In the past two years I’ve multiplied my success opportunities which I list here in my success diary and I’ve gradually built up dozens of passive income streams, vastly increased my online real estate and started to earn a decent online income. What hasn’t happened yet is that I haven’t had any runaway success , you know something that just takes off explodes. So what twist or twinkle do I have to add to my businesses or business methods to achieve this? What turn of phrase added to a slice of luck will do it? Two developments recently I’ve been studying NLP with Chris Grimshaw, I’ve also been studying the process of Idea Creation which I have blogged here .  So I’m putting all the chances on my side and looking forward to 2009 with gusto.

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When I first worked in France in 1984 I and  my future wife visited Hagenau one chilly Sunday afternoon in Winter. Hagenau is right in the top corner of Alsace and France with a German border both to the East and the North. This is a lovely part of the world with beautiful villages in forested countryside. All the same I wondered what on earth we were doing wandering around this town where everything seemed closed on such a cold day and felt rather sorry for ourselves. A plaque revealed that Hagenau was one of those remote bits of France which remained in German hands until late in the war.

Twenty years later I happen to be watching Band of Brothers with only casual interest when they mention that they are trying to find a way of breaking down German defenses around Hagenau. Suddenly my attention is riveted on the program, this is not just television this is real history. Those young American soldiers who fought in Hagenau are now old but they didn’t spend just one chilly afternoon in Hagenau but months in trenches and dugouts, they didn’t go back as we did to a nice dinner in a centrally heated flat in Strasbourg.

Something like this brings it home just what those Veterans did for us

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I love to learn new words and came across Ontology  but the definition nearly blew my brains out namely: Ontology: the branch of metaphysics that studies the nature of existence or being as such phew! . In fact I needed the definition for its use in SEO this is somewhat different Ontology : (computer science) a rigorous and exhaustive organization of some knowledge domain that is usually hierarchical and contains all the relevant entities and their relations . This term is used in SEO for Keyword Research when you try and discover all related search phrases and keywords in order to discover potentially overlooked and therefore hopefully cheap long tail keywords .  So now you and I know!

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Suddenly there’s this tune going round in your head, it’s even more infuriating if you can’t remember what it was, well now scientists think they know how that happens.

Scientists may have found what makes a tune catchy, after locating the brain area where a song’s “hook” gets caught.

A US team from Dartmouth College, reported in the journal Nature, played volunteers tunes with snippets cut out.

They scanned for brain activity and found it centred in the auditory cortex – which handles information from ears.

When familiar tunes played, the cortex activity continued during the blanks – and the volunteers indeed said they still mentally “heard” the tunes.

Catchy songs

Researchers have previously argued that catchy songs work by causing a “brain itch” that can only be scratched by repeating the tune.

Our brains are marvellous things I love learning about their possibilities

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It’s because you attach no importance to it, yet knowing a few (safe) jokes can help break the ice in a social or business situation. It’s also because you were never taught jokes at school or punished for not doing your joke homework.

This is another example of how you are not doing something because you weren’t programmed to do it. You need to break out of that mold.

(print out this list of a Man walked into a Bar jokes and keep in your wallet or purse)

1. A Man walks into a bar and says ouch
2. A guy walks into a bar. The guy behind him ducks. (This took me a while to understand)
3. A fish walks into a bar and the bartender says: “What do you want?” The fish croaks “water.” (You must really croak this)
4. A cowboy walks into a bar, dressed entirely in paper and gets arrested for rustling.
5. A man and giraffe walk into a bar and get totally faceless drunk. The giraffe passes out and man gets up to leave. Barman says “you can’t leave that lying (lion) there.” Man says “it’s not a lion it’s a giraffe.”
6. This horse walks into a bar and the bartender says “Hey, buddy, why the long face…
7. A gorilla walks into a bar and orders a cold one. The bartender gives it to him and says “that’ll be $25.” A minute later making conversation the bartender says “We don’t get many gorillas round these parts” The gorilla replies”I’m not surprised at those prices..”
8. A man walked into a bar and sat down next to a man with a dog at his feet. “Does your dog bite?” he asked. “No.” was the reply. A few minutes later the dog took a huge chunk out of his leg. “I thought you said your dog doesn’t bite!” the man said indignantly. “That’s not my dog.” was the answer…
9. A termite walks into a bar and says, “Is the bar tender here?”
10. A Bear walks into a bar and asks for “A …………….. Beer” The Barman says why the long PAUSE , the Bear shows him his PAWS and says I was born that way!

Taken from my other blog successtheory.com

And Now with even more jokes at http://www.squidoo.com/a-man-walks-into-a-bar

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They had loved my CV so I expected the interview to be tough but no problem.
I arrived and they stated that there would be a practical test (I knew about this).

Anyway I had to use PHP to pull some very specific data out of their MySQL database. This is pretty much what I do every day, but I’m sitting in exam conditions on somebody else’s PC using different tools etc and worse their database is huge.

I got some of the basic data out but my time was up and I was shown out onto the street. This was a bit of a shock to my ego.

Later I realised that although their test was unduly tough I could blame myself for a few things:
Firstly you need to have several interviews to get yourself sharpened up (classic error)
Secondly I’d hadn’t FULLY read the instructions there was one clue as how to solve the problem which I read too late. (Even More Classic Error)

Finally I’m not too disappointed as the company was a real hot-house who would have expected blood.
And of course I’m saved for my passion Internet Marketing!

And here’s my new baby on Exactly How do You Generate New Creative Ideas?

http://www.squidoo.com/creatingideas

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