You pass the room where the kid is busy on the computer. The door is ajar. In a heartbeat, you intuit that you must go in. The hunch is too impulsive, too overpowering. There is Something about the kid and their busy-ness... And you walk in, with as much stealth as you can muster. The kid looks so engrossed watching the screen, the back of the monitor facing you. Suddenly the kid looks up and sees you coming in. You notice the involuntary jerk of the hand moving forward, definitely to grab the mouse. And, by the time you make your way to the front of the monitor, you notice one tab on the browser getting closed. Very coolly. And the tab that comes up is the school's site with the homework page. The kid turns towards you, looking you squarely in the eye. There is not a shade of color on that angelic face. God, when did they learn to keep their face so shadeless? "What is it, mom?" or "What is it, dad?" "Nothing, kid. Just passing by." Poor you. You don't have the heart to dip into the browser's history right then and there, which you know will be the first thing that will be deleted no sooner you step out of the room. You don't want to upset the kid. You don't want to upset the applecart! So you happily, with your own hands, pull the wool of deception on your own eyes and pretend to be blind; the child pretends to be the same angel they always were, and hey, it's another day getting over already, time for supper and time to go to bed!
Deception. Somewhere on the way of growing up, we all learn this fine art, don't we? We quickly learn that this art is essential for our success and happiness, and simply ignore, will ya, that person who stands in the pulpit every Sunday. Because, once the sermon is over and the crowd gets back to the humdrum, we have all these grown-ups who are our role-models and we simply follow in their footsteps and live to learn and learn to live.
We realize very early on in this Game Called Life that there has to be a gap, a dichotomy if you will, between the thought we hold in our mind and the thought we articulate through speech or through the written word. Certainly not a game that the simpleton can play! Requires a lot of gray cells, which have to be continuously exercised all the time, if you wanna remain on top of the game. How interesting that they don't have any course to teach deception. Comes naturally to you, like breathing.
The realization that it is the brain that is doing the processing, working on top speed to decide, in a given situation, whether to lie or be truthful, whether to deceive or remain honest, brings us to wonder whether it is possible to scientifically detect whether somebody is deceiving or not. Turns out, yes, it is possible. Researchers from Universities in China and US conducted an ERP study on a bunch of young adults to determine exactly what happens in the brain when people decide they are to be not truthful and not honest (the study has been published in the January 2009 issue of "Brain Research", available online here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2008.09.090). The researchers have pinpointed specific areas in the brain which handle the conflict between the thoughts of what is truth and what is false. Electric potentials in the brain change in these specific areas when you take, and implement, the decision to deceive; which change does not take place when you are being honest and truthful. As if these particular areas in the brain are the seat where you perch yourself in those crucial moments and the two angels appear on your either side - one from God and one from Devil, like how they show in those Disney movies. And then, when you decide that you want to go with the Devil, something very subtle happens. Your brain emits waves of a different quality altogether, that the researchers' contraption detected and marked "special".
The subjects the researchers studied came from both the genders by the way; just thought you would like to know. With this breakthrough, all that you have to do, is to bring the kid, or whosoever you suspect of deceiving you, and strap this heavy contraption around their head and record their EEG and their EOG and what-have-you. And look out for the telltale waves on the ticker-tape the contraption spews out. Sounds rather impractical, eh? You might as well tell them upfront that you don't believe them. So I am waiting for version 2.0 of this contraption, which will be much lighter, will not have to be installed on the suspect's head (ugh! the word "suspect" brings so much bitterness to the mouth!), but will be hidden in my palm. I simply point the tiny antenna of the device towards the person before me, and the device will vibrate if it detects deception-waves coming from the person's head. Cool, eh!
And then, I will wait for version 3.0 of this device. Which will be able to detect and tell me those areas that lie between 100% truth and 100% lie. You know, the gray shades? The world is full of them, this life is full of them, in case you didn't notice.
