Luck Club

What the bleep?

2007-11-10T21:09:00.000+11:00

What the bleep is a mind bending movie that is both a drama and a documentary on quantum physics.

Three key ideas from the movie are 1. Quantum physics tells us that reality isn't fixed - subatomic particles only come into existence when they are observed 2. Our mind has enormous potential, but we only use a small part of it for conscious thought, and we miss a lot of what's going on around us 3. If your mind is the "observer" that quantum physics talks about, you should be able to choose which of the many possible realities around you comes into existence - you can create your own reality

Characteristics of successful people - Tony Robbins

2007-09-25T12:36:00.000+10:00

In his book Unlimited Power Tony Robbins lists 7 characteristics of successful people 1. Purpose 2. Self Belief 3. Strategy for success 4. Congruent values - not seriously conflicted 5. Energy 6. Connected with others 7. Communication with self and others

Stumbling on happiness with Ted Dilbert

2007-09-18T05:16:00.001+10:00

What is the good life?

2007-09-18T04:31:00.000+10:00

"The good life is using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification," according to Martin Seligman in Authentic Happiness. He argues there are six core virtues - 1. Wisdom & Knowledge 2. Courage 3. Love & Humanity 4. Justice 5. Temperance 6. Spirituality & Transcendence - and we should use our signature strengths to work towards developing all or some of these virtues. That's what produces authentic happiness. What isn't related to happiness is wealth, physical attractiveness or health. Find out more about Seligman's work at www.authentichappiness.org

A fighting mind and spirit

2007-09-17T06:08:00.001+10:00

Man and woman contain heaven and hell and all the stars within themselves said Jacob Boehme in the seventeenth century. It's an example of the universal person that was so influential among the mystics and philosophers of the late eighteenth century." Our whole doctrine is nothing else but an instruction to show how man may create a kingdom of light within himself. He, in whom this spring of divine power flows, carries within himself the divine image and celestial substantiality. In him is Jesus born from the Virgin, and he will not die in eternity." There is a continual cycle of striving and becoming is activated by desire or will which is the flaming world. Its counter force is the abyss from which everything emerges. "Man must be at war with himself" Boehme wrote “If he wishes to be a heavenly citizen, fighting must be the watchword, not with tongue and sword, but with mind and spirit, and not to give over." Everything comes into being through conflict. Man and woman contain heaven and hell and all the stars within themselves said Jacob Boehme in the seventeenth century. It's an example of the universal person that was so influential among the mystics and philosophers of the late eighteenth century." Our whole doctrine is nothing else but an instruction to show how man may create a kingdom of light within himself. He, in whom this spring of divine power flows, carries within himself the divine image and celestial substantiality. In him is Jesus born from the Virgin, and he will not die in eternity." There is a continual cycle of striving and becoming is activated by desire or will which is the flaming world. Its counter force is the abyss from which everything emerges. "Man must be at war with himself" Boehme wrote “If he wishes to be a heavenly citizen, fighting must be the watchword, not with tongue and sword, but with mind and spirit, and not to give over." Everything comes into being through conflict.

The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation

2007-08-19T12:40:00.000+10:00

The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation One way to get luckier and feel better is to practice Random Acts of Kindness. These can be as simple as a smile to a stranger to pitching in and really helping someone in need. I like to always have one act of kindness active in my life - this simply means that when I come across someone I can help I deliberately assist them. The only rules for me here are that there can be no reward for me and preferably the other person doesn't know what I've done. This makes me feel terrific and somehow more useful. Recently I found the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation who help us work out how to do this better. I liked the foundation even more when I found it's not for profit and has no religious or political links. I'm exploring how to set up a Random Acts of Kindness group to promote kindness. In Australia the website for the Kindness Movement is www.kindness.org.au What do you think?

The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb

2007-08-05T12:47:00.000+10:00

Before the discovery of Australia people in the old world were convinced that all swans were white. The sightings of black swans in Australia are an example of the limitations of our knowledge. Taleb uses this metaphor for events that are rare, have extreme impact and are predictable only in retrospect. As Taleb says: “Go through you own existence. Count the significant events, the technological changes, and the inventions that have taken place in our environment since since you were born and compare them to what was expected before their advent. How many of them came on schedule? Look into your own personal life, to your choices of profession, say, or a meeting with your mate, your exile from your country of origin, the betrayals you faced, your sudden enrichment or impoverishment. How often do these things happen according to plan?” He argues that almost all discoveries, inventions and events have been black swans, and not the result of top down planning.

