First and foremost, before we start..

Full credit goes to this expert who makes a living by reverse engineering apps, software, etc.

He goes by the name @bangorlol. The original Reddit post can be found here.

TLDR

Here is how it goes:

I’m a nerd who figures out how apps work for a job. Calling it an advertising platform is an understatement. TikTok is essentially malware that is targeting children. Don’t use TikTok. Don’t let your friends and family use it.

“So I can personally weigh in on this. I reverse-engineered the app, and feel confident in stating that I have a very strong understanding for how the app operates (or at least operated as of a few months ago).”

What TikTok Knows About Your Device

“TikTok is a data collection service that is thinly-veiled as a social network. If there is an API to get information on you, your contacts, or your device… well, they’re using it.”

• Phone hardware (CPU type, number of course, hardware ids, screen dimensions, dpi, memory usage, disk space, etc)

• Other apps you have installed (I’ve even seen some I’ve deleted show up in their analytics payload – maybe using as cached value?)

• Everything network-related (ip, local ip, router mac, your mac, wifi access point name)

• Whether or not you’re rooted/jailbroken

• Some variants of the app had GPS pinging enabled at the time, roughly once every 30 seconds – this is enabled by default if you ever location-tag a post-IIRC

• They set up a local proxy server on your device for “transcoding media“, but that can be abused very easily as it has zero authentication

The Scariest Part

“The scariest part of all of this is that much of the logging they’re doing is remotely configurable, and unless you reverse every single one of their native libraries (have fun reading all of that assembly, assuming you can get past their customized fork of OLLVM!!!) and manually inspect every single obfuscated function. They have several different protections in place to prevent you from reversing or debugging the app as well. App behavior changes slightly if they know you’re trying to figure out what they’re doing. There are also a few snippets of code on the Android version that allows for the downloading of a remote zip file, unzipping it, and executing said binary. There are zero reasons a mobile app would need this functionality legitimately.”

“On top of all of the above, they weren’t even using HTTPS for the longest time. They leaked users’ email addresses in their HTTP REST API, as well as their secondary emails used for password resets. Don’t forget about users’ real names and birthdays, too. It was allllll publicly viewable a few months ago if you MITM’d the application.”

Taste of “Virality”

“They provide users with a taste of “virality” to entice them to stay on the platform. Your first TikTok post will likely garner quite a bit of likes, regardless of how good it is.. assuming you get past the initial moderation queue if that’s still a thing. Most users end up chasing the dragon. Oh, there’s also a ton of creepy old men who have direct access to children on the app, and I’ve personally seen (and reported) some really suspect stuff. 40 to 50-year-old men getting 8 to 10-year-old girls to do “duets” with them with sexually suggestive songs. Those videos are posted publicly. TikTok has direct messaging functionality.”

“Here’s the thing though.. they don’t want you to know how much information they’re collecting on you, and the security implications of all of that data in one place, en masse, are fucking huge. They encrypt all of the analytics requests with an algorithm that changes with every update (at the very least the keys change) just so you can’t see what they’re doing. They also made it so you cannot use the app at all if you block communication to their analytics host off at the DNS level.

Conclusion

For what it’s worth I’ve reversed the Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter apps. They don’t collect anywhere near the same amount of data that TikTok does, and they sure as hell aren’t outright trying to hide exactly what’s being sent like TikTok is. It’s like comparing a cup of water to the ocean – they just don’t compare.

The post Expert Who Reverse-Engineered TikTok Reveals Disturbing Discoveries appeared first on UpMinded.

Have you experienced picking a username for social media but it’s taken or already exists?

Don’t worry about it! In this post, I’d like to share with you some tips and tricks on choosing a modern, clean username

17 Tricks on choosing a username that’s already been taken

1. Use part of your name. Ex: @Oprah (Oprah Winfrey)

2. Use your initials.  Ex: @SarahKSilverman (Sarah K Silverman)

3. Shorten your name. If your full name is really long, hard to remember or if you’re known by a shorter nickname (like @JLo) then shorten your name.

4. Say what you! Add “actor,” “actress” or “acts” to the end of your username

5. Add ‘Real’ to your username. Ex: @KevinHart4real (Kevin Hart) or @RealGilbert (Gilbert Gottfried)

6. Add ‘TV’, ‘Chat’, ‘Buzz’, or ‘films’ (if you are a creator) to the end of your name.  Ex: @ArdaOcalTV 

7. Add ‘Talks’ or ‘Says’ to your name. Ex: @TheRealAdamSays

8. Add a ‘THE’ in front of your name. Ex: @TheEllenShow (Ellen DeGeneres)

9. Make it ‘Official’ (only works with shorter names) Ex: @OfficialAdele

10. Add “I am” or “Im” or “Its” Ex: @IAMQUEENLATIFAH (Queen Latifah)

11. Use your location.  If you live and work in LA or NYC, add it to the end of your username. 

12. Use your website (if you have a short name). This is great because it also directs everyone to your website. Ex: @wordpressdotcom 

13. Add a Mr, Miss, Mrs to the beginning of your name. With this hack you can actually just use your first or last name if it’s still available. 

14. Get creative & make it funny (if that’s your brand)  Ex: @SteveMartinToGo (Steve Martin)

15. Add letters to your name.  Ex: @garyvee (Gary Vaynerchuk)

16. Keep them Updated. If your name is short, add a “daily” in front of your name. Ex: @DailyYourname

The post 17 Tricks If Your Username Is Taken appeared first on UpMinded.

In this post, let’s talk about how to download and convert .m3u8 file to any other format such as TS, MP4, MOV with VLC player on Mac.

The steps are very straight forward, at the end of this page you will see a video to it, feel free to give it a watch and let me know if you have further questions!

Step 1. Open on Chrome, Right Click, Choose “Inspect“

Simply open the video url you’d like to download and convert with Chrome Browser, right click and choose “Inspect” option.

Step 2. Choose Network, Search “m3u8”

Under the new window just opened, pick the Network option then in the search box type “m3u8“.

If nothing shows up, simply refresh your page and it should be able to load right away.

Step 3. Copy m3u8 URL

Click ‘playlist.m3u8‘ in the search result, on the right hand side, you should see a long Request URL, copy this URL, we are almost done!

Step 4. Download VLC Player, Install, Open

VLC is great video player and packed with powerful tools, you can download it for FREE here.

Step 5. File – Open Network

Go to file on top menu, choose Open Network option, and in the new window, under URL section, paste the URL you copied earlier, check “Streaming/Saving” box and click on settings.

Step 6. Name your video, Pick file type

Under settings, give the video a name and choose a file type, I normally go with TS then convert to MP4 or MOV later, this prevents VLC from crashing during streaming and saving. When you’re done, click OK.

Step 7. Wait for the process to finish

At the bottom, you will see the process has begun, just wait for the bar to finish, this process depends on how long the video is, if it’s short, it will finish fast, if it’s a long video, you might have to wait for a while.

Once the process is done, your file is ready to go, in this case, I saved it on my desktop, so the TS file will be save on my desktop.

Step 8. Convert to Other Formats

You can either use the .TS file or use other tools to convert the file to any other formats such as MP4, MOV.

I use this tool called “iSkysoft Video Converter“, however, there are many other tools out there, simply pick the one you like and convert the file.

Step by Step Video:

The post How to Download and Convert m3u8 video to TS, MP4, MOV with VLC (Mac) appeared first on UpMinded.

The first time I heard of “The Law of Success” was in year 2010. My mentor asked me to buy this book (Physical Copy!). I did, I read it about x10 and I’m still carrying it with me to this day!

At the end of this post, you can download your FREE ebook version of the original Law of Success in 16 lessons and there will be a link to the physical copy on Amazon.

Success in life depends upon happiness, and happiness is found in no other way than through SERVICE that is rendered in a spirit of love. –Napoleon Hill

Who is Napoleon Hill

One HUGE Thick Manual

In 1927, the book called “The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons” was written by Napoleon Hill. Most people had never heard of this book. Most people had never read this book. It never became popular because it’s two books in one HUGE thick manual.

At the turn of the century, Hill was hired by a man named Andrew Carnegie. If you don’t know who Andrew Carnegie is, he was (at one time) the richest man on planet Earth and the guy who owned U.S. Steel.

In 1901 Andrew Carnegie was convinced to sell his company to J.P. Morgan for $480M. The value of the transaction in contemporary funds varies between $14.5 billion, if calculated using the cost-of-living index, to as much as $336 billion if calculated as a percentage of GDP.

After the funds were distributed to the small group of private shareholders, Andrew Carnegie personally received around $230M (range between $7 billion to $160 billion, again, depending on how it’s calculated).

The Secrets To Wealth

Andrew Carnegie knew the secrets of creating wealth without working hard. He went to work at 9 in the morning and he left the office at 4 in the afternoon, Monday through Friday. He did not work Saturdays, Sundays or evenings.

He took off June, July and August, to go to Scotland and said, “Don’t bother me!”. This all happened during a time with no phones, iPads, emails or ways to communicate with his office everyday. He did this technique right from the beginning, (meaning he didn’t work like a maniac – 24/7), because he understood the real secret of making money was not working hard, it was using a different power. He understood this, and he became the richest man in the world.

Andrew Carnegie wrote that it was his belief you should spend the first third of life getting all the education you can. You should spend the second third making all the money you can, and the last third should be spent giving it away to worthwhile causes.

“It’s a shame that each new generation must find the way to success by trial and error when the principles are really clear-cut”.  -Andrew Carnegie

“Are You Out Of Your Mind?”

Other people at the time understood this power as well. Tomas Edison, Henry Ford, and virtually every millionaire. Andrew Carnegie decided that he wanted to share this secret with the world. He was the only millionaire in the “circle” that wanted to share it. Every other millionaire in the circle said, “Are you out of your mind? We are not sharing the secret! This is ours and we don’t want more competition.”

So Andrew Carnegie hired a young man named Napoleon Hill. He said, “I’m going teach you the secret and I’m going introduce you to the richest people on planet Earth. You’re going to observe them, question them and so forth. You are going to put together all the common denominators of success and compile them in a book!”

Hill wasn’t quite sure how he would manage it, he reaffirmed his commitment to take on the project and see it through to the end. It took Hill exactly 29 seconds to accept Carnegie’s proposal. Carnegie told Hill afterward that has it taken him more than a minute to make the decision, he would have cancelled the proposal.

20 Years For a Book

It took Napoleon over 20 years to put together the “Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons”. It was published, revealing for the first time in history, the secret to wealth.

Everybody went crazy in the millionaire circle. “They” forced it to be pulled off the market within 12 months. 10 years later in 1937, a “watered down” version came out called “Think and Grow Rich” (which some of you are familiar with!)

Think and Grow Rich is a good book, but all the secrets are taken out! That’s why when some people read it, the majority it doesn’t work for. For some people it does work, because they are accidentally using the “secret” that’s not in it.

There’s never been a book published since that reveals the “real secret” that was published in the original Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons.

The Original Manuscript

My mentor’s “education” in 1979 was in the form of an original manuscript of the Law of Success in 16 Lessons. He had flunked high school and never went to college. The book became his “college education”. He studied it, he read it (probably 100x), and he still travels everywhere with it! That’s how powerful it is! “Every time I read a page or chapter, I get something more out of it!” (The scanned copy of this first original manuscript is available in the bonus section at the end of this post)

Napoleon Hill did some speeches back in the 30s and there is a foundation called the Napoleon Hill foundation. At that time, the foundation archives were in Chicago in a locked basement requiring a key. The archives included the original writings of Napoleon Hill and many tape recordings. The recording sound quality was really poor, so they’ve never been published. (People would return it because they couldn’t hear it at all).

“Break In” To The Foundation Facility

My mentor told me he used to “break in” to this facility and listen to these recordings (with very poor sound quality!), transcribe them by hand and store them in a safe.

In one particular recording, Napoleon Hill was speaking to the members of Congress at a meeting in Washington, DC. At that time, this group was comprised of an outrageously prestigious group of “business men” (there weren’t many business opportunities for women back then). These were the captains of industry at the time (very powerful people).

In the recording, Napoleon Hill said to the group “When I learned the ‘secret’ from Andrew Carnegie and began sharing the principles, it frightened me at how fast and how powerfully it worked (keyword! he emphasized ‘frightened’). When people applied the simple principle, the money came so fast, and in such large quantities, it frightened me at the power of this secret.”

“It Was Too Simple”

But he also told the group, “I stopped being frightened, because almost no one used the secret because it was too simple!”.

Think about it, how many people actually apply what they learned in life?

These sixteen lessons are:

1. The Master Mind: Telepathy, ether, vibration, and how it all is the basis for how the world functions. A master mind is the alliance of two minds joining in a harmonious way. The power that is formed from two or more minds coming together is more powerful than one alone. This is strictly for minds who trust each other and are interested in the good success of all parties involved.
2. Your Definite Chief Aim: Do not underestimate the value of this due to its simplicity. You need to set an objective before you can achieve it. Not having a solid aim to focus on can not possibly get you to it. You have to know what you want so that you can start receiving it.
3. Self Confidence: Believe that you are worthy of success and that you can attain it. Without this simple understanding- truly understanding it- you will probably get nowhere with most of your goals. If you are not confident, then you cannot sell yourself in life.
4. The Habit of Saving: Stop trying to get a Cadillac if you feel more comfortable paying for a Ford. You are on the path to easily affording a Cadillac.
5. Initiative and Leadership: Addresses the importance of leadership skills (yes, they can be habituated and you don’t have to be a born leader). Here, Hill acknowledges the penalties of leadership. Leaders are not always spoken of sweetly. This should not deter you from becoming a leader. It is only “genius” that attracts the attention of critics. Nobody bothers slandering a person who isn’t somewhere near the upper rings of the ladder of success.
6. Imagination: Dream, and use your imagination to help lead you to the attainment of your goals. The making good decisions comes with use, and your intuition will always lead you toward your dream. Dreams and actions are closely related.
7. Enthusiasm: Compels you to act. Mix enthusiasm with your work- do something you are enthusiastic about- and you will not get tired nearly as quickly. Hill explains the things that can contribute to enthusiasm, one being to wear nice clothes. Basically, if you look like a million bucks, you’ll feel like a million bucks, and you will likely find yourself around a million bucks. The opposite is also true, and this is to be avoided. Feel good about your appearance, because it also affects the first impression of you on others who can be instrumental in your path to success.
8. Self Control: Auto suggestion is like reprogramming your subconscious mind to believe what you want it to believe- to replace your old beliefs with new ones that will serve you better. This takes self control. Have you ever tried to change a habit? It makes sense. When you take control over the thoughts you are thinking, then you can take control of your success. Make these thoughts the ones you want to believe, and see yourself the way you want to see yourself.
9. Habit Of Doing More Than Paid For: If you are going to whine about your work, then you are not going anywhere. Do the work you have in front of you, then ask what else you may do. By doing this, you make yourself valuable, and you will surely reach a point where you are being paid handsomely. Valuable employees are… valuable. This is also and especially true when you are working for yourself.
10. Pleasing Personality: Have one. Don’t point things out on people, don’t hang your head and say “I’m tired.” Mediocrity does not care if you are pleasant or not. Success does.
11. Accurate Thought: Sort “facts” from “information”, and use auto-suggestion in conjunction with focused thoughts.
12. Concentration: “Concentration is the act of focusing the mind upon a given desire until ways and means for its realization have been worked out and successfully put into operation” (p 438). That about covers it.
13. Cooperation: The implementing of cooperation between you and others who are going to help you get to your goal (the top of the ladder of success is never lonely, because you can’t help but bring others with you). Cooperation must also exist between your conscious and subconscious mind so that they may work harmoniously in your favor.
14. Failure: Yes! Fail, and be happy that it is bringing you one step closer to success. Failure is inevitable, and it is a great step towards the right direction. Replace “failure” with “temporary defeat”.
15. Tolerance: Don’t practice prejudice or racism. It is ignorance, and it is a barrier to success. Just see the best in people and situations, and focus only on your goal and the good for all.
16. The Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you wish them to do unto you.” Also, “Think of others as you wish them to think of you.”

