Your brain controls the Universe

My daughter recently mentioned that a scientist visiting her 1st grade classroom told the students that their brain power couldn’t move the physical world.

I disagree.

Yes, the common concept of telekinesis is unproven. Science has not been able to measure any sort of change to large physical items when a person or group concentrates on that item.

Balls don’t roll. Coins don’t flip.

Those aren’t the changes that an average brain can influence…

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Magical Thinking: Bombarded with Truth

11:05am Tuesday

Good day! I’m following up on some client phone calls this morning while my kids hang out with my mother-in-law.

Sunday evening, she and I talked late into the night about the coronavirus, a possible return of students to schools in the fall, and —because everything is political these days— the politics of it all.

One thing she brought up was Trump’s recent tweet that we’re getting closer to a vaccine.

“It’s magical thinking,” she said, to raise people’s expectations when there’s no evidence to support it. “Trump does this all the time. He makes things up that just aren’t true.”

Truth, however, isn’t as apparent and unchanging as we’d like to believe.

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Different Realities — Which Do You Live In?

11:05 pm

Saint Paul, Minnesota

Years ago, when I first started reading and writing about persuasion, I found myself moving further to the political right. Or, perhaps, further from the current political left.

Learning about the tools and techniques of persuasion, I could see the manipulation of the population and how easily our energy is directed.

Persuasion, at its core, is getting someone to see the benefits of an action or a believe, and to change their behavior ‘for the better’ because of it.

Manipulation, on the other hand, benefits the manipulator but not the manipulated. Rioting, anyone?

When you’re the first to mention an idea, you “win” that mind space. This is the purpose of a Blue Ocean strategy, that you define a new market and you’re the only one serving it.

But when someone already has an idea and you’re hoping to persuade them to see the benefit of its opposite? Much harder.

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