Attraction is NOT a choice, Jello Wrastlin and controlling the frame....

This past week I've been listening to audiobooks while I'm at work, ripped through three this week. It's pretty awesome to be honest; I love to read but its hard to find the time. Now I feel like I read all day and get paid for it.

I just finished "The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pick Up Artists" by Neil Strauss. It's depressing really, but what an incredible book. Basing an entire life on creating an illusion of greatness for other people will lead to an empty life every time. Sadder still, the game that these guys run works. Attraction is not a choice. And women cheat on their husbands and boyfriends at an alarming rate. Knowing that all it takes is a carefully constructed plan of action intermingled with some cheap parlor tricks wrapped up in a nice shirt and a smile makes it all the more ridiculous.

On the bright side, its all much clearer to me now that sex and relationships occupy two completely different slots in a woman's world. A woman will sleep with just about any guy that can make life seem like an adventure for a while. It takes something more to keep her. The terrifying part for the guy that wants to keep her is that she'll still go on an adventure from time to time.

I just heard more stories about chicks with boyfriends asking some guy she just met that night in a club to pop off in her mouth in the last three days than I ever wanted to hear in a lifetime. Of course, it doesn't help that it smacks right against my #1 fear.

My three worst fears in this order

1. Falling in love, getting married, having a few kids.... then finding out the kids aren't mine.
2. The prison rape scene in American History X
3. Ball Cancer

I encountered real life stories of two of the three just this week.... one of those stories was from a friend of mine who took it. Now I don't feel right even joking about it anymore. But.... I have a new hero.

Speaking of friends, my buddy Phatdaddy told me the other day that though it may sound strange because we haven't actually seen each other in fifteen years, he still feels the same about me as ever, that we're as close now at heart as we were back then.

I'm of the mind that relationships are eternal, that loves and friendships really do last forever; if it were up to me I'd still have every single person I once called a friend in my life. Some people just click so well together that fifty years can pass and they'll pick up right where they left off, as if no time has passed at all. And as if to prove it, my buddy Mike invited me to Jell-O Wrestling at the Double Down Saloon Saturday night, we hadn't seen each other in seventeen years and sure enough, it was like hanging with him in school all over again.

Funny, most of my friends are like that, the eternal type, the type that I'd click with after fifty years like nothing happened. You'll hear their names often, Scotty, Matt, Mike, Walt, Thaddeus, Phatdaddy, The Man... they're often contributors to this space and probably reading this. Give me ten of them over a hundred of those fake ass, fair weather turds any day. You know what you can do with that kind....

And that Jello wrestling was THE SHIT! Seriously, I've never experienced anything like that before. There was one pin fall in particular where a young lady with a nice body sat on her opponents chest and lay down, ala 69, and gave those of us in the right spot the full spread. EPIC!

That doesn't even get into the gorgeous woman in her underwear dancing in the window or the porn playing above the bar. It was just my kind of place, made all the better by good people and good friends. The wrastlin was a benefit for breast cancer; they were demonstrating how important it is to save breasts. Who doesn't love breasts? Even the ladies love breasts!

One nugget I came away with this week is that, whatever you have to say about him, Tom Cruise is THE MAN! Its his world and everyone else lives in it. Answer the poll to the right, because I'm curious about what you think. In NLP we have something we call framing, or the frame, which means the scope through which you see the world. Visualize a picture frame and the picture that's inside of it. If that were a window and you were watching things unfold, what's happening? The person that's in control of that scene, the one decides what's happening in that picture, they control the frame. The way the see things is the way its happening and everyone else has to fit it. It's their world and we live in it.

Most people react to how everyone else sees the world. Alpha's, all alpha's, male or female, business men or pick up artists, priests or politicians, slobs or movie stars, what sets them apart from the rest is how they look at that picture of the world; they control the frame. Tom Cruise is an alpha among alpha's without even trying. He always controls the frame. That's what makes him the man, its his world, his reality, and everyone else just lives in it, has to fit in.

One more thing I learned.....