Uh, and shall I also tell you about version 4.0? This is the coolest. This device tells you when it is you who is deceiving yourself! The art of self-deception is the most devious, and the most complicated to practice. But very interestingly, this art comes to most of us most naturally! As this article here tells you, it is one dark, dark world - this world of self-deception that we hold deep within us, and that we dwell in, most of the time (and sometimes, all the time): Stop Deceiving Yourself - And Start Living Reality.
Enjoy the journey into the dark! And wait for version 4.0.
This is an inspiring story of a mother who got tired of asking her kids to, for their own sake, tone down the volume of whatever it was they were listening. Seeing that her shouting only hoarsened her throat and nothing else besides, she decided to do something more constructive. And how!
Christine Ingemi, the 39-year-old mother from Amherst, New Hampshire, researched on ear buds that would refuse to increase the volume of sound beyond a certain safe level, never mind what the input volume coming from the sound system is. Concluding that there wasn't such a product available at all, she simply went ahead and invented one for her kids.
The entrepreneur bug bit her, of course. Realizing that there was money to be made, she applied for a patent, floated a company, anointed herself its president, got a website designed to promote the product, showcased her product in invention contests, and went to market.
The result? This mother's product has sold over one hundred thousand pieces all over US and Canada. The ear buds have won her the third prize in the "Modern Marvels Invent Now Challenge", 2007. Enthused by success, finally having located the perfect mantra that gives professional acclaim, respect and moolah rolled in one, she has her sights set on new inventions already!
Must be heavy reluctance, to leave aside the tasks of home-making, the dusting and the mopping, no? And to have to jet to exotic locales and stand at the podium and deliver keynote addresses to hundreds of peers, and to clink glasses with business honchos who want to know about one's next idea...? Do the kids miss their mom's shouting at them, or do they mind her being away for long durations? No, they must be lapping up all the attention their mother is getting on the TV! Imagine them bragging about it in school!
We think inventing a new gadget or a widget or device is best left to the nerds or the geeks or the people who spend all their time in the libraries. You know, the ones who earn the creamiest scores in SAT and GRE and GMAT. Actually no, turns out that it is not the speed of the left brain's neural circuits that matters, but it is the creative idea of the right lobe that makes all the difference.
Wouldn't be surprised if one fine morning the news wires flash the press release about Ingemi Corporation, Christine's company, making an initial public offering, with the green shoe option please. Here's wishing you all the best, Christine! The point is that, if Christine can do it, so can you and I. All it takes is an idea, and belief in oneself.
This is like being caught in a cleft. On the one hand is the spiraling-out-of-control oil price, threatening to stop the engine of quite a few economies around the world. And on the other hand is the growing alarm about the negative impact of biofuel crops on environment; biofuel crops that were once hailed as the perfect, natural solution to our fuel needs are now suspect.
In their first gush of profound observations and statements using exotic terminology such as "well to wheels analysis" and "cradle to grave analysis", scientists told us that not only do biofuel crops work out cheaper than fossil fuels; they also are eco-friendly. Science drives economy, and so farmers around the world got busy chopping down forests and grasslands, and generally converting their real estate usage from growing food to growing biofuels. Governments put in place legislations that encourage people to convert to biofuel crops on mass scale. Now fields as afar as Guangzhou in China and Ahmednagar in India and Darwin in Australia are proud owners of exotic plantation such as jatropha.
While the standing crop is still waiting to go under the harvester's thresher, comes another gush of analyses which say that no, no, no, these biofuels crops are not eco-friendly, that they will actually heat up the atmosphere and melt the poles, that some parts of the plant (nuts and leaves) are so toxic that farmers shouldn't touch them with bare hands, that they are susceptible to wildfires and therefore a huge risk to nearby populations, that the solution is worse than the problem it had set out to solve.
Sigh. Sorry guys, but why don't you make up your minds once and for all?
