Change Of Perspective

Help for paranoid people

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Do you tend to notice cruelty in the world, and miss out on much of the positive stuff?

Do you feel superior to all the people in the world you see doing bad things?

Are you constantly comparing yourself to others, and are you preoccupied with what others think of you?

Do you often feel separate from people, different and alone?

I know I just made my email opening sound like the beginning of a Nyquil commercial. It’s not a great way to open an email, and not something I like to do in general. But if you have a genuine new diagnosis for a genuine long-running problem that people have, often the best thing is to call it out.

I can tell you, with only a small amount of hesitation, that when I first read the symptom checklist above, I got quite tingly, like Spider-Man when he senses trouble. I recognized myself in pretty much all of the symptoms, unpleasant (“missing out on the positive stuff”) and unflattering (“feeling superior to others”) as they are.

The list of symptoms above came from a curious book called Transforming Your Self, by a guy named Steve Andreas, who was an NLP trainer. I randomly came across Andreas’s book and read it 5 years ago.

Along with another half-dozen impactful self-help books I have read since, Transforming Yourself has formed the start of a self-transformation journey I am still on, which has overall made me a significantly happier and more resilient person than I had been in the decades preceding.

Chapter 11 of Transforming Your Self is titled, “Changing the ‘Not Self.'” It’s in that chapter that, almost as a throwaway, the above list of symptoms comes.

According to the book, the diagnosis, the disease or syndrome that brings all those symptoms together, is paranoia. And what’s the root cause behind paranoia and all the real-life symptoms it translates to?

Says Steve Andreas in Transforming Your Self, the root cause is negative self definitions, specifically self-definitions that are negative not in substance, but in form. For example:

A. I am a good person (a self definition that’s positive in substance and in form)

B. I am a bad person (a self definition that’s negative in substance but positive in form)

C. I am not a bad person (a self definition that’s positive in substance but negative in form)

Andreas says that paranoia, and all the misery it brings, is the consequence of otherwise good people defining their identity by using negative syntax, as in option C. “I am NOT the kind of person who…”

Is Andreas right? Or is this more unprovable NLP mystification?

I don’t know. Like I said, I can only tell you the idea hit me when I read it, and it seems to have permeated me since, and done me some good. I’m sharing it with you now for two reasons:

1. Because maybe you recognize yourself in the list of symptoms above as well, and maybe knowing the possible root cause can be helpful to you too.

2. Because, if you insist on a marketing lesson, this story illustrates the power of a new diagnosis, and specifically a new problem mechanism or a root cause, in creating a feeling of insight, which can be exploited for marketing purposes.

That’s the end of my email about paranoia. And now, since I am still promoting my new 10 Commandments book, let me move to that.

You might think that my email today was not wise in its opening (a bunch of Nyquil-commercial questions) and is not wise in its closing (an offer that’s entirely unrelated to the topic of the email).

The only thing I can say in my defense is that emotions linger and transfer. In other words, if you create a feeling of insight with one story, your readers’ minds will transfer or associate some of that feeling with your offer when it does come.

This is not particular to the feeling of insight. The same holds for feelings like trust, suspicion, or even the willingness to obey.

In fact, that’s what the influence professionals I profile in my new book, people like con men and pickup artists and even stage magicians, fundamentally rely on, and it’s what my new book is about in many ways.

In case you still haven’t gotten your copy, but are curious:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

The Power of Not Now

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I’m reading a book called Straight-Line Leadership. The central message of the book is, “Just Do It.”

Of course, you can’t publish an entire book with just three words, so this three-word idea is developed in lots of different ways across 50 chapters. For example, in chapter 41, “Now Versus Later,” Straight-Line Leadership tells you:

===

The only time you can ever do something about anything is now.

The problem with individuals who tolerate mediocrity in their lives is that no matter what good idea for taking action comes up, it’s never going to happen now. It’s an idea for some distant future. People who struggle have great ideas that they will implement “some day in the future.”

Almost everyone, deep down, knows what to do to get whatever result they truly want. It’s just that they are not choosing to do it right now. “Getting around to it” is not leadership.

The future is a terrible place to put an action plan because the future does not exist. Literally.

===

It’s a good message. Clear, simple, powerful. But as with most clear, simple, powerful messages, it’s only half the story, at least the way I see it.

In my experience, some actions are simply too painful or frightening to take now. And no amount of repeating to myself to “just choose to do it now, because it’s either now or never,” changes that.

