One afternoon, many years ago, I was watching a documentary about a world famous preacher, and how he was being schooled in the art of public speaking, or what some might call, “giving a sermon.”
After numerous failed attempts to speak effectively, the teacher asked the preacher, “Do you know what you’re doing wrong?”
“Yes,” he replied. “I’m not being natural.”
“Correct,” said the teacher.
And so it goes with virtually anything we want to learn. We can get instruction from someone in order to maximize our abilities, but that instruction serves us best only when it helps us rediscover a sense of natural-ese.
We were most natural when we were infants. At that time we breathed from our lower bellies without instruction. We also moved with a spirit of relaxation. We smiled and laughed frequently. And we quickly let go of our mistakes.
Then we got educated and life became several scoops and helpings of unnecessary tension.
Getting back to being natural is what you accomplish with Psycho-Cybernetics and the Theatre of the Mind process. You stop fighting yourself and allow yourself to grow back into who you were when you were at your best. And that WHO was the person who was being natural.
It’s the you who knowingly or unknowingly, pictured what was wanted and went after it with gusto.
Rewind your mind. Become natural again.
Matt Furey
P.S. Interested in being part of my Mind Power Monthly Coaching this year. If so, drop me an email and tell me more.
New Year’s Resolutions are for Losers
It’s that time again. It’s New Year’s Resolution Time.
Or is it?
You might be interested in what my resolutions are for the new year.
Would you be disappointed if I told you I have ZERO?
That’s correct. I don’t have a top seven list, or a top five. I don’t even have ONE.
Bluntly, I don’t believe in setting New Year’s Resolutions. What I believe in is the power of setting daily goals, most of which employ something I call the Law of Practice (LOP), which just may be the most important Law of them all.
Huh?
Isn’t the Law of Attraction (LOA) most important?
Well, you might think it is, but the LOA has almost no positive value unless you utilize the LOP.
Let me explain it to you this way:
Two people, let’s call them Rick and Rain, come to me to learn how to visualize. Both of them think they cannot visualize, that they don’t have the ability. I teach them how to get started. I start with the simplest of steps that only take five minutes of practice per day.
Rick practices the exercises the day I teach them to him. He remarks that visualization is far easier than he thought. On the days in between our next meeting, though, he doesn’t practice at all.
Rain, on the other hand, struggles during the first lesson. She doesn’t appear to make any progress, but this makes her even more determined to succeed. She follows my suggestions to the letter, practicing for a minimum of five minutes per day.
A month after our first session, Rick, is just as good as he was on day one. Rain, however, is doing great in comparison. The practice is still tough for her compared to Rick, but she is totally committed.
After three months, Rick, who only practices on the days that I meet with him, is still just as good as he was on day one. Rain, however, who practices daily, without fail, is now ahead of Rick.
A year after Rick and Rain started, Rick is the same as he was on day one. This upsets him so he buys yet another program on LOA.
Meanwhile Rain is crushing it. She can now visualize herself doing, being and having, and what she pictures comes to fruition. Her five minutes of practice per day turned into two sessions of five minutes each day. After a few months, she naturally wanted to practice more, and the twice-per-day sessions turned into 15 minutes each. Things she couldn’t see herself doing before are now a reality. Her biggest realization was that the Law of Practice works for the acquiring of any skill as well as the achievement of any objective.
It’s not having the big goal that matters as much as having the willingness to practice each and every day.
Show me someone with a big goal who doesn’t practice and I’ll show you a failure. Show me someone with a daily goal, who practices regularly, and I’ll show you someone who tramples on those who set big goals – or those who craft a list of New Year’s Resolutions.
Here endeth the lesson.
Matt Furey
P.S. If you’re looking for coaching from me in 2021, NOW is the time to drop me an email and let me hear what you have in mind.
P.P.S. Want to know how to crank out an email such as this, and do so in 10 minutes or less, then visit knockoutmarketing.com
When You’ve Got that Winning Feeling
I’m betting you’ve heard it said (and read), that belief is the key to living a successful life.