“Watered Down” Version

Think and Grow Rich 1937 table of contents:

1. Desire
2. Faith
3. Autosuggestion
4. Specialized Knowledge
5. Imagination
6. Organized Planning
7. Decision
8. Persistence
9. Power of the Master Mind
10. The Mystery of Sex Transmutation
11. The Subconscious Mind
12. The Brain
13. The Sixth Sense

Grab Your Original Copy Now For FREE

If you’d like to receive a free copy of “The Law of Success in 16 Lessons“, simply leave your email below and we’ll deliver a copy to you right away:

OR..

Buy The Law of Success 1925 Manuscript Lessons on Amazon

Youtube Audio Book:

Bonus

As I mentioned previously in the post that my mentor got one of the first manuscripts of “Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons” back in the 70s.

Fortunately, the scanned copy of this manuscript is available now at UpMinded.

Own The Original Law of Success in 16 Lessons (Scanned Copy)

Download It Right Now for Just $27!

To get your original digital edition of The Law of Success in 16 lessons right away.

Just click on the “ORDER NOW” button above.

You’ll be taken automatically to our secure shopping cart (provided by PayPal.com) where you’ll be prompted to enter your payment information.
You don’t need a PayPal account. You can pay by credit card.
 
After your payment is received, you can instantly download your eBook…
Whether it’s the middle of the day,
or the middle of the night!

*This is a digital downloadable PDF eBook. Nothing will be sent to you by mail.

The post Why You Should Read Original Law of Success in 16 Lessons Napoleon Hill appeared first on UpMinded.

I speak with incredible confidence and enthusiasm regarding the value of what you are about to discover here. In 2015, after almost 6 years of searching for the magic formula or the “secret” in life, I happened to discover some ancient wisdom, which if applied, will allow ordinary men and women to unlock from within themselves the incredible power that can bring them enormous success and wealth.

My first introduction to the wisdom in The Master Key System was in a self-development training. People were paying $1495 USD to get access to the wisdom from these ancient manuscripts. The fact that multiple people had access to the same information, and “claimed” to be doing things legally, actually raised my curiosity. 

I searched pretty deep, and finally found a rare book store on the Internet that had a copy. I paid my $100 for it. Now, the VERY SAME information that thousands of folks paid $495 to $1,495 to get access to, you can have it for a fraction of the price.  Of course, you can also go to your local bookstores, if any are available, has most likely risen significantly above the $100 that I paid. Now, for a limited time, you can have the complete original version of The Master Key System, on your desktop or mobile device in just moments.

Perhaps, most eye opening, is that the genesis of this program traces back over 100 years. The original writings, available only through referrals from one family to another, were a closely guarded best seller in Europe for decades or even a century ago! They were considered essential, secret ancient wisdom teachings, primarily, only the very wealthy – a tangible testament to the worth of the esoteric techniques disclosed.

The material was made up of a number of ancient teachings that held the missing element, in fact, the master keys, to accessing the greatest power, knowledge and riches. They captured the essence of ancient principles and universal truths that could unleash the force within those allowed to study them. Then, Charles F. Haanel captured the essence of these teachings into The Master Key System. If you are a student of human potential, you will find it interesting that almost every modern day self-development guru uses some elements of The Master Key System as the foundation for their teachings such as book, program, tapes, or seminars. When you discover the universal truths, you can’t re-write them. They remain constant throughout all of mankind.

Similar to Napoleon Hill, who considered the pioneer in the self-development field, Charles F. Haanel studied and researched these secrets and keys to mastering the Universe. He took his wisdom and put it together into a twenty-four volume educational correspondence course/program that became The Master Key System. He began to share these findings with some of the world’s wealthiest people sending them a new section of the course on a weekly basis. These wealthy people were very impressed with the wisdom that they begged Charles not to go public with The Master Key System. Charles still decided to publish the system in book format; however, he NEVER intended for it to be for the general public. Copies of Haanel’s original book are very rare today. 

How can these OLD WORLD teachings of the past centuries remain so relevant today? Because they go far beyond the walls of circumstance and time, and they reach deep into the heart of the creating of one’s quality of life. With The Master Key System, you will discover the unchanged, age-old, fundamental principles that govern our universe and make all the difference in the degree of success achieved – or forfeited.

Many of today’s wealthy and successful people explore the periphery of these principles, but only in The Master Key System self-education course/program will you find such laser-like precision in setting forth the profound principles and requirements for acquiring and sustaining wealth, health, and happiness – starting NOW. Actual review and questions and answers compliment this version of The Master Key System and bring the information current and relevant as we move through the 21st Century.

“You can not entertain weak, harmful, negative thoughts ten hours a day and expect to bring about beautiful, strong and harmonious conditions by ten minutes of strong, positive, creative thought.” 
― Charles F. Haanel, The Master Key System

Some people said that The Master Key System is the book that Bill Gates read before he left Harvard and start his own computer software company, which made him the wealthiest man in the world. I actually tried to verify this by corresponding directly with Mr. Gates, but of the three letters I wrote to him, never heard back.

The Master Key System holds the secret of a powerful system to success, which was used by the author, Charles F. Haanel to amass his own mega-fortune through the starting of his own business, which he built into one of the largest conglomerates of his time.

The Master Key System by Charles F. Haanel was originally published back in 1912, sold over 200,000 copies before it was banned by the church and the controlling group in 1933 and was then lost in the public for over seventy years. It lays down the foundation and the principles of manifestation through the teachings of Law of Attraction, as Charles F. Haanel discovered them. You will learn how to develop and use the creative instrument of your mind—creating true abundance in your life and opening up to the limitless possibilities of the truly creative life.

Whether it was the secrets that Bill Gates found in this book enabled him to form Microsoft, creating his ultra success, we don’t know for certain, but what is clear is that the information found in this book is capable of producing amazing results. All we know is that the rare books stores which occasionally sell a copy have quadrupled their price in just the last 3 years alone. The demand is coming from somewhere… my guess is it’s the results it produces! You will simply have to do your own investigation into it’s secrets to see what the mystery is all about.

Download Your Copies of This Great  Wisdom Today!

To get your personal digital edition of The Master Key System right away. Just click on the “ORDER NOW” button above.

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How Would You Feel When You Own The Book That Was Once Owned ONLY By The 400 Wealthiest Family Around The World?

The Book of Wealth by Hubert Bancroft, is the historical wealth building bible that examines wealth creators and wealth building secrets!

The Book of Wealth was initially published in 1896 in a limited number of 400 sets. Bancroft distributed the book to the wealthiest people in the western world such as the Morgan’s, the Rothschild’s, the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Kennedy’s, the Carnegies, the Fricks, the Fords, and the list goes on.

That’s right, up until now, the only people who have ever owned The Book of Wealth, has been the Global Elite. It makes sense that the only way to gain access to this amazing book was to be born into one of these wealthy and privileged families.

In 1898, Hubert Howe Bancroft placed the following advertisement in the New York Times promoting his infamous 10 volume book.

The Book of Wealth

This book was originally sold at a cost of $2,500 per copy for the cygne noir edition. The second or fin de siecle edition cost $1,000 per copy. By today’s standards, The Book of Wealth would cost 25 times as much as it did back in the day! Adjusted for today’s inflation, this book would cost more than $63,600!

In fact The Book of Wealth can rarely be spotted at auctions, however when that does happen, the price is astronomical, and can even reach up to a million US dollars!

Perhaps the reason for its scarcity is the value of the knowledge it contains. Not only has it been used by the world’s richest individuals and families, but also by a number of the modern day motivational speakers and wealth creators.

The book created, and is the foundation, of the modern Wealth Attraction genre. Indeed leading motivational speakers such as Dr. Demartini have used The Book of Wealth as part of modern approaches to achievement, from the famous movie/book “The Secret” to other “The Law of Attraction” philosophies.

Hubert Bancroft who was a prolific American publisher and historian, set out to chronicle and analyze every significant example of financial success in recorded history, aided by an unprecedented research team. The result: “The Book of Wealth” – “[dealing] with all that is worth knowing concerning wealth, from the dawn of history to Joe Leiter’s wheat deal.”

Bancroft describes his monumental 10-volume set of books as “An Inquiry into the Nature and Distribution of the World’s Resources and Riches, and a History of the Origin and Influence of Property, its Possession, Accumulation and disposition in all Ages and among all Nations.”

Every notable example of wealth up to 1898 is sought out, examined and broken down to profound understandings – from pre-civilization, to history’s greats, to those alive in Bancroft’s time.

It analyzes common traits of wealth creation and the factors common to kings, countries, businessmen and companies who achieved a massive acquisition of wealth in their lifetimes and left lasting legacies behind.

At 10 volumes, The Book of Wealth is more substantial than any other Wealth Attraction media ever, with rigor and detail unmatched anywhere. Among gurus, it’s THE defining text on wealth attraction, and a well kept secret that only John DeMartini has referred to on occasion. Still, “The Book’s” ideas and approaches appear regularly (known to be watered down) in all modern Wealth Attraction. It is impossible to explain the influence, magnitude and rigor of this book, even today.

Own The Book of Wealth! Download It Right Now for Just $27!

The Book of Wealth, containing all 10 volumes, has been reproduced in .pdf format.

To get your personal digital edition of The Book of Wealth right away. Just click on the “ORDER NOW” button below.

If you are wondering about the quality of the books, you can view a free sample of random pages here: The Book of Wealth Sample

It requires Adobe 9.0 or higher to run, which can be downloaded for free on the web at Adobe.com

The Book of Wealth

A $63,616 Value…Yours Today, For Just $27

To get your personal digital edition of The Book of Wealth right away. Just click on the “ORDER NOW” button above.

Our No-risk Money-back guarantee.

*This is a digital downloadable eBook. Nothing will be sent to you by mail.
 

This is the most amazing book ever written — it is a literal code to eternal wealth — I have seen the books and spent 6 hours non stop reading Volume 1 … I have never read anything quite like it — all the self education and self improvement books out there dont add up to anything compared to this book. It is 1000 times better than ‘Think and Grow Rich’. If I had the chance to buy this book — I would pay a small fortune for it. –Peter Schau

In 40+ years of bookselling, we have acquired some unusual items, but this may be the most unique. –Berry Hill

It will inspire, expand and assist you in taking your vision of wealth building to a new and more powerful level. –Dr. Demartini 

The post The Book of Wealth by Hubert Bancroft 1896 appeared first on UpMinded.

Welcome to SPM

You are about to embark on a magical journey by reading these monthly messages (lessons) that will be a part of this Nuggets of Gold Newsletter. The Universe/Source has brought us together in this way for our mutual benefit. Get ready for magic to happen in your life.

YOU want and have desires for “something”. Maybe you want material things, like money and the things money can buy. Or maybe you want/desire intangible things like the “feeling” of contentment, accomplishment, peace, serenity, harmony, joy, bliss, freedom, passion, an improved self image, confidence, a feeling of self worth and that you deserve success in life etc. Maybe you want a relationship (to be loved and to love someone, either a friend or lover). Perhaps you want better health, more physical energy, better mental clarity, a reshaped thin body etc. Or maybe you want a better job, a better social life, a business of your own, being debt free, travel, getting over an addiction, eliminating depression/stress/anxiety or a phobia, better relationships with friends, family members, neighbours, working associates, relatives, etc. The list of wants/desires is endless. There are no right and wrong wants/desires. Simply listen to your inner “Self“, follow your feelings, and you will come up with your own desires/wants/preferences/choices/dreams/goals etc.

Everything starts with a desire/dream/goal. Some of you have a desire to have NO desires at all…which IS in fact a desire. To live with a wonderful sense of “detachment”: not being “owned or attached to anything or anyone” so that you are always free to feel how you choose to feel 100% regardless of the conditions/circumstances/events/situations/or people around you. It is the freedom to be blissfully happy no matter what happens around you or to you or is said about you. Wanting to achieve this is still to have a desire. Everything starts with a desire/dream. Desires/dreams lead to you creating, which is why you are here.

So, what do YOU want? What is your dream/desire/goal/preference? You are standing at the buffet of life and everything is available to you. All you have to do is choose what YOU desire/want…..and your wish is YOUR command! What do you want? Read till the end of the paragraph then stop reading and think! Answer the question! Think…and feel….go slow….and breath…smile…feel good….be still…quiet the mind……what do you want?…….now stop reading for a few minutes and begin to answer this question. Then come back and continue reading.

As you are reading this lesson/message now and every month? Know that I am intending for YOU to manifest, live, and experience all your desires/dreams so that your joy is full and overflowing. We are connected as you read this. More than you can ever imagine! (Because as long as you still are embodied in a physical body your knowingness of this fact can only go so far, thus we ARE connected more than you, right now, have to ability to even imagine, let alone “know”.)

This connection combined with these messages/lessons will assist you in releasing your own power so that you can manifest your dreams faster and easier than ever before, and ultimately be happier and more at peace/harmony/contentment that you have ever felt. The end game is you feeling totally 100% fulfilled on all levels of being! Feeling on top of the world all the time!

Why And How Will This Work?

First, think of all the great “Masters” throughout history. Think of individuals that did great monumental things or came to realizations about life that allowed them to start a “movement”, invention, business, political ideology, product or religion that had or still has, a major impact on the world. Let’s list just a few:

Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, Mandela, Jobs, Devos and Van Andel, Mary Kay Ash, Dr. Shaklee, Many Nobel Prize winners, Ford, Einstein, Edison, Tesla, Columbus, Martin Luther, Confucius, Thoreau, Calvin, Lenin, Marx, Mohammed, L. Ron Hubbard, all the “Guru’s” who founded various spiritual movements, authors like Napoleon Hill, Dyer, Hicks, or Wattles etc. The list goes on.