And yet, those actions become manageable in time. What’s changed? Time has passed. And also, something in my head has changed, due to trying to get myself to act now, and failing at it.

I guess I’m not the only one who feels like this.

I was recently listening to an interview with a wicked smart guy named Michael Levin. Levin is a professor of biology at Tufts. He works on strange topics that sound like the science of the 23rd century rather than the 21st. Stuff like, how do we tap into the electrical language that determines the way organisms determine their shape, so we can get people to regrow, say, an amputated arm?

Anyways, in this interview, which was more philosophical than scientific, Levin said:

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A useful sense of free will is very time-extended. You don’t have, right now, complete control of whatever your next thought is going to be.

And in fact, as you think about it, free from what? Free from past experience? No. And you don’t want to be free from past experience because then you don’t learn.

Free from the laws of physics? No.

So what do you really have in the moment, like within a narrow timeframe? Maybe not much.

But over the long-term, by the application of consistent effort, what you can do is shape your own cognitive structure so that in the future, new things are open to you. Your own structure allows you to do new things.

===

What you have “free will” over is consistent effort. That might not translate into results. It might not even translate into action (this is the point of departure from what Straight-Leadership is saying above).

But consistent effort over the long term will in time change your brain, change your actions, and produce results that change your life. Some time. In the future. Even if it’s not cool to talk about that, because it’s supposedly “either now or never.”

So there you go. A philosophical and counterproductive email, at least from the perspective of selling you something today.

The straightforward message of Straight-Line Leadership, “Just Do It, And Now” is a much better message if you want to sell people stuff.

All I can say in my defense is that I wanted to write today’s email, because this newsletter serves several purposes beyond just selling you stuff.

That said, if you are ready to take action today, specifically around communicating regularly with your clients and prospects, and building up your image as a leader in what you do, then good on you.

And if you want my help with doing that, then take a look here:

​https://bejakovic.com/deh​

Bombarded by water

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A-list copywriter Richard Armstrong once gave a talk in which he said how stupid it is to claim that we are “bombarded by information.” Says Richard:

“It makes no more sense to say we are bombarded with information than it would be to say that a fish is bombarded with water.”

A fish lives in water. It swims in water. It breathes water. In fact, it’s largely made up of water. And so it is with us and information.

I’m telling you this in case you are still on the fence about joining ChatGPT Mastery, which I’ve been promoting since Monday, and which will close to new members tonight, Thursday, at 12 midnight EST.

ChatGPT Mastery is about, well, mastering ChatGPT. And you may feel that info about ChatGPT is as abundant as ocean water. So why pay for it, and why pay the hefty $199 that ChatGPT Mastery asks of you?

The fact is, none of us have any hope of putting our arms, or fins, around the ocean. It’s too immense a body of water.

But there are small, local currents in the ocean which flow in the direction you want to go, and which take you there in less time and with less effort than it might take otherwise.

First, you either have to find these currents or have somebody else point them out. Second, and critically, you have to give these currents a chance to carry you along.

ChatGPT Mastery is one such forward-moving current, at least if your desired destination is automating parts of your business, freeing up your time, even (gasp!) increasing your productivity while working less.

I’ve pointed out this current for you. But you still have to give it a chance to carry you along.

Mind you, I’m not saying that paying for information guarantees you will benefit from it. I’d be a billionaire had I implemented and benefited from every info product I ever bought. And I’d be President of the U.S., due to sheer popularity, if all the people who bought stuff from me implemented and benefited from it. (Not really — The U.S. Constitution prohibits me from ever becoming president, since I wasn’t born in the U.S., but you get my point.)

That said, paying for info on how to master ChatGPT does make it more likely you will take this information for real and benefit from it.

As does the cohort nature of ChatGPT Mastery, with its start and end dates.

As does the fact that ChatGPT Mastery is delivered to your inbox daily, where you can’t ignore it as easily, and where it can keep nudging you to get some value from it.

You might think it’s silly of me to harp on these things. But I have been selling information online long enough that I know what a difference irrational things like these make to the value of information and teaching.

It’s these kinds of difference that actually allow you to slip inside that forward-moving current, so you can get carried along to your desired destination more quickly and easily.

Like I said, ChatGPT Mastery closes tonight at 12 midnight EST. If you’d like to find out more about it, specifically why I am endorsing it, here’s my original email from Monday:

===

Today I’d like to recommend to you a 30-day program called ChatGPT Mastery, which is about… mastering ChatGPT, with the goal of having a kind of large and fast horse to ride on.

