How to REALLY use Twitter, an interview with Chamillionaire

From rapping to tweeting, this is a great interview where multi-platinum selling rap artist and entrepreneur
Chamillionaire shares his insights into how to successfully use Twitter.

The future of business, the freemium business model. Chris Anderson talks about his book FREE: The Future of a Radical price

Chris Anderson talking about his book “FREE: The Future of a Radical price”, if you’re putting your attention on building a business and you want it to be successful you need to pay attention to Chris Anderson, this is a great video, enjoy :-)

Why was US President Barack Obama awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize?

The Nobel Committee said he won it for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples”

Under the previous US President George Bush the world seems to have been on an increasingly nightmare like path towards greater terrorism and fear. In business they say the company is a reflection of it’s leader, let’s hope the US and the rest of the world can be a reflection of a US President Nobel laureate on a path to peace and prosperity for us all. 

So why is President Obama making the difference that President Bush couldn’t with all his military might?

My teacher and mentor leadership expert Dr. Joseph Riggio Ph.D. would no doubt talk about the Graves values system and that Bush was the typical Graves 5 who valued business above all while Obama is the evolution to Graves 6 who values community and agreement understanding that you can’t win if it’d just you that wins. The only real win is the win win situation where everybody wins.

It’s good to have a hero back as the leader of the western world. Just remember leaders are human just like you and me, so why not think how can you extend the peace yourself? How can you also be a hero both for yourself, your family and your country. That’s what the world needs. 

How do you make success inevitable?

Many clients that I see think they know what they want but don’t know how to get it. Or think it’s impossible that they could achieve what they dream about achieving.

“That’s just not me.” is the phrase I regularly hear.

It seems so many many people have accepted the limitation for themselves, that only certain people can be successful. And the criteria for that success is they need to have been born with the money, good looks or ability to go and do the things required which has now made them into the star or celebrity that they are.

The sad fact is that if you believe this you are right.

But if you also don’t believe this you are right.

I’m not talking about the Law of Attraction here and that if you just wish or have faith you’ll get what you place your attention on. That’s the kind of thinking that keeps people stuck in their limitations and not succeeding with the stimulation of the sweetness of feeling good about themselves. But that temporary high doesn’t last or translate into lasting success.

The bible says, God helps those who help themselves.

You help yourself by doing the work necessary to get the success you want. You plant seeds in the ground to grow food to feed yourself and your family.

Yet most people want the harvest before they’ve done the work of planting.

My teacher and mentor Dr. Joseph Riggio Ph.D has written about how people give up on themselves by failing to learn to think for themselves. I encourage you to read his blog post “Rethinking the Value of Language”. And the scary insidious part of this is that most people believe they can think critically, they know they are right.

This is the single thing that limits most people from getting the success they want, that they believe they are right. By thinking this they’ve closed their minds to the possibility of something more.

When clients leave a session with me they now know they can have what before they thought was impossible and that it’s just a question of doing the work necessary to achieve that. Or they’ve realised that they just don’t want to be that person who’s going to do that work which is just as valuable because now other things are possible for them.

The secret of how you make success inevitable is it’s about building from a foundation that will sustain and support you getting to where you want to go. Structural Wellformedness as Dr. Joseph Riggio Ph.D. would say.

Love makes us think creatively, sex makes us think analytically

Jens Förster, Kai Epstude, and Amina Özelsel at the University of Amsterdam have demonstrated that love makes us think differently in that it triggers global processing, which in turn promotes creative thinking and interferes with analytic thinking. Thinking about sex, however, has the opposite effect: it triggers local processing, which in turn promotes analytic thinking and interferes with creativity. 

“One of the most noteworthy implications of these experiments is that love and sex don’t simply influence the way we think about the people we love or desire. Instead, they influence the way we think about everything.”

From the latest issue of Scientific American: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-falling-in-love-make

Are you a lover? If you are you’ll be more creative so will more likely get what you want, than if you just want sex. Sounds like Joseph’s distinction in the MythoSelf process between excitatory and inhibitory.