We're all movie stars.... even the slobs.

We're all slobs.... especially the movie stars.

Later People!

Join my fanpage John LaSota - Writer

Or our creative team's page The Mad Doser Presents

And if you need a healthy helping hand from a Personal Performance Consultant
Coach LaSota

The KEY TO SUCCESS IS RIGHT IN HERE.... if you read it...

I wish I knew who had left that first anonymous comment on last Friday's post. It seems as if a friend of mine is in pain and I can't see who it is. If I can't see it then there's nothing that I can do to help, and they don't feel they can go to anyone with the issue. That is my failing.

One of the basic premises that the work I'm now getting into is built upon is that we all already know the answers that we're looking for. The problem is that we either can't see it because we're asking ourselves the wrong questions, or we're too scared to answer those questions. Very often all it takes is someone talk to, someone to bounce things off of, and we reach the conclusions on our own. I had witnessed that very thing with a friend of mine just this weekend, to beautiful results.

Isn't it a shame then that so often we can't find anyone to sit and listen long enough, or that we feel comfortable enough with without fear of being judged, to allow us to do that? Most of the time most of us are so in love with our own voices, or the importance we feel by doling out advice, that we're thinking of our answer before we even listen to what they're saying. Take a second right now and consider if you do that. I know you have before; I've caught myself doing it too.

My "job", when it's done right, is to simply do that, sit back and keep my mouth shut and just let you vent. Then, when you hit a roadblock or don't want to push passed a barrier in your thinking I give a little nudge in the right direction. There are a lot of techniques that I had to train in, sure, a lot of different ways to get you there, but ultimately we all have to figure it out for ourselves.

Another of the presuppositions of my field (heh, my field), the very first one, is that communication is constant. Every one of us is literally communicating with everyone around us everyone else every single moment. We just don't know it. Hell, half the time we think we're saying one thing while our body or our energy is saying another. Then every one else in the room is picking up a completely different message based on whatever madness they're afflicted with.

Have you ever complimented someone and they flipped out on you? Then you had to step back and look around with a stupid look on your face and all you could think was WTF? Yeah, I know you have because people are nuts. And I know you've done it to someone because you're nuts too. We all are. Well... that's why.

Another thing we all do, or have done, is to get overly self conscious when we think we've said or done something embarrassing. When we're nervous we swear everyone in the room knows it, like they smell it or something. How the hell do you not see my hands shaking? This exact thing keeps so many of us from saying or doing or trying the things that we really want to do, because of that paranoid sense that "they know!".

The flip side to that is that we also think that everyone should be able to tell when there's something going on with us. And if they don't we grunt, whine, fidget, cross our arms and huff, pout, and all manner of other business to call attention to ourselves. Then if that doesn't work we get angry or hurt. We think we're alone or no one cares about us. Often, if this goes on consistently for long stretches, we get trapped by that, w begin to feel we have no one we can turn to, or we lock it away so tightly that we can't or are afraid to let it out.

And even when they do notice somethings off, what do we do? "Forget it! You should know!" How many times has someone done that to you? How many times have you done it?

We're constantly caught between that rock and that hard place; between the assumption that everyone is noticing our insecurities laid bare before them and the frustration and sensitivities that they don't. But they never do.

And why don't people ever notice? Because 99% of the world is thinking about themselves. And even when we think of others, its in terms of what we want or how it affects us. That's not to talk bad about people, I do it too, and so you if you're honest about it. Its human nature. It's survival instinct. Its also why 1% of the world has most of the money. Which 1% do you suppose that is?

Our only real option then is to come right out and say it. Then, of course, you have the issue I always did, as my dear mother always said, "it's not what you say but how you say it."

Anthony Robbins has made a career on the premise that "The quality of your communication is the quality of your life". And according to Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people" 15% of success is based on talent; 85% is from how well you talk to and get along with other people. Its not the guy who has the best idea or does the best work, its the one who gets that idea across to other or gets people behind them, to lift them up, that gets to the top of the mountain.