Here’s a list of exciting facts I’ve prepared for you about this new offer:

#1. ChatGPT Mastery is a cohort course — it kicks off and ends on a specific date — that helps you actually integrate and benefit from AI.

The idea being, things in the AI space are changing so fast that anything that came out even a few months ago is likely to be out of date.

And rather than saying “Oh let me spend a few dozen hours every quarter researching the latest advice on how to actually use this stuff” — because you won’t, just like I won’t – you can just get somebody else to do the work of cutting a path for you through the quickly regenerating AI jungle.

#2. I myself have gone through through ChatGPT Mastery, from A-Z, all 30 days, during the last cohort.

I didn’t pay for it because I was offered to get in for free.

I did go through it first and foremost for my own selfish interests — I feel a constant sense of guilt over not using AI enough in what I do — and only then with a secondary goal of promoting it if I benefited from it enough. So here I am.

#3. ChatGPT Mastery is created and run by Gasper Crepinsek. Gasper is an ex-Boston Consulting Group guy and from what I can tell, one of those hardworking and productive consulting types, the kind I look upon with a mixture of wonder and green envy.

But to hear Gasper tell it, he quit his consulting job to have more freedom, started creating info products online like everybody else, realized he had just bought himself another 70 hr/week job, and then had the idea to automate as much of it as he could with AI.

He’s largely succeeded — he now spends his mornings eating croissants and sipping coffee while strolling around Paris, because most of his work of content creation and social media and even his trip planning have been automated in large part or in full.

#4. Before I went through the 30 days of ChatGPT Mastery, I had already been using ChatGPT daily for a couple years. Inevitably, that means a good part of what Gasper teaches was familiar to me.

Other stuff he teaches was simply not relevant (I won’t be using ChatGPT to write my daily emails, thank you). The way I still benefited from ChatGPT Mastery was:

– By having my mind opened to using ChatGPT for things for things I hadn’t thought of before (just one example: I did a “dopamine reset” protocol over 4 weeks, which was frankly wonderful, and which ChatGPT designed for me, and which I got the idea for while doing ChatGPT Mastery)

– By seeing Gasper’s very structured, consulting-minded approach to automating various aspects of his business, and being inspired to port some of that to my own specific situation

– With several valuable meta-prompts that I continue to use, such as the prompt for generating custom GPTs

#5. The way you could benefit from ChatGPT Mastery is likely to be highly specific to what you do and who you are.

The program focuses on a different use case every day. Some days will be more relevant to you than others. The previous cohort covered topics like competitor analysis, insights based on customer calls or testimonials, and of course the usual stuff like content and idea generation, plus hobuncha more.

If you do any of the specific things that Gasper covers, and if you do them on at least an occasional basis, then odds are you will get a great return on both the time and money and that ChatGPT Mastery requires of you, before the 30 days are out.

Beyond that, ChatGPT Mastery can open your mind to what’s possible, give you confidence and a bunch of examples to get you spotting what could be automated in what you do, plus the techniques for how to do it (I’ve already automated a handful of things in what I do, and I have a list of next things to do).

#6. The time required for ChatGPT Mastery is about 15-20 minutes per day for 30 days. The money required is an upfront payment of $199.

I can imagine that one or the other of these is not easy for you to eke out in the current moment.

All I can say is that it’s an investment that’s likely to pay you back many times over, in terms of both time and money. And the sooner you make that investment, the greater and quicker the returns will come.

#7. If you’d like to find out the full details about ChatGPT Mastery, or even to sign up before the cohort kicks off:

https://bejakovic.com/gasper

Truly tragic street lamp

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Today being March 31, it seems a good time to take you back exactly 135 years, to March 31 1889, when the disgraceful Eiffel Tower was inaugurated.

A few Parisians of the day looked up at the giant new metal structure and said, “Formidable!”

Mostly though, the reactions were super negative.

Petitions started circulating, calling the Eiffel Tower “monstrous” and a “gigantic black smokestack.” One wag called it a “truly tragic street lamp.” Writer Guy de Maupassant supposedly dined at the restaurant inside the Eiffel Tower often — because it was the only place in city where he couldn’t see the structure.

Today, of course, the Eiffel Tower is iconic, perhaps the most iconic landmark in the world. (In my mind, the only possible rivals are the Statue of Liberty and the Colosseum.)

The Eiffel Tower has become a source of pride for the locals, the backdrop of a million and one romantic movies, and a contributor of billions of dollars in tourist revenue to the city of Paris.