Additionally, most leaders of countries around the world, throughout history, who have had a major impact (positive or negative, like Hitler) fall into this list. Most founders of religions, or “leaders” of religions or philosophical movements fall into this list. Also, most billionaires fall into this list.

There is a common denominator with all these people throughout history. ALL of them, BEFORE they were “enlightened”, or became “aware”, or had their epiphany, or made their mental “breakthrough”, or had the future clearly exposed before them, or had the realization of Truth, and BEFORE they started their “movement” or began spreading their “knowledge”, they ALL spent time alone, in relative seclusion (away from people). MANY were in prison, and most were secluded in rural, nature filled settings (forests, islands etc). ALL of them had this “time alone” with nature and “God/Source”, for at least many months, most years. Buddha spent 7 years in the forest…alone. Jesus spent at least 3-­‐5 years alone in the desert before he started his ministry.

Spend Time “Alone”

Now let me explain the significance of this. When a person is “forced” or chooses to spend “time alone” for months or YEARS, he has the unique opportunity to connect with Source without any interference. This is a rare condition. When ALONE or secluded in nature (which IS SOURCE) for months or YEARS, a person CAN (but not always does) experience this connection to the Universal Field in ways and in depths that are beyond anyone’s comprehension as it is beyond words. When this happens, the download of knowledge is uninterrupted and without interference or filters, thus pure. Additionally, the releasing of mental/emotional/spiritual “blocks” happens at an accelerated rate. Thus a person’s ability to think and process data at great speeds is dramatically enhanced.

The main phenomena that COULD occur at various levels are: massive downloads of universal knowledge: of past, present and future; Understanding of this knowledge; thought speed dramatically increases making comprehension/understanding of this knowledge and truth past, present and future obviously apparent; with this complete Understanding of Truth, contentment, bliss and joy are almost permanent flowing emotions; Judging, criticizing and condemning can become non existent; compassion, and acceptance can be constant; love permeates the being and positively affects all who come into contact with it. There are more, but you get the point.

I have had 2 such experiences in my life so far. I am now in my third time of “seclusion”.

So how does this help YOU make YOUR dreams come true?

Simply this. The “powers that be”, throughout history have wanted all mankind to have lack of “knowledge/Truth”; a slow speed of thought; and be easy to control and manipulate by getting man to believe what “they” wanted man to believe.

This keeps those in power, in power (control/wealth). Why is keeping power/control so important to those who have it? Power/control are addictive, more than the most addictive drug. It gives the illusion of getting closer to Truth/Bliss/Contentment/connection to Source/God, yet the more power and control (wealth) you get, IF you are seeking these “things” with the belief it will give you the feeling you are REALLY inside seeking, the more you believe “just a little more” will get you what you truly seek. What is being sought is a “feeling”, (once experienced in ancient past by all of us), that all of us want to re-­experience. But they (like most of us) have been deceived/mislead along the line and are searching down the wrong path.

The Answer Lies Within

The answer lies simply within, not without. All Truth/Joy/Bliss/Contentment that surpasses all comprehension and understanding and is absolutely indescribable comes from simply connecting with Source. Knowing your True Self. Having the awareness and realization of that fact that you are already ONE with ALL-­that-­IS. (This state does not come WHEN you attain a desire.) When this state is attained (by simple awareness), you already HAVE the joy/peace you seek, thus you realize/know you will not get it from without. You now know that you will not get it by achieving things in the material world. The best part is now you CAN have desires/dreams/preferences and make them manifest (as you are the ultimate creators), but now you are doing it for the joy of creating (the joy you already possess and experience) instead of believing that getting your desires will give you what you truly seek, as you already have it. Life now becomes moment to moment bliss! AND you get any and all desires you choose. All while feeling great all the time!

Almost all those is power/control/extreme wealth never reach this state. They are like the drug addicts who always needs more drugs to get the same “high” and it is never as good as their first “high”. So they do more and more and more drugs until they die, never getting the relief or the feeling they have been seeking. J.D. Rockefeller (the richest man in the world in his time, worth in today’s dollars over $200 billion!), was on his deathbed still working to make more money. He was asked, how much money he needed to make to be happy. His sad answer was “just a little more”! Ford, Jobs, Walton, Hughes, and almost every Billionaire you can name was trying to make more money right until the end and lacked contentment and was unfulfilled.

Throughout history, the people in power around the world, have done 2 simple things to keep their power/control/wealth over the masses (because power is the most addictive “drug” there is, they will do anything to keep it and get more of it). First, the have used a secret science of “image creation” to create beliefs in people, of things that are not true. With mass media today, this is easy, as the media is controlled by those in power.

“Image Makers”

Next, they have always tried to slow down a person’s speed of thinking. Your mind/brain is like a computer. If you have a computer with a very slow operating speed, it takes a long time for it to compute things. If your download speed is slow, it can take hours to download something. Remember dial up service for the Internet? When you tried to download something, it could take HOURS. That same download now takes 1­‐2 seconds! Your mind is the same way. If your speed of thought (that also means download speed) is slow, then your ability to download new information from the Universal Field, and to process this information/knowledge, is very slow and/or you cannot come to conclusions at all, as there is an overload in the mind and it freezes up. Thus you just give up hard thinking! And when your download speed is slow, most simply stop trying to access the Universal Field of all knowledge, because you simply cannot download the massive amount of data. (and even if you COULD, your thought speed is so slow, you cannot process it anyway so you give up, letting others do it, then tell you what to do and what to think.)

So, with control over the “images” you are being exposed to (the programming of your brain which creates your beliefs) and with you having a slow speed of thought (brain/mind processing speed as well as download speed)…the powers that be then have complete control over you without you even realizing it. YOU think you are in control because they “make” you think and believe what they want.

To help you achieve your dreams, first we must expose the “issues”. We must shed light on the “problems”. Once you see the “problem” you are already partially free of its power over you. But more importantly, we must FOCUS on the SOLUTION.

These messages/lessons are going to be focusing on the solutions. You will feel great during and after you read these.

The objective is to simultaneously free you from the programming you have received and continue to receive from the “image makers“, and to increase your speed of thought. When these 2 things happen, even to a small degree, you begin to feel freedom like you have never felt before. You begin to feel more content, happy, at peace. You feel more in control of your life experience and realize you can create any life experience you want. You begin to be happy NOW, and are able to manifest what you want in your life easier and faster than ever before.

So, today truly is the first day of the rest of your life. You can become totally free, on all levels and all dimensions. The decision is yours. All success for you, for all time, is simply a decision away. You are not reading this by accident. It has been said, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. I as a lifelong student myself, I have always had the “teacher” (in whatever form Source knows is best, not always a PERSON, but maybe an experience!) appear ONLY when I am 100% ready to receive AND it is my TIME to receive. There is a time for learning, and there is a time for teaching. There is a time for planting and there is a time for harvesting.

I have and continue to be in the time of “learning”, downloading, and releasing abilities. Much of what I was taught many years ago were seeds planted, that have sprouted over time, and that are now being harvested. Along with all the “new”, I will now be sharing ALL of them with you.

Timing Is ALWAYS Perfect

You might be getting tingling sensations right now as I am. This is special for you and for me. You will be a special group to me in a very personal way. We have a connection unique from any other. The magic is already happening and I know you can feel it.

I am student and teacher, and you are student and teacher as well. You will be a source of energy to all around you just by your being-­‐ness. You will have a positive impact on so many just by being you and living your life full of joy. Your best is before you. How lucky we both are to be on this path together. Years from now, I am sure we will be together somewhere in the world, in person, sharing joy, happiness and wonderful stories of these early days. We will talk and laugh about the first month’s newsletter I wrote from prison. We will be joyful in the magnificent lives we live, yet will not be surprised by the magnificence and opulence of our earthly material lives or the indescribable inner joy and bliss we experience. We will simply be enjoying beyond words the lives we have chosen to create and all the experiences/people/events/conditions/situations/material things/inner feelings we have attracted, created, and manifested into our lives.

Remember, there are no good or bad “things/events/situations” except that our thinking makes it so. Everything that has happened, MUST had to have happened for the highest good for ALL. It is ALL perfect. So pop the champagne!

The Universe/Source is Divine and Perfect. Timing is ALWAYS perfect even if we THINK we know better. How blessed we are. How wonderful life is. How perfect the Law of Attraction is. How perfect the power of “love” is. How glorious and spectacular the NOW is and every moment we live and breathe! This moment and every moment is absolute perfection. Revel in it. Taste the deliciousness of it. Savor the sweet nectar of this moment. Be still and know that you are one with All-­‐that-­‐IS . Be still and know that you are one. Be still and know. Be still. Be. Feel the joy bubbling up with you and flowing through you. (this is the FORCE)

The Best Is NOW To Come For YOU

Welcome to a new world of possibilities and experiences……………the journey has begun.

Between now and next month’s message/lesson/newsletter, I would encourage you to do a few things to maximize your growth and help you achieve what you want in life faster:

-Reread this message/lesson at least once. More is better. Rereading it everyday or every other day will have powerful effects on you as each reading of it in a new unit of time will reveal to you more than the previous reading, as much of the benefits of these messages/lessons are hidden “between the lines”, and in the energy being transmitted to you each time you read the lesson, and not just in the words of the lesson, and the intellectual understanding of the concepts presented.

Now is the time for you to be, do and have all that you already ARE! All your dreams ARE already yours in the non physical! They all actually exist right this moment. Now is the time to allow yourself to receive them into your physical experience, as they simply transform from the formless vibrational reality, to the physical material reality of form for you to touch, see, feel…so that your joy is full and over flowing. The best is NOW to come for YOU.

Much love and may you never be the same.

To be continued next month…

GO TO LESSON 2>>

Book Recommendations by KT:

Books FOCUSING on Manifesting Material

Books FOCUSING on Non-Material/Spiritual/Feel Good NOW

Books FOCUSING on Life SKILLS

Miscellaneous

The post Lesson 1 – The Science of Personal Mastery by KT appeared first on UpMinded.

If there is one book you need to carry with you, read and reread in different unit of time, I’d say that book would be “Principles” by one of the legendary investors/entrepreneurs: Ray Dalio.

In the book, Ray says “I’m passing along these principles because I am now at the stage in my life in which I want to help others be successful rather than to be more successful myself. Because these principles have helped me and others so much, I want to share them with you. It’s up to you to decide how valuable they really are and what, if anything, you want to do with them.”

I’d like to walk you through today, some ‘golden nuggets’ I picked up along the way, hope you find value and implement to your own life, that’s how we learn and master, and that’s my purpose here at Upminded!

Ray VS McNuggests

Many of you probably don’t know that Ray actually helped to put out McDonald’s new product – McNuggests in 1983. Around that time, McDonald’s had been planning this new product for a period of time but they were hesitant to bring it to the market because of their concern that chicken prices might rise and squeeze their profit margins. (Yeah! Chick price matters!) Chicken producers like Lane wouldn’t agree to sell to them at a fixed price because of the same concern.

Ray back in the days thought about this problem, he knew that in economic terms a chicken can be seen as a simple machine consisting of a chick plus it’s feed. The most volatile coast that the chicken producer needed to worry about was feed prices. Ray showed Lane how to use a mix of corn and soymeal futures to lock in coast so they could quote a fixed price to McDonald’s. Having greatly reduced its price risk, McDonald’s introduced the McNuggests in 1983. 

There is nothing more important than understanding how reality works and how to deal with it. The state of mind you bring to this process makes all the difference. 

“I have found it helpful to think of my life as if it were a game in which each problem I face is a puzzle I need to solve. By solving the puzzle, you get a gem in the form of a principle that helps me avoid the same sort of problem in the future.” -Ray Dalio

Collecting these ‘gems’ continually improves Ray’s decision making, so he is able to ascend to higher and higher levels. 

People who are super successful and progress driven deeply understand the “law of cause-effect” that governs our reality and develop principles for using them to get what they want. The opposite is also true: Idealists who are not well grounded in reality create problems, not progress.

Evolve or Die

Evolution is the greatest force in the universe; it is the only thing that is permanent and it drives everything. Everything from the smallest subatomic particle to the entire universe is evolving. While everything apparently dies or disappears in time, the truth is what it all just gets reconfigured in evolving forms. Remember that energy can’t be destroyed – it can be only be transformed. The force behind this is evolution. 

The evolutionary cycle is not just for people but for countries, companies, economies, for pretty much everything. And it is naturally self-correcting as a while, though not necessarily for its parts. For instance, if there is too much supply and waste in the market, prices will go down, companies will go out of business, and capacity will be reduced until the supply falls in line with the demand, at which time the cycle will start to move in the opposite direction. 

5-Step process to get what you desire

According to Ray, if you can do these five things well, you will certainly be successful in life:

1. Have clear goals.
2. Identify and don’t tolerate the problems that stand in the way of your achieving those goals. 
3. Accurately diagnose the problems to get at their root causes.
4. Design plans that will get you around them.
5. Do what’s necessary to push these designs through to results.

You have to pick a clear goal that will go will after. Your choice of goals will determine your direction. As you move toward in life, you will encounter problems and challenges. Some of those problems will bring you down against your own weaknesses. How you react to the pain that causes is totally up to you. If you want to achieve your goals, you must be calm and analytical so that you can accurately diagnose your issue, come up with a plan that will get you around them, and do what what’s necessary to push through to results. Then you will look at the new outcomes and go through the process over and over again. To evolve quickly, you will have to do this fast and continuously, setting your goals successively higher. 

How to Make Decisions Effectively 

Ray Dalio has spent his whole life studying how to make decisions effectively and has constantly looked for rules and systems that will improve the odds of being right and ending up with more of whatever it is that he is after. 

One of the most important things he’s come to understand is that most of the processes that go into everyday decision making are subconscious and more complex than is widely understood. To make good decisions, you have to recognize that:

1. The biggest threat to good decision making is harmful emotions
2. Decision making is a 2-step process (first learn then decide)

Learning must come before deciding. You brain stores different types of learning in your subconscious, your rote memory bank, and your habits. But no matter how you acquire your knowledge or where you store it, what’s most important is that what you know paints a true and rich picture of the realities that will affect your decision. That’s why it always pays to be radically open-minded and find information that you believe as you do your learning. Many people have trouble doing this emotionally and block the learning that could help them make better decisions. Remind yourself that it’s never harmful to at least hear na opposing point of view. 

80/20 Rule

Remember the 80/20 rule and know what the key 20% is. The 80/20 rule states that you get 80% of the value out of something from 20% of the information or effect. (It’s also true that you’re likely to exert 80% of your effect getting only 20% of value.) Understanding this rule saves you from getting bogged down in unnecessary detial once you’ve gotten most of the learning you need to make a good decision.

