushing and you won’t complete it. But you’ll try really hard. If you give yourself too much time, you’ll just you’ll just do it and the timing really won’t play a part. So you could guess that it takes you 2 minutes to empty the dishwasher. You could take x amount of time to do x thing. But how do you make it a game every single time and really prove thepoint? The “Add a Minute” Productivity Game Well, what if you do it in 1 minute increments? So here’s the game. You set a timer for 1 minute and then you go to do something. You say, “I’m just going to spend one minute on doing something.” And the rule is you have two choices. You either extend the timer before it runs out or when it runs out, you have to stop. That means if you’re right in the middle of something and you’re just really close to the satisfaction, the dopamine hit of completing the task, you can’t. Okay. When you’re between those two bookends, you tend towards the adding time. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s a very fascinating way to get something done. So, what you will find yourself doing is adding a minute or 2 minutes to the timer. Now, if you add too much time, you have to keep working on that until the timer runs out. So, there’s a there’s a negative and a positive to either one of the bookends, and you’re trying to find the happy middle space of getting that done. You want to get as close as possible to the actual amount of time it takes. Mark, Mark, why would I waste my time and energy doing this? Well, first of all, it’s kind of fun. Well, it is for someone like me. And maybe you’re not someone like me, but you may also be someone who has a really mundane task to do. And by doing this, you figure things out. You will actually accelerate your problem-solving skills because you will be up against the clock. And it is really a bizarre rule that you’re forced to continue working on the project or task or chore as long as the timer is running. You can’t say aha I did it because then there would be no fun. How to Execute the Game with Voice Assistants So my way of doing this very easily is to involve my resident robots. I simply say Alexa set a timer for 1 minute or 2 minutes right and then I go and I focus on my task and but in my head I have to keep the timing going. I can’t look at a clock or anything like that. And when I when I think it’s about to run out I just say add one minute to the timer. It’s that easy. you just use your voice and then you keep going and and then she’ll immediately say, “Hey, you have now you have 2 minutes and 3 seconds or you have 35 seconds.” So, the game is to get as close to it running out of time as possible and complete the task as quickly as possible and not leave too much time at the end because you have to keep working on the task. And you say, “Well, if you just do it for emptying the dishwasher, right?” Well, then you run out of things to do. So you want to do it for a task that really is really long, like something that has other versions of it. So instead of something that’s a one-off like emptying the dishwasher, you can do it for clean up this room or or what have you. Because obviously, as you know, as a someone who has a living space, there’s a lot to clean up. There’s the sweeping and mopping and there’s rearranging things, putting things away, countertops, all that stuff. Tricking Yourself Into Getting Stuff Done So if you choose something like that, you can say, “Okay, look, I’m tired. I’m just going to do this for 2 minutes.” And that really is the crux of this. It’s the genesis of this. It’s the look, I’m really tired. I want to go to bed. Oh crap, I have to take care of this. It’s an amazing way to trick yourself into doing 10 minutes of work when you really only wanted to do one. And do I suggest you lie to yourself continually? No. Do I think you’re lying to yourself all the time? Of course. If you know anything about perception and how our brains work, we are constantly tricking ourselves into things. It’s why we have bad habits. It’s why we have confusion and all that other stuff. So, why not use that to our advantage and say, “Haha, I got myself to do that even though I didn’t want to.” So, I would love to hear feedback from you on what you accomplished by tricking yourself. Now that you understand that timing gives something a lot of value. Thank you again for listening. Take care of yourself. Pick up your own CheckMark™ to use on your phone and desktop, and go through the excersizes of this and other episodes. And you can have fun being productive…

