Greg Thompson - Part 4

The Way of the Shadow – A New Philosophy of Success

March 19, 2009

shadow When you live to please others, you lose the most valuable thing in the world: your authentic self.

When you live to please yourself, you attract the friends, money, power and love from only the sources that make YOU most happy. And in so doing, you gain the freedom to help whomever you wish, or… help no one at all.

Your choice. Because power is about having options – not needing any one particular thing.

If you’ve known me only in the last couple years, you don’t know “The Old Greg.” He was quite different. Even though he didn’t have the knowledge or resources I have today, he had this odd mental tic that automatically hotwired him for success.

This was a more profitable, better connected Greg – more resilient with money (bank account went to zero four times and popped right back up again) and got more girls in a year than most schlubs in ten (according to actual social statistics I have read.)

This was a Greg who got in, got the job done, got out – calm, cold, methodical, and statistical. A mercenary who always grabbed straight for the cash, owing loyalty to no one but himself and one or two close confidants.

And if you got in his way, you had better be prepared for a knife-fight to the death. Because the Old Greg, bloodied and beaten, would only stop coming at ya if you crushed him. Completely.

Lately I’ve felt waves of The Old Greg wash back over me. He’s been gone for over 3 years now. And I’ve missed him. It’s time he return once and for all.

>> Back with a vengeance – click here to Read On…

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Tags: authentic self, authenticity, clint eastwood, extreme measures, hardcore, james bond, lee ermey, lee van cleef, ruthless, shadow, success, the secret, way of the shadow

Topics: Philosophy | 2 Comments »

46 Persuasion Tricks

March 7, 2009

persuasion Have you ever read a great book that could’ve been written with the same amount of punch (or better) in only a few pages?

I run across books like this all the time. Most of them are too wordy or take too long to cut to the heart of the matter.

Authors (especially mainstream authors who depend on large volume sales via Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Borders, airports, etc.) usually fluff up their content by a couple hundred pages for 2 reasons:

1. To make themselves look smarter, more authoritative.

and…

2. Because most people (a.k.a. the mindless mainstream) don’t like to pay $30, $17, or even $12 for a 15 page book.

Hand the mainstream buyer a few power-packed pages loaded down with money-making meat they can fire up immediately and most will balk at the price. Nevermind whether those 15 pages are worth 200 times what you’re asking or not. They’d ship it back and pound their fists for a refund at once. Truth be damned.

Why?

Because in the hands of a loser, the Keys to the Kingdom are
just another set of keys collecting dust on a rusty ring.

One book I read recently did an unusually good job at keeping things pithy. It was a book on persuasion and any one of it’s lessons could net you some serious dough, and possibly even change your life forever.

(Aside: Hmm… there’s that oft-worn phrase “change your life” – we hear it so much these days it’s nearly lost all meaning. And when we do associate it, it’s usually with a positive thing like making more money or finding a lover. But what if I came over to your house right now where you’re sitting at your computer and chopped off your left foot? Would that “change your life” forever? Exactly. And what about the words that motivated me to do such a thing? Don’t underestimate the power of the persuasive word or the small change. People are irrational, yes. But predictably so.)

So here are…

46 Pithy Persuasion Tricks
(use them ethically, and… at your own risk!)

>> What are they? Click here to Read On…

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Tags: advertising, consistency, copywriting, marketing, persuasion, reciprocation, sales, statistics, tactics, tricks

Topics: Money & Business | 3 Comments »

Life Lessons From Nazi Grade School Teachers

February 15, 2009

light bulb Not long ago, I posted a bunch of my favorite quotes. One of the most important of those was “The Professional’s Code” as spoken so well by John Carlton.

It went like this:

The “Professional’s Code” is very simple: You show up where you’re supposed to be… when you said you’d be there… having done what you said you’d do. That’s it.

This “no excuses” approach is something I’ve tried to live by my whole life. In fact, you might even say I take a perverse bit of pride in honoring it.

But what no one knows is one of the fundamental stories behind HOW this mindset began in the mind of Young Greg.

In 3rd & 4th grade I had this PE coach, Coach Morrison, who would NOT take any bullshit from us at all. He burnt the extremes of the “no excuses” lesson into our brains with an entire series of little mindfuck exercises to see who could follow his weird instructions down to a literal T.