Technique: Synthesize the Situation Through Time

To see how the dots connect through time you must collect, analyze and sort different types of information, which isn’t easy. For example, let’s imagine a day in which eight outcomes occur. Some are good, some are bad. Let’s illustrate this day as shown, with each type of event represented by a letter and the quality of the outcome represented by its heights.

In order to see the day this way, you must categorize outcomes by type (signified by letter) and quality (the higher up the graph, the better), which will require synthesizing a by-and-large assessment of each. (To make the example more concrete, imagine you’re running an ice cream shop and the W’s represent sales, the X’s represent press and reviews, the Z’s represent staff engagement, etc) Keep in mind that our example is a relatively simple one: just 8 occurrences over one day. 

From the chart on the right, you can see that it was a great day for sales (because the W’s are at the top) and a bad day for customer experience (the X’s at the bottom). You might conjecture why – maybe a crowd generated sales but produced long lines.

People who are good at pulling out such patterns of events are rare and essential, but as with most abilities, synthesizing through time is only partially innate; even if you’re not good at it, you can get better through practice. You’ll increase your chances of succeeding at it if you follow the next principles. 

Final Thought

This book by Ray is a result of his encounters with reality over many years. Ray’s goal is to pass along these principles that worked well for him; what you do with them is totally up to you. Of course, we aren’t done with our struggles until we die. 

“I feel a certain sense of relief to have gotten these principles out to you, and a sense of contentment as I end this book and turn my attention to passing along my economic and investment principles.” -Ray Dalio

Think for yourself:

1. What do you want in life?
2. What is truth?
3. What are you going to do about it?

This masterpiece by Ray Dalio is worth reading and rereading in different unit of time, it’s packed with valuable information and technique to help you achieve your goals in life. You can purchase your copy at Amazon or get your Free Summary and Table of Life Principles below.

[FREE] Bonus PDF 

If you’d like to receive a free copy of “Summary and Table of Life Principles“, simply leave your email below and we will deliver a copy to you right away:

The post 6 Wisdom Nuggets From Ray Dalio’s Principles (Bonus Included) appeared first on UpMinded.

Welcome to Lesson 2 of Nuggets of Gold. The adventure now commences. Get ready for a magnificent brand new life experience. If you have not completed lesson 1 of the Science of Personal Mastery, click here and finish it then come back for the next lesson.

Lets Begin!

You are reading this. Why are you reading this? You did not answer the question. You did not even ponder the question. You are not concentrating. You are not focused. You are not in the present moment. You are rushing. You think the secrets will be revealed later in this lesson, or in a future lesson, or some other book, or some other seminar, or some other course. You want to read this as fast as you can and “finish”. You cannot yet comprehend that the “secret” could be in this very sentence, at this very moment, right now. You assume it must come “later or someplace else”. You have never been ready to accept or receive Truth. You have thought that you must have to work harder, and longer, to earn your worthiness, and only after a long struggle will you be deserving of having “all” revealed to you, and you think you are not there quite yet.

This is because of the “image makers” and how they programmed you.

You Must Be In Present Moment

The first lesson you must learn now, is to be in present time. Be ready, be receptive, be in a state of openness and allowing, right now. Be humble. Know, that you do not know, what you do not know. Be teachable. Have a high “teach ability index”. You must know you already “have arrived” and are, in fact, worthy and deserving right now.

You read the question, yet did not answer it. You just read the question, and you kept on reading. You did not even think about the question. So, we will start again, and this time actually think about the question, ponder the question, focus, concentrate, search your mind and the Universal field, look with your mind AND SELF throughout the collective consciousness. Emote, feel, and THEN actually answer the question. Be in the present moment. Be open. Be here right now.

This very moment you are “expanding” and becoming more aware and conscious of who you really are and how powerful you are. Secrets are being revealed to you NOW (actually, you are becoming aware of the “secrets” that have always been there!). Your ability to manifest your dreams is increasing NOW, based on YOUR ability to BE HERE NOW, and FOCUS (actually, your abilities cannot increase, your awareness of them can increase, making it seem like you are getting new abilities and powers when you are just getting to “know” and be aware of the abilities and powers you always had).

However, first you must learn this key point. Slow down. Pay full attention to things. Concentrate. Be totally aware (as best you can right now). What you seek is right in front of you at all times. It is actually within you at all times. It is in everything at all times. It is PART of you and you are part of it. Focus. Concentrate. Yet, relax and let go. Go slow. Be conscious of YOU (the SELF), and your current experience: what you are thinking; seeing; doing; feeling; sensing; and witnessing at every moment.

Concentrate. THINK. Focus. Breath. Be.

So, before we go any further, here are the instructions. When you are doing this course (these lessons), AND/OR when you are reading any book, when going through any seminar, audio, or training of any kind, SLOW DOWN! Focus. Pay attention. Concentrate. THINK. Ponder what you are going through, every word you are reading or hearing, and what you are thinking and feeling. Reread sentences.

After you read a sentence, sometimes stop reading and think about the sentence you just read. Then read it again. It is not the NUMBER of books/courses/lessons/seminars you go through that will increase (release) your abilities and happiness within, it is the amount of FOCUS you put on whatever training you are going through.

The answers are in everything, even FALSE teachings, as when you are “aware”, you understand the TRUTH when you are exposed to FALSE teachings. A wise man always learns from the fool, but the fool never learns from the wise man.

So, be in the present moment, be aware, be conscious. Wake up! Pay attention. Focus. Concentrate. THINK. Now, say out loud…YES.

Take a deep breath.

Good.

Go Slow!

In a moment, when I tell you, you will go back to the beginning and read this again, SLOWLY. (I will tell you when to stop reading and go back to the beginning, so keep reading) Maybe, reread some sentences and think about it before you go on.

Consider rereading some sentences 2 or 3 times and think about them BEFORE you continue reading. Go slow!

This is NOT a race where you win and get all the prizes as soon as you finish. You only WIN when you GET the “release” that this course/lessons can produce. You only get the release when you get a cognition from the “secret truth” that is hidden in each paragraph, sentence, and in some cases a single word. If you go through this fast, you will NOT get the cognitions, you will not get the release, and you will not get the benefits you seek (a cognition is when you have a NEW knowingness about something in the broadest sense; a new clarity and complete comprehension of something).

So, go back and read this again, and when you get here the second time, you may continue reading. Go back to the beginning now.

Feel What You Say

Now, repeat out loud SLOWLY, thinking about each word and it’s meaning, and FEELING what you are saying (you may repeat any phrase as many times as you like if it feels good when you say it): I am focused. I am thinking. I am in the present moment. I am concentrating. I am paying attention. I am alert. I am awake. I am aware. I am conscious. I am open. I am allowing. I am ready. I am receptive. I am receiving. I am clear. I am worthy. I am deserving. I am good. I am centered. I am peaceful. I am calm. I am serene. I am tranquil. I am still. I am fully aware and fully conscious on all levels and all dimensions. I am taking my time. I am going slow. I am concentrating. I am enjoying this. I am breathing. I am energy. I am formless. I am eternal. I am love. I am here. I am there. I am everywhere. I am.

Now, anytime I ask a question in these lessons follow these instructions: Think about the question and take your time. Reread the question as many times as you like. Look within, search within, connect to the Universal field/collective consciousness. Focus. Breath. Maybe stand up and walk around as you think about the question. There is no rush. Feel the energy in the question. Feel the energy flowing through you. Be aware of your connection to Source. If you take several minutes, that is fine. This is not a race where the winner is the one who finishes first.

Every Thought Carries Unlimited Power

Every moment in life is significant. EVERY thought you have carries with it unlimited power and the seed of creation. There are no insignificant thoughts. EVERY thought has the potential to transform your world in an instant, and in a monumental way (the way you do anything, is the way you do everything). The NEXT thought might be the one thought that catapults you, in an instant, to total freedom on all levels and in all dimensions. Every thought you have has supreme power, potential, and energy.

So, THINK about the question, and THINK about what you choose to be your answer. There are no right and wrong answers. Answer what you FEEL is true, not what you think I want to hear, or what sounds good. You have to feel your answer is true for you, even if you “wish” or want your answer to be something else. Always answer honestly. Know also, that the moment you answer the question, everything can shift and the next time you are asked the same question (even only a minute later) your answer might be totally different. That is the point!

After you have really thought about the question and the answer, then answer the question out loud to me before you go on.

So, here is the first question: Why are you reading this?

Did you answer? What was your answer? Tell me again. Say it out loud. Articulate it. I AM listening.

Thank you.

Now, let me ask you again, think about the question, and think about your answer,(as this time you might give a different answer), take your time and give the answer out loud to me.

Think, look, search, feel, focus, concentrate, breath, be in the moment, take your time, then give me the answer out loud.

Here is the question: Why are you reading this?

Thank you.

Did you have a cognition, new viewpoint, new understanding, or new awareness of anything, and, if so, please take your time and articulate it now out loud, and when finished, continue reading, if not, simply continue reading.

Thank you.

Now, I will ask you another question, think about the question, take your time, (even if it take several minutes),then say your answer out loud to me.

(Answer before you go on) What do you want?

Thank you.

(Answer before you go on, but do not rush your answer, take your time) What do you want?

Thank you.

(Answer before you go on, but do not rush your answer, as it may be a different answer or a more detailed answer, take your time) What do you want?

Thank you.

What do you want?

Thank you.

Did you have a cognition, new viewpoint, new understanding, or new awareness of anything, and, if so, please take your time and articulate it now out loud, and when finished, continue reading, if not, simply continue reading.

Thank you.

(Answer before you go on, but to do not rush you answer, take your time, focus, THINK, concentrate, search with your feelings, and always give the answer out loud to me) Why do you want what you want?

Thank you.

Tell me again, (only after you have thought about it), why do you want what you want and see if there is another reason why you want what you want.

Thank you.

Why do you want what you want? Thank you.

Did you have a cognition, new viewpoint, new understanding, or new awareness of anything, and, if so, please take your time and articulate it now out loud, and when finished, continue reading, if not, simply continue reading.

Thank you.

What feeling do you want, and you think you will get, when you get what you want? Thank you.

What feeling do you want, and you think you will get, when you get what you want? Thank you.

Did you have a cognition, new viewpoint, new understanding, or new awareness of anything, and, if so, please take your time and articulate it now out loud, and when finished, continue reading, if not, simply continue reading.

Thank you.

Why do you want that feeling? Thank you.

It is fine to change the feeling you want or have a new cognition. Why do you want that feeling?

Thank you.

Why do you want that feeling? Thank you.

Did you have a cognition, new viewpoint, new understanding, or new awareness of anything, and, if so, please take your time and articulate it now out loud, and when finished, continue reading, if not, simply continue reading.

Thank you.

What do you want that you do not have? Thank you.

What do you want that you do not have? Thank you.

Did you have a cognition, new viewpoint, new understanding, or new awareness of anything, and, it so, please take your time and articulate it now out loud, and when finished, continue reading, if not, simply continue reading.

Thank you.

What do you need? Thank you.

What do you need? Thank you.

Did you have a cognition, new viewpoint, new understanding, or new awareness of anything, and, if so, please take your time and articulate it now out loud, and when finished, continue reading, if not, simply continue reading.

Thank you

What is missing from your life? Thank you.

What is missing from your life? Thank you.

Did you have a cognition, new viewpoint, new understanding, or new awareness of anything, and if so, please take your time and articulate it now out loud, and when finished, continue reading, if not, simply continue reading.

Where are you?

Thank you.

(Be detailed) What are you wearing? Thank you.

Be aware of your breathing for 30 seconds. Thank you.

Touch something, focus on it, be fully aware and conscious of it, concentrate on it, acknowledge it’s existence, and call it by name saying “you are a “.

Thank you.

Self vs Ego

What you just did was “experience” something. “You/the SELF” exercised/focused/controlled your “mind/ego”. The goal of these lessons is to release your abilities so you can manifest/create anything you want in the physical material world, AND achieve complete inner peace/bliss that is not overruled by irrational uncontrollable emotions that seem to be at effect to outside circumstances and conditions, such as what people say about you, your physical health, your financial situation, daily frustrations, and events/people/situations that are “outside of our personal control”.

As you went through those questions, you may have experienced some “shifts” in your perspective on things. Perspective is different that “knowing”. Knowing is when you have 100% certainty; not feeling any need to convince anyone; not feeling any need to defend your knowingness about something. You always have supreme inner confidence in your knowingness without any fear, sense of threat, and without any feelings of superiority of, or any condemnation, criticism, or judgment of others. You feel humility.

Now, think about the following concepts/ideas/perspectives. Go slow, and really ponder these concepts. You do not have to believe them, agree with them, or accept them. Just think about them. See how they FEEL when you read them, and consider them.

You (SELF)

Remember there is a difference in: believing something (which is what the ego/mind does, and always contains doubt); “knowing about” something; and actually KNOWING something: a knowingness (which comes from first hand personal “experiencing it”; a total awareness of it; 100% certainty). I will explain more about this in an upcoming lesson.

-You (SELF) are not a body.

-You (SELF) are an eternal non-physical, formless, EXTENSION of pure love/light/Source/All-that-IS.

–You (SELF) ARE in fact, pure love/light/SOURCE/ALL-THAT-IS.

–You (SELF) have a mind/ego (which you need if you are embodied and operating in the material world of form).

–Your mind/ego wants to always be in control, and wants to think thoughts continuously.

–Your mind/ego must always be right, and at the same time, always make others wrong.

–Everything (ideas, thoughts, reality, TRUTH) that suggests the body and mind/ego are not the ONLY and most important aspects of reality, and in fact the only thing that is real, is a threat to the mind/ego’s actual existence.

–Your mind/ego rejects and attacks everything that threatens it (that includes all concepts, ideas, reality, and TRUTH).

–Your body (and all organisms) operate out of fear (the feeling of being separated from Source) which creates a single driving force: SURVIVE (which also can mean thrive)

–Your mind/ego also operates out of fear (the feeling of being separated from Source) which creates a single driving force: SURVIVE (which also can mean thrive)

–YOU/the SELF operate out of love. You/SELF have no fear (for you KNOW that you are not, never have been, and never will be separate from Love/God/Light/Source, as YOU are an extension of, a part of, and one with Source. You ARE Source. Thus, You/SELF KNOW you CANNOT EVER be separate from Source/God; YOU have 100% certainty of this fact).  You/SELF know that You/SELF are eternal thus Survival is not a consideration. You/SELF ARE pure love. Love is not a driving force, and has no driving force, it is simply a state of being. You/SELF simply ARE (just as God IS).

–You/SELF choose to be embodied in order to experience and feel all aspects of love, by expanding the Universe via creating.

–The ego/mind likes things, AND dislikes things, and condemns, criticizes, judges others, and complains (finds fault).

–You (SELF) love everything, and dislike nothing, and never condemns, criticizes, judges others, or complains (finds fault).

