The SnowHow

Category: Life Hacking

  • Don’t Change Yourself, Upgrade Yourself!

    So from time to time we want to change a habit or adopt a new one. The thing is the process of change can be really hard, especially if you have to make a big change.

    When we are trying to make a change there is so much to get in the way of us succeeding.

    First of all we have an inbuilt system within our brain to regulate change and stop us from doing it. The homeostatic part of our brain literally stops us from making changes.

    If you are not familiar with homeostasis it is a self regulating system within the brain that tries to maintain a stable environment and to be wary of change.

    Why would your brain have such an inbuilt system? Well it is for a very important reason. It is designed to keep you alive. How does that work? Well your brain “knows” that if you do anything out of the ordinary it increases the “Risks” you are taking. The more risks you take the higher chances of you dying.

    Or at least that’s the way your brain thinks.

    There is a really big problem with that. Let’s say that we know exercising is a good idea as it will improve our overall health. The thing is all your homeostatic brain sees that as not a good idea it says to itself RISK so it will do everything in its power to stop you from making that change. It will literally throw thoughts into your mind about why it is not a good idea and why you should avoid making the change.

    It kind of sucks doesn’t it.

    This doesn’t just happen for physical things, let’s say we want to start a business, get a new job, end a bad relationship, start eating healthy food? All these are subject to the same scrutiny.

    So every time you are looking to make a change you have to fight that part of your brain.

    So what can you do about this well most people try and use will power to get past this. The thing is what most people don’t know is that will power is in limited supply within us all. And to be honest if you are a regular person you really don’t get that much of it.

    Certainly not enough in most people to make big changes. That is why virtually all New Years resolutions go out of the window within a couple of days from the start of the year.

    Well if you have not got enough will power to get you through it what have we got left. Well we have a few things. One is the BIG DECISION.

    If you make a decision in your mind, one that is absolute, and without question, somehow your mind knows it. This can’t be a wishy washy decision or a hope or an i’d like to decision this is an absolute deciding. Somehow this cuts through the homeostatic gatekeeper and gets taken on board.

    Most of the time these come from rock bottom. They come in the form of a sort of Never Again moment.

    They can come from a good place but that involves building so much positive emotion around the idea that it literally gouges a new neural pathway in your brain. Most of us don’t have the inclination for such practice.

    So unless you are in the depths of despair the big decision may be out of your reach.

    So what else is left? Well we have auto suggestion, affirmation and incantation. Which deal with repetition of chosen words or phrases that slowly change your thinking over time. The latter can be especially effective as it adds the emotional component to it, which your brain takes special attention to, as it (your brain) operates in an emotional capacity. Also we tend to become what we think about most of the time. So hey don’t dismiss this approach it can work for you.

    That said most of us don’t have the discipline to start such a committed routine.

    So what have we got left. Well I will tell you….. Tiny changes and trickery.

    So like i say when you try and make a big change your brain says to itself “forget that” or words to that effect, and does what it can to throw a spanner in the works.

    Aha so if we have the intention to make big changes but don’t want to scare our brain what can we do. Well we can go all psychological stealth ninja on our brain that’s what.

    So how do we do that. Well we take the big change and we break it down to it’s smallest component.

    Let’s say that you decided to get healthy and you thought that the best way to do that was to join a gym and commit to going 4 times a week first thing in the morning. Your brain panics, throws up a million ideas why that is not a good idea, and that is not the person you, are after all we’ve never even done any exercise in years. The plan is scuppered before it begins.

    So what can we do? Well we just do something small to start. Let’s say that you there is something that you do consistently each day. It could be anything taking a shower, brushing your teeth or putting the kettle on for your morning coffee. We will use the latter as an example.

    Here is what you do. You put the kettle on and as it is starting to boil you drop to the floor and do just one push up. No more, just the one! You get up and give yourself a fist pump. (The fist pump is important, new habits love positive rewards/reinforcement) Actually it does not have to be a fist pump it can be any reward (maybe chocolate) but you must reward yourself in some way.

