Cement Pills and Silver Bullets Chapter Sample AKA The Khan's Book

 

Look here it says RAW things aren't what you think

    The Great Work

    For many years now I have been on a deliberate effort to be who I want to be. To be happier than I was, and when I started to achieve this I would talk endlessly about it. So I decided that it was time to put these lessons into the written word. But why? Simple I want other people to see what I have done and more importantly see if those lessons might assist them in their life. I see so many people of potential in my day to day life, who merely want to enjoy the pursuit of happiness. The book began, and quickly turned into a mix of self help and memoir that was quite therapeutic to write. 

    A quick trip to a book store will show you entire sections dedicated to the topic of self help. I would often look over them, usually as I made a beeline for the sci fi and fantasy section, and think I do not know if my book fits in here. Not from an arrogance stance, but rather from content and aims. I wanted to create a small primer, a paperback that would be passed from person to person. A book of simple no nonsense advice designed, worded, and delivered to and by the average bloke. I am not trying to make you a millionaire, give you a 4 hour work week, or make you the next big influencer. Instead I wanted to see some people who have a lot to offer get to enjoy life more and shed some hang ups. The book covers everything from human nature, social and matters of love. All the way down to some nuts and bolts of daily life. Anything that I think will help the average bloke out.  

    So where is the great work up to? Well in stats terms it is a manuscript of one hundred and eleven pages, and some sixty thousands words. With more yet to do. It is a working draft and I will be hopefully sending it away to pitch to some publishers soon. I have sat on it for too long. It needs to be released into the world. To that end I want to host here the first sample of the book. 

CEMENT PILLS AND SILVER BULLETS
Chapter 1:

“A Man who has developed wide, broad shoulders feels superior and has a greater sense of security and confidence about him” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

 

“Never trust a man with small shoulders, he can’t carry responsibility” – My Father

   

            There is a reason for the inclusion of the above quotes, which I will get to in time. Either I can only assume if you are in possession of this book that you are a young man that is seeking to make a change, or perhaps a person that thought it would help you directed you to it. Either way you have something in common. We all have one thing in common. Responsibility. In life, we are bombarded with various responsibilities. It is also a certainty that as we age the list of our responsibilities increases. However, if you are like me then perhaps the one responsibility you have neglected is the one to yourself. The responsibility we have to ourselves to make sure we are happy. It is something I have seen time and time again, the ‘good guy’ syndrome. There is nothing wrong with being a nice guy. However, it should never come at the expense of the self.

The two quotes reflect the core of what you as a reader need to take from this book. Arnold’s quote is to remind you that confidence is the result of success. My Father’s quote is to remind you that taking responsibility is hard work. With this in mind, I wanted to create a guide. A collection of lessons that I have gathered over my time working to better myself. I want you to know that no matter where you are starting from you get to where you want to be. I want you to see where I started.

That is me at age eighteen, I was the quintessential ‘nice guy’. I weighed one hundred and six kilograms, and had a misguided belief that long hair really suited me. That long sleave shirt was always worn under a short sleaved school shirt. I had gone through all of High School as a nice guy. I had never had a girlfriend nor even made out with one. In fact, I chased after the same girl for four years to no success. I sucked at sports and just about every stereotypical masculine pursuit. Aside from winning two minor fights, I had barely done anything that was considered traditionally cool. I however, maintained an attitude that I could improve. It is said that nice guys finish last, it would be more apt to say we never finish. I continued in this fashion after high school in a strange kind of gap year. My focus was to get into University. In the meantime, I simply tried to earn money and spend time with friends. I also passed another important rite of passage, by finally getting my licence to drive. I gathered a few of my friends and took off on a road trip up the Australian coast. I still had no luck with the ladies, but I kept telling myself that I was fine and that things would just come right if I just waited.

            Then came my big turning point. I managed to somehow get a date with a beautiful young woman. I was stoked and planned the night out to ensure it was as romantic as possible. To this day I still do not know how it happened, but as the clock bells chimed I found myself getting my first kiss. As soon as our lips parted, the stupidest thing I have ever said came from mine. ‘I think, I can see myself falling in love with you’. Five minutes later and she was telling me that she could not do ‘this’. I will later explain what I did wrong, when we cover what little I know about women.

 

            I stopped at a petrol station and sat on my car drinking a coke, while I tried to figure out what had happened. The guy on that shift tried to comfort me by telling me it was all her fault. But then it suddenly hit me. ‘It aint you, it’s me’. The problem that I had was not external; it was neither society nor the girl. The problem was with me. I had taken the first step. I had taken responsibility for my position in life. This is the first step that you must take. You must take responsibility for your life and the changes you want to make to it.

 

            Over my studies at University to become a Teacher, we learnt about motivation. There are two main kinds of motivation, one ‘intrinsic’ and the other ‘extrinsic’. Intrinsic motivation is the good kind, it is the motivation that originates within ourselves. For example a man who loves football (NFL because Australian football sucks[1]) will train hard to maximise his chances of success and thus enjoyment. He wants to get better at a game he loves playing. His satisfaction and motivation come from himself. However, if a person were to get into football for the money, than they are acting under an extrinsic motivation. He is doing it for a material reward. Football is a means of getting money. Now I want you to ask yourself something. Have I been intrinsically or extrinsically motivated to change? Chances are you have been extrinsically motivated.