–You (SELF) can ONLY give love and receive love, because you are ONLY love.

Now, consider that YOU (the SELF) are currently controlled by the mind/ego (by lack of awareness and understanding, a slow thought speed, and the images you have been programmed with). When YOU are in control of the mind/ego, THEN you are free! Suffering ceases. You have mastery over all. You have equanimity.

“Images” You Have Been Programmed With

Now read and ponder the following ideas. Go slow.

You do not have to agree with, believe, or accept any of the concepts. Simply read them, think about them, and notice your feelings as you think about them.

Consider that you are reading this because you want something you feel you do not have and feel it could be revealed here. You want to increase your survival potential. You think that you can gain something by reading this, thus subconsciously increase your survival quotient. You are searching. You are curious. You feel you are not yet “whole”, not “complete”. You want both material things and an inner state of joy/happiness/connection, which you believe will increase your ability to survive (thrive). You have searched and still have not “found” or experienced that elusive “magic“. You still feel that something is missing from your life. You are still unfulfilled and do not have complete contentment.

Consider that you want to gain material “stuff” in your life. You want to gain more pleasurable sensations and decrease or eliminate painful sensations.

Now, consider that all your wants come from the ego/mind. And, the ego/mind has been programmed to want things based on what the “image makers” have programmed it to want.

If you live in America, the “images” you have been programmed with are different than the “images” someone who lives in China has been programmed with.

Images (programming) come from TV, movies, books, music, radio, magazines, newspapers, billboards, what we see with our eyes and experience through all of our senses. They also come from the words of all people in your life that you felt had authority, such as your parents, any person older than you, any person you felt was better, smarter, or superior than you, all government officials, teachers etc.

Programming also comes from EVERY word you have spoken out loud, and every thought you think.

If you want a Mercedes, think about what makes you want a Mercedes. It is the advertising (images). It is seeing your favorite celebrity drive one. It is how you hear others talk about a Mercedes and how they wish they had one. It is how you think you will feel when you get it (which all comes from programming).

You want a Mercedes because you have been programmed to want a Mercedes, and not a camel. Yet, in the world, there are many who WANT and DESIRE a camel and could care less about a Mercedes. All wants/desires come from the images your mind/ego has been programmed with.

Consider changing the idea of “wanting/desiring” to: choosing; create; choose to have; wish to create; interest in manifesting; attract; claiming; my preference; my option; I would like to experience “next”; interest in making; etc.

Consider that the only reason you want anything, is because you think getting it will make you feel better than you do now (and increase your ability to survive and thrive).

Consider that ALL feelings that you seek are ultimately a deep inner desire to feel “love”, connection, oneness, completion, wholeness, bliss, safety, contentment, security, happiness, joy, acceptance, approval, worthiness, and ecstasy.

Consider that the reason you want these feelings is because you have already “tasted”/experienced them at some point in your eternal existence, and you desperately want them again.

Consider that feeling you do not have something, can only come from the ego/mind. If you are an extension of ALLdTHATdIS, then you are ONE with everything. You have and ARE everything right now. All you have to do is be aware of it, choose it, claim it, and it will be.

Consider, that YOU (SELF) need nothing. It is only the ego/mind that THINKS it “needs” things (to survive). You/SELF need nothing, for you are already everything, and you are eternal.

Consider that nothing is missing from your life for you ARE one with all.

Consider that you are embodied, here on planet earth, by your choice. You actually wanted to feel disconnected from Source. You choose to experience ALL feelings of separation from LOVE/SOURCE/GOD, so you can KNOW what love/light actually is.

You must KNOW what something is NOT, to know what it is. You must know sour, to know sweet. You must know fear to know love. The process of experiencing all, is the process of experiencing contrast, which leads to preferences and choices, which lead to creation. Creation happens with the mind/ego. YOU control your mind and USE it to create in the physical world.

Consider that your thoughts and only your thoughts create everything, without exception, in your worldly experience. All your past thoughts are projected into everything your senses interact with on the physical plane of existence.

Consider you can give any meaning to anything you experience, thus you and only you can choose anything to be pleasant/good/positive, based on the meaning you give to it.

Consider you can change any experience instantly, by simply changing the thoughts you focus on (with complete certainty). The “time” the change takes place in the physical world is simply an illusion (more on this in an upcoming lesson).

You Can Manifest Anything You Choose

You can create/manifest in the physical world anything you choose. You can be, do and have anything you choose. You can feel anyway you choose. You are the ultimate creator. You are the Supreme Omnipresent, Omnipotent, All Powerful, Absolute Authority in your life who has complete dominion over your entire experience, and how you feel, at all times. And you are the ONLY almighty power over your life. You and only you control your life experience with complete supremacy and absolute total complete authority.

All suffering comes from wanting/desiring “something” you do not have, believing you NEED it, and that you will be or feel better when you get it. It is the attachment or need of “something” outside of yourself that is the cause of all suffering.

You can still choose to create/manifest anything in your life and have no suffering, if you simply are not attached to what you are creating, and creating for the joy of creating, and not the need of “getting” of things. When you know all is already yours, (when you are in control of the mind/ego) suffering ceases, and the joy/bliss/peace that surpasses all human comprehension is your moment to moment experience.

When you are blissful now, you can choose to create anything, knowing that you “need” nothing, and when what you choose to create manifests, your state will not change. This is freedom. This is Mastery. This is equanimity.

Now, you will do an extremely powerful process that will result in huge amounts of release for you and many cognitions. This will help you manifest your desires more easily while increasing your moment to moment joy (reduce suffering).

Perhaps this process will even result in an epiphany, transformation, or transcendental experience for you.

You are going to create your own personal dictionary and “Illuminate and activate” words. A personal dictionary is one of the greatest kept secrets for Mastery in life (I will explain in detail in an upcoming lesson). You can get a notebook (I suggest a 3 ring binder) and write this by hand or you can do this digitally on your computer or Smartphone. Create a “special” personal dictionary with pride. Cherish your personal dictionary. It will contain power and wonder. Make it awesome, wonderful, and magnificent.

Now, go back to the beginning of the lesson, and read/do this lesson again. Do not continue reading this lesson until you have reread the lesson. Only then continue reading.

Welcome back

Now that you have completed all the words, and did the lesson a second time, let me ask you a couple of questions:

-Please tell me out loud how the lesson was different the second time? Thank you.

-Did you have any cognitions or epiphanies from the time you started reading this lesson the first time to right now, and if yes, please tell them to me out loud, before you read any further.

Thank you! Well done!

Now, you are going to create a lesson note book. Take pride in the creation of your personal lesson notebook. Make it something, along with your personal dictionary, that you will be proud to pass on generation to generation.

Your personal dictionary and your personal lesson notebook will be the 2 most important and effective tools you will have as you move through these lessons, to help you release your abilities to manifest things into your physical reality and increase your moment to moment inner bliss/joy/peace.

Give time and effort (with joy) into creating your personal dictionary and lesson notebook. You will be getting new words each lesson that you will be adding to your personal dictionary. You should also be adding words to your personal dictionary on your own throughout the month between lessons, and on a regular ongoing basis.

You will also be adding things to your lesson notebook each month.

From time to time, you will be instructed to go to your personal dictionary and lesson notebook to review what you wrote.

You can use a physical paper notebook (I suggest a 3 ring binder) or you can do this digitally on your computer or smart phone.

Each month you can write notes in your notebook as you go through the lessons. At the end of each lesson I will give you specific questions to answer that you will write in your notebook.

Anytime you write in your notebook, put the day, date, time, where you are and the conditions (city, location such as your house and the room, etc. Be specific and include the weather, what the smells are, sounds etc.) and the lesson you are writing about.

Answer These Questions

Now, read the following questions and write your answers to the questions below in your notebook.

Start with a clean page. At the top of the page, put today’s day, date, time, where you are, the conditions, and write lesson 2.

Then, write the answers to the following questions (remember, go slow. Think about each question before you answer):

-What specific things did you learn from this lesson?

-What major cognitions (if any) did you have while going through this lesson? dWhat benefit(s) did you get out of this lesson?

-What did you like best about this lesson?

-Now, think of 3 things you “choose to have/wish to create” in the next 6 months. Take your time.

-Write down the 3 things in your notebook.

-For each of the 3 things, write down WHY you “choose” to manifest/create it and have it in your life.

-For each of the 3 things, write down what you will do and/or how your life will be when you have it.

-For each of the 3 things, write down why you “think/believe/know” you CAN and WILL create them and possess them.

-Now, think about, and write down 1 thing you “choose to have/wish to create” in the next 2d5 years.

-Write down WHY you “choose” to manifest/create this and have it in your life. dWrite down what you will do and/or how your life will be when you have it.

-Write down why you “think/believe/know” you CAN and WILL create it and possess it.

Do not go on until you have completed the above actions.

Now, follow the procedure when getting questions. Go slow. Take your time. Think. When ready answer out loud. How are you feeling right now?

Thank you.

Now take 3 deep breaths.

Stand up and walk around for 2 minutes. Drink a little water.

Look at something far away for 30 seconds.

Enjoy the the next few moments, allow yourself to bath in peace, serenity and bliss. Savor this very moment in time and space, then continue reading whenever you are ready.

Get Ready

Now, here is what you should do until you receive next month’s lesson.

-Go through this lesson at least one more time before you get next month’s lesson. When you go through this again, do everything again, except the dictionary portion. Instead of looking the words up in a dictionary, look them up in your personal dictionary. Read everything about the word that you wrote. Do use (and say out loud) the words in 2 new sentences, but you do not have to write the new sentences in your personal dictionary. You are encouraged to go through this lesson as many times as possible. At least 1 more time before you get next months lesson will be significant. The more often you go through this lesson the better it will be for you and the more it will become a transformative energy experience for you, rather than being an intellectual academic mind/thoughtful exercise. It can actually become a transcendental experience. It can awaken your dormant energy and power.

-Ideally you should also be going through the Success Mastery Course and moving up the levels at a pace you feel good about. The higher you are in the Success Mastery Course, the more you will benefit from this course (these lessons).

However, even if you have not gone through the Your Wish is Your Command Cds or any of the Success Mastery Course, you will still achieve monumental gains and benefits from these lessons and increase your ability to make “things you focus on materialize in your physical world”, and experience more deep inner joy and contentment than ever before.

-Consider reading a little, each day (or as much as possible), from any of the books on the recommended book list (which follows).

-Consider listening to inspirational, motivational audios as often as possible, (including both spoken word as well as music).

-Say the following affirmation/decree out loud, with feeling, each and every day, in the morning as soon as you arise, right before you go to bed, and as often as you can throughout each day. Do the best you can. Be easy on yourself if you forget, or miss a whole day. It is simply ideal to say this out loud as often as you can, for as many days as you can, before the next lesson arrives, as you are now going to consciously program yourself in a positive way that will help release your abilities.

(When I use the word “I”, I am referring to the YOU/SELF that is eternal, non physical, formless, and an extension of ALLdTHATdIS, not your body, mind, or ego.)

Say the following affirmation/decree out loud now, with feeling and focus. Pay attention to every word. You may repeat this as many times now as you like before you continue reading the lesson.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, for this lesson. I am willing to learn. I can learn. I am learning. I can be aware. I can be conscious. I can expand, I can focus. I can concentrate. I can be in present time. I can be in the moment. I can pay attention. I can think. I can control my thoughts. I can choose what I am thinking about. I can create. I can make my dreams come true. I can manifest my choices. I can create what I choose. I can feel good now. I can control my mind and ego. I can allow myself to relax and be. I can allow myself to release what needs to be released. I am a powerful creator. I am connected to Source. I am good. I am loved. I am”.

Remember, this course (these lessons) are primarily designed to ultimately increase your ability to manifest and create whatever you “choose” to enjoy in this physical life, whatever YOU choose to experience, so that your joy is full and overflowing; to increase your inner peace, happiness, bliss, contentment, joy, serenity, tranquility, and ecstasy, indescribable by any and all words, and beyond all human comprehension; to be in perfect equanimity (eliminating all human suffering).

This Is Just The Beginning

Completing this lesson is a great accomplishment. It is the first step to your total freedom on all levels and in all dimensions. I congratulate you! Well done! I am extremely proud of you.

Before we end the Lesson, a question I get very often is how I invented, developed or discovered all the material in this course and in all the other courses I have produced.

The answer is I did NOT invent, developed or discover any of this material. I am not the source. I was taught this, I learned this, I became aware of this, I experienced this, I live this, I “know” this, and I became this. I am this “material”.

All of this data is in the Universal Field/collective consciousness. It has been written in books by men and women throughout the centuries. It has been taught via word of mouth in “clubs/societies/organizations” and by members of the “privileged elite class” for ages. I stand on the shoulders of these giants. I acknowledge them. I honor them. I give them all the accolades, respect, praise, and credit. I appreciate them. I edify them in every way.

This material is not new. It is ancient. It is eternal. It always has been. There are in fact no new breakthrough technologies for enlightenment, or “success”.

If anyone says “I created this”, it is coming from the ego/mind, and not the SELF.

The only thing that is “new” or different, is the way the material is presented, the words used to describe what simply IS, the manner it is taught or the way it is explained, organized, communicated, shown, and disseminated. The “material” and knowledge are all the same. The “energy” is the same. It is all the same TRUTH.

Yes, few people actually “know” this material. Some “know about” this material, but do not “know” it. Some “believe” in this material, but do not “KNOW” it. Fewer still actually have their own dormant “energy/essence” awakened to the point it can effect and awaken the energy in others. Few have the talent and ability to “explain” or “teach” the material in a way that is easy to grasp and easy to learn.

But I am nothing special. I am you. And you are me. We truly are one.

I present this with the deepest humility. I am humbled to be sharing this with you.

I have the deepest love, appreciation and affection for you. I am honored and privileged to be working together with you as we share this path.

Enjoy the journey, enjoy THIS moment, and enjoy EVERY moment. As always, feel good NOW!

Until next month….

May you never be the same. I will see you at the Top.

This is the end of Lesson 2

Book Recommendations by KT:

Books FOCUSING on Manifesting Material

Books FOCUSING on Non-Material/Spiritual/Feel Good NOW

Books FOCUSING on Life SKILLS

Miscellaneous

The post Lesson 2 – The Science of Personal Mastery by KT appeared first on UpMinded.

Want to practice better decision making?

Unfortunately, your natural brain’s pretty dumb and easily tricked. To save energy and make faster decisions, it relies on cognitive heuristics to make fast judgments.

In prehistoric days when we had to avoid getting devoured by lions, these fast heuristics worked pretty well. Now that life is more complex, the decisions you need to make are more complex, and your cognitive biases trick you into making bad decisions.

These 25 cognitive biases come from “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment,” a talk by Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s partner at Berkshire Hathaway.

By learning these biases, you’ll guard yourself against people trying to exploit you. Even better, you’ll guard against your worst enemy: your own brain.

