Articles - Geoff Blades

Lame Jane or Queen of The Jungle?

That’s what she called herself—

Lame Jane.

I wouldn’t have said it, but I love that she did.

Because it was incredibly helpful to no longer be that way.

“Do you want to be lame?”

I asked her.

“Of course I don’t want to be lame, but it’s just how I’ve been,” she said.

And now, this is the turn.

I asked her one of the most powerful questions in unlocking all of your potential—

How do you want to be?

“Jane, Queen of The Jungle”

“Touche,” I bellowed.

Why not?

If she feels that she’s been showing up Lame, why not show up as Queen of The Jungle?

See, a friend had her call me because she’s “Sucking as a leader,” as she put it!

Now just from the language of hers that I’m sharing, you get a sense for the strength of this woman, right?

She’s been looking at the performance of her business through this cycle.

And in particularly her performance as a leader, and calling herself out.

That takes a lot of character, which showed me exactly what to do.

She wanted to know what can she do?

But as you can see we ended up talking about who she wants to be.

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How do you win in your Wall Street career NOW?

You may not be in a career on Wall Street, and get value from this new video program.

But you might still get value from where I’m taking this letter.

Where?

Well, the operative word in the subject line is NOW!

Meaning, in this Covid world, how do you keep driving forward in your business and career NOW?

2020 hardly what we dreamed…

That’s an understatement, right?

Of course none of us dreamed of the world coming to a halt!

But here we are…

So, what do you do?

You’ve certainly already adapted to this massive shock to the system.

And found some normalcy in the current environment, working from home, etc.

But what do you do from here?

How do you keep driving forward now?

What do you NEED to do?

This is the hardest place many people find themselves.

Covid has created massive problems in their business and career, and they need to do something.

Find another job. Adapt. They must solve a problem.

Luckily for many people on Wall Street this isn’t the case.

Unlike two previous massive shocks to the system I experienced and talk about here—when I began this work after the Internet bubble burst, and the 2008 credit crisis—Wall Street has held up nicely.

The markets have stayed strong.

Some Wall Street businesses have gotten stronger.

So unlike previous cycles where Wall Street careers got shredded, this time around there’s less you NEED to do.

That’s a good thing.

But it’s also bad because it can lead people to think it’s all good, and then focus too little on…

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Enjoy your freedom :)

“It’s ironic we’re celebrating freedom locked in our homes,” an old friend said to me.

He’s not wrong.

Ironic is a fair way to put it.

Yet too, the notion of freedom is entirely one of perspective.

What does it mean to be free?

Perhaps freedom has never been so hard to see!

Of course physical freedom is impossible to come by when you’re imprisoned in your home.

When you can’t open your business or go to work.

See your friends.

Go to the beach and soak in your freedom.

It’s pretty hard to celebrate your freedom standing 6 feet apart.

And what about the freedom of expression?

Have we ever lived in times when groupthink was so socially enforced?

Where having a different opinion to the masses was so scorned?

In a time when you and your freedom of speech can be canceled because of a tweet?

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the most important key to unlock everything you want

No I’m not getting lazy 🙂

I am real busy, but I’m never too busy to share fresh ideas with you.

Yet, there’s something I’m seeing right now that I want to triple down on with you.

It’s something I’m perceiving is REALLY the KEY to all of your goals and aspirations.

To unlocking you and what is possible for you!

And I’m sharing this article again with you on being The Hulk because it’s a highly actionable way of doing this.

No, this isn’t something new I haven’t said before.

Nor is it something completely new in the world of top performance.

Yet, I am getting a new level of clarity around it I want to share with you.

Psycho Cybernetics

Have you read this book by Maxwell Maltz?

Maltz was real purist in the world of top performance.

Look, it’s no secret that most promoters of these topics are just saying basic things that have been said millions of times before.

But Maltz was different.

Mid last century he was a pioneering plastic surgeon, who began to sour on his profession.

When he kept seeing the same people come back for more surgery, he wondered what was he missing?

Long story short, what he perceived is that he could change someone’s nose or jaw or boobs…

But unless how they perceived themselves changed, nothing would change.

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Now’s the time to keep driving forward

You can’t know where this is headed.

The signaling is that we might keep taking one step forward and half a step back.

Maybe we’re opening up more.

Closing down more.

Perhaps the economy will sputter.

Or roar back to life.

It’s unknowable.

Question is…

Where are you at?

I see people are basically in one of three gears—

Idle
Just driving along
Driving forward

Where do you consider yourself right now?

Idle is an easy place to get stuck right now.

Those people are waiting and seeing.

Perhaps wasting hours a day trying to get clear on where it’s headed so they can too.

They’ll remain stuck.

Others are driving along, doing their zoom calls, taking care of what needs to be done.

They’re in a good enough place, but lack direction.

Then, well, you know where I’m headed…

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Relive your best times (again!)

Thought I’d share this with you today.

It’s an oldie but a goodie, as we say in Oz.

And good Sunday play.

This article keeps getting hit right now which tells me that people are, well, looking for ways to relive your best times!

Concept here is super simple.

This beautiful mind of yours is a time machine.