Supposedly, we have “limiting beliefs,” and they are holding us back.
Oh my, so many people think, what to do to change them?
Many people proceed to go on a rampage to get rid of or upgrade the limits in their lives. They write out various statements to change their old beliefs into new and empowering ones.
This approach misses the obvious. And the obvious is that beliefs are naturally upgraded, without effort, when you have that winning feeling, otherwise known as FAITH.
Below are a few lines that came to me recently:
Belief is skin deep; faith penetrates beyond the marrow of your bones.
Belief is easily shaken; faith conveys complete conviction.
Belief says I can do this; faith says I WILL do it.
Belief has a dimmer switch; faith shines eternal.
When you have faith, you don’t need to think a whole lot about what you believe.
With “that winning feeling” deep within your bones, you realize you have the Creator’s assistance, and the impossible is now the doable.
Matt Furey
The Miracle of Momentum
Successful living requires that you get positive momentum going in your favor.
There is positive momentum – and there is negative momentum. And oddly enough, this momentum is usually unleashed in either direction by the “small stuff” you do or don’t do at the beginning and end of each day.
Which way you are going in life can be detected by answers to simple questions, such as: What’s the first thing you do after getting out of bed in the morning?
If your answer is that you get something to eat, check your phone or computer to see who texted, called, tweeted, emailed or “posted,” a golden opportunity to create positive momentum was overlooked.
Show me a person who has positive momentum, a person who is lit up, and I’ll show you someone who starts his or her day with activities such as visualization, prayer, meditation, reading, journaling and so on. I’ll show you a person who reviews his goals and/or the systems to be followed.
Reviewing your goals/systems is huge.
What you fail to review,
you fail to remember.
What you fail to remember,
you fail to achieve.
Why? Because memory, imagination and action are closely linked.
Every time you review a goal you are imagining it, you are visualizing it. This leads to you acting upon it. When you combine deliberate and intentional imagination with action, you are creating a result.
When you avoid the deliberate and intentional use of your imagination, you are visualizing by default. This means you are unconsciously imagining and visualizing what other people and/or forces, put in your mind.
Every act is preceded by the conscious or unconscious use of your imagination. You might think you “just do it” – but no one “just does” anything. We form a mental image of what we are going to do, and then we do it. You can pretend that your situation is different, but keep in mind that even a robot is programmed to do what it does.
Here endeth the lesson.
Matt Furey
P.S. Interested in the momentum-generating process I teach to members of my Mind Power Monthly Coaching? Send me an email if this is of interest to you.
Overwhelmed?
If you’re feeling overwhelmed and frustrated with the setting of goals in EVERY area of your life, you’re not alone. Here’s a message I received yesterday:
Matt,
I, too, want to thank you for the email regarding massive action. That has been my downfall, all the talk about taking massive action. It led to me doing nothing due to overwhelm. Your email made me wake up peacefully this morning for the first time in a very long time. I set some small goals which I know I can do. Everything I’ve tried the last few years I have failed at due to the “massive action” talk.
Best,
Suzana
Suzana, I’m happy to see you rising peacefully again. Becoming successful is so much easier than the goo-roos make it out to be. Simplification is one of the biggest factors that leads to the results you want. With an easier, small-steps approach, you’ll be moving along for a good year or so, and then when you look back at how far you’ve traveled, it will appear to others as massive action, but yet, it isn’t. It was consistent, daily “get ‘er done” goals.
For more information on the process I teach, consider becoming a member of my Mind Power Monthly Coaching. I have three different levels of engagement, making it affordable for most, as well as giving you a goal to move up the ladder for even more instruction.
Send me an email if this is of interest to you.
See it. Feel it. Be it.
Matt Furey
So Much B.S. – So Little Time
Earlier today I received a message from Tom, who thanked me for my previous email, Exposing the Massive Action Myth.
