Technology has rocked our world repeatedly in profound ways. This will happen many more times and is about to happen again with Google Wave.  It’s going to be a tidal wave!

Imagine email, instant messaging, document sharing and much more integrated into a real time platform.  Or don’t imagine it and just wait a few months because that’s when you’ll be using Google Wave. TechCrunch has a great overview explaining why this is a game-changing product.

With Google Wave being announced it seems like a good time to shine a spotlight on how our world has changed from the release of disruptive technologies.  Some of my favorites have been:

• Smart Phones – before them we actually used a phone for making calls.  Now we use our phones as watches, computers, Rolodexes, calendars, cameras, alarm clocks, jukeboxes, photo albums, yellow page directories, news resources, email clients, video game consoles and a hundred other devices-in-one.
• Pagers – First drug dealers used them with pay phones (remember those?  …pay phones, not drug dealers) and parents used them to get their kids to call home.   With their arrival we began to move into a world where we could be found at any moment aside from being in the shower.
• Mobile Phones - Remember when phones were used connect with a specific location?  Now they are used to connect to a person in any location.  This created a major shift in how we communicate.
• Satellites – Before 1957 there were no satellites.  Fifty-two years later we use them for many purposes across industries as varied as radio, television, telecommunications, navigation, meteorology, land mapping, business & finance, climate & environmental monitoring, space science to name a few.  When is the last time you used a paper map instead of Google Maps on your phone or computer?
• Cable news – I don’t watch it, think it’s moronic and a tabloid distraction, but when it first debuted it was a positive revolution to have 24 hour news.  It killed the habit of tuning into the evening news and broadened possibilities before imploding into itself and beginning to be killed by my favorite disruptive technology so far…
• The Interwebs – Also know as the intertubes or the internet.  Since you’re reading this on the internet you probably know how transformational the internet and personal computers have been.  Pause for a moment and try to remember what your life was like before owning a personal computer, much less a laptop or smart phone.

Some technologies that were revolutionary and became extinct include the betamax, laser discs, vinyl albums, Polaroid pictures, PDAs, 8 Track tapes, cassette tapes and floppy discs.  The thing is, they were all necessary bridges to our modern world of digital convenience.  Much like how email and verbal voice mail may be out of use in 10 years, but they are necessary and interesting to us today.

The key to new innovative disruptive technologies is to look for the opportunities rather than being afraid because the old ways are passing away.  Dinosaur industries like music, TV and newspapers could have done much better than they have in the last 10 years.

They are still blowing it by blaming the world for changing rather than blaming their antiquated hierarchical business models.  The old models had large overheads and made a ton of money for few people while taking advantage of many others.  The new models value human, social, financial and environmental capital equally while collaborating to benefit many through innovation with low costs of entry.

There are tons of great examples like Amazon that have changed our personal and professional lives in deeply profound ways by unleashing innovative products, services and distribution models to an unsuspecting public.  Google Wave is just the next best thing, but lets welcome the changes it will bring to help us to do life in better and more collaborative ways.

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Laws are not selective, unless you’re either rich, powerful, a celebrity , politically connected, or know someone who is when you break one.

Gravity is a law. It works 100% of the time with no excuses whether you like it or not.  In fact, you don’t have to buy a book or movie to see how it works; nor do you have to believe in it.  Gravity is a law of physics and doesn’t care what you think. It just does it’s ‘gravity’ thing and you cannot fight it and win.  Ever.  No matter what.

Attraction, the new age kind rather than the law of physics kind, is an emotional or electromagnetic force that does not occur consistently but appeals greatly to our greed, arrogance and inherent need to feel special.

If there was a Law of Attraction then the millions of consumers of the law of attraction and Oprah viewers worldwide would be manifesting every material desire for their health, relationships, careers and financial material wealth that the NYT #1 Best Seller, The Secret, promised them rather than there being a global recession.

Have you talked to a law of attraction believer lately?  How’s it working beyond believing results will arrive at some soon yet undisclosed time after years of practice?

Obama could mandate that every American citizen has to think better thoughts so we can attract our way out of economic crisis and have everything our hearts desire.  Yeah, an army of attractors, that’s the ticket.  Someone get that idea to the Treasury Secretary stat!

Good Emotional Marketing = Many Believers and More Manifrustration

Forget for a moment that the stars of The Secret are seasoned professional marketers who became even more rich and famous after inventing The Secret as a brand, and are about to unleash a sequel to get even more rich and famous.  (Cash cows have got to be milked, even in spiritual capitalism, right?)