While one set of scientists refute, point by point please, the claims made by the other set, we cannot but now wait till they have sorted it out amongst themselves. And while this goes on, airlines are either hiking ticket prices or curtailing flights or both, oil companies are rationing supply of fuels, the friendly neighborhood petrol pump keeps hiking the price of gas every twenty-four hours, and we are slowly and gradually descending into the Middle Age.
It is obvious that there is something inherently wrong in the premise on which the biofuel theory is based. Isn't it time we turned our attention and time and money to some other mechanism which can help us generate energy as naturally as tiny plants do through their tender leaves? With our enormous brains and creativity, why should this task be so difficult?
The X-Prize Foundation has recently announced a USD 100 million prize to any individual or team who or which can come up with a solution that can generate the same or better quantum of energy compared to an equivalent unit of fossil fuel, be cheaper, and also possess none of the eco-hostility of the traditional fuels. Let's hope it motivates the right brains before it is too late.
Pharmaceutical honchos must themselves have to pop sleeping pills these days. For US and European governments are now mandating every new drug license to be given a "suicide rating" before the formulation can be released into the market. A cue which the rest of the world will not take long in picking up.
It is now being discovered that just about any drug that can either affect the brain directly, or affect chemicals which in turn enter the brain, can lead to suicidal thoughts. The spotlight is therefore also on medications used to treat such innocuous conditions as acne, pain, bacterial infections, besides the more serious conditions of hypertension, insomnia, heartburn, and the like.
For example, take the case of Rimonabant (brand name Acomplia, or Zimulti, as it is now known in the US). The drug is touted as a wonder weight-loss medication, also likely to be marketed for cardiovascular cases. As this paper reports, patients participating in a placebo-controlled trial had to discontinue this drug due to depressed mood disorders, anxiety, headache, dizziness etc. Interestingly, the study was conducted on patients drawn from European countries, and after its publication, is still being sold in Europe (as of March / April 2008), though the application for selling it in the US has been withdrawn. Height of cynicism?
Also cynical are practitioners known to routinely prescribe anti-depressants along with drugs that are known to cause depression as side-effect. And there is apparently a tale hanging around the usage of these anti-depressants too, for instead of solving the problem, there are reports that they actually aggravate suicidal tendencies. Ho hum.
I cannot help feeling a sense of deja vu over this turn of events. In quite a few posts on my other blog, I have consistently decried the fad of popping pills for instant nirvana. Science presently is still not equipped enough to understand the complex and delicate interplay of chemicals in the cauldron called the brain. The feeling is that we are being used as guinea pig to conduct trial and error experiments with drugs - okay, if that doesn't work, then how about this? The only gain in the short run is to the companies manufacturing the drugs. But what about you and me? We get only one body in a lifetime. Why should we waste it away on silly experiments that the good doctors want to conduct?
As self-developer, my view is that most diseases afflicting us are a direct somatization of the thoughts that we continuously hold in our mind. And therefore the cure to the diseases lies in thought management. We invite diseases by our thoughts. And we can cure them again by correcting our thoughts.
Ah. But this is a lone voice in the wilderness. It will take a major disaster in the guinea pig theater for the world to veer around to this view.
They say that it took close to two hundred years to construct the entire structure of what is known as the Tower of Pisa.
Wonder how he would have reacted, the architect who designed the structure, were he alive when it was finally completed and inaugurated and thrown open to the public to watch and admire? The reason why there is the epithet of "Leaning" before the name of the tower, they say, is because the foundation was too shallow, and that the choice of the location incorrect as the soil was weak and unstable. The poor architect would have held his head in his hands at his folly! And, depending on the disposition of the government of the day, perhaps run for cover, or jumped bail or hired expensive lawyers to defend himself.
But, no, look how the flaw has become cause for celebration. Had this mistake not been made, the tower would have been yet another high-rise structure, yet another bell tower like any other, with nothing beyond archaeological and academic interest. But the architect's mistake has made him a world celebrity; and tourists from all around flock to this city in Italy to especially ogle at it and take pictures standing next to it. Indeed, so famous has this glaring mistake become, that the tower dwarfs the other arts and artifacts that the city holds in her bosom.
