Today while I was at home being rather lazy I came across a video on the belief system of Scientology on YouTube called “BBC Panorama The Secrets of Scientology (Complete)” which I found extremely emotionally riveting and something inside of me wanted to share an awakening I had which made me realize something so extremely important that I felt I had to share with the readers. It has to do with beliefs, values, and almost everything that happens in our mind with every second of the day.
If you spend 1 entire year reading this entire website and take nothing away except ONE THING from it, I hope you as the reader can take this advice from me and embedd it into the deepest part of your psyche and always remember it. It will carry with you in life and serve you well in understanding one of the most basic aspects of human interaction
“Everyday, Every Hour, Every minute, some one, some organization, some group of people will be trying to influence you, persuade you, sell to you, and try to win your heart and mind to their side, to their cause. In essence, they are trying to win your mind and your heart.”
I’m trying to do it right now. That is the truth. As I write I am secretly hoping that you would believe me, would trust me, and would give me the time to actually read to what I write and listen to what I have to say when I speak on those podcasts. You’re minds and heart is bombarded each and everyday by people who mostly want to persuade you to give them money.
How many signs did you see today? Probably every single sign you saw today was asking you in some variation or way to buy something from them or give them money right?
Even good causes like charities, fund raisers, and donations still are asking you for one thing. Money.
Here is my belief: At the core of most people, we are essentially the same because we want the same things. We want pleasure and want o avoid pain. Our tendency to avoid pain is greater than our desire for pleasure. Most of us like being in the comfort zone and not be forced out of it. We think that we are good people and have good intentions but we find that we often make stupid, obviously wrong choices due to our habits and our identity. If we remember the story of the frog and the scorpion, we must remember that no matter how good and great our original intentions are in believing in doing the right thing, we will still always do or act in the the way that is consistent in what we believe about ourselves. From Wikipedia…“The fable is used to illustrate the view that the behaviour of some creatures, or of some people, is irrepressible, no matter how they are treated and no matter what the consequences.”
Do people change? Sometimes, but most of the time once we reach a certain age, what we have always been doing becomes very hard to stop.
The truth that I have understood is that Scientology is no different from any other form of religion or faith. The hypnotist, mentalist, and NLP expert Derren Brown in his documentary “Derren Brown – Miracles for Sale” he exposes the charlatans, confidence tricksters, and greedy people who use the ideal of God and religion to make other people believe in them and their cause. The reason for persuasion of a person’s mind and heart is the same. If you win a person’s heart and mind, you can ask anything from them and they would give you it.
This is my belief and you don’t have to believe in what I have to believe. I believe that Scientology is a cult, an organization that tries to do everything to control you. And it is not just Scientology, but any type of organization or person who tries too hard and uses psychological tricks and manipulation to coerce people to belive in them.
I remember reading a post by Remit Sethi, who is a very famous Finance advice consultant, writer, and blogger who wrote the book I Will Teach You To Be Rich and he answered a question which really made me think. He shared to me that now that he is in his 30s, he is making the type of money that he wants, which is over 7 figures a year through online products and services, and he has almost all of his finances in order. He has a very well running and secure retirement plan. So he asks me the reader this question “Since I don’t want you the reader for money, what is it that I still want from you?” or something along those lines. The answer was what shocked me. I always thought that all people on the internet wanted were two things. Money and Sex. Apparently the thing that would make him want to talk to you now is no longer consulting gigs, speaking opportunities, and similar projects which would lead to him making even more money. What he wanted and is willing to link to and share on his blog with gets millions of unique visitors a day was this. He wanted you to listen to his advice, take action implementing his advice, come back and tell him the success and positive results you got from his advice. At a deep level, what Remit wanted at this point was a form of ego validation, to show that he has some major influence over other people’s lives. What he needed most at this point in his life and development is for other people to believe in his cause and ideas so much that they become literally psychophants to his words.
At some level, after a person has been selling to other humans long enough, and they have made the amount of money they have wanted, they come to the realization that the money coming in is no longer giving them the amount of personal satisfaction they might have used to have felt earlier in their careers. That Ramit has shown indirectly is that after they have the money, what they really want is the feeling that their own brand of religion or message is right and that other people are listening. For some people, it is just not enough to get the money, but also for them to feel validated in showing that they are also smart, validated in their viewpoints. For men, it is critically important that we are right. For a lot of men, we would rather be “RIGHT” than “HAPPY”. This shows that a HUGE part of a man is connected to his ego, which must be stroked a lot. The competitive nature within us makes us desire to be not just taller than our male counterparts, but also smarter.
I have seen this with many people, and the type of people who are looking for this type of ego validation the most are people who either call themselves consultants or end up in some form of consultant job like at Mckinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Bain, etc.
