Negotiating with the gods.

It's goofy, except it totally works - if you do it right.

As many of you know, I played poker for a living for decades. And even though I knew it was silly, I couldn’t help sometimes “rooting” for the card I wanted to magically appear.

As if I could make a heart that didn’t pair the board come out on the river through sheer force of will.

Of course, I couldn’t. That’s not how it works. And I didn’t really do this that often. It’s more effective to do other things with your time and attention, like looking at your opponent watching that river card get dealt out to see what his reaction is.

But still, there is a type of behavior that, on the surface, seems just as silly as rooting for a favorable turn of the card. Except that these things totally work.

One is prayer. Another is positive visualization — the kind of thing talked about in books like The Secret that was super-popular a while back. Another is what people do who believe they can “self-author” their experience in the simulation they believe this world to be.

All these types of techniques are ways people try to “negotiate with the gods”. Or, put another way, they are techniques by which people try to manifest their hopes and dreams and goals and aspirations into existence.

And while the described mechanism might be metaphysically incorrect, it is true that these techniques actually work — even super-silly ones like love potions or voodoo or magical incantations.

How can this be?

Simple. It’s because the mechanism isn’t what matters. The focus is what matters.

Each of these techniques causes you to orient yourself, your mind and your will, towards some specific goal. It is this change in orientation, this change in focus, that is doing the magic — because it isn’t magic.

If you spend time orienting your system towards a particular goal, whether in prayer or visualization or whatever, you increase your mind’s focus on that thing — and also what steps are required to accomplish that thing. You open up your mind to be able to see how to get from where you are to where you want to be.

Over time, if you stick with the technique, you literally rewire your brain such that your perceptions will alter. You will notice in your environment more things that can help you advance your goals — things you would otherwise not notice.

Don’t believe me? On another show of mine, Natural Order Podcast, ep 9, I laid out how this works. What you believe literally impacts what you perceive. What you see and hear changes depending on what you’re thinking about. Your mental framework literally alters your sensory inputs, and also what you think about those inputs.

It’s easy to see why this is true. Imagine that you’ve been engaging in “the secret” or positive visualization for a few weeks, focusing on the goal of growing your small business. By focusing all your attention on that goal, you will begin seeing all the different ways you might attain it.

Your eyes and ears and mind will be receptive to things in your environment (people, books, podcasts, shops, etc) that can help you advance your goals in a way that never would have happened if you hadn’t primed your mind to be receptive to these things.

When you alter your focus, you alter what you perceive. You literally alter what comes into your mind and how it’s processed. You also enhance your motivation to actively seek out methods of accomplishing your goals.

Another example. If you pray every night and every morning about some particular problem, if you really focus on that problem, over and over again, meaningfully, an answer (several, probably) will appear.

I can’t say it’s God that’ll be answering your prayer, but since we don’t know where our thoughts come from, hey, why not?

The point remains the same, regardless of the metaphysical operating mechanism.

That which you orient yourself towards, becomes your aim. What you aim at determines what your mind and your senses are attuned to. It is this focus that allows you to manifest your desires into reality — through your actions.

Even my dumb habit of trying to conjure an Ace or a 6 to come on the river (I’ve switched games from Hold’em to 7-Stud hi/lo split) so my low becomes a straight isn’t completely useless.

A person who is that emotionally invested in the outcome of a hand of poker is the kind of person who is orienting himself towards caring about winning and losing. Such a person is more likely to pick up a book or two and try to employ strategies that will increase his chances of beating the game on a consistent basis.

It’s not as strong a technique as sustained positive visualization or prayer, but it’s a start.

So, when people say that we can’t negotiate with the gods, I say, “Nonsense! We do it all the time.” And the more attentively and deliberately we do it, the more happiness and success we will achieve.

Naturally,

Adam

PS: If you want me to help you twist the arms of the gods such that Aces or 6’s or non-board-pairing hearts come on your rivers, seek me out here.