All that’s to say, it’s silly to jump at every new thing simply because it’s new and must therefore be better.

It’s equally silly to pan and nay-say every new thing simply because it’s not what has come before.

I’m telling you this because I continue to promote the Royalty Ronin membership, and with new gusto — because after a week’s free trial, the first commissions have started to clink into my tin cup.

Travis Sago, the guy behind Royalty Ronin, might be new to you.

More importantly, many of the sales and marketing ideas that Travis teaches, like auctions, licensing, or “tapping” might be new to you.

Human instinct is to think in black and white — either, “This is gonna save me,” or, “This must be a scam.”

I’d like to invite you to take a closer look, and make up your mind based on some finer distinctions than just a Paris-style knee-jerk reaction.

I can tell you I’ve personally found Royalty Ronin and Travis’s marketing and sales ideas very profitable.

Maybe you will as well. Or maybe you won’t. Again, there’s a week’s free trial, so you don’t risk anything. If you’d like to take a closer look:

​https://bejakovic.com/ronin​

P.S. If you’ve already signed up for a trial of Royalty Ronin via my link above, forward me Travis’s welcome email — the one with “Vroom” in the subject line.

I have a small but growing bundle of bonuses, including my Heart of Hearts and my Inspiration & Engagement trainings, which are waiting for you as a way of saying thanks for taking me up on my recommendation.

Why I shouldn’t be allowed near a toaster

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A couple days ago, I started promoting a free trial of a Skool group as an affiliate… or so I thought.

At first, I figured Skool doesn’t let me see who had signed up via my affiliate link, since it’s a free-trial offer.

It turns out Skool is happy to show me this information. The problem was that I didn’t use the affiliate link when linking to this offer. Instead, I used the bare link.

Strike one.

A few days before that, I wrote an email and scheduled it for my usual sending time between 8 and 9 o’clock.

Except it only turned out the next morning, after several dedicated readers wrote to ask me where my email is, that I realized I had scheduled my email for the wrong day, and for “am” instead of the usual “pm.”

Strike two.

A few days before that, I did a list swap with Jason Resnick.

I gave Jason a link for the lead magnet I was offering… and then a day later, I airheadedly used the same URL, as a redirect on my site, to link to Jason’s landing page from my own email.

If that URL chicanery doesn’t make any sense to you, don’t worry. It takes a special kind of genius to understand.

The end result of all that genius was that a bunch of Jason’s readers, who clicked on the link in Jason’s email in order to get my lead magnet, were redirected to Jason’s optin page instead.

That meant that not only did I miss out on a bunch of new subscribers, but I created a hassle and a headache for my JV partner.

Strike three.

The honest-to-woodheadedness truth is that I really should not be allowed anywhere near a computer, smart TV, or toaster.

Because if there’s a chance to harebrain some setting, to forget to push some button or to push the wrong button that shouldn’t be pushed, and to cause the toast to burn as a result, then I am sure to find that button.

And yet, I keep living. In fact, I keep living quite well. Which brings me to an idea I’d like to share with you.

That idea is the Casino of Life.

Unlike in a normal casino, when you play inside the Casino of Life, you don’t need to have a winning hand to win.

Because in the Casino of Life, you can walk around all the tables, see which hands other people have, and you can bet on their hands. And not only that.

In the Casino of Life, if you yourself happen to have just one good card, for example, the Ace of Copy, or the Queen of Traffic, or maybe the King of Offers, you can find somebody who is missing just your trump card to form a royal flush, and to win a bunch of gold doubloons, which you can then split.

The Casino of Life is a reframe I got a long while ago from Internet marketer Travis Sago.

Not very coincidentally, the Skool group I am promoting as an affiliate is Travis’s Royalty Ronin, which I myself happily pay for, and have done for the past year.

In fact, the reason I screwed up the affiliate link in the first place was that I promoted Royalty Ronin some time last year, for free, before Travis had an affiliate program for it. I simply thought Royalty Ronin would be interesting and valuable for people on my list.

I still think so.

Because Royalty Ronin isn’t just about getting access to a bunch of Travis’s unique and powerful marketing ideas (including via a suite of Travis’s $3k-$6k courses, which come as bonuses for Royalty Ronin).

It’s also about steady exposure to Travis’s brain-shifting insights and inspiration, like the Casino of Life idea, which have made all the difference for me at the right moments.