Tom relayed how he bought everything in regard to changing your self-image. He bought every book, every audio program, every everything he could locate.
He set upon a course of MASSIVE ACTION and guess what happened? He overloaded his nervous system and ended up doing NOTHING for a couple months. Unintentionally, Tom became the proverbial rabbit in the tortoise and hare story.
If Tom would have known that the myth of massive action would run him into the ground, he would have chosen a different course of action. And now that he DOES get it, he is beginning again, this time, though, with a systemized approach of taking one step at a time so that you can be on your journey for your entire life instead of only for a couple weeks.
Previously, I covered the analogy of the 1,000-mile journey. If you walk as far as you can each day (massive action) and I walk five miles a day, at first glance it may appear that you will arrive first, but the reality is that you’ll do exactly what Tom did. You’ll push too hard, too soon, and you’ll be forced to rest because your nervous system is fried from the effort, and it is forcing you to shut down.
Meanwhile, I appear to be lazy. My goal is ONLY five miles per day.
Yes, I can go beyond five miles when I’m in a state of momentum, but I don’t have to. It’s up to me.
Everyday I begin again with the same old boring five-mile goal – and as a result, I kick butt.
In the end, my five-miles per day system removes the resistance from the equation, and I crush the massive action model, exposing it to be a myth, sham and outright lie.
Keep in mind, you only get one breath at a time. Even if you want to take five breaths at once, you cannot. This is all the proof you need that hurrying and scurrying cannot be the key to success.
See it. Feel it. Be it.
Matt Furey
P.S. I’m meeting with a client in a half-hour. He’s been with me for more than 15 years. He can do the unthinkable, so it seems. But I will stump him today. When he leaves he will want to take massive action to get better FAST – but, thank goodness, he is aware of this tendency and will over-ride it. Why? Because every time he’s taken massive action, it backfired. Now he eliminates the angst and the resistance and the feelings of overwhelm by doing what I teach.
Start small and you can have it all.
Start too big and you stumble on every twig.
Recommended resources:
Psycho-Cybernetics – Updated and Expanded
Zero Resistance Living – for advanced players only
Theatre of the Mind – for those who love my stories and enjoy the sound of my voice
The “Don’t Bet Against Me” Mindset
Let’s mentally pretend that the people of a certain town have a success rate of 99 percent whenever they face adversity of any kind.
These people conquer anything and everything that comes their way. They beat invading marauders, they overcome adverse weather conditions and they cure themselves of diseases.
But these facts are never reported to outsiders. All the outside world ever hears about these people is their failures.
Gradually, the thinking from the outside world reaches this town. Most in the area shake their heads and wonder what the outsiders are talking about.
But a few people within the town begin to lament the one percent failure rate, completing blocking out any mental imagery of the 99 percent success rate. They spread doom and gloom everywhere they go, and oddly enough, they attract many followers. Within a short period of time, the town with the 99 percent success rate begins to lose more and more often. And as the people begin to lose, more and more focus is placed upon the losses, and their success rate drops to one percent.
My friend, the above is what many people do to themselves on a daily basis. They block out and ignore their successes and focus solely on their mistakes and failures. And then they can’t figure out why they are in a slump, why things are never turning up rosy.
A basic key to acquiring mind power is realizing that you get more of what you focus on.
When you focus on your successful experiences, you get more of them. When you focus on your losses, you lose more often.
The good news is that no matter how far a person sinks, he or she can begin to rise again by recalling courageous, confident, victorious moments.
Instead of betting against yourself, you take on the mindset of the person who says, “Don’t bet against me.”
Or even better, be the person who when doubted by others, looks them in the eyes and says, “Oh yeah? Watch me!”
See it. Feel it. Be it.
Matt Furey
P.S. If you already own a copy of the classic, Psycho-Cybernetics, then look into upgrading your skills with the advanced courses, Zero Resistance Living and Theatre of the Mind. You’ll be ecstatic when you are holding these courses in your hands.
