Articles - Geoff Blades

This war to control your brain is not new

“Chinese brain control warfare work revealed.”

This was a “revealing” headline from a couple weeks ago.

It can get you to think that brain control warfare is new when it might be the oldest form.

“Psyops” or psychological operations are central to winning every war, and even influencing civilian populations in peacetime.

You don’t often hear about these programs but even the government-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported an unsanctioned psyop the Canadian military ran to influence the public during Covid. (Here’s Vice explaining why it was in the public interest)

Controlling minds wins peace and war.

Art of War

You might know that Sun Tzu wrote perhaps the definitive book on warfare, The Art of War.

Written around the 5th century BC it’s still lauded, Chinese leaders still use it as a playbook, and even with special forces here I’ve talked A LOT about some of the most important principles.

One is—All warfare is based on deception.

As Sun Tzu wrote, “Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive.”

Another dominant principle is, “.”

This is the ultimate goal of psyops, as this book Mindwar details.

Roaring off the line?

I don’t really think we’re headed into the Roaring 22s.

To me there are more red lights out there than green.

Another variant.

Continued lockdowns.

Dysfunctional social narratives.

Reckless money printing and delusional crowds.

Gutted economies, businesses, lives.

More warmongering.

Lucky I’m color blind.

Green lights

You might know this quote I’ve shared before from Albert Schweitzer—

“An optimist sees a green light everywhere… while the pessimist sees only the red light… but the truly wise person is color blind.”

I am medically color blind, although I’d never claim wise.

I’m more like a racecar driver looking for green lights because I’m built to drive.

I’ve always been that idiot sitting at the lights looking left to right ready to roar off the line.

And then just keep driving, fast.

Fired up for the new year?

How you doing?

How are you feeling about the new year?

Would you say you’re fired up or is there another energy you’re “projecting” into the year?

Obviously now is a time when fired up isn’t the dominant feeling for most people.

But it’s crucial to see you can at least choose.

“Let’s hope it’s better”

I politely walked away after he said that.

It was a holiday party when this older fellow started talking to me about the miserable things that happened this year.

Most the time I help people out of their miserable minds but in this case I chose to protect my own.

It can take tremendous effort to avoid being overcome by the stench of manure when you’re visiting a farm, and the same is true with people bathing in miserable energy.

Walking over to a buddy just 10 feet away was like stepping inside a greenhouse.

It was sunny and warm, he’s happy, excited, talking about how hard the year was but how much he, his team, and his family made the most of it, and are fired up for next year.

Happy holidays. Keep in mind…

Apparently 50% of people rank this year as their worst ever.

What about the other 50%?

It really is a tale of two worlds right now, isn’t it?

While many people are struggling from the effects of the virus and lockdowns, some people are absolutely crushing it.

It reminds you that things are never all good or all bad.

“It seemed pretty, pretty dark”

Keep in mind…

On Christmas Eve 2008 Elon Musk’s businesses were nearly bankrupt.

Personally he still had some $30 million and of course a bevy of rich friends who could help him out.

But that was the small part of Elon’s problem.

The big problem was that his two babies, Tesla and SpaceX, these two world-changing missions that Elon had committed his life to, would imminently be taken off life support.

That’s the way Elon talks about his businesses—personally.

He describes them like babies and was forced to ask questions like, “Which one am I going to let starve to death?”

Do we “live” in a simulation?

You hear this question plenty and different opinions on it.

But I bet you haven’t heard the TRUTH I’m sharing with you here.

On this day of the premiere of The Matrix Resurrections I’m revealing to you the most important truth that I’ve discovered over nearly 22 years researching this topic.

When you fully grok this knowledge, everything in your life transforms, FAST.

Why?

Because until you REALLY get this you’ll never be free.

You’ll never be free to think and feel how you want, nor take the actions you decide, at will.

How many people are?

How many people think and feel how they want just by choosing it?

How many people can get themselves to do the things they want, especially when they DON’T “want” to do them?

Said differently, are you in control of your mind and actions?

Or are you being controlled?

“Take the set of actions that are most likely to make the future better.”

That’s a quote from Elon Musk.

It’s a pretty agreeable idea, isn’t it?

Few of us would deliberately seek to take the set of actions that are most likely to make the future worse.

Yet that doesn’t mean we’re always taking the best set of actions that will make the future better, does it?

Elon Musk seeks to.

And it’s what he says next that’s just as important.