Plus, Royalty Ronin is also about joining a community of 500+ motivated, skilled, and yet imperfect people, all of whom are holding unique hands, some of them very powerful, and some missing exactly the card you may be holding.

I’m not much of a networker. I haven’t been taking much advantage of the community aspect of Royalty Ronin. Altogether I’ve connected with fewer than 5 people there.

Even so, just one connections I made in Ronin last year, with media buyer Travis Speegle, paid for yearly subscription for Royalty Ronin for the next few years.

I bet that in the next year, I will make at least one more connection which will pay for a few more years.

Like I said, Travis is now offering a week’s free trial to Royalty Ronin.

If you’d like to check out this unique casino, see who else is inside, or even form a connection or two that can pay for many years of being a member, maybe in just the next week:

​​https://bejakovic.com/ronin​ (yes, the link has been fixed)

P.S. If you already signed up for a trial of Royalty Ronin via the link above, even though it wasn’t my affiliate link until now, then send me the confirmation email you got from Travis, the one with “Vroom” in the subject line.

I’ll honor my end of the deal, and send you my Heart of Hearts training, about how to discover what the people in your market really want, so you can better know what to offer them and how to present it, as a way of saying thanks for taking me up on my recommendation.

Wisdom and perspective shift from 2,000 years ago

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A few days ago, I finished reading a book I had started back on December 8, 2021.

All in all, it took me 1,185 days to finish this book.

In part, that’s because I was reading other stuff during that time as well.

In part, it’s also because this book comes in four volumes, each of which is about 500 pages long. Put together, the four volumes could kill you if they fell out of a third-story window and landed on your head as you strolled on the sidewalk below.

The book in question is Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. It’s a bunch of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, told, as per the title, in parallel, comparing and contrasting the lives of two similar men from two different times and places.

I read Parallel Lives because I like to get a shift in perspective. And one of the best ways to get a shift in perspective is to get away from current Amazon bestsellers, and go read something written 2,000 years ago.

I took hundreds of notes of interesting bits and pieces while reading Plutarch.

I went through them all after I finished, and I pulled out just 7 which I want to share with you today, because they relate to influence or simply because they are inspiring or funny. Here goes:

#1. No beginnings should be considered too small to be capable of quickly becoming great by uninterrupted endurance and having no obstacle to their growth by reason of being despised. [speaking about the rise of Julius Caesar in Caesar’s youth]

#2. “Indulgence is for slaves, but labor for princes.” [supposedly spoken by Alexander the Great]

#3. The most fundamental law is that which makes men in need of help follow him who can save them.

#4. He seemed to think victory over the enemy was merely a subordinate incident in the great work of disciplining his fellow-citizens. [about Aemilius Paulus, a Roman general who kept driving the Romans into various major wars]

#5. “The husband of an heiress should approach her at least thrice in each month. For even if no children are born, still this is a mark of respect to a good wife, and puts an end to many misunderstandings, preventing their leading to an actual quarrel.” [said by Solon, the Athenian lawgiver and philosopher, famous for his wisdom]

#6. It is a strange and unworthy feeling that prompts a man not to claim that to which he has a right, for fear that he may one day lose it; for by the same reasoning he might refuse wealth, reputation, or wisdom, for fear of losing them hereafter.

#7. With all the necessary acts of life, Lykurgus mingled some ceremony, which might enkindle virtue or discourage vice. [about Lycurgus, the legendary lawgiver who instituted Spartan society as we know it]

I think this last bit is particularly interesting. In fact, it’s why I’m writing today’s email.

I find reading to be one of the necessary acts of life, at least if you want to write for influence.

Since it is necessary, I might as well mingle some ceremony with it, such as marking momentous occasions like finishing a 3-year book-reading project.

Of course, it’s not only endings that can be celebrated with ceremony, but beginnings too.

Which is one reason why I’m making such a ceremony of announcing my upcoming book, full title:

10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters

My goal is to finish and publish this book by March 24… or some time after that?

In any case, I will be writing about this book and how it’s progressing, plus what I’m thinking about doing to make it a success when it comes out.

If you are interested in the topic of this book, and you’re thinking you might wanna get a copy when it comes out, click below. I’m planning some launch bonuses and I will be dripping them out early to people on this pre-launch list:

​​Click here to get on the bonus-dripping pre-launch list for my new 10 Commandments book​​​

Competition contradiction

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A paradox? A contradiction?

As part of the research for my new book, I’ve been going through a book by Sam Taggart. Taggart is the founder of D2D Experts, an online education company for door-to-door salesmen.