 

            Recently a good friend introduced me to a TV show called ‘Community’[2] there was a nice exchange in the pilot that really captures the dilemma of motivations.

 

Troy: Let me ask you something. People have been clowning me about this jacket since I got here, but if I take it off to make them happy, that just makes me weak, right?

Jeff: Listen, you take it off to make them happy, you leave it on to piss them off, either way it’s for them.

Troy: woah you just wrinkled my brain. 

---

[1] My hatred of Australian football comes mainly because I can never understand the logic of it. They want to get to the other end of the field so naturally passing the ball backwards is the logical move. Further more those that engage in football love to throw around the derogatory that others are gay. Interesting because a personally I think someone who openly enjoys a game of hugging other men, rolling around all hot and sweaty chasing a testicle shaped ball. Only to win the game with a rousing series of ass slaps and a ground shower really needs to work out there own homoerotic sport. If you have not realised by now I’m a terrific smart arse. I merely love pointing this interpretation out.

[2] Go and watch the damn show, I loved it.

 The point is that his decisions to change had hidden underlying extrinsic motivations. This is what I want you to be careful of before you even start. For example if you want to change yourself purely for others, than you should just put this book down right now. It just is not going to happen. I know this because I have entered into this kind of change with same motivation and it just is not enough. You need to want to make the change for yourself. It is vital because not only is extrinsic motivation too weak, it will actually see you rebel against change. Nice guys will already be familiar with this fact. Nice guys have in their past done things for others, only to find themselves upset when their efforts are not recognised or reciprocated. I will also wager you stopped doing for others, may have even become just a little bitter too. It is all about our motivations. It is not your fault, well not entirely. We have to be take responsibility for ourselves after all. It can be very confusing, no doubt made worse as we (well the majority of those reading) are products of western capitalism. Without going into a lofty speech let me explain. Growing up you were no doubt taught to, ‘eat your vegetables or you wont get ice cream’. You were indoctrinated into an extrinsically motivated system. You should not eat the vegetables just to gain a reward, but instead eat them because they are good for you. Do you see what I am driving at here? Every time I talk with students they tell me how they want to do X job because it pays X amount of money. I prefer to hear about the kid who wants to do something because they love doing it. Change not because others want you to, but because you want to. Make the changes that you want make, and always question your motivations.

 

            This brings me to my final point in this opening section. What do I mean by change? By this point I am sure some of you are ready to lynch me as a hypocrite. However, please stay your torches and pitchforks for a moment. When I say change, I do not mean for you to stop being who you are. The catch phrase of ‘just be yourself’ is used by those that mean to spare our feelings. They mean well but stunt our growth. A better alternative is to ‘be your best self’. I am advocating this change in this book. To become the ‘you’, that you want to become. The ‘best self’.

 

            For example when I was in high school I wore, as stated, clothes that were terrible. I never really dressed the way I wanted to because I was too shy and did not want to dry too much attention to myself. Now when I go out clubbing I wear this;

A vest would become my trademark, my own form of visual branding (I will cover visual branding in fashion). Whilst some kinder readers may be thinking, ‘wow cool’ I am sure that plenty will be thinking ‘god he looks lame’. Trust me I get both reactions the trick that you learn is to expect and deal with both reactions. There are roughly 6.7 billion people on this planet and we do not all like the same things. For many of you the ‘change’ you need to make is to do all the things you want to do, but have lacked the motivation. This is what people call ‘getting out of a rut’.

 

            So I want to sum up what has been said so far. The first important message I had for you was the lesson in responsibility. Just as I had to acknowledge my responsibility for my position in life you need to take responsibility for yours. The next lesson you have to learn, is to find and question your motivations. To ‘eat your veggies’, for their value and not just for the rewards. Leaving us with my final message to you, to promote the best self.

 

 

 

The first exercise

 

            This first exercise is a simple one, we must deal with how you perceive yourself. Perception has long been at the centre of problems people have with themselves. We have all no doubt met someone who can best be described at ‘try hard’ or ‘up themselves’. The kind of person who was clearly told they were very special, or will tell you black and blue that they are special. As much as I envy the unshakable ego of these folks, it must be said that ‘self praise is like masturbation, it feels great but if you start doing it everyone else leaves the room’. Likewise, those of us with negative perceptions of ourselves have usually had them enforced by others. So I will lead you to our first exercise. Meeting You.

 

            This is where the book becomes demanding. This is an interactive text. You need to get yourself some paper or ideally a journal to record the exercises in. Do not read ahead do the exercises as you reach them. So take your pen and paper and complete this first exercise.

