Entries Tagged 'Reviews' ↓

Last night I received the Genius Mind DVD package from Learning Strategies. This is one of several products developed by co-founder Paule Scheele.

So where do you begin? “I am a Magnificent being. I have unlimited, untapped Genius resources within me that I can learn to use expand the usage of my mind, breaking through any past limitations and exploring the magnificence of my full potential.”

The key to my achieving this, is learning how to learn. When you were a baby, you learned about the world by the way you experience it . You learned to understand the world by the things you saw, the sounds that you heard, the aromas that filled the air that you breathed, the different tastes that tickled your pallet and the way everything you touched gave me it a definite feel about the world you lived in. You were completely absorbed in whatever it was you were trying to learn about. Every action was a learning experience and you were alive with energy, excited all the time to try something different and learn something new, something that wasn’t taught.

It was almost all instinctive. It was usually a lesson of the universal creative primal instinct. The world was yours for the taking, because your mind was not able to conceive failure. One of the core pre-suppositions in NLP is: There is NO Failure, only Feedback.

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Popularity: 19% [?]

I recently watched this comedy and was only mildly entertained by it. The more important lesson is that its possible for a shy, nerdy, insecure guy to become confident, social and improve your success with women. So many of the guys who ask me about my coaching programme are infatuated with ONE girl. They miss the point that it is about improving your overall social success with women.

This is one of those few movies like Hitch which can give insecure, lonely or frustrated guys a glimpse of what’s possible. The basic plot of the movie is that Roger, a nerd, played by John Herder from Napoleon Dynamite fame, takes a class with a self-help guru Dr P, played by Billy Bob Thornton. Dr P is a real ass hole and treats all his students with disdain. He has a bad-add enforcer in the form of Lesher, played by the huge Michael Clark Duncan. You can read more detailed reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

What I want to highlight is how stupid this movie ends. Roger basically wins back his girlfriend from Mr P, who turns out to be the biggest liar and a con-man. When you watch a movie like this you have to think about how realistic it is for a character as pathetic as Roger to build enough confidence to do what he does. What I mean is to actually pull it off. This kind of things never happen in the real world. It takes a long time to build up enough muster to challenge an authority figure like Dr P. There are no short cuts and you can throw luck out the window. Fake it till you make it just won’t cut it with women in the long term. If you want to supercharge your social success with women in South Africa, join the South African Seduction Lair and meet guys with more experience. Stop reading books or listening to audio programs from the Internet. Meet guys who can show you what’s possible.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Last weekend I attended the first Fast Break event with Fastdate. This is a weekend away for singles. By the way I detest the word “singles” (it stinks of desperation and I prefer “unmarried”). The idea is simple: a group single people (about 16 men/women) go away for a weekend trip filled with activities. My role was to give a talk on “Dating in the 21st Century” on the Saturday. This talk will shortly be available as an ebook I’m working on called Social or Single.

I decided not to go through on the Friday evening because I was putting the finishing touches on the presentation/talk and instead arrived on the Saturday late morning. Shumba Valley Lodge, where the group was spending the weekend, is a beautiful place. And I highly recommend it. It’s located down the road from the Cradle of Humankind, a very famous World Heritage site in South Africa. This was where things first went wrong as I had prepared my talk for 12 and instead we rushed off to the restaurant The Cradle, that was supposedly closing at 1pm. After the lunch it was suggested we should all rest for a while and my talk would take place at 5pm.

Well it turns out there was some heavy drinking the Friday evening. This type of behaviour is expected but should not be encouraged. People attended this event for a reason: meeting people from the opposite sex and see if there is chemistry. When the organisers are drinking more than the guests, it’s alarming. One of my beliefs is that alcohol abuse comes from deep embarrassment, anger with the world and frustration with your circumstances. How do I know this? My own dad has been an alcoholic most of his life and he is a very bitter and angry man. So this drinking binge may seem acceptable under the circumstances when in fact it does not help anyone overcome fears or social anxiety - which could be seen as the hidden purpose of these singles weekends.

When 5pm arrived half the people where missing or had left including the organisers. They seemed the least interested in what I had to say to their guests who had paid good money to attend this event. And so I was on the verge of leaving when one of the guys persuaded me to stay and give me talk informally. I had my laptop and was planning a presentation but maybe this impromptu speech was better. I shared my ideas with them on what I see as the major challenges in the 21st century in dating and how to improve their success.

Anyway I stayed the evening and we later on had dinner. There was an astronomer who entertained us with informative discussion on the stars, the planets and funny anecdotes. And so we did a bit of star gazing through his telescope. (note to self - buy one of those gadgets) In general the people were good company and I’m sure I’ve made some business contacts with the guys. The one woman I was interested in left earlier on the Saturday.