Taggart has a long but distinguished career selling door-to-door, everything from knives to solar panels to security alarms. His door-to-door selling career started at age 11, and culminated around age 35, when he finished as the #1 salesman in a company of 3,000 reps.

Anyways, grok this, if you can:

On page 44 of his book, Taggart’s top recommendation for motivating yourself is to look at all the other salesmen around you, to start tracking their results, and to start thinking of them as competition you have to beat.

And then on page 64, Taggart says how the best salesmen only view themselves as real competition.

Huh?

It’s easy to dismiss this as just contradiction or fluff inherent in a lot of sales material.

But I don’t think so.

A while back, meaning 3 years ago, I wrote about 6 characteristics of people who manage to do the seemingly impossible.

These 6 characteristics came out of a study of pro athletes who came back from devastating injury to compete at the highest level again… as well as star Wall Street traders who managed to beat not only all other traders, but the randomness inherent in the market as well.

One of the common characteristics of such people was that they simultaneously had a short-term view of the task to be accomplished, as well as a long-term view.

In other words, these folks looked at their situation from both 3 feet away, and from 3,000 feet up in the air. They did so the same time, or at least switching constantly between the two.

And so I think it is with Taggart’s advice — and so it is in many other situations in life.

We all want the “one thing” to cling to.

But quite often, particularly in the most important things in life, you gotta hold two opposing thoughts in your head, and you gotta live by both of them.

Of course you don’t really gotta. You don’t gotta do anything. But if you are currently worried by competition, whether that’s other businesses who target same audience as you, or other solutions or trends that tend to wipe out what you’re doing, or simply people within your own company who try to outperform you, then it might make sense to:

1. Make a list of all these villains, to keep track of their activity, and to start viewing them as competition to be beaten

2. To ignore them and to focus on doing the best you can

Anyways, I’ll have Taggart’s advice — not this, but something less contradictory — in my new book, full title:

10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters

My goal is to finish and publish this book by March 24. The way things are going, I might have to shave half my head, like Demosthenes, to keep myself from leaving the house until the book is finished.

In any case, I will be writing about this book and how it’s progressing, plus what I’m thinking about doing to make it a success when it comes out.

If you are interested in the topic of this book, and you’re thinking you might wanna get a copy when it comes out, click below. I’m planning some launch bonuses and I will be dripping them out early to people on this pre-launch list:

​​Click here to get on the bonus-dripping pre-launch list for my new 10 Commandments book​​

The maple syrup theory of influence

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Fascinating fact about me:

I studied math in college.

Like I said, fascinating. And it gets even more so, because I was never good at math.

Not in elementary school. Not in high school.

Somehow though, when college came, and I could choose to study what I wanted, and I never again had to take any math classes, I wound up taking math classes, and lots of them.

I think I was trying to prove something to myself. I managed it, too, because it turns out you can get a lot done with just curiosity and internal motivation, even in the absence of talent.

Anyways, one time I was taking a math class about “complex analysis” — about how to work with complex numbers, which have both a real and an “imaginary” component (ie, involving the square root of -1).

Whatever. Don’t worry about the math.

The important thing is simply that complex numbers have their own bizarre rules for how they are multiplied and divided, how you take a derivative, how you do integrals.

I never understood complex numbers, not really. But I diligently worked through the course.

I remember a specific homework problem, and the epiphany that came with it.

I was struggling to apply the rules in the textbook. But with some derring-do and with a few leaps of logic, I managed to finally solve the problem and reach the answer.

The answer was simple and elegant.

I remember a feeling of understanding washing over me. I got it, whatever this particular section was about. It made sense to me now. All the struggle and confusion and work had paid off.

Then, as a proper diligent student, I double-checked my answer in the back of the textbook.

It turned out I was 100% wrong. Not just that I’d made some screwup in the calculation, but that I was completely off track. I had misapplied and misunderstood the rules. My feeling of understanding, which had washed over me and given me such relief, corresponded to nothing in reality.

When I was a kid, like 9 years old, I had a feeling I understood myself and the world perfectly.

It was pretty late in life, in my late teens or maybe my early 20s, when I started to notice cracks in my confident understanding of the world.

Gradually, I started to develop a theory that emotions like certainty, understanding, and insight are like maple syrup.

Maple syrup can be poured over whatever you want — pancakes, French toast, waffles.

