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Geoff Blades

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The Trick To Focusing On What Matters… Building Momentum

Continuing on our theme for the year of getting done what matters to you, I want to hit the most basic and fundamental idea.

All the time people ask me what is the trick to getting yourself doing those things you’ve been avoiding, and this is, quite literally, what matters most—

You must be skillful at getting yourself moving and building momentum.

That’s it.

It’s very simple, but, of course, as with all things that we talk about here, this doesn’t make it easy to do.

Why Is It Hard To Build New Habits? 

As I wrote about last week there are many things that can get in the way of making progress on our goals.

Some times we’re resisting. Other times avoiding. Inner conflicts. Lack of commitment. There are lots of reasons we get stalled.

Yet, no matter what the reason, we get held back for more or less the same cause…

We are creatures of habit. And anything new that we “try” to get ourselves to do is, by definition, in conflict with our “muscle memory,” our habits, our old ways of being.

So, while just getting ourselves to take new actions can be hard in its own right, it’s also the elastic pull, or gravity, of our old habits that we must escape.

Think of someone with a goal to change their job. Just imagining all the things they must do to hunt and claim that new job might be resistance-inducing enough, but first reaching escape velocity from their old job can be even harder.

They might be fired up about making a job change, but waking up every day and heading to that old job tends to have a way of starving that new job of oxygen.

To make progress you must be able to get beyond those old ways of being, get yourself moving in a new direction, and build momentum in your goals and days.

Momentum In Your Goals

Progress begets progress. We of course know this. A rolling stone gathers no moss and all that…

But when it comes to our goals, crucially, progress also acts as a “convincer” that we’re on the right track.

Results validate our belief and effort, which begets more belief and effort. And this shot in the arm is often all we need to keep taking action.

In most goals this happens naturally with progress, but we also want to engineer our goals in such a way that we can build momentum with small victories.

Any small victory will do. One more day in a row you ate right. Or went to the gym. Or didn’t drink. Just a couple of great meetings might be all it takes to feel like you’re building momentum in a job search.

You also want to find ways to remind yourself of your momentum. You might do this in your Daily Exercises. A calendar on the wall that you mark with progress. An app that does the same thing.

However you do it keep finding ways to prove to yourself that you’re building momentum, and you’ll find it easier to get yourself focused and taking action.

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Ways We Avoid Focusing on What Matters

In the last few weeks one article on my website keeps getting hit over and over again.

The headline, How to Focus on What Really Matters and Stop Wasting Time, tells you exactly what many of us are searching for.

If we had to label in one word what’s driving this search, we might choose “regret.”

Looking back on those things that we didn’t get done last year, we’re seeking strategies to get them done this year.

Correctly, we identify that our problem might come back to focus.

Incorrectly, we often think the solution is getting better at time management…

NOT About Time

Some of the most “successful” people I’ve known are hardly experts at time management, nor are they even efficient.

In fact, many of them are downright inefficient.

They aren’t particularly clear on what matters most to success, nor are they particularly exceptional at getting focused on those things…

But for what they lack in focus, they make up for in brute force by throwing a lot of hours at their goals.

Unlike a surgeon whose every cut could be the difference between life and death, in many arenas of success, precise focus can be less relevant than simply working at it.

My old world of investment banking is a perfect example—

You don’t need to be the best banker on the planet if you’re willing to work 100 hours a week for the rest of your life.

This Is Focus

You decide.

See, it’s not about solving questions like, “How do I stop wasting time and focus on what matters?” It’s about committing to what matters!

Whether you want to get the house painted, your mind right, or step back and get focused on landing the job you truly want, it’s your decision that gets you moving.

A decision is simple. It says, This matters. And I’m going to do whatever it takes to make it happen.

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New Year’s Resolutions Are Stupid. Set Goals.

What Do I Want

People keep baiting me on the topic of New Year’s resolutions.

Perhaps because I’ve called them stupid in the past, they think I have a negative view of such resolutions…

But that’s not true—I’m fired up about any catalyst that gets people to change.

It’s not New Year’s resolutions that are stupid, only how people pretend to use them!

