Check out Renee Stephens “Inside Out Weight Loss” for some tasty NLP morsels.

Or improve your coaching skill with “Coaching the Life Coach” by Robert Harrison.

Finally, i recommend the “Radical Change Group” a trio of enthusiastic seekers who seem to be well versed in using NLP in a variety of situations.

I’ve been enrolled for a couple of weeks now, and it is fascinating! I am building relationships with a cadre of like minded students from around the world. If you are seriously interested in learning about hypnosis you need to check this out!

To find out more, go to British Hypnosis Research

“15 years from now, we’ll be adding more than a year every year, not just to infant life expectancy, but to your remaining life expectancy, so as you go forward a year, your remaining life expectancy will move away from you… The sands of time will be running in, not out.”

Ray Kurzweil, in his keynote speech at GDC 2008 last week, is predicting that if we live to 2023, then we may live forever. He says that the rate of life extension is a geometric curve which is just now starting to take off. The influence of nanotechnology and information technology on medicine and lifestyle has just started to be recognized. As an example he referred to 4 different drugs which are currently in testing which will “fix” the “fat gene” (insulin response) and allow our overfed population to avoid obesity.

Ray has been remarkably reliable with his predictions in the past, so I don’t want to dismiss this one as fairy dust…

However I still think change will always need to come from within, no magic pill will “fix” our lives or our health for us. It is up to us to keep up the quality of our lives through study and self refinement. I believe that there is still a lot to be learned about the mysteries of the mind and the workings of Qi for instance, I’m hoping that the next 20 years will lead to a revolution in the understanding of both.

For more details about Kurzweil’s speech, check out the report on ohgizmo.com

I was thrilled to be in the audience of Ray’s Keynote. It sure gave me an up-beat mood for the rest of the week!

30 spokes share the wheel’s hub,

but it is the center hole that makes it useful

Shape clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful

Cut the doors and windows for a room;

It is the holes which make it useful.

Emptyness leads to an untroubled mind, and an untroubled mind leads to serenity.

A serene speaker is a good speaker.

In this speech I will discuss the basis of serenity, and give you a little guided meditation to help improve your serenity before your next speech.

Many people have the impression that being a toastmaster is all about talking, talking and more talking.  But without appropriate emptiness, focus, authenticity, and relaxation any speech will fall flat.

Keep your mind empty, and refuse to fill it with expectations or worries. If you are not in tune to your audience, you will be unable to gain the critical ‘rapport’ which attracts them to you. If you are empty of worry, you can remain focused, you can avoid distraction, you will be wholly present in the here and now.The pauses you use will be appropriate and dramatic.

You need to empty your mind of everything but your speech.  This is called focus.  

• Being prepared will improve your focus.  Nothing calms the mind like having practiced your presentation enough! 
• Being relaxed will also improve your focus.  If you are relaxed, you can be in the moment, observing your audience, and sensing your effect upon them. You will be able to go with the flow when an unexpected event happens. 

Some people believe that they can’t be themselves while speaking.  They think they need to hide behind a special ‘presentation’ personality, an “evil twin” where they grit their teeth and painfully force themselves speak. These speakers are not authentic. 

Don’t try to be anyone other than yourself.  When you speak as your true self, your feelings are automatically communicated in your vocal variety, word emphasis, and choice of phrases.

Speeches improve when they are about emotional topics, and show the speaker “opening up”.  Just before your presentation, you can mentally prepare yourself with a little relaxation exercise.

I have prepared a short guided meditation which can assist you in doing this before your next speech.

Please follow me in this exercise:

Take a deep breath… Now let it out nice and slow…

Take another breath, and as you breath out slowly, let go of all your concerns now.