How Learning These 25 Cognitive Biases Will Help You

When’s the last time you stuck to a bad decision far longer than you should have?

When’s the last time you got excited about buying something you really didn’t need?

When’s the last time you over-confidently thought you were really good at something – and it turns out you were terrible?

When’s the last time your infatuation – with somebody, something, or even just an idea – made you ignore all the negatives?

Cognitive biases were at work, morphing your view of reality and causing you to make really bad decisions. Your biases make you ignore really valuable data and over-emphasize faulty data.

By being aware of your cognitive biases, you can take a step back, gather more information, and practice more objective decision making. Making better decisions will ultimately improve your life.

Just as valuable – learning the major cognitive biases also helps you understand other people’s behavior. Why do stock market booms and busts happen? Why do normal-seeming people join cults? Why is it so hard for political opponents to meet in the middle? Why is Facebook so addictive?

Understanding biases will help you unpack why ordinary people can fall into extreme behaviors. At the end of this article, we’ll analyze how cults are so insidiously effective at converting new believers.

How This List of Cognitive Biases Works

For each of Charlie Munger’s 25 cognitive biases, I explain these bullet points:

• AKA
  • Charlie Munger often groups some cognitive biases under a single umbrella term. I list the formal psychological names for related biases you may have heard of.
• What it is
  • How this bias changes your decision making
• Why it evolved
  • Why the bias might have arisen during human evolution
• How it can be harmful
  • How this bias leads to poor decisions or how it can be exploited to change your behavior
• Examples
  • Examples of the bias at work
• Antidotes
  • Actionable on how to avoid the bad behaviour

Charlie’s Reason for Interest in Psychology

In Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Charlie Munger explains why humans are just advanced animals, and why we’re so psychologically flawed, leading to these 25 cognitive biases.

• Man is a “’social animal,’ greatly and automatically influenced by behavior he observed in men around him. I also knew that man lived, like barnyard animals and monkeys, in limited size dominance hierarchies, wherein he tended to respect authority and to like and cooperate with his own hierarchy members while displaying considerable distrust and dislike for competing men not in his own hierarchy.”
• “Extreme success of the ants also fascinated me— how a few behavioral algorithms caused such extreme evolutionary success grounded in extremes of cooperation within the breeding colony and, almost always, extremes of lethal hostility toward ants outside the breeding colony, even ants of the same species.”
• “The limitations inherent in evolution’s development of the nervous-system cells that control behavior arc beautifully demonstrated by these insects, which often have a mere 100,000 or so cells in their entire nervous systems, compared to man’s multiple billions of cells in his brain alone.” “In the ant’s case, the behavioral algorithms are few in number and almost entirely genetic in origin. The ant learns a little behavior from experiences, but mostly it merely responds to ten or so stimuli with a few simple responses programmed into its nervous system by its genes.”
• “It seems obvious, to me at least, that the human brain must often operate counterproductively just like the ant’s, from unavoidable oversimplicity in its mental process.”
• “Man is easily fooled, either by the cleverly thought out manipulation of man, by circumstances occurring by accident, or by very effective manipulation practices that man has stumbled into during “practice evolution” and kept in place because they work so well.”
• Put one hand in hot water, one in cold water, then put both in the same temperature warm water. “Now one hand feels as if it has just been put in cold water and the other hand feels as if it has just been placed in hot water. When one thus sees perception so easily fooled by mere contrast, where a simple temperature gauge would make no error, and realizes that cognition mimics perception in being misled by mere contrast, he is well on the way toward understanding, not only how magicians fool one, but also how life will fool one.”
• Being aware of biases is not a perfect defense. Charlie loves checklists.

Bias 1: Reward and Punishment Superresponse Tendency

• AKA
  • Incentive-caused bias
  • Agency cost
• What it is
  • Self-interest and rewards drive behavior
  • Behaviors are conditioned by prompt rewards given after an action
  • Once a behavior is conditioned, random distribution of rewards keeps the reflexive behavior in place the longest
  • Incentives cause bias, consciously or subconsciously.
  • Man tends to game all human systems.
  • Common incentives are money, friendship, sex, advancement in status.
  • Punishments also inhibit bad behavior
• Why it evolved
  • The brain has an algorithm: “Repeat behavior that works.” Here, “works” means “rewards.” Why would the brain evolve any differently?
• How it can be harmful
  • Poorly designed incentives will cause bad behaviors. In pursuit of his own self-interest, man will rationalize bad behavior.
    • One surgeon excised normal gallbladders. Did this surgeon think, ‘I can get some easy cash by fraudulently excising gallbladders?’ No, “he thought the gallbladder was the source of all medical evil, and if you really loved your patients, you couldn’t get that organ out rapidly enough.”
  • Bad behaviors become intensely habit-forming when they are rewarded (especially because of inconsistency-avoidance tendency, another of the 25 cognitive biases).
• Examples
  • Fedex couldn’t get all packages done in late night shifts. They tried a lot of things. Finally, they changed to pay per shift, rather than pay per hour, and the shifts took care of themselves.
  • Expert advisers recommending things that help themselves
    • “I have never seen a management consultant’s report that didn’t end with the same advice: “This problem needs more management consulting services.”
    • “Whose bread I eat, his song I sing” – recall Arthur Andersen of Enron
  • Government changes from cost-plus contracts to fixed fee contracts.
  • “Most capitalist owners in a vast web of free market economic activity are selected for ability by surviving in a brutal competition with other owners and have a strong incentive to prevent all waste in operations within their ownership. After all, they live on the difference between their competitive prices and their overall costs and their businesses will perish if costs exceed sales. Replace such owners by salaried employees of the state and you will normally get a substantial reduction in overall efficiency as each employee who replaces an owner is subject to incentive-caused bias as he determines what service he will give in exchange for his salary and how much he will yield to peer pressure from many fellow employees who do not desire his creation of any strong performance model.”
  • Punishments
    • A European tribe that killed the last warrior to assemble to his assigned place. “No one enjoyed fighting this tribe.”
    • Munger likes the Navy rule of a ship captain being decommissioned if his boat ran aground. Not totally fair, but sets the stage for everyone else.
  • “A rich person will often, through habit, work or connive energetically for more money long after he has almost no real need for more”
• Antidotes
  • Don’t reward behaviors you don’t want. Don’t design terrible incentive structures.
  • Fear professional advice, especially when it is good for the advisor.
  • Learn and use the basic elements of your advisor’s trade as you deal with your advisor.
  • Double check, disbelieve, or replace much of what you’re told.
  • To ward off employee bad behavior, use audits and sound accounting theory and practice.
    • Cash registers deter employee theft
    • Public punishment for misbehaving employees
  • To ward off employer bad behavior:
    • Unions
    • Regulation
  • Granny’s rule: “Eat your carrots before you get dessert.”
• How to use it
  • “If you would persuade, appeal to interest and not to reason.” – Ben Franklin

Bias 2: Liking/Loving Tendency

• AKA
  • Halo effect
  • Association fallacy
• What it is
  • Humans tend to like and love things and people, especially mothers, much like goslings attach to whatever is there at birth.
  • People like and love being liked and loved.
  • You ignore fault of and comply with wishes of the object of your affection.
  • You favor people, products, and actions associated with the object of your affection.
  • Also works in reverse – a quality you admire in someone intensifies the feeling of liking and loving. This can build extreme feedback loops, as liking further intensifies the admiration for those qualities and ignores faults. Inconsistency-avoidance tendency keeps this further entrenched.
• Why it evolved
  • Attachment to parents promotes learning and safety for child
  • Reciprocal liking between people allows social cohesion
• How it can be harmful
  • You can ignore the real faults of the object of your affection.
  • In extreme cases, affection can be so strong you self-harm to attain what is loved.
  • Because you like being loved, you pursue paths that make other people admire you, rather than the optimal choice for yourself. Like making popular but wrong decisions as a manager, or pursuing a respectable but dull career path.
• Examples
  • Advertising associating products with popular figures
  • Warren and Charlie both liked Warren’s uncle, Fred Buffett, the grocery store owner, which set a positive example.
• Antidotes
  • Put good admirable people in situations where people are prone to like/love, like teaching.
  • Explicitly recognize your desire to be liked/loved, and control for that in decision making.
  • Invert, always invert – what do you dislike most about an object of your affection? What are all the ways it can go wrong?

Bias 3: Disliking/Hating Tendency

• AKA
  • Reverse halo effect
• What it is
  • Humans tend to dislike and hate things and people.
  • You ignore virtues in the object of dislike.
  • You dislike people, products, and actions associated with the object of dislike.
  • You distort facts to facilitate hatred.
• Why it evolved
  • Possibly the dislike of an “other” group promoted resource seizing/conquest and thus enhanced survival.
• How it can be harmful
  • Ignoring virtues can further intensify dislike, causing feedback loops
  • Rifts can progressively widen until there is no common ground, and agreements are harder to achieve. Inconsistency-avoidance tendency (another of the 25 cognitive biases) keeps this further entrenched.
  • Judgments can be made without consideration of full facts
  • Fixating on competition rather than growing the pie or moving to another market. This occurs because the emotional reaction to hating is so strong.
  • You tend to underestimate your competition (commonly maligning incumbents as “dinosaurs” when in reality they can easily crush you if they chose).
• Examples
  • Negative political advertising, and treatment of opposing political candidates
  • Says Munger: When World Trade Center was destroyed, many Pakistanis concluded the Hindus did it, many Muslims concluded the Jews did it.
  • Really, pick anything you strongly dislike, and see how many good things you can say about
• Antidotes
  • Invert, always invert – what can you find to like about an object of your hatred? How can you come to accept this object? What does the best case scenario look like?
  • Respect your adversaries as people who are highly competent with many virtues, whom we will respect and target with our own strengths and virtues until they are defunct.

Bias 4: Doubt-Avoidance Tendency

• AKA
• What it is
  • Doubt is painful, causing puzzlement and stress, so you reach a decision more quickly than a fully considered decision would take.
  • Plodding down your current path is psychologically easier than doubting the path and potentially causing upheaval. This is strengthened by inconsistency-avoidance tendency.
• Why it evolved
  • Doubting your actions for too long gets you eaten by a tiger.
• How it can be harmful
  • You make poorly considered decisions to remove doubt.
  • You perpetuate poor decisions, because doubting your current path causes more turmoil and stress. This is strengthened by inconsistency-avoidance tendency (next on this list of 25 cognitive biases).
• Examples
  • Religion is a way to answer existential doubt and ease stressful situations. It provides answers to your life’s problems if you can just believe.
  • Countering the inertia of your business is tough. Pivoting a company, letting go employees who have been around for a long time, stopping a strategy that’s not working – all these introduce doubt and the easier thing is to just perpetuate the action.
• Antidotes
  • Schedule deliberate delays before making decisions, like in jury trials and “sleeping on it.”
  • Build yourself the luxury of patience. Warren and Charlie are content to sit for a long time until they see a great deal. Having a larger resource buffer helps with patience.

Bias 5: Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency

• AKA
  • Confirmation bias
  • Cognitive inertia
  • Status quo bias
  • Cognitive dissonance
  • Sunk cost fallacy
  • System justification
• What it is
  • People are reluctant to change. This applies to personal behavior, beliefs, relationships, commitments.
  • Habit changing is hard, despite people knowing their habits are bad.
  • “The human mind works a lot like a human egg. When one sperm gets into a human egg, there’s an automatic shut-off device that bars any other sperm from getting in.”
  • Repeated exposures to the same belief reinforces it.
    • “See one, do one, teach one” pounds the learning into the teacher.
  • When your behavior conflicts with a prior belief, you correct your beliefs to accommodate the new behavior.
    • Doing a favor for someone you dislike improves your rating of that person.
    • Being forced to harm someone makes you dislike the person.
  • Making big sacrifices to assume a new identity will intensify devotion to that new identity.
    • Related to sunk cost fallacy and cognitive dissonance (“I suffered a lot of pain to become a doctor, and I wouldn’t do this if I weren’t really excited about being a doctor, so I must love being a doctor.”)
• Why it evolved
  • Keeping the same behavior conserves brain programming space and allows faster decision making.
  • It preserves social cohesion by maintaining social roles and responses.
    • People stay loyal to their roles as citizens, soldiers, teachers, physicians, etc.
• How it can be harmful
  • Early-formed habits may be destiny, since they are so hard to change.
  • Pushing beliefs on children (political, religious) can be permanently damaging.
  • Bad decision making caused by other biases can be locked in for good.
    • Doubt-avoidance tendency causes a bad decision; inconsistency-avoidance tendency perpetuates that decision.
    • Disliking tendency starts a perpetual feedback loop where you dislike a person minorly, then to minimize inconsistency, you see progressively fewer virtues about the person to maintain the belief. (We’re starting to see how the 25 cognitive biases reinforce each other to create strong behaviors)
• Examples
  • “An older Einstein never accepted the full implications of quantum mechanics.”
  • Hazing rituals as initiations into groups strengthen the tie (through cognitive dissonance – “there’s no way I would go through that if I weren’t really into the group.”)
  • Ben Franklin asked a small favor of someone who disliked him, like borrowing a book; this made the man trust Franklin more since disliking Franklin would be inconsistent with doing him a favor.
  • Prisoner abuse by guards: prisoners are treated like animals and instigate retaliation from guards. To be consistent, guards then feel they must hate the prisoners. This causes worse action and perpetuates the cycle.
• Antidotes
  • Consider counterarguments to your position before making decisions. In fact, you should actively seek out opposition to your favorite ideas.
    • Jury trials force listening of both sides before a verdict.
    • Stress-test your ideas with a trusted group of thinkers.
  • An ounce of prevention is a pound of cure. Don’t start smoking or gambling, particularly in response to doubt or a problem (like unhappiness).
  • Invert, always invert – for things you hold sacred, ask yourself, “what if this weren’t true? What if this doesn’t work?”
  • To correct your bad habits, force yourself to act in behaviors that that contradict your beliefs. You will then have to correct your beliefs.
    • If you hate a political opponent, force yourself to know and like someone who follows the opponent. This will help you see the virtue in the other side and correct your hating tendency.
    • “Fake it til you make it” – picture the kind of person you want to be and act in accordance with that. For example, “I’m the type of person who likes waking up and exercising.” Your behavior will rectify your prior self-belief (“I’m a lazy no good nothing”) so that you eventually believe you become the type of person you want to be.
  • Reorient your beliefs about yourself around objectivity. For instance, “I am the person who is always right” to “I am the person who finds the truth” or “I am the person who thinks everyone has something to offer.” You will then start to act according to those beliefs.