10X Your Ability to Visualize
“Daily practice will bring these mental pictures, or memories, clearer and clearer. The effect of learning will also be cumulative. Practice will strengthen the tie-in between mental image and physical sensation. You will become more and more proficient in relaxation, and this in itself will be “remembered” in future practice sessions.”
– Maxwell Maltz, M.D.
Yes, you can visualize. On a scale from 1-10, you might be a 1, but this doesn’t mean you “can’t do it.” It only means that you CAN and WILL get better at it with consistent practice.
Visualization is the same as any other skill you have already mastered. You didn’t master it by reading about it and “trying” it once or twice. You practiced religiously. Whether you want to improve a little bit, or to 10X your skills, practice is the path you tread.
If you want to learn to draw, play a musical instrument, build homes or become a professional in any given task, you get better and better with daily practice. No one escapes this truth.
True, some people catch on faster than others, but being slower out of the gate doesn’t mean you “can’t” compete.
Reality proves that being slower in the beginning is oftentimes a tremendous blessing because you now have an opportunity to dedicate yourself to learning the finer details of WHY something works the way it does. Fast learners are prone to taking their abilities for granted, of overlooking the details, and this leaves them susceptible to being surpassed by the “less-talented” person who follows the Laws of Practice.
You can and do picture things in your “mind’s eye” all day long. You do it with your eyes open. You do it when you dream. You do it when you close your eyes and remember a scene from the past or preview a goal you want to accomplish.
As I teach you in Theatre of the Mind, if you have trouble with your eyes closed, practice with your eyes open. This will help you SEE that you are visualizing, you are imagining, and YES, you CAN DO IT.
See it. Feel it. Become it.
Matt Furey
Eliminates Pre-Election Anxiety
The main stream media wants everyone in panic-mode. All the time.
If it’s not something in the United States, it’s France, Germany or Russia.
If it’s not the first wave, then it’s the second, or the third. It’s its not this bug, then it’s the next one.
Everyone is out to get you and it’s not even Halloween yet. Makes you wonder who the real spooks, ghosts and goblins are.
Where’s the positive reporting on all the good going on in the world? Where’s the positive spin on what is truly positive?
Anyone can be negative. It’s as easy as chomping down a slice of pie or gorging on chocolate. But to give up negativity, that takes some thought, some imagination, some mind power.
Giving up bad habits begins with small steps. We only get one moment at a time, so I believe in giving up a bad habit for a short while (a day), then I keep extending the time frame.
For example, back on July 13, I decided to give up coffee. No particular reason other than to see how life would be without it.
I started with one day. And then, I added a day, and another. I kept adding days until I got to 108.
On day 108, I decided to have a cup of Turkish coffee. I enjoyed breaking the streak but I didn’t enjoy the coffee as much as I thought I would. What a letdown.
The next day I was back to starting another streak. How many days will I go? I don’t know. I don’t have a set agenda, other than to be conscious each day of what I am giving up and what I am adding to fill the void. [Yes, it’s important to replace a habit you don’t want to own anymore with another that you would rather embody.]
I’ve done the same with fasting. I start with a small commitment, then I add on. This approach has helped me to extend an 18-hour fast into 8 days, 5 hours and 15 minutes.
One of the greatest habits I have ever uncovered, one that makes it much easier to give up unwanted habits, or extend good ones, is the daily practice of Dao Zou – a type of moving meditation/visualization that the longest-lived people in China believe extends your life by reducing negative emotions such as grief, anger, angst and so on. It also gives your brain and nervous system a well-deserved feeling of relaxation.
It’s amazing how the program works. You don’t make any attempt whatsoever to be less negative or to feel good. You just follow the program and voila – peace of mind cometh.