Just empty your mind and relax…You may want to close your eyes, because you want to get truly relaxed…You have nothing to do now but to relax… 

Think of a time in your life when you were very calm and focused. Perhaps there was a time when everything went just right…
Re-live this calm and focused time now, in your imagination…

What do you see? …

What can you smell? …

How do you feel? …

Can you make what you see brighter and larger? Double the size, if it makes you feel better…Play some calming music in your mind, notice how much better you feel…You are becoming more and more… Calm and focused and happy…As you get comfortable with this feeling, say to yourself the word “Serenity“, now…Now clear your mind, think of the color white…The color white could be an interesting color.

Bring back the memory of when you were calm and focused…

What do you see? …

What can you smell? …

How do you feel? …

Can you make what you see brighter? Make your feelings stronger, make your memory brighter and larger…

Double the feelings you are having… Notice how much better you feel…Now say to yourself the word “Serenity“…

You may open your eyes, and return to the present…

So here is how you use this.  Just before you give your next speech, Close your eyes for a moment, take a couple of deep breaths…let your breath out slowly, then say to yourself, “Serenity“.  This will help you recall the Calm and focused state you just practiced.

Once you have found the emptiness within you, you will be ready to give the best speech of your life!

This guy is phenomenal, first he was a childhood national chess champion, and then he learned tai-chi well enough to win the world title (twice) in international push hands tournaments.

I found this book to be very inspirational. It rang a bell with both my NLP (how do I learn?) and Taoist (how do I get good at Push Hands?) interests.

If you’d like a preview, check out this youtube video.

Facebook led the charge by publishing an API for developers to use, but Google followed up soon thereafter with an portable standard interface called “OpenSocial“. Most of the rest of the social networks are standardizing on OpenSocial. An OpenSocial application can work similarly on hi5, Myspace and Plaxo and several other social networks with only minor code changes.

OpenSocial provides developers with a Javascript API exposing several interesting services:

1. View the contents of a users Profile.
2. Access to a users social graph (Friends List)
3. Management of application specific persistent data.
4. The ability to read and write “Activity” streams (a log of actions which a user has taken).

Each OpenSocial provider hosts a container for these services, where they can customize which services are available and what permissions need to be validated for access.

By allowing external developers access to this API, the social networks have leveraged the talents of many independent developers, letting them extend their services “stickyness” organically and at very little cost to themselves.

So let me ask, what is the difference between a social networking application and a persistent world? Or even an MMO? Aren’t we just another type of social network, with perhaps some Role Playing stuff on top?

Can we learn from the way that social networks are extending themselves? Should we consider supporting API’s like OpenSocial, and think about extending our communities in a similar way?

Even if we can’t do this “in world”, isn’t there value in exporting this type of information from our game worlds out to the web? Once our communities are visible on the web, we also can support OpenSocial applications.

What are your thoughts?

Find out more about the OpenSocial API.

Christopher Howard gives free “Breakthrough to Success” Trainings, and I was fortunate to attend and see him work his magic.

Christopher Howard has learned the “true tradition” of NLP, and has kept it fresh with a lot of the recent innovations in the field. His reputation was why I chose to go, and as I expected, there was a bit of upselling going on. But it was well worth it, because the training I got was very powerful and Life changing!

I had some mental roadblocks removed, and I now feel like I am going full throttle down the highway of life, watching sparks fly off the guardrail as I adjust my course!

Highly recommended, sign up for your own “Breakthrough to Success” if you get a chance!

(Author Note: Chris Howard has quit giving the Breakthrough to Success weekends in the United States, and although I really found the session valuable, I later discovered that his affiliate support was disorganized and disappointing. )

FYI, If anyone knows good flash or Java developers with some game experience in the bay area, please let me know

Since my last post, I’ve created a new morning ritual (These things should change depending on your need, don’t stagnate). I listen to an hour of holosync www.centerpointe.com while practicing Tai-chi Sword, Tai-chi open hand, Qi Gong and standing meditation. I try to do this 6 days a week (whenever possible) every morning at 6am.

This has been great! My Tai Chi has improved so much! my ability to percieve my surroundings has also expanded greatly. I now have a dedicated hour of practice and meditative activity every morning, and I don’t need to set any alarms, the one hour holosync session does my timing for me!