Flaws and mistakes shouldn't lead to dejection, you see. If there is cause to atone and repent, by all means, let's do it. But the beauty of making mistakes is that they give an opportunity to learn. Imbibing the lesson is very important, for unless it is well and truly assimilated, it tends to repeat itself. Wonder when the Pisa tower architect realized that he had erred? And whether he used the new-found wisdom for his other projects?
Try to not make any mistakes. And if they happen to be made, learn from them. And move on. This is life after all. For what may be considered to be a mistake at one point of time might well become a cause for celebration at a subsequent point of time!
Utilize The Time Spent During Sleep Too, For Self-Development
You can try this experiment yourself. In your household, when a family member goes to sleep or is taking a nap, just sit not very far from them, and may be read a passage from some storybook. Or talk loudly enough (a soliloquy if there is nobody to share this experiment with you), for a few seconds, on a subject that you know the sleeper holds dear.
While you are performing your act, the words you utter are falling in the sleeper's ears, and from there on, flowing through to their brain. Since the alert, judgmental, questioning, defensive conscious is deep in sleep, the words have no trouble in seeping quietly, drip, drip, drip, into the subconscious; the subconscious that is always awake, always alert, and always receiving signals from the senses. If you are perceptive, you will notice a change in the sleeper's eyelid movement and their breathing rhythm. This is a sure-shot signal that your words have gone in.
When the sleeper wakes up, they may not realize that they were guinea-pig to your experiment. But whatever words you said, would have an impact on their thinking process. Try it! Never fails to work!
It is this simple technique that the myHelpHub people have deployed in a set of CDs (16, per the latest count). Priced at five cents less USD 120 (for downloaded version), the audio sessions last about one hour each. Cut away the usual marketing hype on the site's page, and you see that these recordings do exactly this: program your mind, or rather the subconscious component. And since you are controlling what your subconscious is receiving, and since what it is receiving pertains to a plane of your existence where you need the positive reinforcement the most, you benefit at the end of the exercise.
You too could do it yourself, no? Them recordings? So then, why pay these guys for the sessions? Actually, it is both the quality of the content and the quality of the recording that matters here.
We witnessed one of the steepest stock market falls across the globe these past few days. January 2008 will long be remembered stock brokers and traders as one of the bleakest chapter in their career. As all indices plunged, the too-late reaction of US Federal Reserve of cutting interest rates by seventy-five basis points has done little to buffet the downfall.
In some pockets of the world, the dreaded H5N1 has begun rearing its head once again, and there are reports of new pathogenic strains being found. Migratory birds, previously harbingers of peace, are now helping to spread the virus to all the parts of the world, exposing us all to a potentially global pandemic.
The earth is today (January 29th) witness to a near-hit by the asteroid 2007TU24. This guy will pass us by within a whisker in cosmic measurement, about 1.4 times the distance between us and the moon. (The next asteroid to visit will be in 2027 A.D.)
At the political level, postures being adopted over some countries' alleged stocking of nuclear weapons are not yielding any results. If anything, they are only taking us one step closer to another Vietnam-type / Iraq-type scenario.
Look at how the year has begun.
I guess it is in such times that we as self-developers can contribute towards sanity by using the power we have built in ourselves through auto-suggestions, positive visualizations, et al. Let us now include in our daily exercises of positive imagery, a vision of a planet that has regained its balance and sense of peace and calm yet again.
My immediate thought is that this is a passing phase. The world is changing its garbs, and this is the transition period while the new set of clothes is being put in place. Soon, we will see much better times ahead.
Now there, that was a nice thought to include in my daily visualizations! Fellow travelers on the self-dev path, let's be selfish. For our sake and that of our children, let us include the imagery of a happy and peaceful earth in our daily visualizations.
I am sure we all encounter experiences when there is some deadline looming ahead. And the brain simply refuses to function! The boss has to be submitted a report in the next twenty-four hours, and you don't feel the motivation to lift your pen, or mouse, or whatever. You are required to compose a new piece of music, but your mind keeps going back to the stranger you met midnight last night...