Phony Goals

Like a political speech, people so proudly announce their New Year’s resolutions—

I hereby proclaim that starting on January 1 (but no sooner), I will stop watching cat videos on Fakebook and go to the gym at least 6 times a day. 

And just like a parent applauding their 7-year-old’s school play, we‘re expected to celebrate their “achievement” in making such a resolution.

Good on you, Timmy!

Let’s hope you’re not in the 80% of people who give up on their resolutions by the second week in February…

New Year’s “Aspirations”

Nearly all resolutions fail because they were only aspirations to begin with.

Every day of the year you can make a new resolution, but repeating it to yourself and others doesn’t make it a goal.

An aspiration is to Get In Great Shape This Year. A goal is to specifically define how you are eating better and exercising consistently.

Resolutions become goals when they are backed by action, and that’s where, by definition, most resolutions are destined to fail.

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Happy Holidays

I hope you’ve had a great year.

Next week may be a good time to step back and reflect on your year, but now is likely a better time to just kick back, relax…

And really immerse yourself in what’s going on around you for the holidays.

The years tick by, but we can stretch each moment by being more present.

This may be the greatest gift you can give your family and friends!

Enjoy 🙂

Pathways To Success

Often people say to me something like—

“I know plenty of people who’ve achieved great success without doing what you say. They lacked clear goals. Had no path to success. Gave little thought to their process. Didn’t develop top skills. Have never trained their mind…”

It’s true. I know tons of those people. I used to be one of them.

Lacking A Path To Success

I elevated myself from my blue-collar background to Goldman Sachs, and succeeded on Wall Street with nothing more than the goal to do my best and working all the time.

I’d never read a self-help book. Never visualized a goal. Hadn’t laid out a path to success. Never focused on my process. Nor time management, mindset or other “crucial” skills…

That path to success was ultimately unfulfilling to me but it is by far the most basic and common in our society—study hard, get a good job, and work hard for the rest of your life.

If you look at two of the wealthiest people on the planet, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, you see a different path to success.

And some might even conclude that we should all be dropping out of college and starting a tech company…

Dig deeper and you learn most successful people aren’t top executives or famous billionaires. The vast majority of millionaires next door are “small” business people, who found their niche and just kept working it.

Does this mean everyone should start their own business? Or skip college? Or get a top job and work hard?

Of course not…

Engineering A Path To Success

Knowing how other people have succeeded tells you little about creating your own path to success.

A novice gold miner can randomly drill a hole, strike gold, and become an overnight “success.” But what could you actually learn from them in creating your own path to success? Should you just go drill some holes?

Many Internet millionaires were spawned during the first dot.com bubble in the late 1990s. Yet few of them held onto their money into this century.

Even fewer founders could replicate their “success.” Such “Returns on Luck” account for most out-sized success in our society—

You didn’t need to be the best engineer on the planet to get rich working for Facebook; you only had to join early enough.

The difference between making partner at Goldman Sachs pre-IPO in 1998 versus 2000 was some $50 million. And just about anyone buying real estate with zero money down in 2006 looked like a genius, until 2008.

While there’s a lot to be learned from taking advantage of rich opportunities, herein lies the distinction between achieving successful results, and engineering your path to success.

Even the worst football team in the league will win a game every now and then. But the best teams, like Vince Lombardi’s Packers, build a systematic method to winning that they know will work time and time again.

Ultimately, the most successful people are less focused on results, and more focused on engineering a path to success.

What Is Success To You? 

Much of what we consider success in our society is results-focused.

Sure, little Johnny now gets a Final Winner Trophy for running last in a race at school.

But in the real world, it’s the winners we celebrate.

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Easier Not To Do List

My friend talks about leaving her job and starting her own firm, but she doesn’t have the time.

By the time she gets home at night, after a long day, she only wants to pour a glass of wine, kick back and relax.

She has big dreams, but she has a busy life…

And it’s easier not to focus on that business.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

My friend tells me that having her own business isn’t important enough to her…

But, after a couple of glasses of wine, she confesses that it’s just too hard.