My overall my impression of these Fastdate events are bad. They are poorly organised. The organised are disinterested in really helping people connect. And they are more interested in their own dating and relations or lack thereof. So be cautioned and avoid them. Instead I recommend you explore SMARTdate, which has much more integrity in their events and services they render.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Just came back from watching the awesome Bourne Ultimatum. Matt Damon really kicks some solid ass in this film like he did in the previous ones. Bourne is tortured by memory loss and is on a mission to find out where it all began.

This got me think about Jason Bourne vs James Bond as a spy but more so as a male role model. It’s been said other than their initials they do not have much in common. Jason Bourne is edgy, vulnerable and tortured while James Bond is smooth, droll, conscience-free. Bourne is stalked by the loss of his girlfriend in the Bourne Supremacy while James Bond is the ultimate player and womaniser. For a brief moment it seemed like Bourne was going to hook-up with Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles). But he sent her on her on way as he continued to go for broke trying to find out his origins.

In terms of raw energy Jason Bourne is the more pragmatic of the two spies. James Bond relies so much on gadgets to accomplish what he needs to do. I do accept that Daniel Craig is likely the only actor to play Bond that could be superior in ass kicking than Matt Damon’s Bourne. So while James Bond relies on his charm, Bourne could be enormously attractive to women because of his single minded conviction while showing compassion when you least expect it.

Popularity: 17% [?]

This book is a must read for any man living in the world today. And for any mother who wants to know what to do with her son, most especially if she is raising him as a single mother. This strikes a real cord with me because I grew up with a single mother ? and I lacked a strong male role model for most of my teenager years. And the result? A lot of confusion, a lot of self-doubt and this with a combination of other factors led directly to a nervous breakdown when I hit 25. You could say that I was never prepared to deal with the harsh reality of the adult world or you could say that I was to immature and the pace of my life was so fast I could not acclimatise quickly enough.

Yes, I have a father and we have not been close for most of my of my life especially after he remarried. Now his 2nd wide has passed away 8 years ago and my half-brother is almost 21. There is a divide that is deep and sometimes painful. And since I grew up with my mother I have a much closer relationship to her and my 19 year old half-sister. How have I dealt with this in the past? With anger, with frustration for being deprived from growing up in a ?normal? family unit. This led to more self-loathing then anything else so I turned outward to find my own role models, especially masculine, in the great books of history. I studied the classics from the West and the East. And I eventually reached a point where the simplest advice turned out to best for me: accept everything as it is. Thank God I never spent years of therapy trying to figure this out, which in retrospect seems like the kind of common sense my mother always claimed I didn’t have when I was a teenager.

Anyway Iron John is a mythical story of a boy’s journey with the Wild Man and his separation from his mother and his father. The basic element that we find missing in the modern world is that of male initiation. Now living in South Africa I know all about male initiation, especially among the Xhosa people. There has been growing resistance from the government to close down these initiation schools because of the lack of medical expertise where the boys end up suffering injuries. Could it be that more and more of the ancient knowledge or know-how of how to best conduct these rituals have been lost? I think we have reached a critical point, post the feminism revolution, the decline of fatherhood, and the rise of single parent (mother) families, which causes a severe imbalance in the male/female polarity that is needed. When the Yin/Yang balance is distorted to this extent we find that weak men are all that’s left.

There is so many analogies from this book, which has been brought to my attention via other sources, most notably the seduction community, because is an attempt to restore the balance. How many times have you observed in a Hollywood film, a sitcom, or a cartoon the idiot man with his intelligent wife/girlfriend who point him in the right direction. How many times have you met men, who are unable to articulate themselves, who do not live with a passion or a purpose. They become like zombies living lives of quit desperation. How can the modern man meet the wild man inside him? He can push himself to do something of extraordinary courage and learn from it. Maybe climb Kilimanjaro or run the Comrades or stop denying your father, your masculine, because you need to draw from there the energy that can sustain you through your life. This book is an excellent big picture of the current problem men are facing and for specific help on how to overcome these problems I highly recommend The Way Of The Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Woman, Work, and Sexual Desire

If you live in South Africa you should purchase Iron John by Robert Bly from Kalahari.net

Popularity: 19% [?]

The Triangle is a miniseries originally broadcast on the Sci-Fi channel and now available on DVD. I rented the DVD over this weekend because it’s about 255 minutes of running time broken into 3 episodes. This is a very original take on the Bermuda Triangle and time travel discrepancies.

You will enjoy this DVD if you enjoy other current science fiction series like The 4400 or Heroes. The producers include Bryan Singer, director of first two X-Men films and Superman Returns as well as Dean Devlin, producer of Stargate and Independence Day. The cast is exceptional with Eric Stoltz, Sam Neill, Lou Diamond Phillips, Catherine Bell, Bruce Davidson (twice in X-Men as Senator Robert Kelly), and Michael E. Rodgers. There is also two South African actors in the series with brief roles: Marius Weyers, still with a thick South African accent after all these years and Hakeem Kae-Kazim, originally from Nigeria but primarily based in South Africa. I’ve met Hakeem a few times and he has awesome energy about him.

The plot is simple - it seems. A very rich shipping magnate Eric Benirall (Sam Neill) recruits a group of misfits that include a journalist for a tabloid, a deep ocean resource engineer, a man with genuine psychic abilities and Meteorology professor. They band together in desperate times as they find weird coincidences or as Freud called them uncanny happenings. On the surface it seems straightforward, Benirall’s company controls about 1/5th of all ships on the sea at any given time through his cargo company and has lost 6 ships in a short space of time. Later on more deeper reasons emerge as it turns out Benirall lost a brother in the Bermuda Triangle. Each one of the main cast have personal circumstances which adds depth to their characters. The navy it turns out is building a huge machine to counter the effects of the infamous Philadelphia Experiment, in which a ship allegedly disappeared in a scientific experiment in 1943. It has been an integral part of many conspiracy theories over the decades.

In summary this is a great action packed, sci-fi thriller. It’s also reminiscent of the X-Files in many ways and pays homage to mixing hard core scientists, with sceptics, with soothsayers. This is a highly recommended DVD to all those who enjoy suspense, unusual events mixed with great science fiction and excellent performances by the cast. Just a final note - I was really chuffed this mini series was shoot mostly in Cape Town.

Popularity: 15% [?]

When I first began hearing of Deepak Chopra, I did not think to much of him. My best friend Nathaniel recommended The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams a long time ago but I’ve yet to read it. So recently I picked up this book on sale from Exclusive Books, a big book store chain in South Africa, like Borders or Barnes & Noble in the USA. Anyway this book has made a tremendous impact on how I view healthy living. Firstly I now see how I can live a healthier life and enjoy more of life. This sounds stupid and simple but I always imagined living healthy to be some kind of effort. And in fact it should be or could be effortless - it all starts with your mind and how you think, and how you feel about yourself. Much of what Deepak Chopra says resonates so much with what is the The Secret (Extended Edition) I am very surprised they did not interview him.

The way this book is written makes it a really quick and easy read. The chapters are short and the whole book is divided into four sections: Health and Disease, Laying the Foundation, Strategies for Creating Health and Toward a Higher Reality: Mediation and Metamorphosis.

Now one of my own internal guides is when I see references to other people I already respect. For example Deepak Chopra quotes Napoleon Hill, my all time favourite motivational author, several times in the later half the book, and it fits. He also references his friend Dr Wayne Dyer, which I think is the leading light in the West when it comes to manifesting your reality. All this can be bit much to believe for someone who is not familiar with the law of attraction, and changing your physiology by changing your thoughts but give this one a try. It’s short, direct, simple to understand and yet it encompasses a vast body of knowledge. And I really enjoyed the fact that he ended off focussing on the new physics as he calls it that was started with Einstein. There is a link between quantum physics and the old paradigms of the East. And you don’t even have to read The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra to see it. As they see in these circles believing is seeing not the other way around.

If you live in South Africa purchase Creating Health: How to Attain Perfect Health and Feel Ever Youthful by Deepak Chopra from Take2

Popularity: 15% [?]

Last I watch the film Next starring Nicolas Cage and the very hot Jessica Biel. Next is based on the latest Philip K Dicknovel, The Golden Man, to be adapted to the big screen. Philip K. Dick is mostly known for his works on Science Fiction and some memorable movies have been based on his work like Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report and others. This film is great action packed adventure plays up the “responsibility” that comes with great power.

Nicolas Cage plays a stage magician with a gift to see 2 minutes into the future. He is obsessed with visions of a woman, Jessica Biel, which is unusual because he is seeing days into the future because of her. Peter Falk, TV’s Columbo, makes a small guest appearance. Julliane Moore plays a sassy FBI agent who convinces her boss to bring Nicolas Cage in to help track down a nuclear weapon which has been smuggled into America. There is also sorts of plot changes that seem to happen because of his visions of the future changing. So ever now and then the movie jumps back to a previous point because the desired outcome did not happen.

One of the best scenes early on is when he tests various approaches with Jessica Biel and because he is looking into the future he can figure out which one actually works and do that one. A lesson here is in fact that the best approach is the one that is not needy, indirect and also unsuspecting. With enough practise you will discover that well thought out approaches can come across as natural and spontaneous.

Popularity: 23% [?]

This past weekend I finally watched the new Mel Gibson film: Apocalypto. This film is set in the ancient Maya civilisation just before the arrival of the first Europeans. It’s graphic in it’s violence and it’s portrayal of the capturing of one tribe by another to be used as slaves and for ritual sacrifice is gruesome indeed.

This movie really made me think about the link between fear and courage. This was first brought to my attention by Dr Paul Dobransky, a noted psychiatrist and author MindOS. Basically it goes like this when you are afraid you need courage to do the things that bring fear into your life. When you do courages things it fills up the amount of confidence you have to do other things which may bring feels of fear into your life. Susan Jeffers also wrote an excellent little book, Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway.

Now back to Apocalypto. This movie is set in the jungle’s of Mesoamerica and right from the beginning it’s very much an adrenalin rush with the capture of a wild boar. Soon after the capture the son of the tribal leader, Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), through intuition or through sharp senses, gets up, turns around and calls out to what turns out to be a huge tribe in migration, to come out of hiding. This tribe is on the run from slave hunters if you can call them such. Flint Sky, the father of Jaguar Paw, reminds his son not to be afraid. He says to these tribal people moving through their forest, something like this: I am Flint Stone! This is my forest. This is my forest! My father hunted in this forest before me, and my sons will hunt here after I am gone! This is a quote that will be repeated by Jaguar Paw later on in the film.

Soon afterwards the village of Jaguar Paw is pillaged by same slave hunters. The Mayan priests and through them, the king, had ordained that more sacrifice is needed to purify the lands, improve the crop harvest and to save them all. The society had been in decline for a number of years. There is elements of the film that is not historically accurate but this has nothing to do with how powerful a message it conveys regarding how to overcome fear with courage. Just before he is about to be executed a solar eclipse takes place and all the ritual sacrifices is stopped. It’s not over for the captures slaves as the high priest orders them killed. Through some tough determination Jaguar Paw outmanoeuvres the hunters who had captures him and manages to escape into the forest.

And here is where he’s courage is brought to the fore. His confidences increases as he gets deeper into the forest. Now just as his village was being attacked he managed to get his newly pregnant wife and son into a deep hole. And this is part of what drives him to keep going. The fact that he has to rescue them before it rains, and they drown. As the hunters close in on him he fights them off in different ways. The most exhilarating scene in the movie could be when he jumps over a waterfall. When you consider how some of the hunters following him hesitate and end up being killed because of bad jumps over the same waterfall you realise how superior Jaguar Paw’s confidence has become. He is not afraid to take risks and he places himself directly in the line of fire on several occasions. With speed and agility he overcomes great obstacles in the chase. Overall though you can start to see how living in the moment, the now, brings you closer to your true self. It brings you closer to nature and your instincts can take over. Now in a modern, westernised, technologically advances society we live in there is absolutely nothing that pushes us in the same way to develop our confidence, our courage and our instincts. To a large extent we become nothing more than automatons doing repetitive things over and over. Our ability to overcome fear when confronted by it is reduces because of this group behaviour and placating activity we call living today.

Watch the trailer for Apocalypto here and also checkout the detailed Wikipedia entry on Apocalypto.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Eddie Murphy plays multiple characters in a his latest comedy once again. And yes it’s about fat people. Murphy plays and Norbit, a shy, introverted orphan; Rasputia, the obese, loud-mouthed, girl who saves him from the playground bullies, and whom he later on ends up marrying; as well as Mr Wong, the rude, racist Chinese owner of the orphanage where Norbit is raised.

I must agree wholeheartedly with the review on Filmthreat that Murphy seems to be getting lazy in trying to come up with new ideas. The humour is dated to say the least. The thing about Norbit, the main character, is that he is such a nice guy that he gets walked over his whole life. This means that he essentially has very low self-esteem and lacked a strong male model growing up. Mr Wong tells him a few times throughout the film that his inner strength that will one day emerge.

Thandie Newton, the hot MILF, is one of the few redeeming aspects of this movie. She plays Norbit’s childhood friend, who returns to town with her fiancée played by Cuba Gooding, Jr. This presents a challenge to Norbit that will hopefully bring him out of his shell. This movie is so far from reality of male-female dynamics in the real world, it can only happen in a Hollywood movie. In the real world a gorgeous woman like Newton will never choose a wimp like Norbit. He does practically nothing to show any grain of confidence except for a brief moment towards to the end when she almost marries her fiancée. This is certainly not a relationship that can last. Why?

Norbit is one-dimensional, predictable. He puts himself down to make her happy and even states his sole purpose for the rest of his life is to make her happy as happy as she made him. And over time this type of relationships dynamic has been shown to cause resentment in women. Women will get bored with a man like Norbit very quickly because everything he says or does will be predictable.

So what is my advice to you? Find your own path, your own purpose and focus on realising your own ambitions. When you are on this journey you become much more attractive to women and people in general. You then go about your life inviting others on the journey. And when it’s an attractive woman, you say it’ll be great if you join me, but I’m going to continue anyway.

If you are lonely or frustrated with your dating life I highly recommend you read David DeAngelo’s ebook Double Your Dating.

Popularity: 17% [?]