Here’s an email I received recently about how much the program helps you:
Dear Matt,
I wanted to thank you for making the Dao Zou videos available. I only actually made it through the first video before starting to practice. I have now completed over 30 days and have so much more clarity, focus, better balance, inner happiness and peace than I had before. I never miss a day now…30 mins., simple breathing and a smile in my heart, as you taught. This practice has made all the difference for me in many ways.
Thanks again,
Donna
P.S. Do you do any certification to allow people to teach Dao Zou? I believe people my age (I’m 67) could really benefit.
M.F. Hi Donna. So great to hear about your results. It truly is remarkable, isn’t it? Yet… it is totally predictable. As you’ve discovered, you feel it the first day, and when you work the program regularly, the results accumulate. The idea of having a certification has entered my mind numerous times this year. I will definitely look into having one as it would be HUGE.
All for now, my friend.
Best,
Matt Furey
How NOT to Begin Your Day
Earlier today I was a coaching a young man who is having a banner year. In spite of all the shutdowns, lockdowns and quarantines, he’s crushing it.
We went over his daily routine, starting with the first thing he does when his feet hit the floor. And whaddya know, he doesn’t instantly check his dumb phone to see who texted or emailed. He doesn’t look at Twitter, FB or Insta.
Instead he begins with Theatre of the Mind. Then he does the Dao Zou workout he learned from me.
In the past, this man used to push himself to fatigue and failure. Now he pushes himself – but never too much. Instead he stops when he’s still within his comfort zone – and once he finds his comfort zone, the CZ expands spontaneously, without effort.
It’s not about push, push, push… harder, harder, harder.
Reminds me of someone who went from straight F’s to straight A’s. This wasn’t accomplished by telling him to “get out of your comfort zone.” It happened because we helped the young man become comfortable, so comfortable that he WANTED to LEARN.
I realize there are a lot of people preaching this “get out of your comfort zone” mentality. The truth is they only give you part of the story. No one puts himself or herself into an uncomfortable situation unless and until the person is comfortable.. INTERNALLY.
Remember how a few years ago, the ice bucket challenge became a thing? Get a 5-gallon bucket, fill it with ice water and have someone filming you as you dump it over your head.
It’s a simple task. Once the bucket is filled, all you have to do is lift it over your head and turn it over. Only takes a couple seconds… and you’re done.
If you saw people accepting this challenge, but you declined, ask yourself why. Why didn’t you do it?
I’m willing to bet that that you refused because you were “uncomfortable” with being cold, or have a fear of getting sick from ice cold water.
The people who accepted the challenge put themselves into a situation where they were probably going to be physically uncomfortable. So why did they do it? Because they were internally comfortable with the ideas of being physically uncomfortable.
I’ve played around with cold water dousing enough to recognize what I’m saying is true. I’ve gone from barely getting my feet wet to full submersion in cold water. I’ve gone from bailing within 30 seconds to hanging out for 15 minutes, and enjoying it. The secret to hanging in there is finding the comfort zone within.
One of my favorite ways to help people change their results is the daily practice of Dao Zou. It not only helps rewind your mind, it also helps you reverse the flow of negativity in your life.
If you’re getting straight F’s, that can be reversed with a change in how you think and move. If you’re terrified of the cold, or the heat, you can reverse this thinking by reversing the way you picture things in your mind.
If you’re afraid of being broke, or you’re afraid of being prosperous, understand that both of these realities begin as ideas, as images in your mind.
The same goes with anything else. Walking is nothing more than walking until you change one tiny detail of how you walk. If it’s snowing or raining or the temperature is below freezing, maybe you’re less comfortable doing it.
Imagine, though, a way of walking that was so therapeutic that it rewound your mind and made you feel fabulous, without effort; it put you into an internal comfort zone so you could effortlessly expand into realms that were only a figment of your imagination before.
Yes, I believe there is a way of walking that changes your thinking and your life, helping you transcend circumstances.
It’s called Dao Zou. And it may be the answer you’ve been searching for without even realizing it.
See it. Feel it. Be it.
Matt Furey