EXTREME bias for action

This clip is from Principle 9. EXTREME bias for action that I decoded from Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos—

You see this theme everywhere in Jeff and Elon’s businesses.

Whereas many people and companies get stuck overthinking things, Jeff and Elon are constantly seeking to remove the friction, and drive the set of actions that keeps them RAPIDLY moving forward.

In this clip from Elon you see the above quote and 2 more clips with the same structure such as this one—

“It’s important for us to take the set of actions that are most likely to continue consciousness into the future.” (one of my dominant drivers too)

As I talk about after Elon, you consistently see this theme from him.

He’s going after difficult goals that he DOESN’T know how to achieve.

So he’s constantly seeking the best set of actions that are most likely to create the better future he wants.

Are you failing enough to TRULY succeed?

How comfortable are you with failure?

Would you say it’s something that you embrace or intentionally pursue?

Have you failed much?

Or perhaps a way Jeff Bezos might ask is—

Are you failing ENOUGH to succeed?

Fail and fail again

You know the phrase, “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again?”

It’s a powerful way of thinking about failure because it emphasizes persistence like this quote from Elon Musk—

The first launch I was picking up bits of rocket near the launch site, which was a bit sad, but we learned with each successive flight. And we were able to eventually with the fourth flight in 2008 reach orbit, and that was also with the last bit of money that we had.

This notion to “try and try again” is exemplified by the common example of Thomas Edison’s 10,000 experiments to invent the light bulb.

It’s a “resourceful” way of thinking about failure but what I saw from Jeff Bezos was FAR MORE valuable to me.

A rocket for Thanksgiving

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4…

Oops, that’s where we got stalled on the launchpad with this program on Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

Now we’re at 3, 2…

We’re still not yet at 1.

And we won’t yet be sharing this program more broadly.

But I do want to share it with you.

Pull a tiny thread to get the whole ball of yarn

Do you know this expression?

To pull a thread and get the whole ball of yarn?

Is it something that resonates with you?

I often use it in the context of continuing to drive forward, even if you DON’T know how.

This is especially valuable when you’re stuck, not knowing what to do.

Why Elon Musk doesn’t “care about hope or enthusiasm or motivation”

You need hope, don’t you?

Without hope, how can you be motivated to keep taking steps forward?

EASILY, when you’re operating at a higher level beyond hope.

To be sure, you would much prefer to have more hope, rather than less.

But even when things are HOPELESS truly great people keep driving forward.

Motivation vs. DRIVE

Why you find highest meaning “Helping Out”

This is one of my favorite quotes of Jeff Bezos—

“I have realized about myself that I’m very motivated by people counting on me. I like to be counted on.”

Researching Jeff many of his ideas have stuck with me, yet there’s something of highest meaning here.

Leading and being counted on by others can be stressful and hard for many of us, yet delivering for others is our highest calling.

Certainly at Amazon Jeff’s counted on by millions of customers, shareholders, employees and many others.

And at Blue Origin he has the opportunity to be counted on by all of our species.

Elon Musk, still getting lucky

Keep working it.

Keep getting lucky 🙂

If you can dream it you can do it, even Amazon.bomb

In 1994 Jeff Bezos was watching the Internet explode.

As we watched him say last week in this clip he saw, “If it was growing at 2,300% a year pretty soon it was going to be huge.”

Still, most people had never heard of the Internet.

Nobody knew how it would evolve.

Let alone how any business would use it to make money.

#1 thing driving Elon Musk and your goals

Elon Musk is concerned for our future.

And he wants to avoid feeling depressed about it.

He wants to wake up in the morning excited for the future, so he wakes up to build the future he’s excited for.

It’s NOT complicated.

In fact it’s very simple, even if the future he’s excited for demands a colony on Mars.

This future is depressing

This is one thing that surprised me when I began researching Elon.

Because I didn’t know what was driving him I lacked an appreciation for the scale of his thinking.

I’d seen him as going after important, ambitious goals, rather than a leader focused on the future of our species as he’s talking about here:

You see he’s talking about something simple, how you feel waking up every day, and then “tying” this to his view of our depressing future—

I think it’s important to have a future that is inspiring and appealing. I just think that there have to be reasons that you get up in the morning. Like why do you want to live? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future doesn’t include being out there amongst the stars and we’re not a multi-planetary species, I find that incredibly depressing.

This type of clip is common for Elon where often he goes “meta,” tying his goals to a grand mission and purpose.

Here’s the other side.

Why going for it was easy for Jeff?

It’s ALWAYS obvious in hindsight.