Likewise, emotions can be poured over ideas that are true, ideas are not true, or even ideas that are complete waffles, meaning some kind of undefined nonsense, like my understanding of complex analysis rules.

On the one hand, it doesn’t get more unsettling than this. I realized my most basic, certain feelings of rightness are not actually reliable.

On the other hand, it was a powerful realization.

For one thing, it was liberating.

It meant that, even if I’m sure — if it cannot, will not, won’t work, if it’s black and not white, if I am right and not wrong — I don’t really know for a fact. It pays to go get some real-world data — the equivalent of checking the right answer in the back of the textbook.

For another, I’m not the only person whose emotions work like this. I find it’s pretty universal.

And it turns out there are ways to get other people to pour their own emotional syrups — whether of desire, or of insight, or of trust — over pancakes, French toast, waffles, donuts, rice, hot dogs, sponge cake, and pretty much any basic foodstuff you may have to offer them.

You can make hot dogs sweet and sponge cake delicious, even irresistible, if you pour enough maple syrup on them.

And you can make honest, dry, uninspiring information exciting and eye-opening and urgent, much in the same way.

Perhaps you’d like some specific techniques of influence, which you can apply to get your audience to pour out their own emotional maple syrups over your offers?

You can find such techniques, delivered daily to your inbox, inside my Daily Email Habit service.

You even double-check your own answers against my answers, which like today, tend to be based on the day’s Daily Email Habit prompt.

In case you’d like to prove something to yourself:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The Bejako starter pack

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You might be familiar with the concept of a starter pack. It’s a kind of meme format.

In a starter pack, people put together a few images or phrases or whatever, which are representative of something — a gym bro, a local Mexican restaurant, a 1980s heavy metal video.

New Yorker magazine does its own variant, where it asks people they profile to create a starter pack for themselves, consisting of a movie, a TV show, a book, and an album, which are somehow representative.

I had to try it. So here goes:

Bejako starter pack ingredient #1 (movie): The Princess Bride

If you’ve been a reader of this newsletter for a while, this should be no surprise.

My optin page literally says:

“I write a daily email newsletter about direct marketing, copywriting, and my love for the books and screenplays of William Goldman.”

Well, Goldman wrote the screenplay for The Princess Bride, based on his book of the same title.

(He also wrote the famous line, “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” On my website, that morphed into, “Hello. My name is John Bejakovic. You found my website. Prepare to decide.”)

The fact is, I saw The Princess Bride for the first time when I was 11. It was the perfect mix of adventure, romance, and self-aware humor for 11-year-old Bejako.

I guess I’ve never really matured past 11.

The only thing that’s changed for me over the years, as I’ve continued to re-watch this movie, is that I appreciate how it doesn’t talk down or moralize to you.

“Life is pain,” is the core message of the story. In the end, the bad guy goes free. And the main character, Westley, dies. Though ok, miracles do sometimes happen, as do happy endings.

Bejako starter pack ingredient #2 (TV show): Twin Peaks

David Lynch, who made Twin Peaks, died a couple weeks ago. There aren’t many celebrities whose deaths I care about… but I cared about Lynch. He was hinting there might be a season 4 of Twin Peaks, and now it will never happen.

Season 2 of Twin Peaks, which came out in 1990, was largely atrocious.

Season 3 of Twin Peaks, which came out 25+ years later in 2017, was surprisingly good.

But the best is still the original season 1, which Lynch directed and co-wrote.

It has the usual Lynch blend of mystery, sex, horror, weirdness, and quaintness. Plus beautiful shots of wind blowing through the trees.

Bejako starter pack ingredient #3 (book): Dune

I had the most trouble choosing a book for my starter pack.

That’s because, as I wrote a few weeks ago, I don’t particularly enjoy reading, even though I’ve read a lot my whole life.

I also wasn’t sure how to choose a book here. A book that influenced me? Or that I enjoyed reading? Or that I thought was particularly well written?

I ended up going with enjoyment, and picked Frank Herbert’s Dune.

I first read Dune when I was 20, and then a couple more times since.

The story is familiar enough after all the TV shows and movies made based on it in recent years.

I guess what I like in it, beyond the familiar but rousing story of the arrival of “The One,” are the elements of religion… the formation of legend… plus simply the promise of a drug you can take, which makes you so smart you can literally predict the future by seeing all possible outcomes in parallel.

Bejako starter pack ingredient #4 (album): Station To Station by David Bowie

I like a lot of Bowie albums. This one is my favorite. I like the style, sound, strangeness of it, all mostly fueled by cocaine and paranoia.