    12 min

  3. APR 14

    Learn to Prompt Both AI and Humans

    If you are interested in working with AI (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc.), in human psychology, or both, you might enjoy this episode. If you ask yourself, “What is prompting” or “What is a super prompt” you’ll also enjoy this. Transcript: The Ubiquity of AI in Business So, what prompted you to listen to this episode? Uh, get it? Oh, not yet. Well, you will. I’ve done at least two episodes on AI, the dangers of using, and so forth. AI is ubiquitous with business now. Everyone’s using it in some form or another. And why wouldn’t they when it’s pretty much shoved down your throat in every piece of software you use, whether it’s Gmail or even drawing software, scheduling software. New companies are crawling out of the woodwork practically daily saying what they do is AI powered. I have a unique, very unbalanced way of using it. What I do use it for is sort of a language processing model. I have it take the raw transcript from these podcast episodes and then convert it into something that’s a bit more readable, but with the explicit instructions to never change a word or a syllable, regardless of how wrong it thinks the sentence is, because that’s what a transcript is. If I mess up, then I should mess up in the text as well. What I don’t use it for is anything creative. I will never ask it for an idea. I will never ask it to give me a quick list of things that have to do with something else because I need to be able to do that or I don’t understand my subject. Do I ask for clarification? Sure. Do I ask for research sometimes, but mostly it’s a lot of mundane, tedious things that would really take a tremendous amount of time and be a complete waste of time. The Reality of Running Local Language Models I have learned through online use and local use quite a bit. And when I say local use, I I spun up, as they say, a copy of a local language model directly on my office computer. This was a while back and it took a lot of steps. Recently, I did it in just a few steps with an even larger model. It’s so large and so taxing on my system that when I make requests of it, I have to literally watch the temperature to make sure I don’t go over a certain point. And my computer’s smart enough to know to shut down or to or to spin down the CPU, but I it it’s barely running within the parameters that it it can run within. That being said, I want to talk to you about prompting, but not just prompting for LLMs, but prompting for humans, because there’s a lot in common here. When you first heard the word prompting, it probably didn’t mean a lot to you. It didn’t trigger much unless you’re someone who is in writer groups or something where you do writer prompts and things like that. But otherwise, you you probably wondered what prompting was. and it really never stuck in your brain. And because it never stuck in your brain, it’s probably not something you’ve you’ve developed as a skill. Context Windows, Personas, and Super Prompts Prompting is just a set of parameters you give the model you’re talking to before you really get into the conversation. And it really is a must. Now, all models have built-in prompts. They’re all basically engineered to be cheerleaders for you, to be very cheerful, to be overly agreeable, and to be overly cautious. With a beginning prompt, you can get the AI to interact with you in a way that’s a little bit more favorable to what you want to get done. And what you have to do is think of it as a a per session kind of arrangement with it. It’s not going to be your best buddy forever and it only has so much memory. It has something called a context window in which it can fit in the stuff you’re talking about and it’s sort of first in first out when it comes to what it forgets. So, it’s going to have some amnesia on the things that you talked about a while back. If you switch gears a lot, it’ll also make it difficult for it to understand what you’re trying to work on. So, that’s where the prompt comes in. You can say act as a this, you know, a professional person doing something. You’re, you know, you are an attorney and that’s there’s an asterisk there. You’re a this, you’re a that or you’re a development partner helping me do this. If you pick something like attorney or doctor, what have you, it’s always going to give you a disclaimer that it isn’t and so on and so forth. And it’s going to always give you that disclaimer. If you want it to help you in marketing, then you say act as a marketing professional uh and and do this or that. But you’re going to quickly run into basically the same things because you’re not going to get any new exciting ideas out of it unless you give it new and exciting ideas to work with. And that’s the simplest reason to not rely on it to be creative. And unfortunately why we see so many posts on LinkedIn and other places where they all look the same and you can instantly tell that it was created by AI. even if it wasn’t directly created by AI, you can tell that the bullet lists are something that AI came up with. So, back to the prompt, there’s also something called a super prompt, and that is a really long prompt that you give the AI at the very beginning. You can literally cut and paste these things if you search for them, which will give you what they say are sometimes superpowers. Sometimes you can get around the guard rails and get it to tell you things that are a little bit more interesting, a little bit more helpful, and maybe a little bit more dangerous, at least in its perception. You can, of course, and should continue prompting as you’re using it. It’s not a set it and forget it because you can adjust its behavior accordingly. And that’s actually how these models are created. They’re with human reinforcement. But unfortunately, this human reinforcement carries a lot of bias. So you sometimes have to undo some of that bias just to get it to give you the responses you need to do your job or the project or whatever it is you’re working on. If you’ve really never had this sort of way of approaching AI, you will be shocked to see the difference in the responses and the and the difference in how useful it becomes to you if you truly set parameters for it. It’s an interesting exercise in being bossy. Well, it’ll feel like you’re being bossy, but you’re not. What you’re actually doing is saying, “Here, here’s the groundwork. Here’s how I want to work with you. Here’s how I’d like you to create and craft your responses and the the attitude and the persona that I sort of need you to do to fill this. Applying Prompting Principles to Human Interaction Wait a second. This is sounding like something else, isn’t it? What a nice segue. Well, thank you. So, this is why I say that prompting also applies to humans: Think about that. You meet someone for the first time and you can chat with them and both people are going to go from sort of a place of neutrality, right? What do you do? What is this? What is that? And so forth. If you work with someone, they’re going to get onboarded. You know, you’re going to talk about the mission statement and lots of other things that may or may not be a reality in your company. You have a certain persona for the company, a certain way to dress, a way meetings are conducted, the way that people talk to their bosses. Is it a fun environment? Is it a corporate environment? Is it both, which isn’t a real thing? And so forth. So there are all these visual and audio cues and environmental cues for people to be prompted. And the only time you get prompted properly, efficiently, is either A when you do something wrong. Oh, we don’t do that here, Sarah. or B when someone there takes you aside. It’s typically someone of your level who says, “Hey, I got to tell you this is how things really are this way. When you deal with Ralph, do this. They really like this kind of thing here.” They kind of look down on that. That’s prompting. You’re being prompted. Setting the Groundwork Without Feeling Bossy If we’re always prompting each other and and in in many ways, why not do it on purpose then? Why not consider that? And you’re going to say, “Well, that kind of sounds like how I talk to my kids sometimes.” Well, yeah, there’s a lot of parallel between how you interact with your children and how you interact with with other people. We just feel the we feel on our shoulders the the need, the ability, and the responsibility to get it right when our with our kids, especially when they’re little. When we’re dealing with adults, we make all sorts of assumptions that we sometimes get burned for. But what I’m saying is consider the whole concept of prompting but applied to humans. My challenge to you would be first of all listen to my advice about prompting an AI. And if you say, “Well, I don’t work with an AI.” Well, we’ll skip ahead. But if you do work with AIS in your job and in some way, shape, or form, and you’re freely allowed to interact with them in the sort of chat interface, then apply what I’m saying about prompting. And after you do that for a bit, you’re going to start to see the similarities between that and maybe some of the discussion you have with the actual breathing human beings. So my challenge to you would be to then apply that to humans that you deal with. And let me address something that’s going to happen. You’re going to feel bossy. You’re going to feel like you’re trying to control the situation. You’re going to be afraid that someone is going to consider yourself to be controlling, to be someone who is not open to new opinions and so forth. You’re you’re going to think, and you might be right in some cases, that someone’s going to say, “Well, don’t tell me how to talk.” And I will submit to you that all we’re ever doing is tel