    That’s it your done! Do this for a couple of days and then if you like, start adding one more push up each day. If you like after a while do this every time you put on the kettle. Then maybe add one extra exercise a squat maybe or a jumping jack (star jump). Do this slowly.

    Then before you know it your mind starts to get the message that you are a person who exercises. Then maybe you decide to go to the gym once a week not 4 times just once (your brain thinks, “ok, I do some exercise the gym is not that big a stretch!”) Do that for a couple of weeks. Your mind then thinks to itself and says to it’s self “I really am a person who goes to the gym.” Add one more session each week over a period of time. Your brain will readily accept this.

    This is how you sneak up on your brain to make lasting change.

    This works for virtually any area of your life. Just think of the change you want to make break it down to its smallest component. Attach that to an existing habit. Reward yourself. Add small increments. Simples!

    I also like to use this sentence as I’m making changes, it is amusing to me and it makes the thought of change easier in my mind. Give it a try here it is.

    “I’m ready for an upgrade!”

    For some reason we associate upgrades as a reward and not a change, so your mind let’s it slip through.

    So that’s how you can easily make a big change without the hardship and failure. I hope you try this.

    Snowy

  • Why Your Fantasies Can Make You Miserable!

    Why Your Fantasies Can Make You Miserable!

    When I was young I always wanted to be the richest man in Wales (I come from there! If you don’t know where that is, it is the country next to england look it up!)

    In fact I should say that I was totally convinced that I would become said richest man.

    Now that does not mean much unless you know what it takes to be the richest man in Wales. As we speak the two richest Welsh People according to The Sunday Times Rich List are

    Sir Michael Moritz (Sequoia Capital) £1.6 Billion

    Sir Terry Matthews (Newbridge Networks, Celtic Manor) £1.19 Billion.

    So I can feel you asking how am I doing? Well I will tell you I am fucking light years away. Light years I tell you.

    If I compare myself to my fantasy aspirations I’m a total and utter failure. An embarrassment to myself, my family and the Shaolin Temple. In fact I should be apologising to anyone who ever set a goal, to everyone for my very existence and all those who have ever helped me taught me or given me the time of day.

    Does that seem a little strong?

    Well the thing is this, this is how most of us treat ourselves. We compare ourselves to our idols, (Rockstars, Film Stars, Celebrities, Business Leaders even Spiritual Leaders) and we fall so far short of them. Jeez that’s depressing.

    Why oh Why oh Why can’t i be more like the people I admire? Life is so bloody unfair!!!!

    I’m definitely not the only person doing this not so long ago a guy I know asked me if I was upset that I had not achieved as much as Elon Musk (He owns Space X the first commercially successful private space enterprise. Not only that but he founded PayPal and also Tesla Motors) after all we are virtually the same age. Holy Cow. Look how far I am from the mark!

    So does this mean it is bad to aspire to anything for fear of falling short and being a failure?

    Hmm I think that is a good question.

    Buddha said words to the effect of “All suffering is created through desire!” So maybe we should give up on the idea of betterment.

    Or should we?

    Well maybe we should ask a better question.

    How about “How can we feel good about the pursuit of our goals without being reliant on the outcome?”

    Thus far the best definition of success I have ever heard came from Jim Rohn. He described it like this.

    “The progressive realisation of a worthy goal or ideal.”

    You notice there was nothing about completion in the sentence.

    Hey but that still may leave some of us falling short.

    Let’s get a little bit more scientific with this and let’s make a measure that is a little bit more concrete.

    Firstly we are going to do a little thought experiment.

    Have you ever looked at the horizon? Yep we all have.

    Have you ever traveled to the horizon? No you can’t! Why not? Because the horizon is not a real place, it is just our brains way of helping us deal with distance and geography. It is a trick of the mind and certainly not real. Agreed? Good!

    If as a traveler you had to judge your success by how well you were in getting to the horizon you would be leading yourself down a very miserable path.

    Ok this helps us with the second part of this.

    We all have unrealistic ideas of how we would like our lives to be. You know when everything is perfect you have everything you want things life fame, fortune, glory, the big house, the Ferrari, the Yacht and the private jet. You have everything you ever wanted right?

