Life of Boyd

Social Mastery

marloncharles — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 11:31:40 +0000

Social mastery has always played an important part of our apparent survival throughout the passage of time. The fact is… you have your present DNA only because your ancestors developed their social skills to an acceptable level that they would consummate. As a social species we also are able to build structures much larger than ourselves….. conquer prey much more ferocious than ourselves. Together we conquered the planet. As is the case with most of our natural skills… with the arrival of modern living, we forgot to teach them to our younger generation. It’s just so sad that we invented an education system and we trust them to raise our children, when in most cases the system is clueless and not to be trusted. uhmm this is not a rant about that. This entire blog is about enlightenment, not disenchantment.

Let’s take a look at a social master with well honed skills. Skills that can be developed just as much as our physical and mental skills. All it takes is a level of awareness and knowledge . This will be discussed in the future.

I train everyday like you’ve never trained a day in your life.

marloncharles — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:04:21 +0000

Cheers to Alexandr Karelin for that quote in the title.

Everyone has a plan until he gets punched in the face. Mike Tyson.

This is what I mean by training because its about life and death. Life is about escaping death.

Just look at these two guys fight and the intensity is evident. In combat their brain is clicking and transmitting impulses at a rate that is astounding.

Believe me, I don’t need to show you a clip of Mike Tyson to demonstrate what real training looks like. That guy trains like a monster not of this planet. OK OK I changed my mind.

It’s all conditioning of the mind.

Life or death.

marloncharles — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:58:06 +0000

So, I’m continuing on a concept that I’ve been toying with when it comes to self-development. The one thing modern living has been distancing us as human from …… is the reason for living. We are alive for one reason and that is, to not die. Every capability we have… it’s sole purpose is to prevent us from dying. I’ve been drawn to the sport of boxing and wrestling for obvious reasons. They intentionally put themselves in the face of death and condition themselves to hit blows of death. How do you train your mind and body for that reality…. live your life and structure your day around that reality? Think of the cavemen of ancient day living for that fight against the mammoth….. can that be reason we have such large brains.

Ok now here’s an example of a mammoth being knocked out.

What does it take?

marloncharles — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:35:20 +0000

I think it is in physical development that you personally get to experience the natural limits of your mental and spiritual capabilities. Usain Bolt comes to mind and I wonder what does it take, mentally to be able to run 9.5 seconds? I know this much…. Usain could have run 9.5 in his mind way longer than he could have run it physically, and how did he know he could have done that if he has never seen anyone do it before? Of course I’m talking about the effect of the subconscious on muscular response and so called fast twitch responses. It’s a well documented fact that under conditions of life or death… the body is able to perform superhuman feats such as run 9.5 second 100m sprints and many other muscular feats. What does it take for Usain to tap into that resource? Experts watch him and they know it’s not the training that makes him run that fast…… Is he running for his life? Is that possible?

The first impression

marloncharles — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:26:54 +0000

In developing social skills what you see is not always what you get. Rather what you communicate is what you get. Social skills should correctly be defined as communication skills. Communication begins with the first impression, yet no one knows exactly where their first impression began. The brain absorbs everything even if we aren’t conscious of it’s effects. Anyway, enough of the complaining….

Here are the two most effective First Impression drills you can master.

The ‘Hello old friend!’ technique

A visualisation exercise that should automatically adjust your body language signals appropriately. You must imagine that the person you’re about to meet is an old friend. Now, really really make the response overwhelm you and occupy your thought processes. Then make your customary greeting.

The Echoing(mirroring) technique.

This is a verbal exercise and an exercise in thinking outside your head. Notice the words your new friend is using, notice the structure of his sentences. Begin to speak like him.

check out this audio clip for a better explanation. Gosh I love her voice.

First impressions

Changing your brain

marloncharles — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 18:28:37 +0000

So… now we know learning is about changing you brain. Well, the logical inference would be that… in order to learn anything quickly you need to first learn how to change your brain. Now this is a lifelong exploration.

I’ve just begun my journey…. well actually it began a long time ago but I just realised where i had to start. Fun mental gymnastics and drills.

Headstrong Brain

then learn how to memorise a deck of cards….

Yup I’m not crazy…. go through a deck of 52 cards and recall each and every one without looking at the cards and in the correct order.

Kaizen

This is life and it never stops and it just keeps getting more and more interesting as you brain twists and turns in all different directions. Next stop after this should be learning how not to forget.

Brain

marloncharles — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 17:01:48 +0000

Eric Kandel won the Nobel Prize for showing that when people learn something it’s because the wiring of their brains changes. You can test sea slugs or human beings, and you will come up with the same results—any creature that ends up learning something does so because of physical changes in its neural architecture. This is astonishing. We used to think that we were born with all the neurons we were ever going to get and that it would be hard, if not impossible, to change them beyond a certain age. But it’s been quite clear for a while now that the physical changes neurons undergo when learning something happen to anybody’s brain at any age. The brain remains quite plastic until we die. We are lifelong learners. That’s excellent news indeed.

So, the brain is the key part of really living life.