Xamuel.com

There are two types of knowing: emotional knowledge and intellectual knowledge. The two can overlap, but the overlap is surprisingly small. We know something intellectually when we’ve read it or heard it or been taught it from a reputable source. Knowing something intellectually, you can answer questions about it on a quiz. You have an [...]

What happens when an unstoppable force hits an immovable object? The answer is, it depends whether you’re an orthodox objectolic or a born-again forcestant. Belief is the most powerful agent in the natural universe. It can out-move the unstoppable force and dislodge the immovable object. This is because of the Universal Law of Belief, which [...]

When you look at the glass and say it’s half full, that’s an example of an Abundance Mentality. This is in contrast with the opposite, the Scarcity Mentality, through which lens one would call the glass half-empty. Optimism and pessimism. I was a pessimist for most of my childhood, and it did nothing but make [...]

There is a great schism dividing the personal-development movement. On the one hand there are gurus like Anthony Robbins who take a more mentalist approach, advocating all sorts of thought-based techniques like positive affirmations. On the other, there are people like Eckhart Tolle who tell us we should minimize our thoughts as much as possible, [...]

The past few days, my girlfriend and I have been driving all around Illinois, and the Garmin GPS system in the car (a rental) has been a real lifesaver, but at the same time it’s reminded me once again of that old maxim of Korzybski: “The Map is not the Territory”. If you’ve never taken [...]

In neurolinguistic programming, there are a pair of related concepts called toward frames and away frames. Here “frame” is etymologically short for “frame of mind”. In the context of NLP, the term can take on some additional meaning, but that’s not necessary to understand the concepts in question. Consider the two statements, “I want to [...]

The Reticular Activation System (RAS) is a concept introduced in Tony Robbins’ “Awaken the Giant Within”. It’s not to be confused with the “Reticular Activating System”, the part of the brain involved in arousal and motivation in mammals– though the two are certainly related to each other. The RAS introduced by Robbins is part of [...]

I was fortunate to discover positive affirmations at a young age. When I was a youngster, I went through a phase where I was interested in psychic power development. Back then, the Internet was just a collection of crappy geocities sites (people still talked about the Gopher protocol and used BBS’s as their internet service [...]

You know how it feels when everything’s going your way, when you’re “in the zone” or “in state”? A friend and I have been sharing an ongoing dialog about how to feel that all the time. The web is full of exercises for getting in state. Like pumping your fist and shouting “YES!” or “LEVEL [...]

They say people judge you on your vocabulary, and it’s true, but it’s misleading. People hear that saying and they translate it as, “need bigger words”. In fact, this is the basis for a whole industry of “increase your vocabulary” products. Truth is, it’s better to know less words, and know them well. Of course, [...]