    12 min

  4. MAR 26

    What an Anti-Vision Board Can Teach You

    What is a vision board? What is an anti-vision board? Transcript Well, hey there. Welcome back. What’s your vision? The Traditional Vision Board So, here’s a question. Have you ever used a vision board? A vision board is typically a physical place, almost like a bulletin board. It’s usually something larger than a sheet of paper that people place pictures, words, and inspiration. It’s something that they create that they can look at and it inspires them. It’s their vision of the future. It’s the house they want to live in. It’s the relationship they want to have. It’s the success that they want to gain. And it evolves. In the olden olden days, people would essentially cut pictures out of magazines, nice glossy pictures that they would then place on this board with with a pin. And people still do that, but they tend to be more digital. For example, Pinterest can be a vision board and is probably used like that for most people who have one. Granted, there are people who use Pinterest specifically to sort of gather ideas when they’re doing renovations or their nails or what have you, but it’s a cool thing and I see absolutely nothing wrong with it and a lot right with it. The only thing I would say would be wrong is if you just make a big giant square of pretty pictures, but you don’t let it really help you to go where you’re going. Now, how would a big box of pictures help you go where you’re going? Well, let’s talk about what the vision board represents in my book BeCAUSE! I talk about monsters and unicorns, which are the faces of us seeking pleasure and avoiding pain based on Freud’s pleasure principle. So, when you’re looking at a vision board, you’re essentially looking at a whole bunch of unicorns, saying, “Doesn’t it feel good to imagine yourself in this house? to imagine yourself in this relationship” I mean, they’re all good feelings. That’s what the vision board is. It’s about you moving towards the pleasure of having, experiencing, knowing, embracing, and all that wonderful stuff. Introducing the Anti-Vision Board I started thinking about vision boards when I was looking at my CheckMark™ app. And if you haven’t checked it out, you should because I built a vision board into it. Uh, you can use your camera on your phone. You can upload photos to it and arrange it on your phone. It’s kind of cool. Mind you, it’s a small screen, but it’s kind of ever-present, which is cool. And you can look at it on your computer when you get back to your office. I broke the boards down into a number of boards like relationships and health and so forth. But that got me thinking. I felt like there was a board that was missing. What if you flipped everything around and you made a board of all the things you didn’t want? Now, if you literally made a board of the things you don’t want, that would you’d run out of board. Obviously, there’s a million things in life we don’t want, then there are probably just a few things that we really do want. But what if the things we don’t want are sometimes the things we have, right? Like if you’re in a job that you really don’t like, well, that’s something you’d put on that special board. And let’s call it an anti- vision board, right? It’s not my vision. People tend to move away from things that cause them pain. So, if the vision boards are all populated by unicorns, then the anti- vision board is essentially driven by monsters, right? The monster of avoiding the pain of being in a house that’s cramped or in a neighborhood you don’t want to be in or in a dead-end job or a lack of relationship or a toxic relationship or something that just isn’t a good fit for you. So, do you think an anti-vision board would be just as helpful as vision boards? Perhaps in some ways it would be more helpful. When Monsters and Unicorns Work Together You see, a lot of the things that I’ve discovered when I think about monsters and unicorns is that a lot of them do have a flip side. If there’s a if there’s a unicorn pushing you towards pleasure, sometimes there’s also a monster pushing you away from the pain of that. Not in all cases, but in some cases there’s a distinct flip side and they kind of hold hands and work together, as I say. So, here’s an example. If you’re living in a house that’s okay, you probably don’t really have a monster saying, “Oh my god, this hurts.” But you could have on your vision board a really large house or a house with a really nice yard so that your kids can run around. That’s the unicorn saying, “Wow, that feels really good to have that.” But there’s no monster on the flip side saying, “Oh, I hate this house.” But you could also be living in a house that you really don’t like. Uh it could have to do with the terms. It could have to do with the neighborhood has just gone down down the tubes, what have you. So you have both. You have the monster saying, “I don’t like this. We need to get out of here. And the unicorn of saying, “Oh, so beautiful. This one is really nice.” You see how there is actually a difference? If you’ve heard the episode Waking Up to a Monster, you know that it’s not a great place to be in if you wake up every day and your entire day is motivated by avoiding pain. It’s not really how we should be living, right? Some of us have to. A lot of us have to. Sometimes a lot of us get into that area of life. It’s a funk or it’s just a it’s the chasm of life that we hope to to claw our way out of. The Grounding Power of Anti-Vision So if that’s the case, do we really want a vision board that’s telling us all the things that are bad in our life? Well, yes, because it’s voluntary. You may find an anti-vision board more motivating than a vision board. It also acts as a supplement to the vision board to sort of clarify what it is you’re actually looking for. Because you might say, “Well, look, I don’t want a giant house.” Okay, but I don’t like the one I’m living in. Okay, so you wouldn’t have a big giant house on your vision board, but you might have a picture of your existing house or the parts of your house that you really don’t like on your anti- vision board. You see, the anti- vision board is a bit more grounded because it’s something you’re already working with. And sometimes you experience the pleasure of wanting a thing or moving towards a thing, but it feels like you’re just trying to reward yourself. And then you have some guilt and then you have some self-esteem issues that say, “Well, do I really deserve that?” What you’re really trying to say is, “I don’t deserve to have the thing that I have now.” And creating an anti-vision board allows you to define the things in your life that you want to change. Let me say that again. Having an anti-vision board allows you to define the things in your life you want to change. Isn’t that the baseline? Because if you don’t know what you want to change and why, and the monsters will tell you why, then you’re not really going to do anything. It’s it’s sort of like the difference between someone really making themselves better and having a better life and somebody being shoved into a candy store and someone says, “Well, pick six things.” Well, I I I it’s all candy. I I don’t know. I don’t really see. Do you see the difference? It’s a huge difference especially for people who have a good work ethic, people who have humility. You shove those people into a candy store and nothing’s going to happen. But if you allow them to say, “Well, here are the things I would like to change.” Well, now we are going to make progress. Build Your Boards So, I would ask you a few things. Have you ever considered a vision board? Have you ever considered an anti-vision board? What would be on your vision board? What would be on your anti- vision board? If you’re using the CheckMark™ app, you can actually activate the vision board, which includes an anti-vision board, which means you can literally flip to the anti-vision board, walk somewhere in your house or somewhere, and just snap a photo and go, “Yeah, that’s the thing I want to change.” and you carry that with you and it’s on your screen, too. Or you can be traditional and just put it up on your bulletin board or what have you. But I would suggest trying that at least to yourself answer the questions I just asked because it’s really kind of a a cool fascinating thing and I hope you enjoyed this and take care of you. Thank you for listening. BONUS: You can find the CheckMark™ app here. It’s completely free no credit card needed. Get it now! A walk through of this episode is available inside the CheckMark™ app The book BeCAUSE! is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