Bias 6: Curiosity Tendency

• AKA
• What it is
  • Humans tend to be curious, even more so than monkeys and mammals.
  • Curiosity helps prevent bad consequences from other psychological tendencies.
• Why it evolved
  • Curiosity likely helped discover new food sources and other pro-survival things.
• How it can be harmful
  • Curiosity can be exploited by behavior loops, like Facebook’s never ending feed promoting endless scrolling up. These dopamine rewards in conjunction with inconsistency-avoidance tendency make the habit hard to extinguish.
• Examples
  • Athens developed math and science out of curiosity, while the Romans focused on practical engineering of mines, aqueducts, etc.
• Antidotes

Bias 7: Kantian Fairness Tendency

• AKA
  • Golden rule
• What it is
  • Humans follow behaviors that, if followed by all others, make the surrounding human system work best for everybody.
  • When such courtesies are withheld, other parties get very upset.
• Why it evolved
  • Social cohesion in reciprocated behaviors.
• How it can be harmful
  • Excessive fairness can create systems that incentivize poor behavior.
    • Charlie mentions workplace injury compensation schemes that reward fraudulent injuries. He suggests having no workplace injury comp, period.
    • Charlie also likes the Navy rule of being dismissed as an officer if you run your ship aground – not fair in all circumstances, but certainly prevents ships from being run aground.
    • Paying everyone the same amount leads to productivity stagnation and dragging to the lowest common denominator.
  • Violation of Kantian fairness could lead to dislike/hating tendency taking over without understanding the underlying motives.
• Examples
  • Letting people go first at stop signs and one-way bridges.
  • Anger felt when someone cuts in line.
• Antidotes
  • Design good incentive systems that leave fairness out of play and reward productivity.

Bias 8: Envy/Jealousy Tendency

• AKA
• What it is
  • Wanting something that someone else has
  • Fearing that what you have will be taken away
• Why it evolved
  • Humans need food to survive, and seeing someone else have food if you don’t have any makes you want to take the food for yourself.
• How it can be harmful
  • In conjunction with disliking/hating tendency, envy can lead to resentment and hate.
  • Envy/jealousy are seen as childish emotions to have, so it’s taboo to accuse others of it in resolving problems. So the problem goes unsolved.
  • “It is not greed that drives the world, but envy.” – Warren Buffett
• Examples
  • Anger at unequal distribution of wealth
  • Systems that compensate all partners the same, regardless of productivity
  • Sibling jealousy or resources and attention
• Antidotes
  • Kantian fairness tendency opposes this.
  • Generally be happy with what you have rather than calibrating to other people.

Bias 9: Reciprocation Tendency

• AKA
  • Foot in door technique
• What it is
  • Humans reciprocate both favors and disfavors
  • Ants fight intra-species members who are not part of their breeding group. This suggests there is no general algorithm making intraspecies turn-the-other-cheek behavior a booster of species survival
  • Thus it’s not obvious that abandoning reciprocate-disfavor helps countries survive. Thus if ignoring reciprocate-disfavor behavior is good, man will need a lot of heavy psychological work since our genes are of little help
  • Dovetails with inconsistency-avoidance in fulfilling promises made as part of a deal (as in marriage)
  • Asking someone for a huge favor (and getting rejected) then making a concession increases the compliance rate.
    • Asking people to supervise a group of juvenile delinquents on trip to zoo gets 1/6 agree rate. Asking people to supervise the group weekly for 2 years gets 0% acceptance rate, but then lowering this to one afternoon gets rate up to ½ agree rate.
    • The participants were anchored to the 2 year span, so the concession seemed valuable and was reciprocated with kindness.
• Why it evolved
  • Group cooperation and mutual deterrence of bad behavior
• How it can be harmful
  • Negative behaviors can be reciprocated to extremes, as in war. A take-no-prisoners attitude will quickly be reciprocated and possibly hard to correct
  • Exploiters will demonstrate a small favor to you (like a car salesman giving you a free cup of coffee) and get rewarded far in abundance. This gets especially bad when you are buying on behalf of someone else, like an employer or the government.
• Examples
  • Trade uses both self-interest incentives and reciprocation
  • Weird pauses of fighting in war, when one side shows some favor to the other
  • On the other hand, in some wars, no prisoners were taken; all were killed
  • Road rage is reciprocating anger and perceived unfairness
  • Religious behavior, reciprocating favor from gods
    • Sacrifices in religions, as with Aztecs
    • General good behavior for reciprocation for getting into heaven
  • Another foot-in-door technique: Watergate. A subordinate gave an extreme proposal to scandalize the other party (“some combination of whores and a gigantic yacht.”) The subordinate conceded and asked merely for a burglary, and the attorney general went along.
• Antidotes
  • Train yourself to defer reaction. “You can always tell the man off tomorrow, if it is such a good idea.”
  • To oppose reciprocate-favor tendency, don’t let employees accept any favors from vendors.
  • Strive to be more interested in pleasing than being pleased to kick off the reciprocal virtuous cycle
  • Guilt arises from the conflict between self-interest and reciprocate-favor tendency.
  • Be cognizant of exploitative favors, like with car salesmen, and try to discount those (cynically, “he’s only doing this since I’m giving him money.”) Also, go into the negotiation with a hardline price.

Bias 10: Influence-from-Mere-Association Tendency

• AKA
• What it is
  • The qualities of one item transfer to another simply when placed in proximity
  • “You won’t see Coke advertised alongside some account of the death of a child.”
• Why it evolved
  • Associating rewards (food) with neighboring items (a landmark boulder, a big tree, a certain tribe member) helps survival by making you seek it more in the future
    • If caveman Grog looks really handsome and healthy and is eating caterpillars all day, maybe caterpillars can make you handsome and healthy too
  • Likewise associating pain (illness) with neighboring items (vomit, feces) helps avoid those items
• How it can be harmful
  • Wrong attribution of previous success
    • Gambler thinking he’s on a hot streak
    • Investor who got lucky in a venture and tries again, with failure
  • Wrong attribution of liking/loving or disliking/hating
  • Persian Messenger syndrome – killing the messengers who bring bad news (the messengers then learn to run and hide instead of delivering the news)
  • Associating your current misfortune with someone helping you can swamp reciprocating favor tendency
    • Charlie had a friend Glotz who gave below-market rents and college fellowships to tenants. When he moved to tear down the building, someone said “Glotz doesn’t need any more money. I know this because I was supported in college by Glotz fellowships.”
  • Classification stereotypes
    • Old people are not high mental functioning
• Examples
  • Association of high prices with quality
  • Luxury goods where high prices are associated with extra status
  • Advertising associating attractive people with product
  • Persian Messenger syndrome
    • CBS Chariman Paley lived in a cocoon of unreality because he was hostile to bearers of bad news
• Antidotes
  • Look for accidental, non-causative factors associated with success that will mislead the appraising of new odds
  • Look for dangerous aspects of the new undertaking that weren’t present in the last success
  • Don’t kill the messenger; reward her for bringing in problems early.
    • “Always tell us the bad news promptly. It is only the god news that can wait.”
  • Combat classification stereotypes by remembering that the average does not guide the specific item
    • “the fellow who drowned in a river that averaged out only eighteen inches deep.”

Bias 11: Simple, Pain-Avoiding Psychological Denial

• AKA
• What it is
  • Denying that an objective truth exists because it causes pain
  • Usually mixed up with love, death, and chemical dependency
  • Can probably be helpful in persevering if the objective truth is not available, or the common wisdom is incorrect
• Why it evolved
  • Avoiding pain probably helps people continue to survive (eg not believing your husband is dead from a food expedition helps you continue caring for your family, rather than breaking down)
• How it can be harmful
  • If the truth exists and you refuse to accept it, denial can only worsen your decision making
• Examples
  • Denial is first stage of grief
  • Substance abusers tend to deny they have a problem as they further deteriorate
• Antidotes
  • “It is not necessary to hope in order to persevere.”
  • Don’t even risk chemical dependency by starting
  • Exposure therapy to the truth – keep repeating it and it will become less painful

Bias 12: Excessive Self-Regard Tendency

• AKA
  • Lake Wobegon effect
  • Endowment effect
  • Dunning-Kruger effect
  • Homophily
• What it is
  • You overestimate your abilities
  • You overvalue your possessions
    • When given a new item, people are immediately willing to pay more for it than if they weren’t given the item.
  • You overvalue your decisions once you’ve made them (also inconsistency avoidance)
  • You like people who are like you
• Why it evolved
  • Confidence helps spur action and grows you beyond your abilities? Self-doubt would be crippling
  • The true character of someone is hard to read, and the effects of behavior take a while to materialize. In the meantime, people have to pick mating partners before they have full information. Potential mates who act confidently signal that they may have good traits. And the best way to behave confidently is to believe (sometimes mistakenly) you’re actually good.
• How it can be harmful
  • With doubt avoidance tendency, your overconfidence makes you pick rash decisions that aren’t as good as you believe. Then, inconsistency avoidance and excessive self-regard tendency make you think the decision is great and not worth changing
  • Believing you can contribute more good than harm (eg to your organization)
  • Homophily breeds groupthink
    • Corrupt departments will select for people who fit the corruption and over time be very resistant to change
• Examples
  • You overestimate your children
  • Lake Wobegon effect – everyone believes they’re above average
  • People more often return wallets when the wallet holder resembles the finder
  • Gambling play is much lower when you can’t pick your own numbers
  • If you think you’re pretty smart, you may fall for scams if you think “there’s no way I would fall for scams, thus this isn’t a scam“
  • Stock market cycles, where people enter the market thinking they’re smarter than the average investor.
  • You overestimate abilities to pick great hires from face-to-face interviews
  • The worst criminals don’t appraise themselves as all that bad. They either believe they didn’t commit their crimes (denial) or, considering the circumstances of their lives, what they did was forgivable
• Antidotes
  • Force yourself to be more objective when thinking about yourself, the people close to you, your property, and your decisions
  • When making decisions, use a checklist to see if any psychological tendencies apply and ask yourself questions about your objectivity
  • Don’t accept excuses for poor performance
    • A child steals candy and says he’ll replace it later. His father says, “Son, it would be better for you to simply take all you want and call yourself a thief every time you do it.”
  • Fixable but unfixed bad performance is bad character, tends to be self-repeating, and creates a bad culture. Create a fair, meritocratic, demanding culture
  • Sever the poor performers
  • Justified pride is fine and necessary (pilots need to be confident in landing planes)

Bias 13: Overoptimism Tendency

• AKA
• What it is
  • People tend to believe things will work out
  • “What a man wishes, that also will he believe.” – Demosthenes
• Why it evolved
  • Hope spurs action. Optimism that there is a food source over there helps survival.
• How it can be harmful
  • Believing that things will work out overestimates the value of decisions
  • Denial of bad news and overoptimistic ignorance of risk factors leads to poor decisionmaking
• Examples
  • Venture funding believing that most of your picks can be huge companies, and that some critical risk will be resolved
  • People buying lottery tickets and overestimating chances of winning
• Antidotes
  • Habitual use of probability math. Mental heuristics for chance are not adequate, much like your intuitive golf grip is nowhere as performant as the unnatural ones now used by experts

Bias 14: Deprival-Superreaction Tendency

• AKA
  • Loss aversion
  • Sunk cost fallacy
  • Near-misses
• What it is
  • The pleasure gain from earning $10 is less than the displeasure from losing $10
  • Almost getting a reward and then having it jerked away makes the loss feel as though he had owned it the whole time
  • Overweighing of what is near – someone worth $10 million will decry losing $100 from his wallet, but not small percentage losses in his assets
• Why it evolved
  • Having your food taken away
• How it can be harmful
  • Overreaction to a threatened loss
    • Open-outcry auctions where you feel you’ve almost won, so you keep bidding
  • Missing the forest for the trees – worried about competition taking your share, when the real prize is a new market people aren’t fighting for
  • Like a dog biting the hand that feeds it but takes away food, disliking someone who takes something away may cause overreaction in way that is harmful to you (say an employer who takes you off a project)
  • Denial may protect yourself against deprival superreaction. Eg a spouse dies; deprival superreaction would be extremely crushing, thus your body protects you through denial.
  • Synergizes strongly with inconsistency avoidance. The greater the investment in your venture, the greater the deprival reaction will be.
    • For example, running a business the way it always has been, and not facing the truth that it needs to change (which risks deprival of a way of life, many people’s livelihoods) or shutting it down period. See Andy Grove and switching Intel from memory to processors.
• Examples
  • Near-misses in gambling (7-7-lemon) make you feel like you almost had the prize
  • Among religious people, disliking vocal nonbelievers who threaten taking away colleagues and also deprive you of your helpful beliefs.
  • Labor objects to decreases, and this often requires that companies close rather than renegotiate salaries downwards.
  • Gambler has passion to get even once he suffers a loss, and this passion grows with the loss.
  • Charlie bought 300 shares of an oil company at $115 per with cash on hand. He was offered another 1,500 but didn’t want to liquidate any other assets to get the cash needed, so he refused. Later Shell bought the company for $3,700 per share. He felt that if it were a good value, he should have paid more at that value.
  • Holding onto stocks for too long, whether they’ve risen or dropped in value.
• Antidotes
  • Calibrate the losses in true absolute terms, rather than relative terms (eg not firing a nonperformant $100k/year employee is far worse than a vendor overcharging by $100 a month
  • Extreme culture of courtesy

Bias 15: Social-Proof Tendency

• AKA
  • Bystander effect
• What it is
  • You think and do what you observe is thought and done around you.
  • Triggered most easily in times of puzzlement and stress
  • Applies to both action and inaction
• Why it evolved
  • Helps social cohesion through normative behavior
  • Helps everyone share in cooperative behavior that helps overall survival (eg bathing)
• How it can be harmful
  • When other people are ignoring the truth and behaving poorly
  • A company follows the crowd and thins its advantage
  • When coupled with stress and doubt avoidance, leads to rash follow-the-crowd decisions (see: stock market booms and busts; people owning 5 houses in 2008)
  • Exploiters like salespeople will couple social proof with stress and isolation
  • In inaction, everyone sits around and does nothing in emergencies
  • Coupled with envy/jealousy and deprival superreaction (from the above 25 cognitive biases) – when everyone is subject to the same biases and acts irrationally, social proof reinforces the bad behavior
• Examples
  • Go to the football game by following the crowd
  • Stranger enters elevator with everyone standing to face the rear – stranger will often turn to do so
  • Teens rely on social proof of peers more than from parents
  • Serpico syndrome – lone dissenter police officer is harassed by the corrupt organization
  • Kitty Genovese died after crying for help
  • Board of directors sits on inaction
  • Advertising with admirable people using product; product placement
  • Black Friday mobs in frenzy over sales – coupled with incentive bias, deprival superreaction, envy/jealousy
• Antidotes
  • As a society, stop bad behavior before it spreads, and display good behavior
  • Learn how to ignore the examples from others when they are wrong
  • Use a checklist to see if the countervailing theory is correct
  • To stop bystander effect, point to someone specific and ask for something