Anyone caught messing up was verbally “tarred and feathered” in front of the whole class – a punishment which, to a youngster just learning the ropes in life, meant nothing short of terrifying nightmare.

It was one of those situations rigged against you from the beginning, where it didn’t matter what you said; any answer was automatically the WRONG answer. The smarter ones among us quickly caught on that only ‘acceptable’ thing to say was “coach, I screwed up. I have no excuse.”

One of the more poignant lessons from Coach Morrison is when he’d have us jump in place, turning 90 degrees each time as he barked “RIGHT!” “LEFT!” “RIGHT!” “RIGHT!” “RIGHT!” “LEFT!”, getting progressively faster each time, eventually reaching a dizzy crescendo.

Finally he’d yell, “STOP!”

Then he’d begin the rounds, sauntering by everyone, like a drill-sergeant inspecting his misfit troops. Usually some goof would make a mistake and you’d get off scot-free. But the time I remember most was when he marched straight up to me and peered right into my eyes.

“Oh shit,” I thought, “My day has finally come. Now I’m done for.”

He screamed, “GREG!….” His words echoing throughout the now pin-drop-quiet gym.

…

I didn’t know what to do. Was I supposed to say something? You could slice the silence with a knife.

At last, he moved:

“…YOU’RE RIGHT!!!!”

My hair swayed a bit from the sudden blast of air. I nearly lost all blood pressure to my head, in what felt like being mere seconds from fainting dead away on the spot.

But I looked around the room and, sure enough, was the only one facing the “right” way.

I guess everybody else just looked to see what the other guy was doing when they got confused.

Morrison was always like that; never quite knew what he was really thinking. And I bet he loved it.

(As a brief aside: On my final day of his class before I moved to a different city, Coach Morrison took me aside and said I could walk the track that day if I wanted to, instead of sweating my ass off like everyone else. Apparently I’d earned it. Guess he wasn’t such a bastard after all.)

But my relief was only a reprieve, as I left one 4th grade class and landed into another.

Enter one Mrs. Rothwell. Rose lensed glasses. Mounted animals around the classroom (I sat in between the King Cobra and gigantic Moose head.) Hunchback crazy-woman with claws instead of finger nails who would sooner eat a live rat than deal with our bullshit excuses.

Because of those weird glasses, you could never tell if she was looking at you… or the kid next to you. This made every public scolding possibly YOUR public scolding, which made everyone pay attention to every last word she said.

And you learned real quick not to test her, either. Because yesterday when the kid next to you got out of line, all Mrs. Rothwell said was:

“Ok, that’s it. You’re gone.”

She dragged him by the ear outside into the hallway, and… all you knew was you hadn’t seen him since.

No one knew what “gone” really meant. It was exact enough to create news, yet vague enough to arouse rumor.

This new school made my old one in the bigger city look like Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale. The math problems might as well have been written in Egyptian, the homework piled up faster than I could possibly imagine, and during class the teacher switched from “Social Studies” to “Science” with a fluid-like invisible smoothness that left everyone wondering whether they should be looking at the frog diagram on page 98 or the Mayan pyramid on 212.

There simply wasn’t enough desk space to have 3 books open at once to cover all your bases.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Rothwell was up there at the front of the room spouting off on what the concept of “free enterprise” was at 88 miles per hour when you’d ask a question on somehting she covered 5 minutes ago (because that’s where you are)

“Don’t bother me, I’m on a roll!” she’d blurt.

Every time she said this, I’d imagine her running in place, literally atop a perpetually spinning dinner roll.

Yet for all her insanity, there was a method to her madness. In her mind, she was preparing us for the unmitigated horrors of Middle School as if we were troops about to land Omaha Beach on D-day.

And you know what? It worked. “Graduates” of her class were the finest, most disciplined group of multi-taskers the Middle School realm had ever seen.

But I’ve saved the best for last… because even if you mutated Coach Morrison and Mrs. Rothwell into some hybrid creature, you still wouldn’t begin to approach the Sterling Perfection forged in the heat of 7th grade English.

Her name was Mrs. Berkbuegler. Students feared the looming visage she cast on their schedules. Her classes ran with all the intricate precision of a Swiss watch, and a “good day” was when only one student openly wept.