You find yourself staring at a complex mathematical equation or a drawing, and know that it is within you to solve the problem it is posing. Yet, you cannot summon the right resources within you required to handle it.
In short, this _is_ a defining moment, but, somehow, you are incapable of seizing it. The mood just isn't there, you see.
That's where a nifty self-dev tool can help. We have long since known that when our mind is "in the mood" of doing a certain activity, and when we are totally absorbed in that activity, our brain emits waves that have frequencies different from the ones it emits when we are "not in the mood". Another aspect of the brain that we know about is its capability to "entrain" itself to any external frequency. Which is another way of saying that when we plug our ears with earphones connected to an Mp3 that is belting music at specific frequency, after a while the brain begins humming at that very frequency.
This is where this tool comes in. It is called the "brainev", and goes by the fancy name of "Brain Evolution System". A product of "Elite Inner Circle", the package has six CDs, each with a focus / end goal.
Pop in the appropriate CD in the player, and while listening to the music, you begin to feel the brain gradually "evolving" itself to the state that you wanted yourself to be in. So you can now finish the report and place it on your boss' table in time; or shift your mind from the stranger in the night and back to the music you are supposed to write; or solve the complex equation that has defied solution. Or even, create new ideas out of ether and realize them on this earth.
There's a video here where the company's representative talks about this product's properties.
My Love For My Negatives Keeps Me Mired In Unhappiness
Durante Alighieri was a great poet and equally great observer of human nature and foibles. Dante, as he is popularly known in the world, had a great passion for philosophy and metaphysics.
His list of seven deadly "Sins", as he calls them, has become a list of "virtues" in today's fashion. Indeed, people vie with each other in indulging in them - it's very much considered the in thing now.
In the middle of my life's journey, "morally passing the point of no return", I find a good similarity between Dante's list of "sins" and my Self-Developer's list of negatives. I discover that modern definitions of this list still hold valid. My modern negatives still take me through Hell to the purgatory, with the "diritta via" pathway to Paradise and "Providential will" not (immediately) in sight.
So here are my seven deadly negatives:
1. (Originally) Saligia, now translated to "aberrant urges". How many times do I find myself yearning for something (or someone) who does not belong to me?
2. Gula, which is now "over-indulgence". Ah, my credit cards, and my non-capability to restrain myself from spending money that is not mine for buying something purely on impulse. And tomorrow be damned!
3. Avaritia, which has become "manipulating somebody's emotions for personal gains." How I enjoy playing with the emotions of my spouse or my sibling or my kid or my parent for that little personal gain!
4. Acedia was Dante's version of "going away from God". For me, Acedia stands for "procrastination". I _know_ I am capable of great things in life, but, yawn, I will do them tomorrow, what the hell.
5. Ira continues to be "anger, bottling up". I might have had to face the taunts of peers for my bad English. Or the object of my desire rejected / humiliated me. Or somebody simply hit my vehicle on the side in a bid to overtake. Or whatever. I either explode then and there, or seethe within.
6. Invidia is now "low self-esteem" for me. Somebody who is doing better than me lowers my image in my own eyes. I find it oh so difficult to get back on my feet again.
7. Superbia takes the crown in all sins: "arrogance" or "vanity". I have done so many things - which now hindsight wisdom tells me were foolish -, and they were all out of either arrogance or vanity.
All these negatives are an outcome of my thought processes. Now if only I become ever-vigilant of what I am thinking and feeling, I will perhaps be able to drink from the river of Eunoe.
We all read up on the biographical stories of the Buddha, Jonah, watch Superman and James Bond movies, feel momentarily inspired by all of them --- and then stow them away. Isn't it just possible, remotely, but just possible, that the same elements of heroism might be there in our own life too? Isn't it just possible, remotely, but just possible, that we might never have valued ourselves enough to look at ourselves as a Hero or a Heroine?