When she sits down to work on it, she doesn’t know where to begin. Once she gets moving, her fears get racing, and she wants to stop in her tracks.

She knows she could prioritize the time to work on it, but it feels too hard and she doesn’t believe that she can get it done.

That’s the hard thing about doing hard things… They can feel hard!

And she’s content with putting her business and “freedom” on her Easier Not To Do List.

The Good Life Isn’t Great

Many people I meet are in a similar position.

They know that their job, relationship, finances, happiness, health, or otherwise isn’t what they want it to be, but it’s good enough.

So, why change it?

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Mind Champ

Muhammad Ali was a mind champ.

Way before he stepped into the ring, Ali had already beaten down his opponent countless times in his own head.

He’d seen himself dancing out of the dressing room and stepping into the ring. Imagined himself floating like a butterfly circling himself and his opponent. And felt himself standing over his downed rival as the ref counted him out.

Long before any punch was thrown, in his own mind, Ali had already won. More powerfully, Ali was masterful at getting his opponent to believe he’d already lost.

Aussie cricketer, Steve Waugh, known as the Ice Man for his mental toughness, called this form of psychological warfare, mental disintegration.

But being a mind champ isn’t just for top athletes striving to win more. It’s about using your powerful mind to get what you want in every aspect of your life.

What Is The Mind?

Inside our thick skulls we each have a brain, and somewhere not necessarily inside our heads (in our “awareness”) we have a mind that we can use to direct the brain.

Think of the brain as an organ, and the mind as pushing the pedals, akin to a car and a driver.

Just like a car, the brain mostly drives itself. We don’t need to bother thinking about how the body breaths, walks, and pumps blood. The role of the mind is to oversee the operations, steer in the right direction, and keep us on the road.

Unfortunately for most of us, nobody ever taught us how to drive.

Brains Out of Control

Because nobody ever teaches us how to use our brains—“Education” is stuffing them with information—most of our brains are out of control.

From moment to moment, like those people whose foot is always tapping while they sit, many of us have just accepted our noisy brains and their wild swings in thinking and focus.

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Take Care of Yourself

A key lesson I’ve learned over the years is the crucial importance of self-care.

Even the phrase “self-care” sounds a bit touchy-feely and weak to me, but I’ve come to see the power in it.

Particularly when you are chasing massive goals, there is nothing more powerful than taking care of yourself along the way.

Just like cramming for exams, we often think, When I get to that next phase, then I’ll take a breather.

But twenty years later we’re still “cranking it out,” still that one step away from taking our foot off the gas.

Until The First Heart Attack, Divorce, Death…

Us humans are incredibly resilient hard charging animals, and often it takes a brick wall to slow us down.

The first friend who dies “young.” The first major health scare. Cheating spouse. Divorce. Massive disappointment.

These things tend to get us to step back and think differently about ourselves and our lives, but it’s often too late by then.

Even Atlas shrugged, and if we want to keep crushing hard goals, we must be taking care of ourselves.

Self-Care Ain’t “Balance”

I detest the pithy notion of “work / life balance.”

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Dear Elon

Life’s too short, mate.

And you have too much good work to do for you to be driving yourself crazy.

Working around the clock.

Mixing your Ambien and your drink to take the edge off.

Whatever, we all have our thing, but when I read this article, here’s what I thought.

Depression!

Whoa…

It’s a big deal that you’re talking about it.

Many people assume that success takes care of such problems, but every successful person knows otherwise.

What many people don’t know though, is that massive goals can cause massive depression.

Those of us who’ve been there know how dark it can get, and I hope you’re not going there…

Because, we need you.

If anyone has to keep wearing the gold-covered glasses it’s the iron man inventing our future.

In a world where an app that takes photos or calls a car is worth more than a nation, who else is focused on stuff that really matters, Elon?

We need you, man.

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Protect Yourself From Terror

I live just up the highway from where that lunatic ran down bikers and runners in Manhattan yesterday.

Just the day before I was running that path at around the same time, and yesterday I was crossing it about when the incident occurred.

That got me thinking about what you do with these situations.

Give Them The Attention They Deserve

Little.