Each day, she drilled us on new vocabulary, new literary terms, new grammar- sharpening our dull speech and even duller writing down to a fine tip, reaching a penetrating, diamond-like hardness by year’s end.

She drilled simile and metaphor. She taught literature, especially Shakespeare. (Every one of us literally memorized the entire play of Julius Caesar, word-for-word, and most importantly understood it.) Forms of “to be” – am, are, is, was, were, has, have, had, be, being, and been. Nouns, personification, onomatopoeia. She branded some definitions so firmly into your mind, you could easily repeat them to your children, 10, even 20 years later without batting an eye.

The speed at which you could flip through a dictionary was of utmost value, so The Good Book became your new best friend real quick… and those who got left behind were the ones who’d often stumble on the rocks in a perpetual cycle to keep up, eventually falling off the cliff (so to speak), cracking under the pressure.

Despite my initial dread and absolute hatred of her [class], I have said for years and will continue to proudly claim for the rest of my life, Mrs. Berkbuegler’s ruthless steel blade of discipline and absolute insistence on accepting nothing but one’s absolute best has served me better than any other single thing I’ve learned since.

That’s because it’s the real basis of learning anything else you need to be successful in life. Most people will agree with the fact, but few actually live as if love, fame, and fortune are NOT innate rights the universe owes to us all on a silver platter simply because we exist. These teachers, harsh as they seemed at the time, were really showing more love and compassion than their more easy-going contemporaries.

This was the Tyler Durden School of Hard Knocks years before Fight Club. “Shock therapy” weeds out the weenies and turns everyone else into pillars of iron. And in my book, it’s the best format of education anyone can get.

I used to think conformity and strict discipline stifled creativity and was therefore “bad.” But it’s only bad if it lasts forever. In reality, stuff needs to get DONE and needs smart, focused people to do it. If you learn your craft under the pain of the Iron Will, then strike out from that point with your own theories and ideas, creativity will bloom – this time from a place of intelligence that moves the world forward, instead from one of random accident.

So Hat’s Off to the Nazi Grade School Teachers of yore – without you, I’d hate to imagine the sad state of affairs I’d be in today.

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Tags: berkbuegler, coach morrison, discipline, education, grade school, life lessons, no excuses, perfection, professionals code, rothwell, teachers, tyler durden

Topics: Personal | 1 Comment »

The Ghost Who Gave Back Massages

February 8, 2009

ghost-towel As we often did in those days, late one night in 2006 I lay stretched across the bed, on the phone with my girlfriend Christine.

Her Cuteness blathered on about such-n-such issue of little consequence when all of a sudden I heard her shriek followed by a loud *clunk* *clunk* *clunk*

“…Christine? Are you ok?”

It was no use. She’d dropped the phone.

Lingering silence.

…And then some rustling around like a squirrel burrowing into a pile of leaves.

She grabbed the phone, loudly whispering “Greg there’s something over here!”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s someone in here! I swear I just felt the bed move and a hand on my leg!”

“Are you sure it wasn’t just the dog?”

“No!!! A HUMAN hand!”

Taken aback but still not really buying it, I asked her exactly what happened. She said she was just lying there talking to me when all of a sudden the corner of the bed pressed down and a hand, five icy fingers and all, yanked her by the ankle. This is when she dropped the phone, and scrambled out of bed across the room to flip on the lights.

But the lights came on, and… nobody was home.

Confident everything was fine, I said “Christine, if there really was some psycho in there with you, there’s no way he could’ve hid from you that fast before you switched on the lights. Besides,” I added jokingly, trying to lighten the mood, “if he was gonna get ya, he would’ve gotten ya by now anyway.”

“Yeah…” she added nervously, but as if a little bit of my logic actually sank in.

I stayed on the phone with her a lot longer than usual that night to help her calm down and try to forget the whole thing even happened. Which worked. Sortof. Before finally settling off to sleep though, she still dragged her bleary-eyed sister into bed with her.

Because, you know… just in case.

(As an aside, it’s kinda funny how girls operate. Better the boogey-man snack on two young maidens than merely a single. Or maybe it’s an old throwback to prehistoric days; you don’t have to outrun the lion, only the poor schlub next to you Whatever the case, we just feel better in groups – if only to confirm our own sanity.)