How I'm living beyond the singularity now.

There’s a great article by Jamais Cascio writing on Fast Company.com on the technosocial nature of the singlarity here: http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/jamais-cascio/open-future/singularities-and-society 
 
And an equally interesting response to the article by Michael Anisimov here: http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2009/09/response-to-jamais-cascio-on-the-singularity-and-society/

While I’m perhaps in danger of adding more confusion to what ‘Singularity’ means I’m very aware that I’m not waiting for the singularity to happen because for me is has already happened in that I’ve made an ontological shift, a transformation in being from who I used to be to who I am now. AND looking back I’m now living in a different world to where most people are. OK so I don’t have all the cool technological toys that the technological singularity promises, or maybe I do, I truly love my iPhone 3GS largely because I get it’s NOT a phone, it’s a platform, in just the same way a desktop computer or a laptop computer is a platform. And it’s evolving, there’s lots of rumours of the bigger version Apple will be announcing shortly. And I’ve evolved in my use from desktop computer, to laptop computer to now a larger portion of the time I mostly just have my iPhone.

The singularity is a point of transformation. And the point of transformation that most people don’t get when they say they want transformation is that you can’t know from before what’s going to happen. If you did it wouldn’t be transformation it would be translation.

So for me looking back post my singularity. Part of this misconception or misperception is it’s like how many people think of enlightenment, you get it and like WOW you have everything, understand everything and that’s it.

I used to want Eckhart Tolle’s Power of NOW, now I’m here in the NOW I wonder what all the fuss is about, is this enlightenment? If so I’m a bit disappointed - where is the constant orgasmic bliss :-)?

But looking back it’s more like I’ve lost my innocence. Stepped out of Eden so to speak or is it realised that this is Eden. Gotten rid of the delusions, or become more structurally well-formed as my teacher and mentor Dr. Joseph Riggio Ph.D. might say.

Or even been reborn.

So now it’s time to start again. But starting from a different position, treasuring the scars of knowledge I’ve paid for. I’ve built a foundation that I can truly build something worthwhile from. Which is what most people fail to do, go down deep into themselves and build the foundation within themselves that guarantees success, (with the Chinese martial arts call nei gung).

No matter how much technology evolves, and I enjoyed the recent Bruce Willis film Surrogates, where the story is that people ‘wear’ remote controlled robot bodies that feel and sense just as human bodies do but you can design your body the way you’d design your clothes. But that is just a projection on how people think today, just translation not transformation. 

What limits people is how they think, and I don’t think artificial augmentation (more brain power) will change the way you think. Because it’s how you do that thinking. It’s the old old computer phrase “garbage in garbage out” and most people spend all their time feeding themselves with garbage representations (that’s what television is, representations of reality that other people have chosen for you to think) and unless you develop the critical faculties and make the decision to choose what you input it’s like eating at McDonalds everyday and it wont super-size your brain. And the progress of technology just gives bigger and better representations, better picture, better sound, but it’ll never make a better you because you have to decide that for yourself.

So how are you evolving, will there be a YOU 2.0?

If you’re in New York this coming weekend there is the Singlarity Summit, details are here: http://www.Singularitysummit.com/

Or if you’re in the UK this coming weekend there’s Charles Moore’s MythoSelf Experience weekend where as an added bonus there’s the lovely Piernicola De Maria (a genuine Italian love god).

The 237 reasons why women have sex

According to a new book by a clinical psychologist and an evolutionary psychologist there are 237 reasons why women have sex. Here’s the article from yesterdays Guardian newspaper telling you more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/sep/28/sex-women-relationships-tanya-gold

And I thought it was as simple as I wrote the other day, the primary distinction being either excitatory or inhibitory…

We are hard-wired to create the future, be it good or bad.

The future you create depends on what Joseph calls the ‘Primary distinction’ (whether you’re in the excitatory or inhibitory). Chris Anderson whose book “FREE - the Future of a Radical Price” is brilliant imho, wrote the blog post below which I think is both enlightening and frightening at the same time because it illustrates that most people aren’t tracking for the implication of their actions through time. Which is probably no surprise to most of you reading this because you get that’s a large part of the reason we’re in the mess we’re in.