The loser's guide to getting lucky

2007-07-04T15:03:00.000+10:00

Professor Richard Wiseman is an English psychologist who wanted to learn more about luck so he placed ads in national newspapers asking for people to respond who felt consistently lucky or unlucky. He then learned more about these people in a variety of ways - interviews, studies and experiments. What he found were ways of thinking and behaving that were consistent with good fortune. 1. Lucky people are more relaxed and open to opportunities 2. Lucky people listen to their gut instincts 3. Lucky people spend time each day remembering things that went well 4. Lucky people visualise being lucky before an important event Have a look at Wiseman’s website http://www.richardwiseman.com/ for more about his work on luck.

Six Value Hats by Edward de Bono

2007-06-28T16:02:00.000+10:00

Here are the key thoughts on values from de Bono 1."Values come into all areas of thinking and behavior. Values are what we consider important, but we may not be consciously aware of them." 2. “Almost any thinking and almost any action has an important value component. It is impossible to ignore values. Every decision we make involves values. There are two types of decision: 1) Deciding whether or not to do something 2) Choosing between alternatives” 3. “In a way, a perception is an unconscious decision about how we see the world around us. Because it is unconscious we have no control over our perception unless we make the driving values visible’ 4. “Some people make the mistake of believing that we see things objectively and then we apply our values. Unfortunately it is not like that. Values determine our perception, whether or not we are conscious of those values, and then what we see tend to support that perception.” 5. There are some who believe that decisions are made by logic, you assemble the relevant information and then you apply your logic. This only works in rare cases. Logic can help you decide how to do something but logic cannot tell you what to do.” 6. “Values are the underlying drivers that bring about our emotions.” There are more interesting ideas on de Bono's website www.edwdebono.com

Napoleon by Paul Johnson

2007-06-28T15:44:00.000+10:00

In Napoleon Paul Johnson describes the many facets of this genius. He reminds us that real success means versatility. Napoleon could be entrepreneurial, analytical or ruthless depending on the circumstances. 1. Napololeon was entrepreneural. “Bonaparte believed not in revolution but change, perhaps accelerated evolution is the exact term. He wanted things to work better,or more fairly, and also faster. He had an implicit contract with his men: they would make his victories possible, and in return he would ensure them loot." 2. Napoleon was an analyst At age 28 he said "Europe is too small for me... I must go East" 'He calculated that with 30,000 French troops, he could raise another 30,000 mercenaries in Egypt, and with 50,000 camels and 150 canon he could be on the Indus within four months. He worked all this out down to the last round of ammunition and water canister.' 3. Napoleon was ruthless “The object of power in his view was not only to crush the opposition to his will, but more usually to inspire fear, so that power did not need to be used at all." “He rejected medical advances of the day in wound dressing and treatment preferring amputation in the field for any reported injury. This kept reported injuries low and medical intervention rapid and simple.”

Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins

2007-06-26T15:49:00.000+10:00

Unlimited Power covers a wide range of topics, from goal setting, Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), personal finance, and relationships. This book is worth looking at because it is the most successful motivational book ever published. One of Robbin's key ideas is that success leaves clues and its you ability to find and act on these clues that will define how successful you are. Robbins argues that the most successful people are the best communicators - with themselves and others. The key to communicating with yourself is to decide what things mean - since meaning is a choice. According to Robbins, the easiest way to become successful is to find a successful person and model their behaviour. I enjoyed the book and I've also attended two of his programs - Unleash the Power Within (which features a firewalk) and Date with Destiny. I can recommend both programs. Find out more about Robbins at http://www.tonyrobbins.com/.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