These folks, heroic all of them, went through the monomythical stages that Joseph Campbell so brilliantly describes in his "The Hero with a Thousand Faces".
You are leading what you or anybody might describe as an "ordinary" life. Suddenly, out of the blue, a gauntlet is thrown at you. You decide to pick it up, or ignore it. If you ignore it (continue leading the same _ordinary_ life), you take a different life path. Again, gauntlets are thrown at you at different times in the future.
What could the challenge be? Oh, one of a host of issues. Being given the pink slip is one. Being told that you have cancer or AIDS or some other life-threatening disease, is another. Falling in love is a positive spin in your life. Or getting an offer of a job out of the blue, when you had resigned yourself to a life of a homemaker or a retiree is yet another. Going to college, or being assigned on a new project in the office / factory too come in this list.
And after picking up the gauntlet, begins a series of stages through which you go through. It is really interesting - to identify what stage you are in at the moment, by comparing with the stages Campbell has laid out in his book.
Somewhere during the day today, between your daily chores, sit down and go through his book. And quietly introspect and do this identification. You will be surprised at the answer that pops up.
Do it. And let the hero or the heroine in you emerge.
It is about the shift taking place in our civilization right at this moment. Not that shifts are anything new to us - they have been happening since the dawn of time. That is how we hopped onto the ground from the branches of trees and came to live in the city.
But the present shift is a cumulation of all the earlier shifts. As the next shift will cumulate this one with all the rest.
Please switch on your speakers while you watch this brief (about six minutes) presentation. For the background music (a score from "The Last of the Mohicans") is haunting, and quite apt to its content.
What made this man think that lamb's blood could be pumped into a human being? Had he blabbered about it today, he would have been laughed at, at best, or been labeled a voodoo artist at worst. Blogs would have sneered at him. If lucky, he might have even developed a cult following. If luckier, TV channels would have grabbed at one more bizarre phenomenon to fill their bytes with, with anchorpersons interviewing him from every angle possible. The zenith of course would have been to get an invitation to appear in TV czarina Oprah Winfrey's show, no less...
Denis Jean-Baptiste, the son of a civil engineer in Louis XIV's government, attracted controversy from the start.
Born sometime in the 1640s, Denis called himself a doctor in medicine, but the Montpellier school of medicine from where he claimed to have earned his degree, doesn't seem to have any record of his being a student there. He also assumed the title of "Professor" to teach Mathematics and Philosophy to students; and characteristically, he didn't have any papers to prove that he had any formal grounding in these subjects. That he could still hold fort on these admittedly high-brow subjects speaks volumes of this man!
Coming back to the point, it was Denis who hit upon the idea of pumping the blood of lambs into human beings. Back then, our good doctors were still groping in the dark on what makes life tick (they still grope, in the dark I mean, but that's a different story), and a guy named William Harvey had just discovered that blood took a closed-circuit loop in the body: from the heart to the farthest cells of the body through arteries, and back again to the heart through veins.
A clutch of scientists from England took the excitement further, and we had Christopher Wren who began giving his first intravenous injections (now what drug was he administering his patients in those days?), and Richard Lower who discovered that it was quite easy to transfuse blood from one dog to another. Not to be outdone (patriotic pride!), scientists in France set out to replicate these experiments themselves, and Denis was one scientist to take up the challenge.
After discovering the ease with which transfusion worked successfully in dogs (extract blood from one dog, and transfuse into another, and the recipient survived the experiment) - Denis was exhilarated. The thought of an entire new world (the word "hematology" hadn't been coined then) about to open up for him gave him sleepless nights.
Thinking out of the box, he wondered - why not try this blood transfusion into human beings? And with this thought taking root in him, he got the first opportunity on 15 June 1667 - exactly this day 340 years ago - when a young man walked into his clinic. The man was in "a drowsy and feverish state", and other doctors had given up on him. Quickly concluding that his standard set of medicines wouldn't work, he got hold of a lamb, withdrew from it about 12 ounces of blood, and transfused the blood into his patient. His reasoning? "A lamb is full of gentle 'humors', and its blood will infuse in the man its natural enthusiasm and bounce." ^+^
Lo and behold! The man recovered in no time!