With perfect 20/20 backward vision you could easily make your absolute best decisions.

And if you could turn back time, you might make plenty of different choices.

But foresight is entirely different, isn’t it?

Here you have less than perfect information.

You’re in the realm of uncertainty, risk, downside, fear, failure, loss, etc.

But also excitement, possibility, adventure, and potentially HUGE opportunity.

“It was going to be huge”

This is one of my favorite clips of Jeff Bezos:

It’s short yet it takes you back to where all this started for him.

Back to the mid-90s where he’s at MIT describing the exciting growth he was seeing online, Jeff says—

“If it was growing at 2,300% a year, pretty soon it was going to be huge.”

Of course in hindsight leaving his job to go after this opportunity seems a no-brainer, but keep in mind that the first question Jeff says he got from the 60 investors he first met was—

“What’s the Internet?”

Since he was a kid Jeff had imagined building things, he was drawn to the adventure and rewards of being an entrepreneur.

Yet it still could have been an extremely hard decision for him.

Keep driving forward

On Christmas Eve 2008 Elon Musk was hours away from bankruptcy.

Major delays on the Tesla Roadster meant they were too slow getting cars off the production line.

Three failed launches at SpaceX left them barely scratching together enough money and parts for a fourth.

This night it was all on the line.

With most of his chips already on the table, when he might have lost it all, Elon went ALL IN.

He gave Tesla his last remaining cash. Other investors followed.

In the face of imminent failure, Elon drove through.

Something he’d need to keep doing just to keep his baby alive even nine years later.

Keep swimming forward…ferociously

Do you know that most sharks must keep swimming?

They must keep moving forward to absorb oxygen from the water into their gills.

Otherwise they drown.

The same happens if they’re dragged backwards.

They are a creature built for moving forward.

Keep moving forward

I don’t get why you’d live any other way?

Maybe it’s a problem.

This year people have told me it is.

Because I refuse to stop and obsess about whatever they think they know from whatever news source they think is the accurate one.

This week a CEO told me that he’s scared the vaccine will sterilize his kids, while another told me that the unvaccinated kid next door would kill her father.

Especially when the waters are this filthy…

You’ve just gotta keep swimming forward.

Saltigrade

Do you know what this word means?

It’s the word of the day that well captures what I’m experiencing right now.

Saltigrade is a verb which means, “Moving by leaping.”

In the context of your business or career…

Why move any other way?

Leap after leap

I’ve been experiencing something incredible this year.

For years I’ve been steadily pushing forward on all fronts.

But that’s never been my target.

I target quantum leaps.

That’s been my focus since I was a kid.

Not just how to make your life a little bit better.

But how do you make enormous transformational leaps from where you are right now…

To what you TRULY want?

Watching Joe Rogan freeze on stage I saw we all face this problem

It was the most bizarre thing.

An hour before he was riffing on stage like he owned it.

But now he was frozen like a deer, following the GOAT around.

This part of the show was unscripted and Rogan was unprepared.

Standing up there next to Dave Chappelle he looked like a tired kid at Disneyland needing to be carried.

He was out of lines, but worse, he was out of confidence.

While Chappelle, who’d just delivered a crushing set, was on fire, in his zone, freestyling, lighting up the stadium.

Seeing the whites of his eyes

It was pretty awkward, I have to say.

I felt so much for the guy.

He’s obviously a highly accomplished performer.

An hour earlier he’d captivated the huge crowd, but now he was pottering around unable to even blurt out a line, let alone a funny one.

It was difficult to watch, and from our front row seats a little too close for comfort.

You could see the bulging whites of his eyes.

Feel the trepidation in his body along with the awkward silence his words were supposed to fill.

Watching his frozen body, I could “hear” the gears stuck in his head.

Continue

Might you benefit from Jeff Bezos’ regret minimization framework?

Jeff Bezos did something crazy.

Years before the Internet was mainstream he decided to go after it.

Unlike a college kid with nothing to lose, he had a lot to lose.

He had a good, stable job on Wall Street.

Recently married with a new home, he had reasons to be risk averse.

But imagining what the Internet could be, he wanted to avoid looking back in regret.

He makes it sound easy

You’ll see him talk about it in this short video clip.

It’s a classic from 2001 where he’s talking about leaving Wall Street to start Amazon.

See, the thing is, of course now some 27 years after founding Amazon, and becoming the richest man in the world, it looks like an obvious decision.

But going back to when he was making it, the decision was anything but obvious.

What his boss said to him well captures it.

Continue