One of the benefits of learning the MythoSelf® process is that it is an embodied ethical decision making process, so you’re tracking for what you want in a well-formed way. But tracking according to the Scope of Decision™ model the implication of your actions through both time and space.

This is from Chris Anderson’s blog at: http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2009/09/is-this-how-the-singularity-happens.html

Is this how the singularity happens?

This was one of those freaky moments when the future sneaks up and smacks you. I was on a plane earlier this week and took a break from work to watch the movie while they served dinner. It was Terminator Salvation, which once again tells us what happens when Skynet becomes self-aware and the machines take over. Then they cleared dinner, and I opened my laptop again and resumed work where I left off: programming unmanned aerial vehicles in RobotC.

Which is exactly, of course, how Skynet becomes self-aware. Have I learned nothing?!!

Seriously, it was a kinda weird moment. After all, if we ever do hit a singularity when the collective ability of machines (I won’t use the word “intelligence”, since we neither really know what that means, nor are we likely to recognize it in machines) exceed that of humans, it will because of lots of people like me doing just what I was doing.

And yet, I couldn’t imagine not doing it. I was programming UAVs in RobotC because I can—the technological opportunity was in front of me and I couldn’t resist taking it. Indeed, I was working rather than watching the rest of the movie because I was keen to finish the project faster, so nobody could beat me to it. My competitive drive was pushing to me to do what was possible, mostly just because it was possible and hadn’t been done yet.

In a sense, I couldn’t help myself. We are innovative animals. If something can be invented, we feel compelled to invent it. If I don’t do it, someone else will. That which can be invented, must be. It almost doesn’t matter how useful it will be or even if it might be dangerous. Matches must be struck, just to watch them burn.

I wondered if the inventors of the atomic bomb felt the same way. Atoms can fuse, so let’s fuse them. Chain reactions can take place, so let’s start one. They can happen faster with the right materials and conditions, so let’s create them. And so on. Each step of the way is just grabbing the natural opportunity in front of us, but the end result is a weapon of mass destruction.

Of course with the atomic bomb, it was eventually clear that the next step would lead to a terrifying weapon and wise minds considered whether or not to take that step (they decided to do so because they knew that others would get there soon, and with perhaps worse consequences).

But in the case of “Skynet becoming self-aware” (yes, I know that’s just a movie, but indulge me for the sake of the thought experiment), would that threshold be as clear?

Will it come someday with some guy like me fixing the last bug in his code and pressing compile? Will he even know what he has done? Or will it be more gradual, with loads of us building it bit by bit, with no single moment, technology or decision marking the point where we crossed the line?

Maybe that day will never come. But it stopped me in my tracks for a few minutes as I reflected on how amoral invention is. Technology wants to be invented and we are almost powerless to stop it. We are hard-wired to create the future, be it good or bad. Invention is its own master.

And then I went back to programming the robot. After all if I don’t make airplanes self-aware someone else will. And I can’t let them get the glory!

(Diagram of the real Skynet from the BBC.)

Catch Me If You Can (and they did).

On the subject of teenagers doing extraordinary things, some of you will remember the Leonardo DiCapri film Catch Me If You Can about Frank Abagnale Jr. who between the ages of 16 and 21 posed as an airline pilot, a lawyer, a college professor and a paediatrician, fraudulently earning millions of dollars. Well in todays Times newspaper an unnamed 17 year old has been caught up to the same kind of thing, it’s a great story that shows the intelligence and enthusiasm of what some young men and women can do. Of course if he’d been on Des’s Empowered Life for Teens he’d be building from structural wellformedness or in other worlds building a future that works rather than moving in the other direction.

Here’s the story from the London Times: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article6719191.ece

And here’s Des’s HeroPath website: http://www.heropath.co.uk/cms/ The next Empowered Life for Teens Workshop is on the 11-13th September in Harpenden, call Des for more details on 01923 267 107

Smoking' with Joe no.2

Another great video from Joseph:

July 4th is Interdependence day in the UK

To celebrate interdependence day in the UK and thank the founding father of the MythoSelf Dr. Joseph Riggio we’re offering you FREE FACILITATION for this day only at a venue just outside central London (approx 50-60 minutes from London Victoria).