    (Some people get this and they are still not happy) But not you, you’d be over the moon right? The thing with fantasies is that they are always a moving goal post. That’s why some celebrities who seem to have it all are miserable because the posts always move. They are just like chasing the horizon.

    Crikey Snowy you really are depressing me!!! Throw me a bone man for goodness sake!

    OK so here is the bone and here is how you win the game.

    First we have to realise that our fantasies are just like the horizon but instead of geography this is how our brain deals with time! Please take a moment to get the implications of that sentence.

    Second, we have to look at three points.

    1. Our fantasy life (or if you prefer, your compelling goals) We will call this Fantasy 1 (F1 for short)
    2. Where we are right now! We will call this Reality 1 (R1 for short)
    3. Where we have come from (our journey thus far) We will call this Starting point 1 (S1 for short)
    S1 —————————— R1 ——————————————————————— F1
    All pain comes from comparing yourself to F1 when you are standing at R1.

    All pleasure comes from pursuing F1 but looking back from R1 to S1 and enjoying the journey and how far you’ve come.

    So clearly I’m not the richest man in Wales (yet) but I am happy where I am and how far I’ve come, and I am still looking to the future with optimism. And well to be truthful by most peoples standards I’m doing much better than OK.

    Each day is a win because I get a little bit closer to my fantasy and travel a little further from where I have come.

    My friend Julian has tattooed on his arms the words Journey and Destination when I asked once asked him about them he told me that there was no difference in either word, he said “The journey is the destination!”
    Snowy

     

    Picture courtesy of the legend Julian Castaldi (c)

  • I Will Have My Vengeance! In This Life Or The Next!

    Sorry, this article is all about being great has no relevance to the title. So I know that this sounds a bit like bait and switch but if you came here looking for vengeance then your shit out of luck. If you came to this looking for greatness then read on.

    I want to be the best person I can be. That is a sentiment that we can pretty much all get on board with.

    The problem is, that usually in order to be our ideal self we need an objective measure of just exactly that means.

    For the most part we have no real clarity on what a fully self actualised person looks like. After all we are bombarded from all sorts of directions as to what “success” should look like.

    From pop stars, movie stars and other celebrities to business moguls and spiritual leaders.

    So how do we compare and how do we stack up? You see it’s a hard comparison.

    Each of the groups often have quite different individual characteristics, so there is no real way to tell which area we need to improve.

    Often we start to break down this idea by making individual goals for each area of our personal self.

    They could be physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, creativity etc.

    Ok that may be a start, and for many people that works. Sometimes isolation of a particular area gives us clues.

    But what if we wanted a more complete measure of what we think we should look like?

    There have been people from history who have been held up as examples to us all. People like Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tsu from the spiritual realms. We also have the great military leaders like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Ghengis Khan. Hey lets not forget the creatives like Leonardo Da Vinci, Mozart or Shakespeare. Or should we just go for the pure intellects like Newton, Einstein or Hawking.

    See it is a tough ask to find one person who embodies everything.

    For years I used to have an imaginary master mind group (I got the idea from Napoleon Hill’s book Think And Grow Rich) it contained many different people who I believed were the embodiment of a characteristic I thought that I needed in order to become successful.

    (If you have not read TAGR then you certainly should. Many of the most successful of people site it as the singularly most important book they read when it comes to success. The thing is the internal mastermind group idea was the one idea from it that I found the most useful. Surprisingly, I have never met one other person who has ever used that idea… Go figure!)

    Anyway I read countless biographies trying to find my guy, the person who I thought embodies all I want to be. Not one person stood out from the crowd, a few got close but each and every one fell short in some way.

    Then I read “The Memoirs of Marcus Aurelius” and I found my guy!!!

    By the way it was not Marcus Aurelius himself, great man though he may have been. It was one of the people in the book he described.

    Have you seen the film Gladiator with Russell Crowe? I’m sure you have it is a great film. Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris) puts an appearance at the start. He is the one killed by Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix).

    The funny thing is that what most people don’t know is that Maximus was based on a real historical character. His story in the film is fictionalised but he really did live. And believe it or not he was my guy.