Then I realize that this need for one to be able to influence others to make them believe in your ideas and causes has been a part of me as well. The truth is that one of my other business is in the Coaching industry, which at this current form is like the wild west. There is no accreditation or training needed to be a coach, whether it would be for fitness, life, success, finance, etc. The coaching my other business focuses on is for men who feel that they are not being able to express their masculinity correctly. At some strange level, I wanted the power and ability to influence the thoughts and behavior of others.
Then I thought back to all the religions and faiths in the world. Let’s look at some of the most controversial and influential cultish groups today. Mormonism, and Scientology.
The reason why Mormonism (The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) has been so influential is because of the work ethic that the religion teaches to its adherents. I wanted to note that in my graduating college class, some of the people who are the hardest working with the best grades were from the Mormonism religion. They are very pious and dedicated to their cause focusing on doing hard work and in this modern work where most people choose to lax off and be lazy, their work ethic has managed to propel them to the upper ranks of many businesses and societies, the best example being recent 2012 Republican Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney. For Mormonism, there are factions of it which has been able to keep its values and beliefs closer to the modern values and beliefs but there are other sects of Mormonism which has been a cause of great concern over charges of polymary and child sexual abuse charges.
The reason why Scientology has been so influential has been its ability to get in its following some high name celebrities. It also helps that Scientologist try to recruit young kids into the faith as young as possible so that they can gain control over the kid’s mind when it is still malleable and impressionable. The way Scientologist have learned is to use mind control techniques to both attack and defend their system of belief against scrutiny. This means that it is good at scrambling other people’s mental models while being able to put a psychological wall against people who try to deconstruct their mental models.
As for other religions and cults, we have to remember that EVERY SINGLE religion, cult, religious movement, or sect was started by someone who had immense charisma, persuasive powers, and influence. Hitler himself was an amazing speaker who could move entire stadiums with the emotional fervor in his voice. Steve Jobs who many consider to be sociopathic due to his violent , loud tirades had what his employees called a “Reality Distortion Field” because of the way he would look so intensely into other people’s eyes and somehow through some strange inner will get other people to bend down and do what they were told. It could have been easily claimed that early on in Apple’s history, his emotional intelligence was highly lacking. In a revealing video I remember from YouTube, Steve would say that his one of his teachers from his childhood days would say that Steve would either have turned out to have been super successful due to his personality, or end up in prison. For people who have the psychopathological tendencies like Jobs, their fate will almost always be unique. At the end, we can say that Steve Jobs created his own “cult”, the Cult of Apple, and the Cult of Steve Jobs, people who were so fervently loyal to him and the Apple brand. From his Buddhistic and liberal arts background, he managed to add an element of humanity to the Apple products which was different from other electronic devices. He understood that for humans, we often need more than just the technical facts and functionality. At a deep level, we want to be touched emotionally and have our souls lit up by some form of Crusade or system of belief.
When it comes to modern, new faith systems, we can look at the Church of Anthony Robbins. For the last 30 years, Anthony Robbins has been teaching his own version of self help and coaching which seems to be far more effective than the traditional therapy. His younger years in incorporating over 700 books of knowledge and as many useful self help systems along with NLP meant that he had a strong solid foundation on how the human mind works and its natural tendencies. I’ve listened to his talks at his Unleash the Power Within, Date with Destiny, etc. and after you hear his taks and principles for the 5th time, you realize that he is running on a same script in almost all of his talks, his answers to questions, and his speeches. Although he says the same things over and over again in his seminars and events, the message is still powerful because of his energy, his passion, his intensity, and his size. Anthony Robbins has been able to reveal to his followers some very basic human truths which many people understand. [Example: The easiest and most effective way for two humans to make a connection is through pain, or sharing of pain. At a very fundamental level, all humans understand what pain feels like and have had to endure suffering and pain at some level.] Now, today after even 30 years of preaching like a High Priest of Human Potential as another writer labeled him, he has a worldwide following, over $300 million in assets, his own private helicopter, his own syndicate and mastermind of equally rich and successful people he can refer to and get help from. The fact that Robbins spends a lot of his time in his own private island in Fiji, alone where he can not be disturbed mans that he can create his own little world or reality which no other people can get into.