I pay little attention to the media machine that will turn this latest lunatic into a celebrity.

We most dishonor the victims when we “honor” the disease, and I care to know as much about him as I know about any ant crawling cracks in the pavement.

Why care what his name is? Why care why he thinks he did it? Why care how “surprised” people in his life will be?

Last night I spent an hour sitting in meditation honoring the victims and dreaming of a better world, and today I’m focused on “reality.”

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What’s In A Quote?

One of my clients just needs a good quote to get him going.

That’s it. Once something lights his fuse, he’s got it from there.

Quotes by famous people appeal to the part of our brain that responds to “social proof,” which can powerfully open our minds to new ideas.

From there, I suggest going deeper and cracking open the quotes you like to seek deeper levels of meaning.

As Picasso Said…

Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.

Sounds about right, doesn’t it?

Especially if Picasso said it, must be pure wisdom, right?

So, let’s take a closer look, and see how you can squeeze more juice from it.

1. Goals

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Weinstein Leading by Example

I mostly avoid the media machine but there’s something about this Weinstein mess that I just can’t stand.

It bothers me that we get so publicly outraged with Weinstein, and seemingly pretend he is one isolated example. Pigs live in pigsties.

It bothers me lots of people knew about this, and indeed, even some women were complicit, for a very long time, yet they allowed the abuse to continue.

It’s unrealistic to imagine we might live in a world that is evolved beyond dirty old men groping on women, or where victims are empowered enough to stand up for themselves.

But it is realistic to expect that others with power in Hollywood who knew about this would have done more than make a joke.

Countless young women, daughters, sisters, mothers, wives have been abused over decades because nobody was willing to put an end to it.

Leaders Lead

I worked for a messed-up boss once.

The only power I had was to lawyer up and go nuclear against the firm, which was a terrible idea.

I shouldn’t have needed to put my life on the line, assemble my own army, and wage war against their broken leader.

The leaders of the firm should have led, and taken care of their problem.

Just like the Catholic Church, when you cover it up, you only perpetuate it, and create more future victims.

It is up to those leaders with power to do what’s right for those who are powerless to act on their own.

Hollywood Can Lead Now

Strong leaders in Hollywood should have taken care of Weinstein long ago.

But given he has revealed himself now, and again exposed their grimy underbelly, they should act powerfully in making an example out of him.

Kicking him out of the Academy is like telling a kid they can’t go to drama class, when they can use his falling star to put a dint in his lecherous universe of disgusting people.

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How Do You LEAD Better, Right Now?

With a number of our business clients we’ve been digging deep into the topic of leadership.

We see it as a “field” that is ripe for disruption, and in particular, simplification.

There’s millions of great ideas on leadership.

And there are many many many great thinkers too.

But, more than ideas and books and speeches and whatnot, what matters most is…

How Do You Better Lead, Right Now…

The field of leadership is akin to the field of personal development.

You can spend your lifetime plowing through shelves of books and videos and courses, but that’s not what most of us want or need.

We simply want to know the ideas that are right for us, and be able to use them in a way that works.

Most people don’t want to know how an internal combustion engine works; they just want to know how to get in and drive.

Leadership is the same.

YOUR Definition of Leading

A consultant to our consulting firm (yes, like a double consultant), a Navy SEAL sees leadership in action.

It’s about building high performance teams and empowering them to do their best work.

Vince Lombardi saw leadership as asking yourself tough questions, working harder, chasing perfection, and demanding autonomy.

John C. Maxwell. Warren Bennis. Simon Sinek. And many other top leadership experts have many other great models, principles, tips, and ideas.

So, who do you listen to? Whose leadership model do you put to work? Do you have to read them all to figure it out? Have to attend 3 years of leadership workshops?

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What’s the Fear of Iterating?

Of the “meta fears” that hold many of us back, this is one of the most pronounced.

I’ve never heard it termed this way (because I made it up) but you see plenty of evidence of this fear of iterating all around you.

It is buried in the fear of hard work.

The fear of failure.

The fear of getting it wrong.

The fear of looking silly.