    Not the film version but the version that Marcus Aurelius wrote about in his memoir.

    Here is his description. Her is my model of what a self actualised human being looks like.

    “Maximus set an example of self-mastery, steadiness of purpose, and good cheer that no circumstance, not even illness, could extinguish. He combined in beautiful measure gravity with charm, and he did whatever needed to be done without making a fuss. Everyone believed what he said was what he thought and that he never acted with an intention to do harm or give offense. Nothing surprised or frightened him, and he never seemed to be in a hurry or slow to accomplish a task.

    He was neither intimidated and embarrassed on one hand, nor aggressive and suspicious on the other. So giving, forgiving, and loyal was he by nature that he appeared to be a man whose virtues were inborn rather than acquired. It is unimaginable that anyone ever felt inferior or superior around him, perhaps as a result of his pleasing sense of humour.”

    Ever since I read that description I have my model for the person I am looking to be.

    I now have my objective measure. I can compare myself to the above description and see where I live up to that description or where I am falling short. I can assess myself in each of the areas and make the adjustments and improvements as and when I am falling short. Now I have my measure.

    Have you got a measure of what greatness looks like? If not maybe you should find one.

    Maximus is my guy.

    Who knows maybe he can be yours too.

    Snowy

  • Your next thought might save your life.

    I tell you what I’ve noticed, different thoughts have different levels of power. Power to raise you up power to bring you down.

    As much as thoughts have no real depth in the physical world they have a great deal of size and weight in the mental world.

    You see everything comes to us as a thought. Try and think of something that doesn’t 🙂

    You see our day to day life is almost totally controlled by the thoughts we have. Sometimes our thoughts manifest in the real world. I’ll give you an example: try thinking about all the reasons why the world is out to get you. Things like big business never giving you an opportunity to make it for yourself, the government stealing all your money for taxes. Your boss never being grateful for the work you do. Your romantic partner never appreciating all the effort you put in. Or more mundane things like why is everything so much more expensive these days, why is there never anything good on tv. Why is this wifi so incredibly slow.

    When you get into those sort of thought patterns it is so very easy to spiral further and further down ever onwards gradually drawing closer and closer to despair.

    You see each thought within your mind has a certain level of gravity to it. It attracts to it similar thoughts making the weight of the first thought that little bit heavier and that little bit more magnetic to the next thought. On and on the weight of the thought goes getting bigger and bigger as it attaches the next thought to it. In the form of negatives this might over time look like this… Indifference to meh to grumpy to annoyed to angry to depressed to despair.

    They don’t generally happen quickly they sneak up on you like some sort of mind directed stealth ninja. And because these thoughts come gradually we never tend to notice the itty bitty changes that are taking place.

    Maybe it gets so bad that the next thought after despair leads you to the thought that there is no hope and it is better to end it all. Literally in that situation your next thought could kill you.

    See what I mean when I say thoughts have weight and power.

    So what do we do when we are starting to spiral well the logical thing would be to think of the happiest thing possible the most wonderful thing in the universe. Well, you know what from the depths of despair that may not be possible, but I’ll tell you what is possible is to choose the next best thought.

    From where you are if you ask yourself what could make my day just that tiny bit better? Who knows you may find an answer that could literally save your life. Maybe your journey starts with the thought hey maybe i will just take a couple of deep breaths. Nothing ground breaking.

    Maybe your next thought is that you say to yourself maybe i should just get up and take a stretch. Then we continue upwards with our thoughts. i know that water is good for me maybe i will have a nice cold glass. maybe i should go for a walk that always clears my head. Maybe i could go to the park I am always feel better when i look at nature. On and on we go up and up our thoughts go starting to develop a gravity all of their own.

    Then as we get back to neutral we start looking for happy thoughts. What is good in my life right now. who are the people I care about. What are the things I’m looking forward to doing. on and on up and up we go. Then we get to the 600lbs gorilla thoughts like what am I grateful for.