If we wanted another example, look at the Integral Philosophy system psychologist/philosopher Ken Wilber created since the 70s in trying to create a model or system to explain everything in the world. As one very well known self help coach and blogger would say, he got into his “Ken Wilber phase” and also his “Anthony Robbins phase” at one time or another in his personal development, being zealous of these modern day philosophers, promoting their works, and reading everything they write. When you watch the videos on Ken, you can see that he is always sitting in some chair, and looking down at his followers who listen to his every word. Many of his follower, people who have been reading his work and listening to his every work for over 20 years, calls him a “guru” but he prefers to be called a “pandit”. I guess that for a lot of the people in the world, they are very confused and scared. They want to follow another person who they can follow and devoted to so they can have some sense of direction and purpose, or at least some philosophical foundation that they can live their life with.
The biggest self help “guru” that has come up in recent years has been Las Vegas based Steve Pavlina with his blog “Personal Development for Smart People“. While he was immensely helpful and insightful for people early on in his blogs, in recent years, his sociopathic tendencies have surfaced. He would choose to get into polymary which his ex-wife Erin eventually did not like which lead to their divorce. It was possible that he was cause in bed with another women. His dark humor jokes about sex slaves, polymarous lifestyles, trials with polyphasic sleep, wanting sexual variety, etc. has made many people think he has gone “crazy” in recent years. His association with Johnny Sopornno, a pickup artist and dating instructor who dates almost exclusively adult movie stars and prostitutes (in the words of a another well known pickup artist) makes him sleazy. His talk about creating his own reality and solipsism makes you think that he has started to believe that he is special or unique in some way.
What you will find with people who do become rich and successful enough in their professional lives is that eventually they will either consciously or unconsicously start to create a mini-world, or a bubble for them to encapsulate themselves and the people they want in their inner sanctum in to shelter themselves away from the external world. The reason is two fold..
1. They are trying to protect themselves in terms of emotional stress and wear and tear from other people from trying to force their own views and idea on them.
2. It is to create a small world which they can have full control over. Control is a huge part of a human’s psychic issue.
All you have to do is look at the controlling, domineering leaders of history..
- Kim Il Sung, the communist revolutionary of North Korea closed off all of North Korea from foreign influence to protect himself and his ideology and promote the idea of “Juche”, an Korean term meaning self reliance. His son Kim Il Jong would do the same thing continuing to try to control the thoughts and hearts of eveyrone in his country. This lead to disaster with his country’s people suffering from starvation and famine for many years and millions of people dying.
- Mao ZeDong would close off China from western influences and used his ideologyy to stoke the fervor of young teenagers to completely override traditional chinese cultural values and start what would be known as “The Cultural Revolution”. This lead to an entire generation of Chinese young workers lossing all of their future.
- Steve Jobs would create Apple, which has total control over all aspects of development, the software and hardware, unlike other companies like Microsoft which has been traditional only in the software industry. His small world of total control was Apple, which he tried to rule with an iron fist, until life decided to step in and slap him with a cold dose of reality in the form of Prostate Cancer.
- Islam, where the cult of Muhammad means that his face can never be shown in any artistic depiction, unless the artist wished to have death threats, harassment, and violent riots on his behalf every single day. Incidently, we must remember what many Imams have say about Islam itself. Islam is not just a religion, but a complete way of life. This means that this religion has managed to pervade every aspect of life, until every single moment has been used and dedicated to promote and profelytize its views and beliefs. With Islam, you can’t leave it at the church or school. You take it with you everywhere.
In my opinion, every single religions system who believes in proselytizing at a high degree, is a racket, a syndicate of crime who tries to convert people to their belief system. This means that people and organizations who try to push too hard have selfish intent when they walk up to you. Almost everyday when I walk on the streets I have people who push brochures and fliers at me trying to get me to first take the flier, then look at it, and find some interest in it, and then decide to go to where they are advertising and open my wallet.
And it is not just on religious institutions, but very practical organizations and institutions in our lives too.
Many months ago I was sitting with a man in his 30s who was unemployed and who told me about his trial in going to business school and getting his MBA. I personally don’t ever want to go to business school or get my MBA because I felt it was not worth me spending that type of time and money on something which has not yielded much rate of return among the people who I went to school with. His way of describing MBA was this “the MBA is a degree or a way to validate you have the qualifications to manage people”. He was talking about business, but he focused on the human side. Since every business involves people, all of the marketing, the sales, the accounting, the product development, and innovation must at some level be able to understand human psychology and motivation and use those ideas to persuade people. The one element that never goes away was the element of people. He would say in the next phrase this “You go to business school to learn how to manage people mostly”. Since everyone is different with their individual quirks, habits, issues, and values, there is always a huge need to learn how to manage, control, and influence people so that conflict and fighting doesn’t develop between people who disagree or hate each other.
We know that to manage people, you have to understand humans really well, their habits, tendencies, and trigger points.
Robert Cialdini talks in his seminal work Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion about the 6 different types of ways people can influence other people.