    10 min

  5. MAR 15

    What behavioral mapping reveals about Elon Musk

    Disclaimer: this episode is based on my proprietary behavior mapping system. This system is used in conjunction with a discovery conversation I have with an individual. In the case of mapping public figures this is purely an independent analysis and opinion based on publicly available research. See citations below article. Transcript: You’re probably like me in that you’re a very visual person. (see below!) Well, hey there. Welcome back. Let’s talk Elon Musk. But before we do that, let’s talk about behavioral mapping and my book BeCAUSE!. Freud’s Pleasure Principle: Monsters and Unicorns Okay, wait. We have to back up from that and we have to talk about Freud’s pleasure principle. If you are an old fan of this show, you’ve probably heard me say this a bunch of times, but let’s sum it up really quickly. Freud’s pleasure principle is based on the fact that we are binary individuals. We seek pleasure, we avoid pain. Everything and anything we do is broken down into those things. I’ve had a number of episodes on this and the book BeCAUSE! is based on this, but I give the seeking pleasure and the avoiding pain a face. The seeking pleasure is a unicorn and the avoiding pain is a monster. They are neither good nor bad. They are not devils and angels. They simply are. Visualizing Behavior: My New Mapping Software After the book BeCAUSE! came out, I ended up developing patent pending behavioral mapping software. It’s software that allows me to actually map this stuff out. And you’re probably like me in that you’re a very visual person. This episode might be a little bit longer than my self-imposed 10-minute limit, so please bear with me. Paradoxically, when I talk about Elon Musk, I actually want you to not be thinking of him, but to be thinking of you. Every episode of this podcast starts out as an article on Alchemy for Life. This one is no different, and you’ll be able to see the visual mapping on the site if you’d like. You can follow along on there or if you’re listening in your car, you can just visualize based on what I’m telling you. Deconstructing Elon Musk: The Childhood Trauma Most people are familiar with Elon Musk. He’s a rather polarizing person. He’s someone who won’t stop talking about going to Mars and now the moon. He’s someone who created an empire. He owns Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, now X, the Boring Company, and X AI. He’s had some romances. He’s currently not married and he has a lot of children. What most people don’t know is what I actually found out in the map showing why all of this is happening. And again, because audio is literally linear, meaning you talk in a straight line, you stop it. You can’t go into branches and things like that. It’s a little harder in audio to tell you what something on a screen can tell you, but I’ll do the best I can. When he was young, the family dog bit him. It was actually a pretty vicious bite, but he was terrified that the dog was going to be put down. He needed medical attention, but he kept refusing it because he said, “You need to promise you’re not going to put the dog down.” Unfortunately, they put the dog down. And this was a very traumatic thing. And I can imagine for myself, and I’m sure you’re thinking about this, too, that’s a very traumatic thing to have to go through. You blame yourself. You think, well, maybe there’s something I could have done to not have the dog bite me. It’s horrible, horrible feeling. And it’s a feeling of losing something and someone that’s really important to you. You feel like you’re literally responsible for the death of a living creature. and that you have no control. So imagine that. It puts a pretty strong pleasure center. It puts a pretty strong unicorn in place that says, “Hey, follow me and you’ll have more control. You want more control.” Yes, I want more control. As with a lot of things, sometimes you also have the opposite in place. You have a monster that says, “It really feels bad to lose control.” And I’m sure you can understand that. I’m sure there are times in your life when you’ve lost control for some reason and you vowed to never lose that control again. Whether you were placed in a very unfortunate position due to your job or relationship or or even in your childhood The Teenage Existential Crisis when he was a teenager and we all remember just how wonderful and clear thinking we were as teenagers. He read both Shopenhau and Nietzsche. And I’ll tell you that Nichi is actually on my wall among five other people. But it’s not exactly something you would read out loud at like a children’s birthday party. So for him, he deeply regretted reading that stuff because it created in him an existential crisis. And imagine that’s essentially what being a teenager is, is having an existential crisis. You you question life. you’re halfway between being an adult