Motivation

Habit and Cynicism, Obstacles to Progress?

March 24, 2009

When it comes to progress, cynicism is perfectly understandable. When you think about all the change you’ve witnessed or been promised in your lifetime, most things didn’t happen the way they were predicted to happen, most didn’t happen at all, and most of what did happen didn’t wind up where anyone said it would. When positive change is the promise, but everything actually remains the same or gets worse, well, it’s easy to become cynical.

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Can Fear and Cynicism Actually Cause Pain?

March 23, 2009

I learned that one reason for end of life pain is holding on desperately to life out of the fear of dying. Other terminal people suffer at the end of life because they have become cynical about life itself, having found no deeper meaning in their own. All the things people learn to do to numb themselves and distract themselves from a lack of meaning in their lives stop working at the end and the collective pain is suddenly and overwhelmingly expressed.

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Will Americans Be Fooled Again?

September 12, 2008

With less than two months before our fateful election day, it seems increasingly likely that the smears and jeers that accentuate our fears will continue to raise cheers from the people sitting on their rears blithely watching us tumble further towards oblivion. It’s the effective use for the sake of abuse of the art of persuasion. I wrote my book to warn you, prepare you, train you and encourage you to put these tools into good use for good cause, instead of leaving them in the hands of people who are only up for no good to bring us all down. Well, consider the who, the where, the when and how of it, and here is what you’ll find.

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Ron Ross WJBC Interviews Dr. Rick Kirschner

September 11, 2008

Ron Ross, of WJBC, the Voice of McClean County in Bloomington, Illinois, interviewed communication skills expert Dr. Rick Kirschner recently in his ‘interview of the day’ segment. They discussed the persuasion strategies of the candidates and their skills and weaknesses.

You can hear the interview by subscribing to his WJBC Interview of the Day podcast

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Can You Use ‘The Secret’ To Affirm/Visualize Your Way To Success?

August 19, 2008

Though I think ‘The Secret’ (say it in hushed tones!) is a brilliant marketing program organized around wishful thinking, still, I am a big believer in the value of affirmations. So how can that be? I don’t believe in the magical power of affirmations as a new agey tool that gives you access to the catalog of goodies in the sky, delivered by a genie, a stork or Santa to the good little boys and girls who say the magic words. But I recognize affirmation as a valuable way of focusing the mind, strengthening one’s vision and clarity of purpose, and navigating forward in the presence of static, backlash and gorilla dust! And since people use them all the time anyway, I figure you might as well use them wisely.

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Does Wishful Thinking Actually Work?

August 13, 2008

In the movie, ‘The Secret,’ (which, when you say it out loud, you MUST say ‘The Secret’ in a whisper to have the right effect!) there is a core idea that the self-appointed self-promotion gurus that produced it are promoting. They call it ‘the Law of Attraction.’ This so-called law, according to the big muckymucks involved in making it, is that like attracts like, and ‘The Secret’ is that if you send out the right images, words and feelings, the universe MUST respond to you by sending the real item you desire in return. Wow. How magical! They must be using ‘The Secret’ to attract all the interest in, and money flowing from, the creation of the movie and spin off products related to ‘The Secret.’ (remember, whisper those words for maximum impact!)

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Peter Buckley Interview – Final Part

July 28, 2008