By the way, coked-up Bowie from this period has inspired the central tenet of this newsletter. In an interview with Playboy, Bowie said:

“Nothing matters except whatever it is I’m doing at the moment. I can’t keep track of everything I say. I don’t give a shit. I can’t even remember how much I believe and how much I don’t believe. The point is to grow into the person you grow into. I haven’t a clue where I’m gonna be in a year.”

Maybe in a year, I’ll have to do another, different starter pack.

For now, this one will give you more insight into me than most people who know me in person have.

As you can probably guess, today’s email was based on the Daily Email Habit “puzzle” I sent out today.

Sometimes it’s good to write emails like this, to surprise people, and to simply let them a bit into your own world.

But other times, entirely different emails are called for. And that’s what I make sure Daily Email Habit puzzles do, day in and day out.

If you’d like to get started with your own daily email habit, starting with tomorrow’s puzzle, which is entirely different and much more difficult to guess at than today’s, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Energy makes time

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I signed up for newsletter just now.

It told to go to my inbox and click a link to confirm my subscription.

I felt a drive to go check my email as a result.

Except I have a new rule I am living by, where I only check my email between 12 noon and 2pm.

It’s 10:28am now.

Email is verboten.

So I opened up a notebook I’ve been keeping, where I’m tracking my email-checking urges. I write inside this notebook whenever I feel a drive to go check my email.

I wrote just now: “After signing up for some newsletter which is telling me to confirm my subscription in the email they just sent me.”

Who knows? I might one day realize something about when I feel the drive to pointlessly check email.

But that’s not why I’m writing these email-checking urges down. It turns out the simple act of writing them down is all I need to not check my email, either now or in five minutes from now, without any struggle or Thor-like willpower.

Since I’ve started this “write down when I feel an urge to check email” practice a few days ago, I’ve found it to be a useful hack.

But it’s probably only a hack. In other words, in the absence of other things, there’s a good chance it will work for a few more days, at which point my brain will adjust and the hack will stop working.

Which brings me to what I really wanna share with you in this email.

Because the newsletter I signed up for this morning was by a woman named Mandy Brown.

I signed up because I liked one single article she had written, which I came across a few weeks ago.

The article is titled, “Energy makes time.”

Brown is apparently a coach for “high performers.” These people, says Brown, typically have tried all the possible time-management hacks out there.

Many of these hacks work – until they don’t.

After the last hack has failed, the high performers come to Brown. And she suggests they try something different.

She suggests they realize that, much like money and pizza dough, time is actually a very stretchy substance.

A single day can shrink down to where you can barely get the dishes done before it’s time to go to bed, with nothing else fitting inside the 24-hour window… or a day can stretch so you can travel halfway around the world, meet a bunch of new people, have several great business or personal ideas along the way, and write the outline for a new book, and much of a first draft to boot.

The difference, says Brown, is that we’ve been conditioned to think that everything we do costs time.

And in the conveyor-belt optimization of human productivity, that means that certain things drop away — “There simply isn’t enough time, at least not now!”

That calculus ignores the fact that there are things that actually give you time back. That make more time for you. That stretch out the time you’ve got, so you can fit a boat and a house and maybe a book in there.

Which things give you time back?

Brown gives the example of doing art, if doing art is your thing.

But it really depends on you.

I’m guessing it can equally be going to the aquarium… or taking a day trip to see some place new… or spending a day with friends… or simply sitting down and writing out all the stuff that’s in your head, vague plans and fears included.

Anyways, it’s a kind of time management un-hack that’s been stuck in my mind ever since I read it in Brown’s article. (I read the article a few weeks ago. I re-read it now to write this email.)

Maybe “energy makes time” get stuck in your head as well. Maybe it give you some ideas to actually create time for yourself.

Now on to the topic of daily emails, which is my offer for you today.

Daily emails cost time. Much time.

But they can also create time. Much time. At least they do for me.

Writing daily emails gives me ideas. It gives me motivation. It gives me the satisfaction of accomplishing something every day, which makes it so I am more likely to accomplish something else, like attacking the dirty dishes that are waiting for me in the kitchen.

I don’t know if writing daily emails will make more time for you. Maybe it’s not your thing. Or maybe it is. There’s only one way to find out, and that’s to start, to stick with it for a while, and to see what happens.

And if you want my help starting and sticking with the habit of writing daily emails:

https://bejakovic.com/deh