2007-05-16T16:04:00.000+10:00

Here are four examples of the power of the subconscious from Malcolm Gladwell in his book Blink. 1. In September 1983 an art dealer named Gianfranco Becchina sold a marble statue to the J Paul Getty Museum in California. He claimed it was a kouros- a statue of a male nude youth dating from sixth century BC. $10m was agreed after exhaustive high resolution electronic microscope analysis of the statue. A few months later Thomas Hoving, the former director of Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, saw the statue and his first impression was "fresh"- not the right reaction. It was a fake. 2. The second example involves a card playing study from the University of Iowa. Players start being dealt cards from 4 decks - 2 black and 2 red. Each card wins or loses you money. What you don't know is that the red cards are a minefield- the rewards are high but the penalties are severe. Actually you can only win with the black cards. What the Iowa scientists found was that gamblers started generating stress responses to the red decks by the tenth card, forty cards before they were able to say they had a hunch about what was wrong with those 2 red decks. 3. Psychologist Nalini Ambady gave students a 5 second video tape of a teacher – student’s judgment of the teacher's effectiveness after the 5 second video was just as accurate as students who had a full semester of classes. 4. Professor John Gottman at the University of Washington analysed one hour of a husband and wife talking and could predict with 95% accuracy whether the couple would still be married in 15 years.

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

2007-05-15T09:08:00.000+10:00

The crucial aspect of changing anything about yourself or others is having a strong enough reason why to change. You'll find that the more reasons you gave to create change the more likely it us to happen One of the most powerful stories about the power of why came from Victor Frankl who was a successful psychiatrist in Austria in the 1930’s. His wife, parents and children we arrested and imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp in 1939. He watched as his children and parents died in the camp, and he saw his wife taken to Belsen concentration camp where she later died. Frankl noticed that some of his fellow prisoners died during relatively easy challenges, while others refused to perish even in extreme conditions. He found that those who had a strong enough reason why to live and endure the hardship found a way to survive, while those with less compelling reasons found it harder to survive. He wrote that: "Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. Each man is questioned by life and can only answer to life by answering for his own life, by being responsible. Responsibleness is the essence of human existence."

How relaxation can cure cancer

2007-04-06T20:50:00.000+10:00

Ian Gawler was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was given up for dead. He decided to take treatment into his own hands and has been cancer free ever since. He made the following remarks recently in a talk I attended. “The Human body is designed to be in balance. Each of us has an inbuilt intelligence that knows how to build a body and to maintain it. Stress depletes the immune system. This is is the basis of psychoneuroimmunology. Two key tools here are food and state of mind. To think that what our minds are doing doesn’t affect what our bodies are doing is detaching head from body. It requires physical and mental relaxation.” Ian Gawler runs workshops for both sick and well people at the Gawler Institute, look him up at www.gawler.org.

Meet my son Blake

2007-01-03T21:41:00.000+11:00

This is my son Blake who was born at 3.30am on January 2 2007.

It's great to have a little brother for my daughter Belle and it's best having a wife like Liz.

She is amazing. Being a dad is the best job in the world.

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

2006-12-17T10:23:00.000+11:00

Rhonda Byrne interviews world leaders in motivation and self development, then reviews the best thinking on success from the past 2000 years. The Secret she finds is to do three things to create your destiny using the law of attraction: 1. Ask for what you want by having a clear picture of your goal - whether this is for today or for your life. 2. Believe that you already have it 3. Receive what you want by feeling good because you are then on the frequency of what you want. What I like about The Secret is that your life does go in the direction of your dominant thoughts. if you think about bad events you will encourage them to happen. The key to the secret becoming very aware of how you are thinking and focus on what you want, rather than focusing on what you don't want.

The Hinge Factor by Erik Dureschmied

2006-12-06T15:31:00.000+11:00

The role of chance is well known in war. In 1832 Carl von Clausewitz wrote On War where he said “Chance and uncertainty are two of the most common and most important elements in warfare”. One hundred and thirty years later the Enola Gay carried an atomic weapon on its way to bomb one of four cities in Japan – Kokura, Niigata, Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The pilot waited for a report on weather conditions over the four cities before he selected a target. Clear weather would doom one of these cities. Erik Dureschmied reports in his book The Hinge Factor that the weather was fine over Hiroshima so the city was bombed with a nuclear weapon. If it was cloudy over that city it would not have been doomed as it was. War often has great strategy, planning and thought in its persecution. However as Dureschmied explains so well, from Troy to Agincourt to the Gulf War chance often plays a bigger role that strategy.