and being a child. So reading that created in him a monster of avoiding the feeling of having existential dread and personal meaninglessness. We all want purpose in our life. Imagine removing that as a teenager. Imagine questioning all of that and saying, “Oh my god, this feels terrible. I I I can’t experience this.” So, conversely, it creates the unicorn that makes it feel really good when you feel purpose and meaning. It’s the same one most of us would have. The Scars of Bullying and Humiliation When he was in school, he was severely bullied and beaten basically to the point of not being recognizable. Some of us were bullied, maybe all of us were bullied. And it tends to shape us sometimes in bad ways and sometimes in good ways. But to compound this, when he came home to his father, his father blamed him for this and made him stand for 2 hours while he bered him and called him a loser. How would you respond to that? How would you psychologically speaking respond to that so that it would never happen to you again? You would have a monster that would be very strong in making sure you avoid humiliation and being vulnerable. And from the bullying, obviously you would have a monster that would say, “I’m never going to be bullied again. Never.” This is probably the first time you’re hearing about a lot of this stuff. Probably what you tend to hear about Elon Musk is his purchase or he makes a decision that you think is chaotic or egotistical. you’ve probably never heard any of this other stuff unless you have read his bio or multiple bios and things like that. Connecting the Trauma to the Billionaire’s Actions So, now that you know the monsters and unicorns that he has in place, what actions did these cause? Well, let’s go through them. If you’re trying to avoid the pain of bullying and the monster keeps getting in the way and saying, “You’re going to be bullied. Don’t do that.” Wouldn’t you be a bit combative on social media? Wouldn’t you make sure that in an interview you’re not going to be bullied? Wouldn’t you make sure that when you are dealing with the feds or other court systems or other CEOs that you would tend not to back down? In fact, maybe even not back down even when it’s to your detriment. If you’re avoiding the pain and fear of scarcity because of what happened with your dog and that you had no control over that, and you’re avoiding the pain of humiliation and especially vulnerability and bullying because of the place you’re in as someone who is almost a trillionaire, would it not affect your approach on forming a family? If you are married and have children, you are in a position of vulnerability. You have more vulnerability right now than someone who, let’s say, doesn’t have children or isn’t married. If you’re in a loving relationship, that’s part for the course. It comes with the territory. It’s something you welcome. But if you combine a fear of scarcity and you’ve developed a sort of pleasure for having absolute sovereignty and control of any and all outcomes and you have a terrible monster that makes it feel horrible. If you are losing control, you would be in a unique position to want to perpetuate the human race, but not in a traditional way that causes vulnerability. which is why he has 14 children across four different women and he is presently not married to any of them. This monster for avoiding pain and the fear of scarcity, working together with this pleasure of having absolute sovereignty and control and this extremely strong unicorn pulling him towards the feeling of purpose and meaning would obviously lead him to the creation of Space X so that he could continue to make the race multilanetary. Oh, and that monster telling him that scarcity feels bad, he helps as well. And guess who’s also looking over his shoulder? The monster that’s avoiding him having the feeling of existential dread and personal meaninglessness. You’re definitely listening to that monster if you are trying to perpetuate the human race on another planet. If you are avoiding losing control and you certainly enjoy the absolute sovereignty of being able to change the outcome and you enjoy the feeling of purpose and meaning and you’re terrified of having existential dread and personal meaninglessness, would you not purchase the most well-known social media platform in your attempt, at least according to you, to save free speech? Mapping Your Own Monsters and Unicorns Whether you’re a fan or not of Elon, whether you’re completely neutral or not, you can’t help but empathize with some of the things I’ve described. And like I said, you’re more likely to think of you than of him in these situations. What would you do? What have you experienced? What emotional turmoil have you gone through? What horrible things have you gone through in your childhood, in your teens, and even in your adult life that have shaped who you are? Those things just don’t go away. They stay wit