At any moment you can imagine the most amazing times in your life and relive them now.

Like watching a stage show reliving your best times, follow these 4 simple steps.

Enjoy the play!

5 steps getting your mind winning this year

Indeed Covid threw a spanner in the works, didn’t it!?

What the heck will this year look like?

Are we opening up for good?

For a little while?

What will happen in the economy?

In your business or career?

Can’t know.

What you do know is…

Whatever you make of this year doesn’t come back to the economy.

Or your industry.

Or your business.

Of course none of these things you control.

But what you do control is the attitude you bring to winning this year.

What is this winning attitude?

And how do you get here from where you are now?

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How do you set business goals, NOW?

You have no idea what will happen in a business!

That’s what I most learned as a distressed investor at the Carlyle Group.

Investing in public securities you convince yourself that the management team and you can somehow predict where this quarter or year is headed.

Yet, as a control investor, sitting on the board, with more information, you quickly see how little you know.

And the nothing you can actually predict.

The illusion of predicting the future

Yes, yes, we all know our world is based on guessing the future.

Economic forecasts.

Revenue projections, all the way down to EPS.

It all seems smart and thoughtful and precise, and rationalized by data…

And then, well, for any number of reasons, the world doesn’t behave according to our models!

As we’ve seen this year…

Man, our predictions would have been right on if it wasn’t for Covid!!

For better and worse, btw. (e.g. Amazon vs. United Airlines)

I saw the same in 2008.

The credit crisis and recession blew up many businesses, and completely blew out all projections and cash flow models.

The question we were forced to ask is…

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remove the block and all lives matter

“You can only push yourself to the wall,” I said to him.

“What do you mean?”

“Push, push, push, push will only get you so far,” I said.

So what takes you all the way?

I drew him this chart

I draw a lot of charts for myself.

There was a time in my old apartment where every wall was covered with charts.

Laughing about it, but being serious, my friend Liz used to say, “hmm, I hope you don’t bring people over here…”

That apartment I saw as my lab—like a scientist scribbling all over a chalkboard looking for a solution, it was where I did my work solving the mind.

When I moved and took all the charts off the walls I counted some 36 charts, just in my office, and I won’t tell you how many in total.

The point being that I’ve always been able to “see” developing more clearly than saying it.

So I showed him this chart that you see above.

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quick note on happiness

I keep hearing how much more unhappy Americans are now.

It’s no surprise.

Locked in your home.

Many people’s income cut off.

Businesses dying.

Kids futures looking like, what?

All the stresses and strains that are now upon us.

Yet…

You know from all the stuff we talk about here that…

NONE OF THAT causes happiness or unhappiness.

The ONLY cause of how you think and feel is you.

Admittedly, this is really really not easy to learn nor do.

Because our society has tricked you to believe that how you think and feel is caused by what you have or do.

This is the biggest lie perpetuated to keep humans in misery.

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the hardest part to winning

System For Winning

A client had a huge breakthrough this week.

Something we’ve been working on for a while really clicked in him.

It’s f’n cool to see.

When after all the ways we’ve been triggering this, boom!

He could see exactly what he needs to do.

That’s the hardest thing

Knowing what to do.

Meaning, if you have a job and your boss says to you—do these 5 things and you will succeed.

OK, well, that can still be hard, because these things might be hard to do.

But by far the harder thing to winning is when you have no clue what to do.

When you’re looking at your goals, and you literally have no idea how to win at them.

See, a lot of the time I talk about pro athletes, but in some ways that’s an easy game.

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practicing one simple feeling

How are you doing?

I want to share with you something real simple I’ve been deep in this week.

It’s for getting yourself feeling your absolute best.

You might see this as a valid goal in itself.

Coz, let’s face it, if you can feel 7 out of 10, or 10 out of 10, how do you want to feel?

But I’ve been using it more to drive what for me is a very hard goal.

There’s something about the brain…

That is full of trickery.

In some ways I think it is set up to deceive you.

Yet in other ways this deception is all part of the play.

Meaning, if you just woke up every day and had everything you want and your life was absolutely grand, well, how would you be?

It’s a bit of a trick question, isn’t it?

Coz on the one hand you might say, well I’d be chilling, I’d lack motivation.

But then on the other hand you might say I’d be fired up to just be living this life.

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4 steps to showing up like a pro athlete to win

One thing matters to top performance—

You.

One thing matters to you delivering top performance—

You being in a top performance state of mind.

That’s the difference between an amateur and a pro.

An amateur just shows up, but a pro shows up their best every time.

Why the mind of an athlete?

Because they are hardcore, of course.

Perhaps the most conditioned minds on the planet.

A reason I say this is because unlike say a military mind that has been forged in a system of conditioning.

The mind of an athlete is forged as a force of will.

Choice. Discipline. Routines. Used over and over again.

Not in theory, like the many who pretend to meditate…

But in practice, every day getting your mind game ready to drive top performance.

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“Always give 100% UNLESS…”

…you’re giving blood or getting a divorce.”

hahahaha.

That cracks me up every time.

It’s a line from one of the Pitch Perfect movies.