The Relaxation Response by Herb Bensen

2006-12-03T18:10:00.000+11:00

We’ve all heard about the stress response and how it automatically produces negative thinking, destructive habits and feelings of ill health. You may be less familiar with the relaxation response which creates the exact opposite reaction as the stress response. It was developed by Dr Herb Bensen at the Harvard Medical School and produces a range of benefits from great heath to creativity.

While the stress response happens automatically the relaxation response must be elicited or deliberatley brought about. It’s simply a profound state of rest with two characteristics: 1. Focusing on a repetitive activity like breathing, walking or affirmations 2. A non-judgemental attitude to any thoughts that arise The simplest way to illicit the response is to sit down comfortably and observe your breath. If you’d like a free copy of a sound – file of how to illicit the response then just send me an email (peteranthony@mettta.com.au).

Great lessons from the chess board

2006-11-02T20:03:00.000+11:00

It's hard to find a better example of competition than chess. After just three opening moves by a chess player more than 9 million positions are possible from the 32 pieces on 64 squares. Gary Kasparov was world chess champion for a decade from 1984 when he won the title as a 22 year old. He was interviewed recently by Harvard Business Review and he said some very interesting things such as the following. "Often, your gut will serve you better than your brains. I've studied the playing histories of the great players of the past 200 years. I found something very interesting. It was often at the very toughest moments of their chess battles - when they had to rely on pure intuition - that these great players came up with their best, most innovative moves. Ironically, when the games were finished and the players had the luxury of replaying them at leisure they typically made more mistakes than when they were competing. To me the implication is clear: What made these players great was not their analytic prowess but their intuition under pressure." "I call it the champions dilemma, and it’s a real problem for people at the top of their game - where does a virtuoso go after he has accomplished everything? In the end I believe that there is only one answer: you must be lucky in your choice of enemies. For me it was Karpov. For the first five years of my championship I had to prove every year that I was the best. I see new enemies nipping at my heels. And every day I am grateful to them because they push me to be passionate about staying on top. Without Bill Gates Steve Jobs would not be the CEO he is today. If Karpov had not existed you may not be talking to me today." "Bobby Fisher could beat the IBM computer Big Blue because he could focus on the 10% of moves that had biggest strategic impact, while the computer looked at an infinite number of possible moves."

Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman

2006-10-22T20:00:00.000+10:00

Marty Seligman has found that a satisfying life is about contribution and engagement. He found this after considering three different approaches to life. The first is the pleasant life where you enjoy as many as pleasures as possible – food, alcohol and sex in a Bacchus like debauched self interest orgy. This is great for immediate gratification but sets up real moral and sustainability issues The second is the engaged life where you are attempting to get into the flow of the activity you are involved in. However you could get into flow by playing cards and still be very unhappy and make no contribution to the world. Seligman recommends the meaningful life because we programmed for meaning. You should know your strengths and how to use them to serve others. He has developed his ideas into a body of knowledge called ‘positive psychology’ and you can find out more at http://www.authentichappiness.org/

We will rock you

2006-10-20T15:12:00.000+10:00

In the UK last year I watched a reality program called Gene Simmons' “Rock School”. The bad boy of Kiss tries to turn children of a prim British boarding school into a heavy rock band. Gene does this at Christ's Hospital, a 450 year-old boarding school outside London. There, the students wear uniforms, march in procession, and study classical music. Gene is surprisingly thought provoking in his philosophy. Two things in particular stood out for me. The first is Gene says that 90% of being a rock star is attitude and only 10% musical ability. All rock stars are very individual. “It’s about finding out who you are” says Gene. ". He chose Josh as the lead singer because he was an outcaste, and because the losers need to reinvent themselves to survive. “The more of an outcaste you are the more of a reinvention needs to take place” Gene says. The second thing I liked is the sense of certainty he was teaching to the children. His favorite song is "We will rock you". He stresses that it wasn’t titled "We might rock you, or "We could potentially rock you.” And he said that sense of certainty is what helps the band and the song work for people.

The Feeling of What Happens by Antonio Damasio

2006-09-22T23:22:00.000+10:00

Neurologist Antonio Damasio has worked with many patients who have brain damage, often in the frontal lobe, that causes them to lose their normal emotional responses and become emotionally flat. Far from turning into super-rational decision makers, able to plan their lives without all the irritating distraction of unwanted emotions, they become almost paralysed with indecision. We need our emotions because they calibrate our values so we can make decisions.