Its those people that raise us up, that believe in us, our support system, that gets us to where we're going. Those are our ambassadors, the ones who spread the word for us, in turn get their people to believe in us too without our having to ask them. That's mostly because they can't help but gush about us.

Here's the irony of it all; you know how I said 99% of the world is always thinking about themselves? If that's true then why would they gush about us? Because the people who drip with excitement most thinking about us are the ones that WE gush over the most... to them!

Of course, the key is that you can't be full of shit. You can't do it geared towards what you're looking to get out of them; people smell bullshit from a mile away. But if you show genuine enthusiasm for someone else and who they are, what they do, then you fill them with a sense of importance. And every time they think of you thereafter they associate you and what you're doing with that same sense of importance. The more you matter, then the more they matter.

I'm famous for rubbing people the wrong way. It happened again just Saturday night, and so I've begun to look back and review all the ways to communicate better. You who read this know my heart better than most, but if you were to meet me in public without having done so would never know that this is how I really am. You would believe the exact opposite of me, that I'm a horrible human being. And that's the challenge facing us all.

You good people have taught me though that its in bearing my soul and making myself completely vulnerable that I show my true strength. But many of you have yet to learn that for yourselves, and fear can trap our souls behind a wall of pain.

Most of us are wrapped up in our own shit, too much to notice yours. But that doesn't mean that we don't care. So please, please, to my anonymous commenter, and everyone else, don't be afraid, come right out and say it. Tell me what's up and free yourself.

Or in the immortal words of Ronald Reagan
"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Later people!

Reruns...

No, not that Rerun.

I was fully expecting to be completely hung over this morning, but I wanted to get something up and out to you anyway, so I decided that I was going to put up some of the old videos that we used to do and learn you something. Videos like this one here about what it means to be Proactive

Yeah, that sexy beast in the video is me. This blog isn't my first attempt at putting things out there for you. We were making these video blogs a bit, and they're pretty damn informative on some real things, but my production quality, well, it's crap... and the videos are long by most standards.... not to mention it took me at least a week to do all the editing, so I stopped. 

Don't worry sister, I am. It always cracks me up seeing what I find when I'm looking to do these things. It's not just the random whacky images or the crazy shit that people do... well, yeah, it is. Life is the BEST!

Speaking of looking things up. I think I've been going to the wrong beaches. She caught herself a fish, the one eyed trouser trout. Like any good fisherman, as soon as she gets home she's going to find out just how it tastes. Unless they allow fires on the beach, then it won't have to wait that long. And from what I'm seeing here... I bet the allow fires on the beach....

I should know exactly how it is that they found themselves together out there on the high seas, I've studied it long enough. A lot of you have probably seen this before, I'm explaining why we go for the people we do, to date or screw. My good buddy Walt and I have taken this knowledge into the field and studied it, like zoo keepers observing the chimps, and the tricks of the trade are like gold, they get it done. The funny thing about this is that it's angled for guys, because I'm a guy, but I have more women asking me about it than anything else. They want to know why they always go for the worst thing for them (and they do) and what tricks the guys use to get them (and they work). I'm excellent in this capacity girls, not much for the tricks myself, but I can sure as hell tell you when it's working against you.

What?

Uh.. What?

What do you want to bet these two know each other. They're probably dating. Somewhere some good guy thinks that blond is just great, but she treated him like shit. Instead, she's all over this guy right here. Just look at how much he's got to offer.

But I think the look on this guys... er... chicks.. ah... guys face says it all. I leave the URL info on the pics up there purposely most of the time in case you want to go check out who's bringing it to you. StupidHumans.org must be the shit, I wouldn't know though, I didn't specifically go to the site. Every one of this pics came up randomly in my search for truth.

Now THAT is sexy! Actually, I really do like her back. And I can almost guarantee this little lady rocks in bed. You probably have to beat the hell out her though, or she won't respect you. Give her a good right hook though and she'll be ready for....