In the spirit of the 4th of July celebration in the US we’re donating our time free of charge to give you the opportunity to join the party that is life LIVED IN THE EXCITATORY, the gift of the MythoSelf process. You’ll be stuffed like a turkey full of the realisation that ANYTHING is possible and with all the trimmings, taking you where your problems are not we will cook you to perfection, the perfection of living a life well lived where you get what you want by being who you want to be.

Step up and declare your interdependence, the UK Mytho crew are waiting to pounce on you.

Time: 11am to 3pm Saturday 4th of July
Where: We’re taking over a museum in Horsham, Sussex. (So no fondling the exhibits please).

Contact me by email to reserve one of the strictly limited places, michaelroach@mac.com and I’ll send you details of exactly how to get to where you want to go.

Michael Roach
http://www.PredatoryEnlightenment.com


PS. Just in case you’re wondering WHY INTERDEPENDENCE? It’s the evolutionary move you need to make from dependence where you just get told what to do, to independence where you think you’re free, and then to interdependence where other people want to help you get what you want because of who you are.

PPS. A special message for any Americans reading, we guarantee you’ll have so much fun, so much TRANSFORMATIONAL fun that you’ll want to rejoin Great Britain… :-)

Smokin' with Joe

Great new video from Joseph Riggio: Smokin’ with Joe:

Why Michael Jackson is dead at 50 and why talent is not enough

If you looked up talent in the dictionary you’d expect to see a picture of Michael Jackson. I can think of few people more naturally talented who have developed their talent with hard work into such a skilled and beautiful expression of their art. Yet you can’t help but to have been exposed to the news storied about the troubles Michael has had for quite a long time now. Even though he once had an extraordinary amount of money and with such extraordinary talent which he had spent years refining and developing how could things go so wrong?

The answer is simple it’s what my mentor and teacher Dr. Joseph Riggio calls Structural Illformedness and it’s what the workshop Patterns of Personal Transformation in July is about, and it’s the secret of how successful people not just make themselves successful but it’s how they maintain that success through time. In his book Towards a Theory of Transpersonal Decision-Making in Human-Systems: A Neurolinguistically-Modeled Phenomenography Joseph talks about the transpersonal nature of decision making and how his proprietary models the MythoSelf process® and the Scope of Decision™ model show how to establish this structural wellformedness and use it in making decisions in your life.

Put simply it’s the foundation that you need to get right before you build the empire on top. Shaky or badly built foundations and at some point it all ends in tears.

But most people don’t get how to build foundations that will not only enable success but sustain that success through time. The magic is in including the transpersonal consideration and it’s what Joseph’s model the MythoSelf process teaches people, how to access a way of being where literally anything is possible and then how to use that as the foundation of building a life that works.

I love watching shows like Britain’s Got Talent or America’s Got Talent because it reminds us that among the ordinary people like you and me there are people with such gifts of extraordinary talent perhaps the next Michael Jackson I just wish they would take advantage of the technology that’s available today. Any good architect knows that unless you build a good foundation you can’t reach the heights of success and sustain that success. Take advantage of what the Architect and designer of the MythoSelf process Dr. Joseph Riggio offers and at the minimum you’ll live a happy life and anything more than that will truly be a blessing.

What use are the primal drivers?

A post to Daryl on the MythoSelf list:

What use are the primal drivers?

It’s the SECRET for how you get people to take action, to get the results they want.

If I said most coaching and consulting doesn’t work you’d think that was hype. But you want to understand what most peoples expectations are. They don’t expect transformation. They want to not have their problem or be somewhere other than where they currently are. They’ve also been falsely led to believe that by understanding the problem in more detail they can then do what’s necessary to not have it or when they have sufficient data that will tell them how to get to where they want to go.