I don’t know if you’ve seen any of them, but they are good for a laugh.

And there’s some real clever stuff in there too.

Playing with motivation

One reason I enjoy the movies is they take the piss, as we say in England.

And you see it in this quote.

It’s coming at a hardcore topic of motivation and being your best in a fun way.

Right?

How often do we say arrgghh, you’ve gotta give it your best shot.

Or you’ve gotta really go for it.

Or leave it all on the field…

While having a laugh about it.

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have you seen this one?

Hey there,

How you doing?

Today I’m sharing with you one of the most valuable articles on my site.

If you’ve been hanging with me for a while you know these topics well.

All the time we talk about MIND CONTROL…

But REALLY, how skilled are you at this?

It isn’t just about having more success, or getting more of what you want, or top performance, or being happier, etc.

Nor is it about making more money, or having more options, or crushing your business, etc.

It’s about ALL of these things!!!

Coz, it comes back to the most fundamental thing that you do all day every day—

Think!!!

This article isn’t just about taking control of your thoughts.

It’s about optimizing your thinking to drive “anythink” that you want.

And it’s not just ideas, but 4 simple, practical steps you can do right now for taking control of your thoughts.

btw, if you don’t have it, you might get tons of value from this free book for Building Your Limitless Mind which is full of ways to ACTUALLY do this.

Raising a fund? Now is the time to prepare for a hard fundraise

I know that not many of you are money managers raising funds.

But I thought I’d share with you this free video program for Raising Your Fund Bigger, Faster, Easier.

Perhaps you are raising a fund.

Or you might know someone who is.

And now is the time they could really benefit from this program.

Yes, I know I’m OTT

Yes, this program is over the top.

I get that I’m extreme.

But as I often say that’s because I’m only focused on extreme goals.

It’s certainly true that trillions of dollars of capital has been raised by managers who lacked a winning method.

Or for that matter, had no method!

Yet, raising a fund can be incredibly hard.

And particularly now, if you’re looking to raise capital you want all the edge you can get.

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Do your best for humanity by taking control

How you doing?

These are challenging times, aren’t they?

The era of outrage.

Tensions boiled over.

A history of human oppression laid bare.

Terrorizing mob behavior from cops and protestors.

And here we are…

In the middle of a pandemic that has lost its front page status.

Social distancing given way to social unrest.

Locked up, with no end even talked about anymore.

In the phase of curfews, police and mob rule.

Hopefully this will be short.

And soon give way to opening up the economy and your life.

Or maybe not.

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This one thing is what matters most in life

Ultimate Days

Waking up I think I’m alone.

There’s no woman wrapped around me.

No body pressed up against me, face full of hair.

And then I see him at the end of the bed.

Green eyes staring at me, as if he knew I’d soon be waking.

We lock eyes.

I motion for him to come over.

He doesn’t want to, so I drop into trance.

Drifting back to wake

Staring at a point on the wall is how I used to do it.

Like the Heightened State of Awareness exercise in Focus Tools, fixating your attention is the simplest way to get beyond that mind.

But I no longer need that.

I simply blank the mind.

Years ago, what feels a lifetime ago, I’d wake up to a mind that was racing.

And then like chasing a horse after it’s bolted out of the gates I’d be running around after it all day.

I suspect you know what I mean.

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3 truths how to feel happy that few of us want to hear, let alone can or will train!

When I’m doing what I want, then I’ll feel amazing.

I didn’t tell myself that.

If you had asked me all those years ago when I was just so desperately scrambling to escape my life and be living the life I truly wanted…

I would have said I was happy.

Running like mad to figure it out, sedating myself with escapes, thinking that was “happy.”

Knowing, not just believing, but knowing, with certainty…

When you’re doing what you want, then you’ll feel how you want to feel.

The biggest human lie

It’s the lie your brain is constantly telling you.

The lie our consumer economy is selling you.

The lie our society spoon feeds you from cradle to grave.

The lie that nearly everyone will live and die by.

The lie that keeps nearly every human on the planet at some low level of what you might call happy.

The lie that—

Something in your life needs to change is how to feel happy.

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How to get more energy, without coffee

Do you know how coffee works?

How about what it does to spiders as you see on the chart above?

Of course most of us know how it works in you.

You drink it, feel more energized for some time, then it wears off like booze.

Or if you’ve habituated to it, perhaps you don’t even get much buzz anymore, but you still habitual drink it.

So most of us know the effect, but do you know how it works in your brain?

And why it leads you to crash?

Caffeine gives you “not-energy”

What I mean by “not-energy” is knowing how caffeine tricks your brain.

Many of us want to know how to get more energy.

Yet, we’re never taught the things that give and rob energy from you. (e.g. thinking steals tremendous energy)

Caffeine doesn’t somehow stimulate more energy in you.

It merely mutes the natural chemical in your brain, adenosine, that accumulates between sleep cycles.

In effect, caffeine blocks the receptors in your brain from detecting this natural sleep agent, which fools you into thinking you have more energy.

That is until the caffeine wears off after its average half-life of 5-7 hours, and in one big rush your brain realizes how sleepy it really is.

This is the caffeine crash.