But listen fellas, really, before you take that next step and take the plunge, make sure you do the right thing and have a proper send off... you know what I'm talking about too... the bachelor party

How awesome is this? I always knew there was a family out there for me. Check out the smile on Mom's face in the back there. The baby looks like she's hungry. What a good baby, patiently waiting her turn. Is that his sister? Or maybe she's with the dude in the camouflage. When she gets older, you know what she's going to dress up as for Halloween?

That's right, there you have it. This comes right out of the handbook for perfect parenting. Which one of them do you suppose designed that costume? He worked on getting the tail out of that short skirt... the tits are all her....

But it could always be worse. Why is it that the mouth on his face by his ballsack is a whole lot happier than the mouth.... seriously, I don't see anything wrong with this. For Christmas I'm getting everyone life sized posters of myself. I think it's that jacket that'll be giving me nightmares, but what the hell do I know.

And having nothing to do with anything at all, I just thought, for a second, that we could all use just a little perspective. If you have to ask who that is I can't talk to you. If you have to ask who that is, Bush, Obama, Sara Palin, Al Sharpton, Charlie Sheen... they're not the problem with America... YOU ARE!

Speaking of Charlie Sheen... his Comedy Central roast is coming next Monday.... EPIC!

I'm tired. I think I'll go home now.

Later People!

Join my fanpage John LaSota - Writer
Or our creative team's page The Mad Doser Presents

And if you need a healthy helping hand from a Personal Performance Consultant
Coach LaSota

9/11 - Exactly what is it that we'll never forget?

First I want to thank you all for the tremendous, overwhelming response to my last post. I had a great, great weekend, which I'll go into more detail about during the week, and I'm tired but it would probably be irresponsible of me not to address the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11.

I didn't watch a single second of the coverage on television; the images are ingrained in our memories as if etched in stone. I didn't need to see that again. There will be no pictures of any of that in my posts. This will not be about politics, or terrorism, or anger, or revenge. This will not be about conspiracies or what I believe to be the truth behind that day. Instead I'll talk about that day, that week, as I experienced it and the message that I always try to take from it.

I was born and raised in New York City, and with the exception of the three years I spent in Vegas and a year at Oklahoma State, I've lived here my whole life; thirty years I've lived here. But I wasn't in New York that day, my sister, her husband and I were in Orlando Florida.

We got an early call from one of my sisters to turn on the T.V. and watched it all unfold live. There's no need to tell you the rest of that, you know it well enough.

New York can be a hard place. It's a hard life. But you never realize how much you love a place, or the people, how much they're a part of you. Two grown men wandering around Orlando with tears in their eyes so thick that there was just no wiping them away brought all of those raw emotions to the forefront for everyone to see.

It wasn't long before cell phone service was done, and we were left in the dark. My oldest sister, a detective with the NYPD, was stationed down the block at the time, we feared she may be in there. My father ran a place off of Broadway just a block away. I had only left a job at the Patrolman's Benevolent Association just a few months earlier and still had many, many friends (many of you reading right now) who would have been getting off of the trains which ran beneath the trade center right at the time the planes hit.

What was happening, and to whom, we just didn't know. And there was no way to find out. That was the worst part of it for us down there, that we just didn't know. It would be days before we found anything out. The three of us took turns randomly breaking into tears, bawling like babies.

As it happened we were scheduled to go to Seaworld's Discovery Cove, a place that only allows limited crowds per day. You have to make an appointment. Most everyone we encountered had been sympathetic, and it's in times like this, when something bigger than all of us snaps us out of our usual self occupied focus that we really get to see how good most folks really are, how much we empathize, how much we care for one another. Or course, invariably, there always has to be some jackass too stupid to get it, acting like fools because they don't fear repercussions because no one holds them to task.

Two clowns at the park screamed "In Coming!", laughing about it as we waited to swim with dolphins. Stepping out to where they could see us, red lines staining out cheeks, and a low but firm "we're from NY you asshole" wiped the smile and jokes from their faces quickly. It's amazing how quickly it usually does with that sort of clown, isn't it?