Most coaches, consultants, or therapists have a skillset for getting their client more information, more understanding which gives a temporary feeling of satisfaction which the client likes and often wants more of which a coach, consultant, therapist can like a parasite make use of… But this relationship isn’t sustainable which is why most coaches don’t make a good living they effectively kill their clients off.

The magic of Joseph’s EPC2 coaching and consulting is it’s purely generative, the reason why you want to be operating aesthetically is you’re changing the filter through which you have your experience.

MOST PEOPLE ARE NEVER SATISFIED BY WHAT THEY DO NO MATTER HOW GOOD, THEY LIVE STRIVING FOR SOMETHING THEY CAN’T QUITE SEE, TOUCH, OR FEEL AND THEY END UP TELLING THEMSELVES IT DOESN’T EXIST, AND SO LIVE LIVES OF QUIET DESPERATION PALE SHADOWS OF WHAT COULD BE MAGNIFICENT, FULL, RICH, JUCY AND THOROUGHLY SATISFIED.

This is what an EPC2 certified coach offers to their clients that deep satiation not of pale intellectual understanding but of embodied knowing.

Daryl you don’t teach someone how to pull the trigger before they’ve learnt how to aim. Ready, fire, aim is not what the elite sniper does instead it’s the precision of knowing you’ve hit the target before pulling the trigger. It’s why Joseph’s Beyond Elite Performance Coach training is from the live programs in July then a years worth of tele-coaching to the following June… Then you can be an assassin of limitations.

How I overcame my biggest business challenge

“How I overcame my biggest business challenge” a great entry on the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur’s blog: They say misery likes company. I think challenges like company too. As an entrepreneur you may feel that you are an island. You may believe that you are the first ever to face your challenge, but I have good news. You’re not. Many entrepreneurs have come before you, and many will after. Here are the stories that some of our TPE community wanted to share with you. You are not alone! You can read more here: http://www.toiletpaperentrepreneur.com/blog/how-i-overcame-my-big-business-challenge

Is it scary or does it fill you with hope?

A post to Peta on the MythoSelf list:

What you describe Peta sounds like Gene Rodenberry’s vision, otherwise known as Star Trek. Where it is technology that enables the abundance that makes a utopian society possible… Assuming of course that you consider Star Trek a utopian vision…

Part of the point of books like Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan is that whatever your skill at prediction, global think tank or individual soothsayer there’s just stuff you can’t predict.

The question though is, is this scary or does it fill you with hope?

Each is how you are choosing to interpret the same data.

Those that focus on the inhibitory or what isn’t working close themselves off to seeing the possibilities that are there in front of them. Those that focus on possibility find the opportunities that are there.

But the more important question is how are you participating in the future you want to be happening? If you are not participating in it’s creation, or indeed co-creation you’ve abdicated your opportunity to be part of building this future and it wont be the same without your participation. I think to some extent people choose not to evolve, choose not to enter into the possibility of making something truly profound because they think their little idea is insignificant compared to the massive changes that will happen. And those changes will be massive, but they’re built on the keystone ideas of people like you and me. Take out that keystone and all that massive possibility collapses. When you choose to enter into something with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your passion, being in the excitatory rather than the inhibitory focusing on what works the impossible becomes possible, dreams are built from the little ideas that like little seeds take root in the hearts of others, and if you don’t plant that seed nothing comes from it.

Listen to Joseph talk about his upcoming program in Denmark here: http://www.josephriggio.com/programs/entry/beyond-elite-performance/ are you moved by his eloquent description? Is your curiosity provoked to find out more? Would you like to be able to express your passion the way Joseph does? Go on I dare you, if you want to evolve yourself and make your future a future that works listen to Joseph here: http://www.josephriggio.com/programs/entry/beyond-elite-performance/ oh and he has a great new blog post as well on that same site. AND sign up on his list otherwise you wont know how to get his $47 cd for .99 cents.

To the witches out there

A post to Agnes and Taso on the Mythoself list:

I’ve found it interesting that quite a high percentage of the women I’ve met who have begun to be connected to a more empowering mythology describe themselves as witches. Not explicitly an anti-christian stance or pro-pagan but more a rejection of the cultural patriarchal bindings that limit the expression of the powerful divine feminine.