  6. MAR 5

    The Dark Side of Repetition & What’s Really Causing Your Pain

    Well, hey there. Welcome back. Let’s talk about the dark side of things. I don’t mean the dark side of everything, even though that sounds kind of exciting, doesn’t it? Okay, let’s rewind. The Psychology of Motivation: Monsters and Unicorns My recent book because talks about fundamental building blocks. In simple terms, it’s built on Freud’s pleasure principle. And in simple terms, Freud’s pleasure principle states that we basically do everything based on two sort of drivers. One is to seek pleasure in all forms and to avoid pain in all forms. These two driving factors are neither good nor bad. They are neutral and sometimes they’re used to great success and sometimes they’re used to your detriment. In the book, I take those semi-intangible concepts and I give them a face. The avoiding pain takes the form of a monster. The seeking pleasure takes the form of a unicorn. But the book goes farther than that. I then go on to talk about something that really separates all high achievers from everyone else. And that is essentially repetition. And there are many books out there and I cite some of them talking about this repetition and how you become an Olympic athlete by repeating. But the thing that everyone else forgets about or ignores is, well, how do they repeat so much? What drives them to repeat? And of course, it’s the monsters and the unicorns. The Secret Weapon of High Achievers And I have always said to myself, or rather recently, whatever you repeat, you enhance, you create, and you achieve. At least that’s what I tell myself. And that’s what because is about. It’s about repeating something over and over and over again. And and it doesn’t have to be a 4 secondond action. It can be something that’s fairly long term, something that takes days or something that requires a lot of nuance, but if you continue at it and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it and stick at it, you will achieve it. You can do great things this way. You can make amazing changes this way. But like the monsters and the unicorns, repetition is neutral. Think about that. The very concept of repetition doesn’t carry with it good or bad. It doesn’t carry with it constructive or destructive. It’s both and neither. So swimming almost constantly will make you a better swimmer. Practicing speaking will make you a better speaker. Studying and practicing repetitively and diligently will get you your realtor license, your pilot license, etc. The Dark Side of Repetition: How Unconscious Habits Hurt Us But my friends, let’s talk about the dark side. The dark side of repetition. And you know what’s interesting about that is that from a lot of people’s perspective, the dark side is actually what they know better. And I’m not saying it’s because they live in the dark side of repetition, but it’s because that sort of has been their perception of it. Stop making that face. If you keep making that face, it’s going to stay that way. Do you remember that? Did your parent ever say that to you? How many of you grind your teeth? It’s also called bxism. That’s a repetitive thing that people do with their teeth where they just clench down or they grind them side to side and it has tremendous negative impact on your health. Ergonomics is based partially on people repeatedly doing something that’s bad for their body. You can sit in a bad chair for a little while and not a lot’s going to happen. But if you spend hours and hours in a chair that’s slightly tilted or lifts your legs off the floor and puts a lot of pressure on your arteries and so forth, it can have really devastating health effects just just from sitting. You can eat good food and even in smaller portions, but if you eat it fast, it can also affect your health. Eating it fast once isn’t going to do a lot, but every time you eat, if you eat fast, it’s going to affect you. You will find or probably have found that you have aches and pains that are actually caused by you. And they’re caused by you in a way that is just repetitious. It’s, for example, I had an issue with my ankle for a while. I didn’t know where it was coming from. It it really hurts and I couldn’t remember doing anything to it. I couldn’t, you know, I would I would go work out. I’ i’d run and all that stuff. I wasn’t doing it incorrectly. Something was going on. And I found that when I would work at my desk sometimes, I would sort of let my ankle flop over to the right. So, I’m putting all this tremendous pressure on it just because that sort of felt, and you can see the quotes, felt comfortable. But what I was doing is hyperextending some things and really causing some damage. So I just had to become aware of that. I mean, it’s the same thing with even crossing your legs, squishing up your your hand and arms at night and tucking them in so that you’re constantly woken up with tingles and things because you’re sort of squishing up like a dead spider. This extends to the way you speak, the negative self-t talk, the way that you interact with others, preconceived notions that you continue to repeat, and the list goes on and on. I mean, how many times in your life have you had this thought? Oh my god, I did it again. How to Predict Your Triggers and Break the Loop If you’ve ever had that, it can be really frustrating because it’s something you do repeatedly that you probably can’t even predict. And that seguays us into the next section, which is, okay, we’re aware of this, Mark. Now, what do we do about it? Well, predicting your habits or just embracing something you do and saying, wait a second. I think I’m probably going to do that again. I’m about to eat. I should probably somehow figure out how I cannot eat fast. I’m hungry. I shouldn’t suddenly impulsively say I want three times as much food because right now I’m really hungry. That sounds really good. I’m sitting in my chair. Do I have the right chair? And if I do, am I sitting in some weird way that I think is comfortable or compensates when I’m stressed? I’m working on something intensely. What am I doing with my jaw and my teeth right now? I keep squinting my eyes. Do I just need different glasses or am I sitting too close to my screen? I seem to have a headache every day at the same time. What is it that I’m doing? Having a little bit of forethought can help dramatically. And I guess that’s one of the pluses of this repetition. It’s going to repeat. So, at least it’s sort of on a predictable schedule. And as I talk about in my micro seminar, do it to a fault. Things that you do can be attached not just to time, but to actions and feelings. So you might just do something when you’re feeling a certain way. It can even be when you have joy. You might do something around the same time or you might do something around the same activity. The whole concept of triggers essentially is described in what I just said. And in fact, there’s a section of the book because it talks about triggers that they’re your monsters and unicorns that sort of raise their hand and say, “Hey, I’m here. Just so you know, I’m going to be doing this thing.” So, give some thought to your repetition in your life. It is one of the most powerful things that you can use from a from a 30,000 ft view. Repetition in general is an amazing thing and it can do amazing good and amazing harm. So let’s try to limit the harm. Let’s nip that stuff in the bud and let’s try to use it for good. Outro If this made sense to you, then check out my over 300 other episodes that talk about interesting things like this. If you know someone who you think would benefit from this quick 10-minute podcast, feel free to forward it to them as well. And thank you as always for listening. And feel free to provide any feedback. Take care. Want a proven tool in your asernal for getting things done? try CheckMark™, the no-install todo list that lives on your phone and your desktop. It’s completely free. BONUS: The excersizes mentioned in this episode can be instantly copied to your checklist clipboard.