How important is Hope?

2006-09-22T22:54:00.000+10:00

In 1957 Dr C P Richter of the Psychobiological Laboratory of John Hopkins Medical School carried out an experiment that attempted to measure the motivational effect of hope. The experiments involved placing rats into cylinders of water thirty inches deep and eight inches wide. After a short time, half of the rats were momentarily rescued- lifted out of the cylinders for a few seconds, then put back into the water. The other half were not. The group that was given hope swam for more than three days. The other rats drowned almost immediately.

Who inspires you?

2006-07-04T21:23:00.000+10:00

I enjoy scuba diving and I feel like a real adventurer when I dive with big fish like this one - it makes me feel alive. Sometimes I feel concerned about how deep I can dive. Last summer when I was diving off the Barrier Reef in Queensland I was reminded of one of my heroes – Tanya Streeter, there’s a photo of her below. Recently Tanya set a new word record by free diving to a depth of 400 feet or 121 metres - on a single breath lasting 3 minutes and 38 seconds. She has done more than any woman or man using only a pair of giant flippers to propel her to that depth. But she says that its not physical its mental, she says on her website that the deeper she goes the more peace she experiences: “I have an incredible sense of inner peace throughout the dive. It’s introspective because you are forced to look within to understand how you are responding to the experience, and to adjust accordingly. It’s very quiet. And there's a peace that comes from knowing that you are doing the thing that you love more than anything else.” Tanya is a great example of exploring outer limits, and maybe the peace we feel when we get to those limits is the peace of being fully alive and experiencing our destiny. So who inspires you?

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

2006-07-04T09:01:00.000+10:00

1. Be Pro-active - Take responsibility for what you think and do 2. Begin with the End In Mind – develop a personal mission statement with the end of your life in mind 3. Put First Things First – ensure the most important is not neglected for the urgent 4. Think Win/Win – build collaboration 5. Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood. 6. Synergize- The whole is greater than the sum of its parts 7. Sharpen the saw focuses on balanced self-renewal.

Good uses of bad feelings

2006-06-30T21:25:00.000+10:00

I went through a tough time in the first week of May. On Monday I sprained my ankle, on Tuesday I picked up a middle ear infection and the next day I developed bronchitis. I was not a happy camper. I caught up with a friend for coffee and he told me how I should look on the bright side and not dwell on the bad feelings. And then I realised what I know already. Often bad feeling have a good use. Why? Because becoming clear on our reality and the things we wish were different in our lives is the first step to motivating ourselves. In my case I was travelling and working too hard and not allowing enough time for rest and nutrition and I found I was running empty. My health was a subtle signal to get back to the reality of my own well being, and I realised that health messages come in small doses first before they become fully developed illnesses. While I was in bed for a few days I replanned the next quarter to ensure exercise, rest and meditation was a regular feature. Now I'm strong and happy and grateful for the bad feelings - they came to great use. What do you think? Is there a time when thinking about bad times has worked for you?

Sensing Spirit

2006-06-27T21:52:00.000+10:00

At Eagles Nest in Bhutan the sense of spirit is overwhelming. A man was born on a lotus plant in India two thousand years before Christ. He was a descendant of the Buddha and he became aware there were problems in the Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan. So he flew up into the Himalayas and settled at Tigers Nest where he took human form and seeded a monastery that has thrived for 2000 years. I went to find Tigers Nest last year on a mission to get a message or a sign. For some bizarre reason I thought a Buddhist god could guide me today, and his message may just be relevant for me, and for you. Is there a special place you've been that gives you a sense of peace?

My daughter's sales technique

2006-06-16T17:25:00.000+10:00

This is Belle, my daughter; she’s just four years old. She knows how to get what she wants. She is very comfortable with the complete range of influencing skills - from demanding more hot water in the bath to cuddling affection wanting more chips with her fish and chips. So how is it that we unlearn so many of these skills? Sure we need to add subtlety but surely as we mature we learn how not to ask for what we want. Asking for what we want may not work every time, but it's more likely to work than not asking for what you want.