Our (western) culture which through the viral media is virtually a global culture, is a culture that sexualises a mythology of “desirable” woman as adolescent waif. A submissive, passive, victim that can only attain status by association with a strong virile male that resembles David Beckham, surface good looks but intelligence not required by either…

Women have forgotten their mythology and become victim to the enforced enculturation where it’s good to be dumb but pretty. Oh, and so have men by the way… If you don’t believe me look behind the scenes of any fashion magazine where Photoshop is the essential tool to sculpt the perfect look.

I used to do the tech stuff for fashion shows and other performances, for most models lunch is a cigarette and they’re profoundly dysfunctional because their identity is based on how they believe they look which is built from how the ‘right people’ have told them they look which is right for the camera or catwalk and has no bearing on reality.

And it’s these people who have become the replacement mythic heroines and heroes for a culture that thinks celebrity is the divine. A culture out of touch with the power that mythology holds and that you can get in touch with and embody for yourself.

So I know there are some witches on this list, how about you throw off your enchantments of invisibility and expose yourselves in all your divine femininity. 

I kneel in awe before your beauty and prostrate myself in the hope of your interest and attention… 

Note:  Actually I’m just saying the last line for the benefit of any wannabe witches. Really I’m standing here, erect, tall and proud. Knowing that you recognise the divine masculine and that Goddesses like to frolic with Gods. And it was just the Christian labelling or framing that made Goddess = witch.

By the way if you’re Christian and object to any of the above I welcome your correction (though not by inquisition) and tales of divine Christian feminine. 

Oh, and of course I would add if you want to stop being a victim of your enculturation you need to step up and become one of the elite http://www.josephriggio.com/programs/entry/beyond-elite-performance/

What's your purpose

A post to Danny on the MythoSelf list:

Watch Joseph’s video here.

Many people think they have to go and find their purpose rather than start with being the person who they want to be who by nature of being that person does what they want to do and so their purpose unfolds out of that way of being.

You’re asking an epistemological question to which I’m not giving you an epistemological answer BECAUSE the answer is ontological. Joseph says this much nicer than I do in the above video…

Want To Know The Dark Secrets Behind Monster Success? It’s Not Pretty.

There’s a great blog post by David Garfinkel on John Carlton’s blog here: http://www.john-carlton.com/2009/05/the-big-lie/

What THE SECRET really is

A reply to Taso on the MythoSelf list:

Virtually everyone interprets cost in the financial sense. So if you’re doing well you’re making a lot of money if you’re not doing well you’re in debt. This is why getting a good return for the shareholders has been seen as so good… You can screw the environment, you can screw your employees, and basically you can screw everyone as long as you get a nice fat return for your shareholders… I’m sure most of you reading this can think of examples in this paradigm where greed is seen as good, BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT SUCCESS HAS BEEN.

And for those of you who are not like this at all and want to develop yourselves so you can truly make a difference, is your path ‘let’s learn to make money then because I’m such an enlightened and good person and know so much better than those other people how things should be done I can spend that money on making worthy things happen’…?

I of course believe you completely and trust your worthy intentions… The question is will your intentions still be the same having walked this path, how much heart does this path have? Will you be enslaving your soul, selling your body, prostituting yourself to make a few more dollars to feed your ego’s addiction when the answer lies in just waking up.

Most people want to change the world starting with someone else.

If you want to know what THE SECRET really is, it’s not that once you’ve got enough self esteem, once you’ve been stroked sufficiently, once you’ve got those crucial skills, THEN you’ll have success… It’s how you become the person who can make happen what needs to happen, when you’re at cause in the world, not at the mercy of the effects of others.

It’s what Joseph talks about in Beyond Elite Performance as living on your Trajectory of Intent. It’s about transformation, it’s about composing a life where who you are brings about what you want to be happening in the world. It’s about, actually why don’t you just read Joseph’s words ‘cos he says it much better than I do here.