Forget that the unfulfilled promises in The Secret just happen to be for the four things every psychic and marketer happens to sell you hope for – money, relationships, health and avoidance of death, lets look at the definitions of attraction from Dictionary.com that apply:

5.Physics. the electric or magnetic force that acts between oppositely charged bodies, tending to draw them together.

6. an entertainment offered to the public.

For #5 note that it says “oppositely charged” which is contradictory to the Secret’s formula of aligning yourself with what you want to attract.  So maybe thinking about poverty is the true road to attracting wealth. hmmm….

Also for #5, there is a “tendency” rather than a law (i.e. – a principle based on the predictable consequences of an act, condition, etc.: the law of supply and demand) though for #6 we’re getting closer.

It is practically a law that the public will pay to be entertained – especially if that entertainment makes them feel like they are special.

Instead, most people practicing the law of attraction techniques live in constant hope and manifrustration which ironically was the same state they lived in before buying into the marketing campaign for the law of attraction.

It Works Fine, You’re the One Who’s Broken

The scapegoat is that when the law of attraction doesn’t work there’s an easy answer; the law works, but YOU are the problem.  You’re not believing hard enough.  (You and the tens of millions of others who aren’t getting results.  Would you keep taking a drug with results like these?)

This is what bothers me the most.  It’s the same crazy making blame game that people get in multi-level marketing and sales rooms with no proven sales system.

Remember that you only need a handful of success stories (or actors reading their lines) on your infomercial to appear successful and deflect the fact that 99% of your customers didn’t lose weight with your plastic exercise device.

How many people do you know of who appear to have great relationships, material wealth, successful careers or great health?  Out of those people who enjoy the results promised by marketers of the law of attraction, how many do you think practiced the principals in The Secret?

Most successful people I know have been so busy taking action to create results that they didn’t have time to watch the Secret movie much less buy into it’s superstition.  A couple of them do have vision boards and the like, but they use those tools to remind them of what they’re working so hard to achieve while taking massive amounts of action.

Notice that the correlation of success to taking action, reviewing results and taking more action (very concrete steps) is much higher than the correlation of success to ‘believing the right thoughts’ – which is pretty damned nebulous.  Who determines what thoughts are right and whether they’re ‘right’ enough to attract what you want?

Note that magnets attract 100% of the time by being in proximity to what they naturally attract, metal.  A magnet needs to be close to it’s target (humans do this by taking action) and it does not attract anything else like sand, carpet or plastic (which would be what for humans?  Bad jobs? Mean people? Losing money?)

The Secrets to Success

Sorry Charlie, the secret to success is that there is no perfect formula to follow that anyone can sell to you.

See, there are also people taking tons of action and not getting results with or without playing The Secret game.  Heck, you may even know some or be one of them.  Look in the mirror real quick and check.

Why aren’t they succeeding?  Luck, timing, how they did in the womb lottery (being born in L.A. gives you a better shot, though no guarantee, at success than being born in Uganda), how rich and powerful their families were or weren’t, whether their talent was nurtured or not, who they did or didn’t  meet as they grew up, how industrious their attitude is, and so on.

Read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success,  Geoff Covin’s Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else or Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets to really wake up to this.

Can the principals work?  Maybe.  Are they the principals most successful people throughout history have used?  No.  Will they work for you? Magic 8 ball says “probability doubtful.”   Will a little focus and a lot of action give you a better shot at achieving your goals? Probably.

A Mind is a Terrible Thing

The mind makes up meaning and is not very good at it.  That’s it’s job like a teenager’s job is to push their parents buttons.  That’s just how the wiring works.  Deal with it.

In hindsight, you will probably attribute your success or lack thereof to a misguided conclusion that getting up early, practicing the law of attraction, going to a good school or whatever explains your situation.  The truth is that many factors, including many we miss, contribute to our perceived failures and successes.

Do your thoughts create your reality? Well, thinking positively and consciously is never a bad thing, but we’ve all experienced both great and terrible circumstances without either consciously believing that we could or couldn’t experience them.

Did most of your happiest moments occur after intense practice visualizing them?  I didn’t think so.  How about your unhappiest? Uh huh.  And you’re moderately not-so-notable experiences?  Okay.

If You Believe in the Law of Attraction it Can’t Just Work for the Stuff You Like.

Are children molested, adults contracting cancer or drivers getting in car accidents because their thoughts attracted that experience?

Did the US Airways flight crash into the Hudson with no casualties because the passengers were attracting an exciting yet non-lethal experience in an airplane?

Or maybe it was because the pilot was skilled and had been flying since he was a teenager which enabled him to react in the best possible way to a random life threatening occurrence.

Or maybe we’ll never know because our brains are experts at making meaning out of the first possible plausible explanation it comes up with or is exposed to.