But there's real magic in the world around us every time we walk outside our door, especially in the natural things, all one has to do to see it is know where to look. Discovery Cove is set up so that you experience some of that natural magic. We swam with sharks that day; we swam with dolphins.

That was an experience like no other with an absolutely amazing creature. Dolphins are graceful, yet powerful, intelligent and loving. No words of mine are sufficient to describe the feeling of exhilaration as one of these majestic animals pulls you through the water. And it's insane how you can just feel how happy they are that you're there with them.

There's a picture we have from that day that I don't need to see, I can picture it as I write this, of my sister riding that dolphin, and the pure joy on her face. Her and I have been through so much together over the years; that look on her face is one of my best memories. By the time we got back to the time share our emotions had worn us down; we were in no shape to go anywhere, do anything. But watching more of the horrible footage just wouldn't do, so we rented a movie.

There's not much in the world that I love more than a good story, and my love of movies stems from the need to escape life's pains; for two hours you're transported into another world, for two hours all of your problems disappear. We rented The Legend of Bagger Vance that night, a film about God and fate and finding our own path in life, our natural swing. It stars Matt Damon, Will Smith and Charlize Theron, directed by Robert Redford. The flik went down as one of the biggest flops in all of their careers, but there were parts that just made us laugh. My brother in law and I still scream "BALLS!" because of it all these years later, and it's one of my favorite movies to this day.

9/11 forced the closing of Disney World, the happiest place on earth, so we went to Seaworld instead. Devil and I sat as close as possible to Shamu the whale and came out out of the show completely drenched. Being owned by Anheuser Busch, Seaworld had 'beer school', which we had to attend. Each person gets 1 free sample; drunks as we are, we each had 6. I have a picture hanging on my wall; it's my brother in law and I thoroughly soaked, smiling from ear to ear.

The next day we went to Epcot Center and grabbed a beer at every bar in every country in the place. That adds up to a lot of beer; we were loaded. I had to fulfil one of my great pleasures of the time, taking picture with people I don't know. On the monorail on the way back a three year old girl pointed up at my brother in law and scolded him, clear as day, "You're a bad piece!" I can't tell you how hard that made me us laugh.

We had to drive back home from Florida, going through a tropical storm that literally blinded us on the way. My sister has brass balls even attempting that and a few days later we were making our approach to the city, Even a week later you could see the smoke hanging in the air for miles. There was a sickening hole in the skyline.

I happened to be one of the lucky ones from that day, none of my people had been lost. Many people who are very dear to me couldn't say the same, having lost people very dear to them. Often I feel guilty that I wasn't here, not that I could have done anything, just to have been there with, and for, my people, my city. I probably always will, but it is what it is.

Since then, 9/11 has often been used for cheap propaganda and to push political agenda. It's been used as an excuse to lash out in anger, to pigeon hole us into the "if you're not with us, you're against us" mentality. And for every "never forget" plastered all over facebook, I fear in twenty years it'll just be another excuse for a barbecue, and to utter lines of crap just for attention, but making it seem like we care. I know in twenty years facts will come out that make the whole thing very different in our minds.

But when I think of that time I want no part of images of desperate people hurling themselves 100 stories to their death. I prefer to think about natures amazing creatures, one of the happiest smiles I've ever seen on my sisters face, Bagger Vance and trying to find my natural swing, the beautiful innocence and perfect intuition of little children and the worlds only confirmed bad piece. I prefer to think about how the great little details in life can take away the greatest pains, even if just for a while.

Of course, it's so much easier for me; I didn't lose anyone; I didn't have to walk home that day, terrified, through dust and debris, through living hell. But I prefer to think of my people, my nation, coming together and showing our pride in who we are, in each other, our once great country and the hope that we can be great again. Americans used to live for America, for that ideal of something bigger, better than all of us; we rarely do that anymore. And I prefer to remember seeing how much we really care about each other, and how we collectively pick each other up when we're so down.

But I cry too. Why does it have to take the worst of the world to show us the best of it, the best of us? If we could see that, be that, everyday, travesties like 9/11 would never occur.

Later people.