There are two kinds of NLP. One you use on other people (I am not sure about the use of it) and one you use on yourself (I don’t know much about it either but there seem to be a few good ideas). I’ll be talking about the latter in this post. I’m no expert in NLP and I amn’t trying to become one as of now. So, just out of interest.

Pattern interruption. Think about it. You’re depressed and you’re going in a car. Suddenly, another car pops out of the other street and you must hit the breaks to avoid accident. Does your brain still remember it had been feeling depressed a few moments ago? No way, a rush of adrenaline has kicked in by now. Depression is gone.

That was an extreme example. Another one. You are on a high building and have a fear of heights. Suddenly, you notice a plain flying by with your name written on it. You immediately get interested. Ooops, where is your fear of heights? It’s gone for the moment, isn’t it?

Now, these are all pattern interruptions. They could help you get rid of small fears, laziness, anger and some other kinds of negative emotions. I could really see the use here. Now, the big question: can they be induced artificially? I am hoping the answer is yes.

I googleed a bit. Found a good site, read a bit and it seems it boils down to this NLP scheme for pattern interruption: IRC (just like internet relay chat).

1. Identify. Find the emotion and then the idea that’s causing the emotion. For example, if you’re afraid of spiders, the idea would be something like: “Spiders are dangerous for me”.
2. Ridicule. Imagine the idea said in a funny manner. Let mickey mouse say it. Or just use a funny voice in your mind. Use bad grammar or something. Anything that would make you think: “How silly…”.
3. Confuse. Confusion is the main concept in NLP. Now, what creates confusion? One answer seems to be: distraction. So, distract your thought! How do you do that? The way they suggest (and it sounds easy) is to use your surroundings as a source. Count the shades of black around you. Count the leaves of a branch of the tree in front of you. See how many faces you see around. Try to give names and remember to each person you see in front of you (if you are among strangers - this would also help train your memory). Anything to distract you from your original thought.

I like the idea. Seems easy. I have also tried it. It’s no magic pill but you don’t expect it to work magically especially the first time you try it, do you? It seems like it could become a really cool and useful psychological tool. You’re welcome. :>

I have two new ideas for websites. And one old idea that I am willing to revive.  I had  completely created a website with a very simple idea that could still take off like 3 years ago. I then did not launch the site, however. And then, though the site itself was old, it was clean and nice. I lost the code somewhere but I might get it back if I search my archives well. The bad thing is, I saw a very similar project somewhere. Anyway, I’m currently keen on finally making that project and releasing it.

Also there is some other stuff which is not hard to do but it needs quite some brainstorming and archive-reviewing for the key ideas in the content. I guess that website could still make a difference. Finally, I’m really willing to renew one of my sites that currently blow.

In any case, sorry for being so vague about stuff yet. I just kinda needed to note things down so that I could jump on then. Whatever it is, I’m going to make something big very soon.

And one thing that I have been doing for some time already - write your ideas on paper. Doesn’t matter if it’s easy or hard to do, if you come up with something, just write it down. I have been into doing this and I had like 20 crazy ideas on a piece of paper (a piece of paper, which I have lost)… Anyway, just a quick tip - write your ideas  down.

Have you heard about the Einstein’s riddle. Einstein wrote it like a 100 years ago and when he wrote it, he said that maybe 2% of the world’s population would be able to solve it. It goes like that:

1. In a street there are five houses, painted five different colours.
2. In each house lives a person of different nationality.
3. These five homeowners each drink a different kind of beverage, smoke different brand of cigar and keep a different pet.

HINTS

1. The Brit lives in a red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The Green house is next to, and on the left of the White house.
5. The owner of the Green house drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the Yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the centre house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbour who drinks water.

THE QUESTION: WHO OWNS THE FISH?

It’s too bad I accidently found the answer in the comments before actually began to solve it. Well, gotta wait some time till I forget it.

And also, by chance I have found this in maze of Einstein. I don’t know, I solved it in like 2-3 minutes. But maybe I just got lucky. Or possibly I cheated somewhere and didn’t notice.

A well-known physicist Feynman once said:

If, in some cataclysm, all scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is <…> that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence you will see an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.

Well, I am not sure. But if I had to make one last sentence, I would make sure there is a hell lot of semicolons in it, duh…

P.S. Yeah, I know, it does relate to the two things concept. I wonder which came from which.

Have you heard about the two things concept? The original site says:

For every subject, there are really only two things you really need to know. Everything else is the application of those two things, or just not important.

It really is an interesting idea. For example, the two things of Economics suggested by Glen Whitman, are:

1. Incentives matter.
2. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

I utterly agree with the first one. I couldn’t probably express it any better. However, I have problems with the second one. It’s like, it’s true, but it just basically repeats the first one (to some extent). I don’t really think it would be the perfect second statement, although I am not really sure what would.

In any case, it’s a really cool concept and I think I’d get back to it sometime later.