Did every single one of the 9/11 victims or the millions of Iraqi’s killed in the last 8 years envision those experiences to manifest them?  If some of those 9/11 victims would have told someone their visions of planes crashing into buildings maybe we could have prepared better.

Law of attraction? Nope.  Theory of attraction? More accurate by definition.

If it helps you to take better action in your life great.  If it’s another late night infomercial emotional crutch to provide false hope, not so good.

Ask your doctor if the law of attraction is right for you and then remember that results WILL vary.  You can count on that.

In the current job climate many people are more vulnerable than usual to work at home scams.  I work from home, but not for a multi-level company promising the moon for very little work.

I’m a consultant and my clients are legitimate companies that hire me for concrete services like copywriting, designing and implementing marketing strategies and improving brand stature, not to recruit others into “the business” or promise that if I buy their $100 – $3,000 program I’ll make $500 a day doing data entry work.

The bottom line is that you never have to pay to start working a legitimate job. When your gut clenches as you read these “opportunity” sales pitches there’s a reason.  Mother nature and your gut do not lie, but your mind can be fooled.

Can you make money with some of these programs?  Maybe.  Will you achieve even half the level of income promised without four times the work promised and some luck?  Doubtful.

If you search “work at home” on You Tube you’ll find 144,000 videos trying to recruit you into some companies “easy” system and even showing a picture of a check reflecting “legitimate income.”

Just pass on by.  Especially if you hear the words, “you only need to get 2 who get 2 who get 2 and then you’ll be rolling in residual income.”  …unless you want a full time job as a recruiter.

There are legitimate work from home businesses, but most of what you’ll find is a scam.  For deeper details on this visit the Crimes of Persuasion: Schemes, Scams and Frauds site.  Here’s their mission statement:

To inform the public, along with law enforcement personnel, justice officials and victim support groups on the workings and scope of telemarketing and investment fraud so that efforts can effectively be taken to minimize the impact on its victims and ensure that adequate penalties are in place to deter the perpetrators.

It only takes a few success stories to make anything look attractive and make you think, “Hey, I could do that too.”

It’s great marketing, but lacks integrity because they tell you what you “can” do without acknowledging that very few succeed.  If you pay attention you’ll notice the detail in never using the word “will” instead of “can” because then they can be sued for promising results that rarely come to be.

What you don’t see is the hundreds or thousands of road kill past suckers that tried the program and failed.  Twenty successes on an infomercial looks like a lot until you realize that it’s 20 out of 10,000 and the other 9,980 people who tried it couldn’t make it work.

Use common sense, keep your greed (and wallet) in check and realize that success for most people comes from steady work they enjoy and spending less money than they earn.

Get rich quick is a marketing scam, especially when it’s dressed up and labeled as a “business” or “business opportunity.”  Don’t buy it.

It’s not news that how you think the world is defines how it is for you.  What’s amazing is how many of us learn this, but continue to go through life thinking that our way is THE way.  Is your glass half full or half empty?

With the unending drum beat about the economy “crisis,” pounding through our heads it seems like a good time to revisit this.  Humans are emotional creatures that react to people’s comments on perceived circumstances more often than being proactive in choosing how to create their lives.  This phenomenon lends itself to leading us astray based on our past beliefs and current assessments of our lives.

There is no doubt that the U.S. economy is slow and translates into hard times for a large number of it’s citizens.  That said, they sky isn’t falling, just like it wasn’t falling on September 11, 2001.  Unfortunate events yes, but extreme fearful reactions just make up mental suffering.  They are blips on the screen when you view the full scope of your life.

Money is a very funny thing.  These days it’s mostly digital bytes on a screen.  And economies based on money are totally made up conversations.

Who decided to create interest rates, compound interest, zero interest loans with huge interest back ends, stock derivatives, hedge funds, money market accounts, savings accounts, certificate of deposit rates, consumer price indexes, etc.?  They’re all made up structures, which can be changed, not laws of the universe.

Money is nothing but a mental agreement where we all decided that U.S. Treasury green backs have value but Monopoly money doesn’t have value even though they’re both just pieces of paper.  You could argue that money is backed by valuable minerals like gold and silver, but who decided they were valuable?

Do you know who decided that diamonds were valuable? De Beers Diamond company and their amazing PR team who intentionally lied to the public creating a perception that diamonds are the rarest gem on Earth.  If your wife perceives that diamonds are valuable, though it’s not true, then you’ll pay 3 months salary for one and she’ll be thrilled because she thinks her perception is THE real perception.

We somehow created an extra $9 billion a month for 5 years and counting for an Iraq invasion and occupation, we found $700 billion to bail out Wall Street, and over decades we haven’t been able to allocate a few million dollars to improve America’s dilapidated schools.

It’s a matter of perception and priorities.  Regardless of what you  think of the way our social systems operate, money seems to be created when it’s needed.

Before selling my house a couple of years ago I remember thinking how crazy it was that a 2,500 sq ft house built in 1992 should be valued at over $500,000.  I was right.  The market was way over valued based on dumb reactions to perceptions real estate buyers had.

They were reacting to a perception that housing values would go up forever and they were missing out if they didn’t have rental property in addition to their own homes.  The appraisal on that house is surely lower today than it was 3 years ago.  It’s the same house.  The only thing that’s different is public perception.

Today many stocks are extremely undervalued just like a few years ago real estate was overvalued.  The market reacts illogically every day to everchanging perceptions. It’s nothing new.

So take a deep breath, smile , and spend more time creating the life you enjoy rather than following the negative news of the day.  As all things do, this too shall pass and your glass will be half full or half empty based on your perception.  What’s it gonna be?

Paul Grignon’s 47-minute animated presentation of “Money as Debt” tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it is being created. It is an entertaining way to get the message out. The Cowichan Citizens Coalition and its “Duncan Initiative” received high praise from those who previewed it. I recommend it as a painless but hard-hitting educational tool and encourage the widest distribution and use by all groups concerned with the present unsustainable monetary system in Canada and the United States.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When you consume news remember that it too is a product being marketed.

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Before you follow the advice of the talking heads on TV it may be a good idea to check their track records first.  This video is funny though it’s also very educational in explaining how some aspects of the financial markets market their dodgy products to consumers like you and me.

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The abuse of credit cards by both lenders and borrowers has been well documented for awhile.  Since most of the population blindly racks up credit card debt with little awareness around the pitfalls of being on the giving end of compound interest, I had to add a post on Maxed Out.

It’s a blessing that someone made a documentary explaining the predatory lending practices executed by some of the biggest names in banking.  I highly recommend renting this film as well as reading  Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover book, taking Dave’s Financial Peace University course (The cost is almost nothing and it’s invaluable) along with listening to Dave’s daily radio show either online, on terrestrial radio or watching it on cable TV. Dave is one the people interviewed in the film and diving into his advice is your next step after watching the movie.

If I could change one thing in my financial life it would have been to have learned about Dave Ramsey sooner in life.  The only thing that could have come close would have been to have someone else explain how to handle money as simply and effectively as he does.  When I saw Dave Ramsey on 60 minutes a few years ago and read Total Money Makeover it changed my financial habits for the better and forever.  You can’t put a price on financial peace and it only costs a little time and focus to make it happen.

So, back to Maxed Out.  Here’s the skinny on what it’s about:

Maxed Out takes viewers on a journey deep inside the American style of debt, where things seem fine as long as the minimum monthly payment arrives on time. With coverage that spans from small American towns all the way to the White House, the film shows how the modern financial industry really works, explains the true definition of “preferred customer” and tells us why the poor are getting poorer while the rich keep getting richer. Hilarious, shocking and incisive, Maxed Out paints a picture of a national nightmare which is all too real for most of us. Great for college students.

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The secret to getting rich quick is to not spend your hard earned money and valuable time on schemes that experts are selling you to teach you how to get rich quick.  The truth is that if they were rich from their actions they wouldn’t be wasting their time on stages and teleseminars pitching you on how they altruistically want to teach you to do it too.

I once worked for someone with a very profitable infomercial on “easy 1,2,3″ real estate transactions.  Yes, he did get rich by engaging in similar transactions.  But, he was making more in a day selling products, services and courses on how to do it than he made in a year of doing real estate transactions.

Beyond that, his customer service phones rang of the hook with thousands of daily calls from unhappy customers who couldn’t figure out why the system wouldn’t work for them.  As long as he had 20 success stories for the infomercial and handfuls of others, most of whom had previous real estate experience, he could prove that it worked while 98% of his customers failed.

I’m not going to throw every money making opportunity into this category, but we can bet that at least 95% of them are not what they seem.  In some cases the people pimping their expertise really believe that their students can learn to be incredibly successful.

Unfortunately, the results beg to differ.  For instance, how many millions of people bought products from Tony Robbins versus how many reached their pinnacle of success through following the simple and easy program?

In the personal development field there is a term called “shelf help.”  If you have any books, tapes or CDs lining your shelves with promises to make you lose weight, make money, improve your health or make your relationships better then you’re a consumer of shelf help.