    For years I made the mistake of intellectualising the idea of using gratitude thoughts (no pun intended). You should heed these words and avoid that mistake. Gratitude thoughts have more gravity to them than any other thoughts with the exception of maybe love. They have power to make radical changes in your psyche and in your life.

    They are like rocket fuel to our psyche and we should reach for them as often as we can. At any point in the day be grateful for something anything. Currently I’m grateful to Apple for building a laptop for me to write these words on. I am grateful to Evernote for keeping these words safe. I’m grateful to everyone involved in getting me my coffee to me as I write this (from the farmers, the roasters, the transporters, the exchange, the grinders the packagers to the lovely barista who served it to me etc).

    There are not too many things in the world in which we get to claim absolute control of. Our thoughts are one of those things. On a side note you may think other people can affect your mood this is a mistake in thinking that many people make. I may cover this in another article. For now I will leave you with one parting thought and it is this. So wherever you are whatever you are doing reach for the next best thought (it could save your life.)

    Snowy

  • How To Meet New People Without Getting Told To F**K Off!

    So it’s really hard to meet new people these days. Especially in person.

    More and more are we relying on electronic devices to provide a digital solution to our human connection needs. And hey sometimes that is a good thing. I mean lets be fair Facebook has allowed me and everyone else to get back in touch and stay connected to friends from the past. People who we would no longer have a method to reach if it wasn’t for them. They also allow communication and exchange with people who would other wise be separated by distance to keep updated with their comings and goings.

    We see pictures and status updates of what is going on with their life. Oh and if we are really enthused by that we can say what the hell and give them a like. Maybe if we are particularly moved we can throw in the occasional comment (if like me mostly sarcasm or some for of derogatory comment.)

    But with the advent of this, communication real human communication is being lost.

    We now no longer connect with people we exchange information. You see there is a ladder of communication and on its lowest rung lies exchange. Only slightly higher up the ladder comes connection. Now connection is not bad when it comes to communication the fact of the matter is that connection is great we all love to connect yet we are getting further and further away from that.

    With the advent of SMS/text messaging, Twitters” 140 characters and countless other digital devices, our method of communication has been limited to an exchange of ideas and thoughts in short format.

    This in and of itself sounds fine, but the reality is that it verbally but more importantly humanly it isolates us from the rest of our fellow earth dwellers.

    I have a question, and it is this. How often do you speak to strangers? Actually, when was the last time you spoke to a stranger?

    Let’s take this a little further, when was the last time you gave a stranger a simple greeting like “hello” or ‘Good morning”?

    If you are one of the bold people who says I do that all the time, then ask yourself when was the last time you tried to find out from a stranger what made them unique and special?

    A number of years ago the author Neil Strauss wrote quite a controversial book called “The Game” about an underground society of pick up artists. The book introduced the masses to many concepts of how it is possible for men to systematically and strategically have a process to meet connect and then seduce women. Interesting stuff.

    Within the book a concept was introduced called “approach anxiety”. What it is is as the name suggests is an uncomfortable feeling/fear (even dread) at the thought of walking up to an attractive woman, with the view of trying to get to know her and then effectively chat her up.

    They gave evolutionary reasons for this about how if we got it wrong we would be ostracized from our tribe and could likely die because of this etc.

    I was familiar with the feeling, if in small doses, and sort of understood the reason why (after all hot women are scary and could probably beat you in a fist fight).

    At the time I assumed that approach anxiety was confined only within the terms of meeting and connecting to people of the opposite sex who you had romantic aspirations with.

    However, this now appears to me to be not true.

    More and more do I see this phenomenon happening with every day people. We are losing the ability to talk to other people in general.

    I know you may be thinking “so what” but i will tell you why this is important. In business there is an expression “your network is your net worth”. OK so you don’t care about business! So how does it effect your everyday life.

    Well Anthony Robbins the well known peak performance strategist has stated you will become the average of the 5 people you spend time with.

    What happens if the only people in your life are total dipshits and all they do is drag you down?

    If you have no way to meet new people your screwed.

    Never mind that more than anything else people are what most effect the quality of your life.

    In fact on a side note the quickest way i know to change your lot in life for the better, is to start to surround yourself with people who you admire and inspire you.

    If you can’t speak to these people how on earth are you going to bring them into your life.

    So if you feel that you are having trouble meeting new people start to exercise your conversational skills.

    You can start small and work up. Smile at a stranger until you get one to smile back.

    Say “Hello’ to a stranger until you get a hello back.

    Ask a stranger how their day is going until you get a reply. Then hey tell them about your day.

    Build on this until you get to the point where you get good at conversation. (I will write more on the art of conversation at a later stage but for now you should practice the building blocks)

    Once you get good at talking to strangers you will become more and more socially confident which makes you more socially attractive. People will gravitate towards you and want to be in your company.

    As other peoples social skills decline through technology your skills with ascend through practice and repetition. As you become better and this you will become a leader of men/women, after all we naturally gravitate to people with charisma and charm and that is what you will attain by this process.

    So before I go I want to leave you with a poem i read as a very young man. It changed my life for the better all those years ago without ever realising it. I would suggest you read it often and adopt the sentiments contained within it. So here it is from Walt Whitman.

    To You

    STRANGER! if you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me?
    And why should I not speak to you?
    Have fun talking to people. Practice every day.

    Snowy

  • You, Your Life And Winning The Kobayashi Maru!

    If you are like most people then the game of life is unwinable. Harsh but True. It’s the Kobayashi Maru.If you are unfamiliar with the Kobayashi Maru well it’s an idea from the StarTrek universe. For the non Sci-fi folk bear with me as the idea is more important than where the idea arrives from.
    Ok so the Kobayashi Maru is an unwinable simulation taught to all would be star ship captains. In brief it works like this there is a ship. The aforementioned Kobayashi Maru. It is in enemy space and has broken down. If you leave it there all the crew will die. If you try and rescue it you will die. Unwinable!
    However, one captain… James T Kirk found a way to beat it. I will tell you how a little later.

    For now that’s where we are at, the game of life = Unwinable.

    I know, I know some people clearly are winning the game of life! They have fame, fortune and glory!

    But for most people they as Theroux quoted live lives of quiet desperation and go to their grave with their song still in them.

    So why does this happen. Well I have a few theories but the main one is that they take bad advice from well meaning people. People like friends, family, teachers and colleagues.

    So what sort of advice keeps you trapped in an unwinable game.

    Work hard in school/University and then get a good job.

    It is better to have someone than be alone.

    Starting your own business is risky.

    Get a job first and you can do what you love later.

    Your own home is an asset.

    Think about this how many people do you know who take this advice?

    Now ask how many of them are happy and are winning the game of life?

    Let me just drive this home. How many out of 100 put a number on it.

    People hate their jobs, stuck in a rut, hate their boss. Hate there partner/spouse, getting divorced. No money, living pay check to paycheck, in debt, massive mortgage hanging over their heads. Looking forward to that two weeks a year when they get to go on a second rate holiday and thinking that it is the bees knees.

    So how many out of the 100?

    It’s not pretty is it!

    So how do we win the Kobayashi Maru?

    Well we do what Captain Kirk did we cheat!

    We break the conventional rules and make our own.

    Kirk reprogrammed the simulation in order to win!

    We are going to do the same with the game of life. We will do this in a systematic way.

    We have a three step plan…

    First,  we are going to learn the rules of the game.

    Second, we are going to play better than the rules.

    Third, we will make our own rules.

    Simple!

    This is where TheSnowHow comes in. We will look to show you just how the game is played. Then show you how to build your skill to beat the game. Then make your own game a game you can win. This will come though observations of what it really take to win the game of life in all its different areas. Things like health, wealth, business, freedom, psychology, success and real happiness.

    We will upgrade your thinking, your knowledge, your performance and your understanding of what it takes to be able to take your life by the scruff of the neck and lift yourself out of the game that other people want to force upon you and go on to be able to win your game.

    If that sounds like something that appeals to you then keep reading. You are just about to swallow the “Red Pill” and see how deep the rabbit hole goes!

    More importantly it should allow you to live long and prosper!

    Snowy.