Bias 16: Contrast-Misreaction Tendency

• AKA
  • Contrast effect
  • Anchoring
• What it is
  • You tend to think in terms of relative contrast (% terms) rather than absolute numbers
    • Eg put two hands in different buckets of cold or hot water, then put them in lukewarm water. The hands will feel different despite same final temperature
  • Small imperceptible differences can make a huge difference over time – boiling frog effect
• Why it evolved
  • Detecting contrasts may allow for simpler cognition, or faster recognizing of danger (eg a tiger contrast vs grass)
• How it can be harmful
  • You make a decision pased on relative value, not absolute value
    • Buying a $1k upgrade to your car that costs $60k, when normally you’d balk at a $1k purchase
  • Boiling frog syndrome can lead to a drastic situation with one small slip at a time
    • Eg the slippery slope down alcoholism
  • In negotiations, anchoring and reciprocation tendency can draw you away from your original desired end point.
• Examples
  • Real estate agent shows you three overpriced, bad houses, and a final normal priced normal house, which now seems like a bargain
  • Obsessing over small absolute differences like credit card rewards can be problematic, since the relative amount looks big (1% to 1.5%) but in total it may amount to just hundreds of dollars a year.
• Antidotes
  • Think about absolute value of item rather than

Bias 17: Stress-Influence Tendency

• AKA
• What it is
  • Adrenaline-caused stress prompts faster and more extreme reactions
  • Light stress can slightly improve performance (eg tests)
• Why it evolved
  • You don’t want to be pondering when a tiger jumps at you
• How it can be harmful
  • Stress causes reliance on faulty heuristics rather than methodical thinking
  • Stress amplifies other biases
    • Social proof tendency (no time to think, do what everyone else does)
    • Deprival superreaction (my stuff is being taken away, quick, attack)
    • Reciprocation, Kantian fairness, Disliking/hating tendency (e.g. road rage: someone is being unfair and taking away my time, I hate this person, I want to unleash my fury on this person, I’m stressed and I think this is a good idea)
    • Doubt-avoidance (I’m stressed, I don’t know what to do, I will pick something quickly to avoid this feeling)
  • Extreme stress can lead to nondepressive mental breakdowns and rewiring
• Examples
  • Pavlov experiments with stress in dogs
    • Put dog in cage, flood cage until barely any air is left. Causes a behavior change where they started disliking handlers
    • The dogs hardest to break down were also hardest to return to pre-breakdown state
    • Interestingly, he couldn’t reverse a breakdown except by reimposing stress
  • Research: in stressful situations, people tend to want charismatic leaders, even though they may tend to be narcissistic and not the best leader for the situation
    • Combines with influence-from-mere-association and
• Antidotes
  • Try to maintain calm, think about how much time you have to react and what happens if you don’t act before then. You may have more time to think than you expected
  • Extreme stress may help rewire people (as in reconverting someone who has joined a cult, or perhaps drug habits?) [this has not been studied much]
  • When calm, use checklists to think through decisions

Bias 18: Availability-Misweighing Tendency

• AKA
  • Availability heuristic
• What it is
  • Your brain works with what’s available to you
  • This applies broadly to facts, memories, concepts, and emotions
• Why it evolved
  • We have a limited capacity to remember, recall, and think, so we jump to what’s easily available
  • Possibly, it helps to upweight the most recent places you got food and not the place that worked a year ago
• How it can be harmful
  • By using only what’s recently available, you ignore other important data
  • Amplifies other biases, mainly in misjudging the small amount of information that is recently available to you
    • Stress influence (you have to make a decision fast, and the easiest recall is what’s available)
    • Contrast misreaction (the most recent change is upweighted)
    • Social proof (among crowds, there is a massive cognitive input of many humans behaving together that crowds out independent thought)
• Examples
  • Economists supporting arguments that produce reams of data, rather than fuzzier concepts that are true (thus the time it took for behavioral economics to arise)
  • “When I’m not near the girl I love, I love the girl I’m near.”
• Antidotes
  • Use procedures and checklists
  • Emphasize disconfirming evidence
  • Seek information that is not readily available to you – find a new type of person to talk to, or invert and read the other side’s publications
  • Extra-vivid and memorable information should be underweighed
  • Vivid images can be constructively used to persuade and help memory (as in mnemonics or in speeches)
  • “An idea or a fact is not worth more merely because it is easily available to you.”

Bias 19: Use-It-or-Lose-It Tendency

• AKA
• What it is
  • All skills attenuate with disuse.
• Why it evolved
  • All neural circuits have the tendency to have memory and decay over time. Probably useful for pruning of unused circuits.
• How it can be harmful
  • Gaps appear in your latticework of thinking, and you risk man with a hammer syndrome.
• Examples
  • Pianist Paderewski said if he failed to practice for a single day, he’d notice his performance deteriorate, and after a week, the audience would notice it too.
  • Skills trained to fluency will be lost more slowly and will come back faster with new learning.
• Antidotes
  • Continuously practice the skills you can’t afford to lose, much like fighter pilots in simulators.
  • Use a checklist to recall important skills and concepts.
  • Learn a skill to fluency to better recall it later.

Bias 20: Drug-Misinfluence Tendency

• AKA
• What it is
  • There are substances like alcohol that are addictive and make you feel deceptively happy
• Why it evolved
  • Habituation of neurons to the input (like morphine) both require increasingly strong doses and cause withdrawal.
• How it can be harmful
  • Drugs are destructive for cognition, and addiction is destructive to life
• Examples
• Antidotes
  • Just don’t even get started
  • Alcoholics Anonymous has a decent success rate and employs a good number of the psychological effects expressed here

Bias 21: Senescence-Misinfluence Tendency

• AKA
• What it is
  • Old people find it harder to learn new skills
  • Deterioration can be disguised by social conventions like clothing
  • However, some remain good at maintaining intensely practiced old skills (as can be seen in a bridge or checkers tournament)
• Why it evolved
• How it can be harmful
• Examples
• Antidotes
  • Continuous thinking and learning, done with joy, can delay the inevitable

Bias 22: Authority-Misinfluence Tendency

• AKA
• What it is
  • Man was born mostly to follow leaders, with only a few people doing the leading
  • Hierarchies arise that support this tendency
  • People tend to follow instructions from authority, even blindly
• Why it evolved
  • May improve cohesion and improve survival by reducing the number of orders given
  • Replicating the habits of the powerful or successful may improve survival
• How it can be harmful
  • Authority limits the individual’s decision making, which is bad:
  • When the leader is wrong
  • When the leader’s ideas are misunderstood
  • Amplified by the other 25 cognitive biases
    • stress influence (confusing situations like emergencies or economic recessions increase reception to leader’s guidance)
    • doubt avoidance (being in doubt is stressful, following a leader’s orders is easier)
    • social proof (when a few start following, the rest flock to them)
    • contrast misreaction (small gradual changes can )
• Examples
  • Milgram experiment
    • The subject is induced by an authority in a lab coat to deliver increasingly strong electric shocks to a confederate. When demurring, the authority says, in order, “Please continue. The experiment requires that you continue. It is absolutely essential that you continue. You have no other choice, you must go on.” The majority of people deliver a final electric shock that is believed to be fatal.
    • (Charlie uses this as an example of poor psychology research analysis, as authority obedience was cited as the major cause for years, when if you had used a checklist of tendencies, many more would apply, such as social proof.)
  • Hitler led believing Christians into supporting genocide
  • In 2014, a ferry capsized, and 300 passengers (mainly high school students) died. The captain asked the passengers to stay in their cabins and await further orders, which didn’t come.
  • Many CEOs have remained in control far longer than they should have
• Antidotes
  • Be careful whom you appoint to power as this figure will be hard to remove, since people listen to authority
  • As usual, de-stress in a situation, follow a checklist, and verify the leader’s judgment is sound
  • Check your thinking if you’re defaulting to “well this [policeman, professor, manager] couldn’t possibly be wrong.” Coming from the perspective of all people universally having biases and possibly being wrong is healthy.

Bias 23: Twaddle Tendency

• AKA
  • Dunning-Kruger effect
• What it is
  • Twaddle = “foolish speech or writing”
  • Some people tend to pour out twaddle while others are doing serious work
• Why it evolved
  • Self-regard tendency and influence-from-mere-association (from the other 25 cognitive biases) can make people try to appear more confident or knowledgeable than they are
• How it can be harmful
  • Believing twaddle from other people can lead to bad decisions
  • Overstepping your circle of competence, with excessive self-regard tendency, may delude you into taking on something you’re not ready for
• Examples
  • Honeybee experiment
    • Bees dance to indicate the direction of nectar to the other bees
    • Scientists put nectar straight up above the hive, where it normally never is (because flowers don’t grow in the sky)
    • The bee does an incoherent dance that confuses the other bees
• Antidotes
  • Know your circle of competence. If you’re outside of it, gather more information before making a decision
  • “The principal job of an academic administration is to keep the people who don’t matter from interfering with the work of the people that do.” Don’t hire twaddlers or people whose confidence exceeds their abilities.

Bias 24: Reason-Respective Tendency

• AKA
• What it is
  • You work and learn better when given correct reasons for why to do something.
• Why it evolved
  • People innately enjoy accurate cognition (such as puzzles and games)
  • Having a consistent logical argument is logically more persuasive
• How it can be harmful
  • Hearing illogical reasons can be just as persuasive as logical reasons
  • Amplifies other tendencies and 25 cognitive biases:
    • Doubt avoidance: a bad reason is better than no reason at all
    • Authority misinfluence: authority is already persuasive, so bad reasons can surpass the threshold for compliance
• Examples
  • Copy machine study: telling people you need to skip ahead in line because you need to make copies gives the same compliance as saying you’re in a rush
• Antidotes
  • Think through reasons before giving orders
  • Communicate reasons for doing something
    • Justify orders with Who, What, Where, When, Why
  • Keep asking Why? Justify the reasons logically (and use a checklist)

Bias 25: Lollapalooza Tendency

• AKA
  • Synergy
  • Emergent effects
• What it is
  • The confluence of multiple tendencies leads to extreme consequences
• Why it evolved
• How it can be harmful
  • Has been underappreciated in psychology, likely because multiple biases are hard to replicate well in the lab
• Examples
  • Cults
  • Milgram experiment
  • Hitler
• Antidotes
  • Tackle the tendencies individually to dismantle the structure

Analyses of Lollapaloozas

Charlie repeatedly mentions two lollapaloozas leading to extreme behaviors that have fascinated him: how cults work, and the Milgram shocking experiment. They combine many of the 25 cognitive biases here to warp the behavior of normal people.

As per his suggestion, I apply a checklist of the 25 cognitive biasesto see the contributors to these behaviors, ordered roughly in chronological sequence.

Why cults are so effective

Let’s step through the life of a potential cult member, starting from the beginning. We’ll see how many of the 25 cognitive biases apply at each step.

• Doubt-avoidance: potential members may be more vulnerable if they have lost direction in life or need answers to large existential questions
• Stress-influence: potential members may be in stressful situations where they hasten decision making
• Liking/loving, influence-from-mere-association: recruiters may be very charismatic, attractive, likable. Members generally may seem to be good people
• Reciprocation: recruiters may give a small token and expect a donation or listening to their spiel (Hare Krishna giving flowers)
• Reason respective tendency: many justifiable reasons to join the cult are compelling
• Social proof: witnessing many members makes one think, “they can’t all be crazy.” Seeing all the members perpetuate practices lowers barrier to practicing yourself.
• Excessive self-regard: once under the spell, self-regard makes one think, “I’m a pretty smart person, and I’m unlikely to be fooled, so more likely this group really is correct.”
• Inconsistency avoidance: on initiation, cults often ask for a severance of ties, selling of homes, donation of assets. This sunk cost makes leaving the cult far harder practically and socially (it’d be embarrassing to return to your parents after telling them off). During cult membership, the
• Reward superresponse: happiness can be a big driver to join. There are likely continuous benefits to being a cult member that kep driving the dopamine circuits
• Denial: even if membership in the cult is destructive, denying the harms exist protects the ego. It is hard to accept that one has made such a terrible decision to give up their former life and join the cult.
• Contrast misreaction: each progressive step may be gradual to ease the transition. Scientology has many levels of ascension.
• Deprival superreaction: leaving the cult becomes very difficult once it becomes your identity and your social connection.
  • Deprival reaction also raises the bar for entering the cult if it requires initiation rites, but likely the doubt avoidance and social proof far overwhelm this
• Disliking/hating: over time, the feeling of us vs others may spur hate for the outside world
• Authority misinfluence: cults often surround a charismatic leader who give guidance to followers. Hierarchies are set up for leadership structures
• Envy/jealousy: once the cult’s beliefs have taken hold, one may envy the position of higher people who are closer to the great leader. This spurs further action to rise to that level
• Availability misweighing: many cults seclude themselves from the outside world. This reduces the toolkits available to members to make better decisions
• Use it or lose it: cults have regular rituals that pound the beliefs into your head
• Drug misinfluence: some cults may actually use drugs to promote addiction

Nearly every tendency in Charlie’s list is applied to cults. It makes sense to have so many apply, as the cult is a microcosm of society and becomes a person’s entire existence.

No surprise then that they can lead to such dramatic behavior changes. Similar to this is getting involved in multi-level marketing schemes and religion.

Explaining the Milgram Experiment

Similarly, Charlie Munger was dismayed at how psychologists explained the Milgram experiment as a simple authority influence issue, when in fact many other of the 25 cognitive biases apply.

Here’s my take on the major factors that caused normal people to deliver lethal shocks:

• Authority influence: a respectable person in a lab coat tells you to do things
• Reason respect: “the experiment requires that you continue” justifies the shocking as part of research
• Social proof: bystanders aren’t interrupting, so it’s probably OK
• Contrast misreaction: each gradual step up of 15V is far easier to handle than a first shock at 450V
• Stress influence: the confusion at hurting someone and your internal conflicts cause stress and lower inhibition to executing orders
• Inconsistency avoidance: taking the first few steps builds inertia from stopping. Internally, the participants see themselves as people who contribute to meaningful scientific experiments, and if they were to leave, it would jeopardize the research
• Excessive self-regard: “I’m not the type of person to just blindly obey authority, so my behavior is probably justified, and this is probably OK to do.”
• Disliking/hating tendency: the person has done something wrong, and I’m punishing him, so he’s probably unlikeable to begin with

Practical examples of applying tendencies

• Adopting the US Constitution
  • Secret meetings not released to public – Lowers inconsistency avoidance
  • No recorded vote by name until final vote – Lowers social proof, inconsistency avoidance, authority influence
  • Votes reversible at any time – Lowers inconsistency avoidance
• Using decision trees and checklists
  • Avoid rash decisions and biases

Paradoxes of psychology

• The more people learn about biases, the less true they are
• Yet even knowing about the bias does not fully guard you against it

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