    10 min

  7. FEB 25

    Conflict resolution in just three words

    Tell me the problem in three words. Well, hey there. Welcome back. The “Favorite Three” Listening Game Today I want to talk to you about something that was a communication tool and kind of a game. And it all centers around the number three. When my kids were younger, I used to play a game with them in the car. And the game was Favorite Three. And it was such a natural hit that we would use it at parties.. And it really is kind of a not only a cool icebreaker, but it’s sort of a demonstrator of how well people listen. It’s a game you can play with your staff and in meetings, too. If you have a staff meeting and you’re waiting, you can play Favorite Three. It kind of sharpens your mind a little bit in the process, too. So, here’s how this works. Favorite three basically means you pick your three favorite things. Someone asks you your favorite three things. I mean you can say what’s your favorite dog breed? What’s your favorite Italian food? And what is your favorite state? You go around the room and people answer. They don’t say well my favorite state is… No. In the order that they were asked they need to answer. Usually, there’s a long pause while people’s gears are turning. Seriously, try this. So, the person asking the question names the person who needs to answer and they start and go around in a circle. Many times people actually forget and they’ll say, “Well, wait, what was the second one?” It’s literally three things that you have to remember, but for some reason, for some people, it’s actually quite hard to keep track. So in the example that I just said, the next person would say hopefully husky pizza Colorado and then it would go to the next person and so forth. And those people are devoid of context. They just know the answers of the person in front of them. all the amazing things that we do in life, all the things that we can work through, reading entire novels and keeping track of screenplays and and all the complexities of your job, you may actually have difficulty with that. So, play it at your next event and tell me how it goes. Using Three Words for Conflict Resolution So, here’s the other thing centering around the number three. This helps in conflict resolution. And again, this is something that I used with my kids when there’s a conflict or when they had a conflict and there was a lot of back and forth. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of two people talking over each other and screaming and emotions and things like that. I would pick one to start and I would say, “Tell me the problem in three words.” That was it. And then the other person would go and tell me the problem in three words. And it’s really easy to figure out which person is stuck in their emotions and which person is just trying to convey a point. And it’s all because of the three words that they choose. And this is something you can do in your relationship. I mean, if you’ve been married 20 years, you can still do this and say, you know, tell me in three words. Now, people don’t like to have their communication filtered, adjusted, or controlled. So, it may be difficult for some personality types, especially in the heat of the moment, if you tell them, “No, you’re not allowed to communicate to me in sentences. You need to tell me that in three words.” So, use carefully and wisely. But even in your job, if you need to do conflict resolution, this may be really eye opening and you think, “Mark, they’re just going to take three verbs.” No, they’re really not. You’ll be shocked at which words they choose, especially the first time. And when they sort of get the gist of it, they’ll choose better words. They’ll say, “Ah, okay, I need to clarify.” M. And it’s that focus on the cerebral act of clarifying which allows for the emotions to leak out to go away because the focus is on communicating now instead of you know sarcasm or taking a shot at the other person and so forth. You don’t have the room for it. You literally have three words to use and don’t waste them. People aren’t going to use he is idiot. they’re going to choose other things. Okay? A Real-World HR Example: Manager vs. Creative And again, you may be thinking, “Well, this is kind of rudimentary, Mark.” No, it really is a different way to get your brains to communicate. Let me give you an example. Imagine you have a manager and someone who’s uh creative underneath them, someone who’s producing something and there’s there’s a conflict and there’s always a conflict between them and you don’t understand because they both for the most part are are fairly stellar in in their work and the work ethic, but you have them in your office because you’re the HR person and you get the creative to tell you what the problem is and the creative starts to go on and on and on about stuff and personalities and you go, “No, no, no, give me the three words.” And the creative thinks for a second and says work, frustration, recognition. Doesn’t that tell you a lot? Doesn’t that tell you a lot in just three words? The person is frustrated because their work isn’t recognized. They They’re not asking for a raise necessarily. They’re not even saying anything negative about their manager, but they’re frustrated because they work really hard. And so let’s say in this hypothetical situation, the manager goes, “Wow.” Because the manager probably didn’t even realize that, but he now has to answer himself and he thinks for a moment and he says, “And uh hours um uh documentation deadline.” And so when he may be asked to expand on that, it’s that the person under him isn’t really documenting their work. So it’s kind of hard to recognize what’s gone in on the back end. And perhaps that person also isn’t great about tracking their hours, which again makes it frustrating for the manager to say, “Well, I I don’t know how much time or effort you spent on this. I I don’t I don’t know.” Now, as an aside, this is usually a disconnection between the departments, departments like, you know, like sales and the people who actually accomplish the things the salespeople are selling or managers and creatives and all that stuff. Sometimes there’s a disconnection that really shouldn’t be there because they should have a better grounded understanding of what’s involved to create the product, whether it’s a a service or whether it’s a a tangible item. So that’s an aside. But do you see how forcing a minimum of words can make a huge difference in a conversation? How Word Scarcity Forces Clarity And I am sure that in the annals of HR and and and employee relations, there are tons of things like this. But I’m just telling you from a personal standpoint, I have used this and it’s been really amazing. In fact, I’ve used it on myself as I do with many things that I have tried to get myself to be concise about using just three words and three is really a cool number. It’s more than two and you know what? It’s less than four. So, right then out of the gate, it’s it’s a good number. So, my challenge for you would be to first of all see if you can facilitate conversation like this in a conflict. And again, if you if there are any bruises involved, I I I’m giving you a warning that if someone has really high emotions, this may not be the best thing to use at first. But it also may be good as a tool for you in a case where you are just sort of feeling kind of strung out and and frustrated and you don’t know where your head is on certain things. Now, you could use my UPS method and see the episode on UPS, but with this in mind, you can actually just use the three words to force yourself to just say, “Okay, I need to express this in three words.” And it’s pretty cool because typically one of the words is going to reflect a feeling, one is going to be an action, one might be a state of being, but you’re not going to get three words that basically mean the same because they’re so precious. And you’re going to choose you or they are going to choose words that really convey a lot of meaning or power because again scarcity creates this sort of thing. And you know when it comes to words and language and talking there’s not a lot of scarcity there. I myself force scarcity in this podcast. And that’s why we only have a minute left because I won’t let myself go over 10 for the most part. So, play the two games of three and let me know what the outcome is. I’d love to know the situation. Was it personal? Was it with your kids? Was it HR related? Was it business related? Did it actually help you to express yourself even in marketing materials in which you have a marketing material and you’re like, you know, there’s paragraphs here. This is too much. And I I want to inject this. There’s a very specific rule about presentations, PowerPoint, and so forth that people regularly break, and that is keep the text to a minimum, but people typically have paragraphs and and whole books up on the screen where just three words would make a big difference. Outro So, please try this out and let me know. And as always, I appreciate you listening. Take care.

    11 min

  8. FEB 1

    Why your resolutions failed and how to fix that.