Though I’ve cleaned out my shelf help collection, I still have some too.  I even created and sold some and believe you can get good information from self help material though it’s dangerous thinking one book, course or seminar is going to fix your life.  Then again, I don’t believe anyone’s life is broken in the first place.  We’re just warped by marketing to think that we aren’t good enough and buying products and services will make us whole again.

There are some benefits to these products in some cases, but in the majority of them there is a major flaw.  Usually there is a formula or prescription of what to do to for you to become thin, rich and fabulous with no future problems in your life.  The thing is that there isn’t one formula that’s duplicatable.  The other thing is that things don’t make people happy so even rich and thin people have problems, especially if their happiness is tied to material wealth rather than inner peace.

Your best bet is to pick up some tips here and there that work for you and allow you to create your life in the fashion you’d like.  Every successful person got to where they are with many unplanned, unexpected and helpful people and circumstances.  Since no two people live the exact same lives, it is impossible to replicate another person’s results no matter how well you model their actions and attitudes.

This is not to say that thinking positively and taking strategic action can’t be beneficial.  You just can’t know whether or not they are contributing to your perceived successes and failures.  When you hang out with upwardly mobile fun people who like you there is a higher chance that you’ll bump into better opportunites in life, but there are no guarantees.

Which leads to another funny topic; how our brains make meaning out of everything.  For instance if you watch the Secret movie and something good happens you’ll attribute it to that and if bad things happen you’ll think you’re not doing the Secret steps right.  Suffice it to say that you aren’t the problem, but believing that the Secret works and you don’t is a big problem.  We’ll dive deeper into that fun one in another post.

You have to create your own happiness.  One way to get there faster is to love your life as it is while still doing smart things that make you happy.  Once you stop believing there is a happier and better life beyond the one you’re living you’ll really be on your way.  In realizing the possible hypocrisy of recommending a book in this post, I will say that listening to the CDs of Byron Katie’s Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life helped me to realize this fact.

You’ll be astounded at how quickly you’ll get rich over time when you save and invest your time and money rather than wasting it on get rich quick programs.  Life is a marathon, not a sprint.  Think long term and enjoy today.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the #1 NYT Best Selling author of Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets and The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, predicted the current banking crisis 12 years ago.

As a trader for 18 years, and an intelligent critical thinker his entire life, Mr. Taleb knows of that which he speaks.  If the current and latest crisis has caught you by surprise I highly recommend reading both of his books to prevent you from being blind-sighted again.

So why didn’t anyone listen to him?  It won’t be a shock to consider selfish greed on the part of those in a position to do something about it as the main cause.  We all know now that trillions of dollars in profit were made by the people with an investment in propping up the house of cards.

Greed leads to neglect and collapse…again.  To gain an understanding beyond the obvious fact that a deregulated industry of sharks couldn’t be trusted to do the right thing, lets look at three quotes from The Black Swan which was written between 2003-2007.

Globalization creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability. In other words it creates devastating Black Swans. We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. Financial Institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks – when one fails, they all fall.  The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crises less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur ….I shiver at the thought.

Banks hire dull people and train them to be even more dull. If they look conservative, it’s only because their loans go bust on rare, very rare occasions. But (…)bankers are not conservative at all. They are just phenomenally skilled at self-deception by burying the possibility of a large, devastating loss under the rug.

The government-sponsored institution Fannie Mae, when I look at its risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry: their large staff of scientists deemed these events “unlikely”.

Hindsight is always 20/20.  Foresight takes a little effort to develop.  By recognizing that Mr. Taleb, and surely some others in the banking and finance industries, did see this train wreck coming down the tracks we can pay more attention to future signs of obvious insanity.

Our biggest major surprise was that invading and occupying Iraq was a bad idea.  Honestly, it didn’t take a foreign policy expert to see that.  Sunni and Shiite factions had been covertly and overtly warring with each other for centuries and no one treats invaders and occupiers as liberators.

Then there was Hurricane Katrina.  Not really a surprise after weather forecasters warned of it’s possibilities years before it happened, but it never the less shocked the nation.  A hurricane in Kansas would be a surprise.  A little critical thinking can go a long way to waking up from the cartoon media trance most of America lives in today.

There will be other crises down the road in many industries.  Some can be predicted and some cannot. Priests and other crusaders of morality will be caught doing the things they condemn, politicians will lie to get what they want, lobbyists will choose personal profit over public interests, and on and on.  Stopped being shocked when these things happen for the hundredth time.

By expecting the unexpected to randomly happen and questioning every time you hear the words, “No one could have predicted this” like it was a fire alarm, you’ll enjoy more peace and sanity.  Or at least you won’t be a blind sheep believing everything the “experts” tell you.