Elated, our Denis performed this same technique on another patient, this time a 45-year old chair bearer. Instead of a lamb, Denis now got hold of a sheep, using his own quaint (!) line of logic. Again, the man recovered!
The name and fame of Denis spread like wildfire, as expected. Extremely complicated cases would now be referred to him, and his prestige in the eyes of his peers grew.
Alas, success in a man draws antagonism and jealousy in fellow beings. So when one transfusion experiment failed and the patient died, a canard was spread that the good Doctor was the perpetrator. The case was brought to court, and though Denis successfully extricated himself of the charges, the incident shook his beliefs. He stopped transfusions from then on.
Though he was later invited to the court of England, where he demonstrated his prowess in blood transfusion, disillusionment had set in, and the man who "pumped lamb's blood into humans" faded away into oblivion.
It was almost one hundred fifty years later, when a British obstetrician, Dr. James Blundell, discarded the "gentle animal blood" theory and transfused blood from human being to human being.
What I liked about this man, Denis Jean-Baptiste, was his creativity and daring. While the buzz about animal-to-animal blood transfusion was around him, he thought of the next step of performing the first animal-to-human transfusion; never mind the soundness of his logic.
Or, How You Can Stoke Passions Or Bring Peace With Your Speech
Caesar's Advantage Not every aspiring orator or public speaker can have the advantage that Julius Caesar had. This great statesman was tutored by rhetoricians such as Marcus Antonius Gnipho and Apollonius Molon.
The distinguished teachers themselves were disciples of Gurus who traced their lineage right up to people like Demosthenes. Molon would drill into young Caesar the key element of skilled oratory: "Delivery, Delivery, and Delivery! That is what matters, Julius!"
Caesar's rise in Roman politics may be partly attributed to his oratorical skills. When he would rise to speak, his presence on the podium would hush the crowds. When he opened his mouth, words would flow like a fresh stream of water - sometimes spiking, sometimes ebbing, and always holding the attention of the audience in their grip. He would sense the mood of the crowd, and sway their emotions the way he wanted them to be swayed. Whether it was pitching against powerful opponents in the election for Pontifex Maximus (the post of the High Priest), or whether it was defending himself against the charges of colluding with Catiline to overthrow the Roman Republic: Caesar's skillful and shining oratory won him the day.
Caesar's impassioned gestures and high-pitched voice would later inspire his troops to conquer more than eight hundred cities and hoist the Roman flag over the entire Gaul, Britannia and Germania.
So, Can You Achieve The Same Feat? Granted, not all of us are so fortunate to have learnt from such great tutors. But that doesn't mean that we are handicapped, or in any way less of human beings than them, are we, eh?
Modern research has gone into what makes the likes of Julius Caesar and his contemporary, Cicero, so great. Few traits that they have readily identified (doesn't take much research to identify them, actually) are:
- These guys have a lot of self-esteem. They believe in themselves. They do not constantly look over their shoulder for approval from peers.
- They do a lot of preparation. And in situations where they are called upon to make an impromptu presentation, the first attribute sees them through.
- They can look at the audience, eyeball-to-eyeball, they can feel the mood of the audience, and quickly tailor their presentation accordingly.
Building these and other traits in one's personality is now relatively simple. Self-Hypnosis is one technique that you can deploy to imbibe into your psyche the basic elements of positive self-esteem and self-confidence that is not fragile but enduring, whatever the circumstances. (Caesar was once kidnapped by pirates. They demanded ransom from his seniors in government. Caesar promised that he would get even. The pirates laughed at him. After being released against ransom, Caesar returned and crucified his perpetrators. Now how's that for self-esteem and self-confidence?)
Here is one site where you can pick up the CD for self-hypnosis:
