Podcast 388

The Power Of Negative Thinking. See? Made you look. What’s needed is more positive thinking. Still, negative thinking is everywhere. We’ve talked about the power of turning off all the media long enough to hear internal thoughts. Now its time to talk about how many of those internal thoughts can be negative. Negative thoughts are like a cancer, that invades everything and makes it hard to act positively for yourself. Political people especially need to remember the need to be for something, as opposed to against seemingly everything. In this podcast, some experiences directly related to business, and the changes a radio guy goes through to become a podcaster and independent businessman. It’s not all wine and roses, but in the end, being able to be independent, to navigate deep and shallow water as you wish, is very fulfilling. Fact is, no one ever said it would be easy. One of the things you learn in business for yourself is, it’s always something. Negative thoughts include self doubt, worry, and fear of failure and especially success. So many conversations this fourth of July weekend, and almost none of them were about politics and what’s on the 24 hour news channel. Many of them were about other, deeper subjects; Proof that normal, everyday, regular people are thinking about complex and deep subjects, and doing amazing things. You just don’t see them on Fox and CNN, or hear them on talk radio, because they’re too busy talking about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and in talk radio’s case, running away from the issues. Find out how a simple piece of advice from a friend ended up as Podcast 388. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing of Saint Paul

Podcast 387

Noise and Unconscious Thought. What do you think about when you don’t know you’re thinking? Everyone has an unconscious stream of thought. It’s never ending. Most of the time we don’t even realize our brains are running, our minds are talking to us. Truth is, that unconscious stream of thoughts is often the well spring of good ideas and insight. It can be a gold mine of creativity, or a window into a person’s deepest motivations. Yet, everywhere we go these days is a video monitor, music playing, or a TV hooked up to one of the twenty four hour news channels. With all that ‘content’ being delivered everywhere, we don’t get a chance to experience silence long enough to actually experience our thoughts moment to moment. One could ask, ‘Do you ever listen to your thoughts’? Thing is, its near impossible for people to hear themselves think, because whether you’re putting gas in your car, going into a coffee store or restaurant, sitting at a bar, even doing your laundry at a laundromat, ‘content’ is always there. What they don’t tell you is, all that content is designed to use your emotion to persuade, or to hook into emotions to cause you to listen longer, watch longer and remember. With celebrities, politicians, even terrorists playing into the media for attention and persuasion, our thought streams are manipulated, and we don’t even know it. So for this Independence Day weekend in the United States, hopefully people can get a little slice of silence long enough to hear themselves think. What will you think about? Sponsored by X Government Cars

Podcast 386

Conservative Movement RIP. The last podcast in June before a short Hiatus, also announces News Cleanse 2015. The time is ripe. While travel broadens the horizons and raises the energy of the traveler, it seems staying glued to the television 24/7, hyper vigilance with news websites, social media and those email newsletters in everyone’s in boxes is making people more ignorant, as opposed to more informed. At the end of a week that saw two rulings by the Supreme Court go against the right, it’s clear the ‘last resort’ of the courts is not a solution for a ‘movement’ that is increasingly dependent on those same courts, Fox News and Talk Radio because it is too unorganized and ignorant of tactical politics to influence congress. A court that overreached in 2000, has been very sensitive to public opinion ever since and is loathe to do anything that might upset certain groups which are well organized and ready to march. Meanwhile, on the right, there is always another outrage playing on the twenty four hour cable channels and talk radio. You can be sure at the end of the day the right will do nothing…nothing about any of it. Given this reality, these court decisions are a surprise? Even with an open political system in Minnesota, Congressman Eric Paulsen recently suggested the biggest problem with the right is lack of engagement. That is, people to carry the water. What happens? The same people who have stood up to help year after year are the people representatives see, not to mention the lobbyists, operatives and big money donors. The so called grassroots movements that were ignited with the passing of the ACA have failed to mature, failed to organize, and are fading. Meanwhile millennials are entering the adult world and the political process and they have very different ideas than grandma and grandpa. It seems almost academic to ask whether the conservative movement that started with Murry Rothbard and Barry Goldwater, might have peaked with Reagan; The truth? Its bleached bones are visible in the desert, like the opening shot of a Breaking Bad episode. “Conservatives” these days can’t decide what they are and what they believe, much less build an organization and thus a real movement around some over arching theme, because there isn’t one. What’s left is a republican party that gets 38 to 44 percent of the vote in any given year, versus a democrat party that gets 38 to 44 percent of the vote in any given year, slightly different totals and majorities because of gerrymandering congressional districts, and a big fight held in the media — a circus, really — day after day. No wonder there are twenty or more running for president on the republican side. This doesn’t preclude a republican president, but it does mean a continuing drift toward a country where control of all social and economic interaction is in the hands of the state, whether the head of that state is republican or democrat. And that is exactly what we don’t need. It’s a tough message for people on the right to hear, but it’s the cold, hard truth. Sponsored by Baklund R&D