The fear of “What will people think?”

The fear of committing to something that truly matters.

The fear of “Am I good enough?”

These and many other fears are merely the fear of iterating in disguise….

OK, So What’s the Fear of Iterating?

It is being afraid to get something wrong in order to keep getting it more right.

It’s the fear of starting with a wrong or incomplete answer, and then continuing to work and re-work your answer until you get to the right one.

Iteration is the process behind every single form of improving, and unless you’re willing to keep iterating something that needs to improve, it never will.

This means, to get anything right we must be cool with continuously improving at getting it “wrong.” To keep moving towards the right answer we must be unafraid to keep landing on wrong ones.

For many people, this fear is game-stopping.

Literally, they’ll never get past it, so game over.

Because they’re scared to admit they aren’t already living the life they truly want, or they aren’t the 100% perfect person they pretend to be, they remain too afraid to improve in any way.

Look around you. You see it everywhere.

As Emerson put it, “All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.”

Yet, just by seeing that of course life is nothing but a continuous iteration to the “end,” we give ourselves an opportunity to iterate to new and better experiences.

How Was Your First Sex?

Imagine that the rest of your life’s sex was as “good” as your first.

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Rescue Hours a Week from Email

If I said that reading this would save you hours this week you might not believe me.

But even if you don’t, you’d likely believe that the way many of us engage with email is costing us hours a week, right?

Hours a week flushed down the gurgler.

Hours a week that you could put into valuable tasks that lead to more of what you want.

Hours a week that you could be doing something fun.

Hours a week that you could be much more enjoying your time than eyes pasted on a screen.

I know we all identify with these goals, which only leaves two questions.

First, what are you going to do with all that extra time?

Second, How Are You Rescuing It?

Now here’s the thing that I’m not going to do here…

I’m not going to give you some “productivity hacks” or tips that may or may not be right for you.

I’m not going to try and get you to “just look at email less” or “shut down your email during the day.”

Instead, I’m going to share with you an important principle and suggest that, if you want to rescue a couple hours a week from your email, you use these ideas to commit yourself to a new email routine.

Not So Easy

In some ways this should be the easiest change in the world, but we all know it’s not so easy.

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FEAR: Draws The Boundary of Our Lives

Are we really in “control” of our lives? What leads us to make our most important decisions?

Are we motivated towards what we want, or away from what we fear?

The answers are complicated, but it’s generally agreed that fear drives us more than we like to admit.

In the last two weeks I’ve heard two people say more or less the same thing about how fear held them back.

That is—because they were scared, they held themselves back from taking a job.

It was an odd idea to me, but having kicked it around with some people, I now see it more clearly.

Why Was It Odd To Me?

It’s hard for me to understand how fear could prevent someone from taking a better job because I couldn’t imagine fear holding me back from anything that I truly want.

I see fear as part of the package. I’ve jumped from metaphorical planes without a parachute, I’ve suffered plenty of fear, but I still keep leaping.

In doing what you want, you take the actions anyway, and train yourself to deal with the fear.

But that’s not to say I’m immune to fear… I simply face the same lie as the second guy I’ll tell you about.

Not Taking A Job Because of The Fear

One person told me that she didn’t take a job because of her fear.

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We all have cats in our heads!

I’m yet to meet someone who doesn’t suffer from fears or insecurities or worries, or what not.

We often think it’s just us, when as far as I can tell, it’s nearly all of us, if only we had a way to talk about it.

We all have thoughts in our heads and feelings in our bodies that hold us back; it’s just a matter of whether we let them.

Last week one of my friends opened up to me on some things he was embarrassed to talk about.

He’s a great guy. Really optimistic. Fun. A dreamer. A visionary. Business builder.

But he’s got some cats running around in his head.

Like most of us who’ve lived long enough, he’s had some bad stuff happen in his life.

His father passed away. He went through a tough time in his business. Other things happened that have been weighing him down.

He’s had a heaviness to his days.

A lethargy. Trouble getting focused on topics that matter. Some days struggling to get motivated.

“It’s Not Just You…”

I told him.