I didn’t hear another word about the mysterious visitor until one evening when I spent the night at Christine’s – she told me about some strange feelings she’d had in this bed lately.

“What, you mean like that one night?” I asked.

“No… more like a kicking. Like this,” she twacked the lower side of the bed several times, causing the matress to wobble a bit. “And sometimes… it feels like there’s something inside the bed – under the surface.”

I wasn’t quite sure what she meant, but later that night a couple times I could’ve swore the foot of the bed shook a little. Just wrote it off to my imagination.

That is, until morning.

I woke up around 7am. Christine was already up and out of bed, with the unmistakable aroma of pancakes emanating down the hall. Mmm, food. Nice having someone so proactive like that. Even better when the mess required to create it all is in her place and not mine.

Rubbing my eyes, I stretched out for a couple more minutes of sweet surrender. It’s at this moment I noticed something moving. My arm. Which would normally be fine, except…

…I wasn’t the one moving my arm.

Still groggy, I lay there for a moment watching my right arm visibly move up and down as… something… rolled along, as if just underneath the mattress’ surface, down my arm and across my back.

Only after witnessing this did my “What The Fuck” Sensors kick in and I bolted up out of bed, instantly awake and alert.

To get an idea of what this felt like, imagine a big ball bearing about 6 to 7 inches in diameter rolling around underneath you with perfect fluid precision smoothness while you try to sleep. You hit it with your fist, or yell at it, and it goes away. Then, moments later it reappears… this time at your feet, pushing your right foot up off the bed a little, before continuing to roll up your leg and back to your back, shoulders, and head.

First I was weirded out, refusing to get back into that bed, even for a second. I mean, I could still see it moving around even when I was up standing on my feet looking back down at it. Christine felt it too, but after awhile preferred to pretend it didn’t exist, even when painfully obvious. Her philosophy was “ignore it and it’ll go away.”

Except it never did.

When we called, Christine’s mom suggested rodents might be afoot. Ridiculous, we insisted. True, her room may be a mess, but Animal Paradise it certainly was not. And besides, no living thing I know of could roll around in a perfect sphere shape for that length of time and especially not that smoothly.

Being the avid tester I am, I tried all sorts of experiments on it over the course of my stays. Sometimes it would go away for hours, then reappear just when you settled into bed and got comfortable. It also seemed to prefer the lights off. Turn them on, and it slowly dies away. Off again and it comes back full force. Particular kinds of activity *cough* also seemed to scare it off. It wasn’t particularly fond of lots of people in the room, either.

After I tested just about everything I could think of, it stopped being scary and started just being a pain in the ass. (Sometimes literally.) This is when I got angry with it, openly taunting and trash talking it – something the superstitious Christine did not find amusing. Finally I got sarcastic, gushing things like “Ohhhh yeah, thats it… a little to the right!… no, no…there! Ahhh!”

But deep down inside me still lurked this unsettling feeling – because even though I never dared tell Christine (didn’t want to freak her out even more than she already was), I began to feel the same presence on other pieces of soft furniture in her house – especially the couch and in the other bedroom. This thing seemed to follow me around.

And just when I thought it was ME who was crazy… I’d return home to the normalcy of my own place, and… everything would be fine. I’d lay on my own bed for an hour or more just waiting for the faintest shift or roll, but… nothing. Other people’s beds? Just fine too.

Up until this point, I’d never experienced any sort of “unexplained phenomenon” in my life. Heard of plenty, sure. (Loyal subscriber to Fate Magazine since 2004) But actually happen to me? Certainly not.

From what I’ve learned about “ghosts” (er whatever), they’re always localized to a particular location (house, stairwell, etc) or object, like say, a piece of clothing or a chest of drawers. So if that’s true, then it would make sense why I never experienced anything like that outside Christine’s house, or anything like it since.

So what do I really think it was?

I haven’t the foggiest. But whatever it was, it definitely was not natural.

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Tags: bedroom, boogey man, bumps in the night, christine, creepy, fate magazine, ghost, mysterious, mystery, strange, supernatural, unknown, weird

Topics: Strange & Unknown | 6 Comments »

49 Quotes To Live By

January 28, 2009

quotation marks Ask any successful person about the people they admire and they’re sure to fire back more quotes from those personal heroes than any well-adjusted human brain could possibly handle.