    If your resolutions failed this is why, and this is how you can have success in 2026. The New Year’s Resolution Check-In It’s February 1st. How did you do on your New Year’s resolutions? I know. I know. Here we go. But it’s not something I’m ever going to stop talking about. and we’ve had at least one, if not two or more episodes on New Year’s resolutions and how I feel about them. So, let’s just jump into it, shall we? If you’re a longtime listener, you know that I try to compress a lot of conversation. And I say conversation because I feel like you get to say something and think something. I compress a lot of that into 10 minutes. And one of the ways I do that is by using pause. And I think it’s an amazing tool to be able to use. So, I say something and then I ask you to pause and then you have infinite amount of time to think about or work through what I just said and then you restart it again. So, we’re going to do this a lot this time and it’s going to be based on this sound. If you recognize that sound, it’s the sound you get when you check off an item in check mark. So, how did you do on your New Year’s resolutions so far considering that the entire month of January has passed? If your answer was not great, then why do you think that is? Give that some thought. So, do you think it was because you didn’t try hard enough or because of something else? Well, let me tell you this. If you decided to stop doing a thing, like I’m not going to be late anymore or doing a thing a lot more, then you’re only considering the action itself. The Limits of Free Will and Willpower And the action is always motivated by seeking pleasure or avoiding pain. And now you’re going to say, “But Mark, we’re not just some tiny binary combination of fervently seeking pleasure and running away from pain.” Well, that’s not what Freud found. That’s not what I found. And that’s not what the monsters and unicorns told me. But Mark, we have free will, don’t we? Um, yeah, kind of. Kind of, sort of. Um, but it depends on your definition because our free will is modified by those constantly running programs. If you’re late all the time, there’s a reason behind the action. And that’s literally what the word because means, the reason for the action, which is why I called the book BeCAUSE!. And you can say, well, Mark, I can just do it. I just have to do it. So then you’re describing using your strength of will. And strength of will is very powerful. Well, it’s sort of powerful by itself. What happens if you say, “Look, I have this thing that really annoys me. Um, I’m I’m not going to do that anymore. Period.” and you go, I’m exerting my free will right now and my strength of will. Well, what your strength of will is going to then do is it’s going to panic and be going, “Okay, we’re doing this, but man, this is tiring and oh my god, I can’t do this constantly. There’s got to be some reason why. What? There’s got to be some reason to allow me to do this. There’s got to be some motivation.” And then the monsters and unicorns kick in. The seeking pleasure and the avoiding pain. That’s how you get it done. That’s it in a nutshell. That’s how these things happen. So if you say, “I don’t want to be late anymore. You can try to use your strength of will, but your strength of will will search around for something or someone to help it.” And both the monsters and the unicorns, the seeking pleasure, the avoiding pains, can help together. You can actually have multiple unicorns and multiple monsters holding hands together to get it done. And in fact, most of those insurmountable things that you have done in your life that you look back on and you go, “How? Oh my god, how did I even do that?” They were because you were holding hands with monsters and unicorns at the time. Identifying the Motivation Behind Your Successes So then, let’s think about this with the next pause. If you were able to adhere to a New Year’s resolution this year and it has gone successfully and continues to do so, and now that you’ve done the 30-day mark, you’re pretty sure this is set in stone, think about the why of it. What was the reason behind that action? Okay, if you’re one of the lucky ones who actually did make a difference in your life, even if it’s a tiny one, you think, well, this was kind of trivial, but you know, I’m really glad I don’t do that. I’m really glad I decided not to always finish my plate even if I’m not hungry. I’m really glad that I eat slower or I’m more sensible or that I show up on time or what have you. You have just identified the monster andor unicorn that helped you. So, here’s a crazy thought. What if you could identify the monster and the unicorn before you know what action it’s modifying? Finding Your Recurring Monsters and Unicorns Because you will find with your monsters and unicorns, and again, seeking pleasure, avoiding pain for those who don’t like the mental image, but I love the mental image. Thank you very much. You’ll find that a certain unicorn keeps showing up. A certain monster keeps showing up. And they’re responsible for multiple things in your life. They’re responsible for multiple good things that you’re proud of. They’re responsible for multiple bad things that you’re not so thrilled with. Yeah. I tend to such and such. Right. Let’s do this. What What feeling or thing tends to make you look at the ground and go, “Yeah, I tend to da da da. It’s something I deal with. Okay, let’s do the opposite. What thing do you do that you say, “Well, yeah, I really like such and such.” And it seems to affect things. If you’ll notice, I was sort of vague with both of those things because again, monsters and unicorns can modify behavior in such a way as to make you do something that you are proud of or make you do something you’re not so proud of because neither is good, neither is bad. They are just programmatic features of the way our psyche works. You can get a lot of absolute joy in helping children or helping people learn or giving. You can get that same absolute joy in having a lot more ice cream than you should. Or deciding that dinner was delicious. I’m going to keep eating cuz oh my god, is this great and fun. Or it’s so much more fun to not work than to work. And again, the same is true for monsters. It can give you an absolutely terrible feeling to feel that you’re not being a good friend. But it can also give you an absolute terrible feeling to feel that you don’t want to work anymore. I don’t want to work anymore because working makes me feel like this. And that’s the same way it makes you feel when you’re a bad friend. What? Right? Because they’re neutral. Clarity Through Identifying Your Drivers I can’t stress enough, even though you may disagree, I can’t stress enough that these driving forces need to be identified in your life. And once they are identified, a lot of things will give you tremendous clarity. And I can tell you with my coaching system that I built, and it’s not just a system, but it’s a system the the I’m meaning a system as a way of doing things, but a system as a programatical thing I made online. So anyway, I’ve actually modified that system that has worked really well to include the concept of monsters and unicorns seeking pleasure and avoiding pain to make it a lot easier to help me to identify the paths and the ways for people to succeed. You can do the same for yourself without involving me. If you want to involve me, that would be awesome. But you don’t have to involve me. You can do it yourself if you identify the monsters and the unicorns. And again, if you’ve had some failure with New Year’s resolutions and you’ve and you’ve said, “I made that New Year’s resolution this year again,” then you know that you’re targeting a behavior and not targeting the things that power the behavior. And power is really an uh apppropo word. All the energy to do a thing comes from that. Pleasure and pain generate energy. They can both generate the same amount of energy but in different ways and with different feels to it. What Will You Do Differently? So one last pause for us. So my question is now that we’ve discussed this and now that you’ve thought through your New Year’s resolutions and maybe you did indeed come up with one that really you hit a wall on knowing about the monsters and the unicorns, what will you do different to attack this issue? Well, all righty then. I think we had a really good conversation this time. I really do. So, thank you as always for listening. Take a look at BeCAUSE! it’s a quick read and it makes a lot of sense. And um keep listening and if you think this was worth sharing, please do so. I would really appreciate that. And happy February.

    10 min
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About

Welcome to the Time, Energy, and Resources Coaching and Podcast! Our coaching style and podcast are all about helping you make the most of your time, energy, and resources so you can achieve your goals and live a more fulfilling life. Whether you’re looking to improve your productivity, reduce stress, or simply make better use of your time, we have the tools and strategies you need to get started. Join us on this journey and discover how to take control of your time, energy, and resources and unlock your full potential.

Information

  • Creator
    Author Mark Bradford
  • Years Active
    2017 - 2026
  • Episodes
    250
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Alchemy For Life

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