Now, while I won’t speak for all 7+ billion of us humans, I will say, if it’s not “all of us,” it’s certainly many of us.

A number of my clients I used to think were 100% confident, charismatic, secure, all-powerful leaders…

Then I got into their heads and saw, hmm, it looks good on the outside, but inside they’re holding it together with rubber bands and duct tape.

That didn’t make me respect them any less, but much more.

I saw they didn’t have some magical gift that made it easy for them to be amazing—they worked at it, doing their best to be their best, sometimes really struggling through it.

Most people who know them would never imagine that, but after years of being deep in the heads of successful people, I imagine this is true of most everyone.

A reason I know this is because I’m a pro, and it’s certainly true for me.

I Turned Pro Because of This

I said to my friend—

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Go Time: Powerfully Finish Your Year

Yesterday my client said to me, “I really love this time after Labor Day.”

For him it’s an energizing sprint into the holidays, where he seeks to consolidate his year.

Over the next few months he’s focused on driving home those things he’s been working on all year, as well as laying the piping for next year.

The last two weeks in August he takes time to slow it down, but this weekend he was in full swing, winding it up to finish the year.

Building Momentum

So much of getting what you want comes from building momentum.

Just like hitting the gym once a year on January 1, success doesn’t come from what you do one day a year, but from what you wake up and do every day.

Showing up his best my client knows that he drives his best results, but it’s also through building this momentum every day that he feels his best.

This is the case for most of us.

We can get our knickers in a knot thinking too much about what we want to get done, but we feel our greatest when we just dive into doing it.

It’s for this reason that over the last couple of weeks we’ve been taking the thinking out of it, and laying out two systems for my client to get back in the swing.

Systematically Use Your Day

As I constantly rant about, all things get better through a systematic approach.

You could wake up tomorrow and try to get dressed by wading through a massive pile of clothes that you keep stacked up in your closet, or you can dress easily when you systematically organize your clothes. (e.g. keep socks together)

Each and every part of your day can work the same.

You can wake up in the morning and allow your mind to run into the hundreds of things that may or may not matter to your day, or you can wake up and direct your mind into your systematic approach for your day.

How do you best get organized to crush your day?

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1 Practice This Holiday

The trick to quickly mastering any skill is to pick one crucial aspect of that skill to focus on like a maniac before moving on to your next one thing, and so on.

For instance, many of us know that the word “but” (as in “Yeah, but”) screws up communications.

It negates what that person just said and means you basically end up throwing your words all over their self-defenses.

Notice this week that nearly every time you say “but” you could have easily said “and,” and just by changing this one word how much better you are at keeping people on side.

Changing this one small aspect of your language can have a massive impact.

All skills are the same.

The Hardest Skill To Master

In my lifetime I’ve learned an endless number of skills, but none have been so hard to master as the skill of thinking.

That’s the skill of getting beyond those old habitual ways of thinking that your biology and society conditioned into you, and choosing the thoughts that you want to live by.

So instead of say reading the news and seeing the world through crap-covered glasses, this skill involves stepping outside of the fear-based social reality, and living in your own reality.

As we cover all the time together, the skill of getting what you want mostly comes down to this skill of thinking.

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Trump: Won. NYT: WINNING

After the latest gaffe around Charlottesville, Trump lost a number of high profile CEO supporters, and the New York Times quickly moved in for the kill.

In its appropriately titled section, “Morning Agenda,” the NYT ran the headline, “Debating Gary Cohn’s Future in Washington.”

Using powerful influence, citing no sources but “the many” business elite, and “several people close to him,” the NYT expertly seeded the idea that Cohn might be next to go.

To those people out there who read the news as “factual” this may appear to be a simple statement of the “truth…”

But to those of us who enjoy watching the wars of propaganda in our society, you see the NYT beautifully using one of Trump’s favorite devices of influence against him—external validation.

In his presidential campaign Trump proved himself an excellent influencer, but the media is proving itself better.

Where Blowing Up People Fails

Trump principally has one approach to winning—a hand grenade.

He’s used to blowing through things, forcing other people to bend, break, collapse, and hand him victory.

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