6 key principles of persuasion by Robert Cialdini (from Wikipedia Source)
- Reciprocity – People tend to return a favor, thus the pervasiveness of free samples in marketing. In his conferences, he often uses the example of Ethiopia providing thousands of dollars in humanitarian aid to Mexico just after the 1985 earthquake, despite Ethiopia suffering from a crippling famine and civil war at the time. Ethiopia had been reciprocating for the diplomatic support Mexico provided when Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935. The good cop/bad cop strategy is also based on this principle.
- Commitment and Consistency – If people commit, orally or in writing, to an idea or goal, they are more likely to honor that commitment because of establishing that idea or goal as being congruent with their self-image. Even if the original incentive or motivation is removed after they have already agreed, they will continue to honor the agreement. Cialdini notes Chinese brainwashing on American prisoners of war to rewrite their self-image and gain automatic unenforced compliance. See cognitive dissonance.
- Social Proof – People will do things that they see other people are doing. For example, in one experiment, one or more confederates would look up into the sky; bystanders would then look up into the sky to see what they were seeing. At one point this experiment aborted, as so many people were looking up that they stopped traffic. See conformity, and the Asch conformity experiments.
- Authority – People will tend to obey authority figures, even if they are asked to perform objectionable acts. Cialdini cites incidents such as the Milgram experiments in the early 1960s and the My Lai massacre.
- Liking – People are easily persuaded by other people that they like. Cialdini cites the marketing of Tupperware in what might now be called viral marketing. People were more likely to buy if they liked the person selling it to them. Some of the many biases favoring more attractive people are discussed. See physical attractiveness stereotype.
- Scarcity – Perceived scarcity will generate demand. For example, saying offers are available for a “limited time only” encourages sales.
One of the reasons why you might think Tyler from HeightQuest is an expert on the subject and science of height increase could be that he has a lot of very technical genetics related material on his website, he’s been doing the research for over 4 years now, and he says that the method he dsicovered and is always promoting and validating gave him real results. But he can be wrong. The best arguement for his promoted idea is why is it that he and only a few people have gotten results with others not seeing anything? Playing devil’s advocate for commonly accetepd ideas is critical to help keep things into perspective and be as objective as possible.
Maybe the reason you believe in me and my website is from the large amount of content and posts that is release. Maybe you feel more trust and believe in me more because I have created a Podcast along with the website as well as a Youtube Account with a few videos uploaded, all where you can hear my voice. However I can tell you right now that I am just a beginner in the research. I have never been able to crack open a real textbook on the subject of auxology or endocrinology. I wrote about my big frustration with the research in the post “I Really Don’t Know What I Am Doing“. Sometimes I think I am just talking bullshit and other times I think that what I am saying is only HALF bullshit. I’m not an expert, I’m not a guru, or a master in anything related to the research. I just read more about the topic than most other people because I have a strong interest in it and there is a deep seeded pain associated with feeling like I am too short to be loved.
One of the earliest posts I wrote was the possibility that what I am trying to do is impossible at “What If Height Increase and Growing Taller Is Impossible?“. At some point, I think we need to take a step back from our intense focus and drive to achieve our height increase goals and just think about it from a more reasonable perspective. I am doing all this research hoping that we will eventually through our effort find some solution or at least make a few breakthroughs. I don’t make any claims or . All ideas are questionable and can be stated to be ineffective until proven otherwise.
I would never ask a person to blindly listen to my adivce but actually think for themselves. There is one thing that I would ask every single human to do and that is to question everything and not just follow the commands and rules of the people and organizations around them. When you find yourself feeling angry, passionate, or really emotional over some cause, belief, or issue it is wise to ask yourself “Am I being influenced and manipulated by someone else to believe or value this cause or principle with my mind and heart?”
Here are a few examples on things for you to think about and maybe question their real value on…
Example #1: Are diamonds really worth the type of money they are really worth? All it is highly condensed carbon atoms. The crystal doesn’t even have any color.
Example #2: Why do people care so much about fashion when the fashion trends change so quickly and become passe requiring people to obsessively buy the newest hippest thing and spend so much money on this area?
Example #3: Do we really need to have luxury cars (or any type of luxury iteam) which really is just a brand label when all we really need is a dependable, durable, safe car to drive?
Example #4: Why do we care so much about our local sports teams when we realize that we can move or that the sports teams can leave as well?
I would say that we have been tricked and scammed on all of our life by bad influences who wish to win our hearts and minds for their cause.
Another smarter student insisted that I bring in evidence that proves that jumping rope doesn’t work. The problem is I’m not finding any scientific papers that specifically deal with this. Lots on how the body grows taller but nothing refuting or debunking bogus ‘get tall quick’ scams.