 

1. Name three things that you want to do, but have been putting off.
   __________________________________________________________________________________________________
   __________________________________________________________________________________________________
   __________________________________________________________________________________________________
2. Describe the experience that you could best call your ‘wake up call’.
   ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
3. Name your three core qualities you have, three things you believe about yourself.
   ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
4. List three things you can not do
   ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Now after you have spent a few moments completing exercise one I want you to close your journal or put the piece of paper away for the moment so you cannot see the answers you have just given. I want to take a moment to discuss that whole ‘perceptions’ notion again.

 

            What is a perception? Without sounding like a Macquarie dictionary, perceptions are merely an awareness of something. It is how we see ourselves, or others. The problem with perceptions is that they lead to beliefs. More importantly they lead to the worst kind of beliefs; ‘limiting beliefs’. Limiting beliefs are those nagging doubts that prevent us from attempting or achieving something. Let me give you an example. A person may say something like ‘I suck at Math, I just can’t do maths’. They may not actually suck at math, but it is the perception they have at the current time.

 

How did they come to have this perception and thus the limiting belief that they suck at maths? In short you require a pretty specific set of circumstances to instil a perception and accompanying limiting belief. The individual requires a series of proofs or evidences generally attained over a period. You will be able to easily spot a limiting belief. Here is what to look for. A limiting belief will always start with a pessimistic ending. Such as ‘I can’t’, ‘I am not able to’, ‘not good enough to’ or my favourite ‘I could never’. These are all statements, made with outcome already decided in the speaker’s mind. So looking at our friend’s statement again we see the ‘I suck at maths’, they have already made up their mind. Now comes the next step they need to prove it, they need evidence. The power of the human mind is so great that it will look for evidence to prove what is being said. This is where the problem really begins. The brain and the speaker want to be right so they will perceive all evidence in a certain light. Thus, perceptions and evidence give birth to a conclusion and the subsequent limiting belief.

 

So take a quick look at your answers to number four on the exercise. Are there any answers that are demonstrating limiting beliefs? This is a loaded question because just as I tell my students you need to simply put ‘yet’ on the end of your answers. So getting back to our example, ‘I can not do math…yet’. Just as a series of evidences can be used to create a limiting belief, you must find some to disprove it. For example in our example, the individual says they cannot do maths. Yet I highly doubt they have gone their whole lives without once engaging in a financial transaction. In doing so they have used math, and this is evidence they can do math. Now the mind has a problem it has evidence that contradicts the currently held limiting belief. Now the individual merely reverses the process that lead to the limiting belief.

 

In a simpler fashion if;

 

PERCEPTION à        PROOF OF PERCEPTION      à PERIOD = BELIEF
(the view of self)   (some event that supports perception)  (over time)    (limiting)

 

            This is the basic explanation of how a limiting belief is formed. However, if we approach this cycle slightly differently we can rewrite that limiting belief that you have programmed into yourself. EG

BELIEF -à       CONTRADICTING PROOF  à  PERIOD    à PERCEPTION
(what do you believe?) (proof to the opposite)   (over time)        (new perception)

 

            Try using this right now. Take one of the limiting beliefs you might have about yourself and analyse it. Here is the checklist to decrypt these limiting beliefs, and I am going to use one from my own life. First some background. When I was about 14 years old, it became apparent that I had a curved spine. A series of CAT scans and X-rays later and it showed that I had both Kyphosis and Lordosis. In non-technical language, my upper vertebrae had grown in a wedge shape leading to a curve. In response, my lower back had gone in. Because of all this, I had grown to believe something;

“I can’t do physical stuff, because I’ll hurt my back”.

 

            Well seeing as I do pretty much whatever I want now including a solid 3 hours of exercise a week I have certainly proved this statement wrong. However, let us take it apart. We easily spot the limiting belief with the ‘I can’t’. However, where did the perception that I could not do ‘physical stuff’ come in? To put it simply people around us inform most of our perceptions, this was no different for me. It was only years later that I discovered where I got the perception that my back was somehow weak. My own mother. She, like any mother, worried that I would hurt myself. I took this perception on board and as a result, I took any experience of physical weakness to be a result of my back. Can you see how perception cast the ‘evidence’ in a certain light? So my perception of my back being weak, coupled with experiences of not being good at exercise lead to the limiting belief that my back left me unable to engage in ‘physical stuff’. Now take some of your limiting beliefs and really take them apart. I have no doubt that you will be able to replace the limiting beliefs you have. In fact, just to help you with this we have part five of the first exercise. A HA! You thought I was done with you.

 

5. Overcome, learn or fix the three things you can not do

 

These three things were not simply the first thing that came to mind. These are no doubt, either based on limiting beliefs, or things you have wanted to do but your mentality has held you back. I want you to go online, and do some research. You would be shocked at how awesome the internet truly is as a source of information. For example, I always wanted to improve my dancing and through the internet, I found some good videos and a location for learning Salsa dancing free.

 

Overcoming these things may seem like a monumental task at first. However, I promise that by the time you overcome one, the others become far easier. As you complete each challenge successfully, you will gain momentum. Small challenges give way to large ones and soon you are able to overcome anything in your path. Progression shall become your addiction. It will not be easy, but it will not be beyond you.

 

I hate to quote platitudes at people but I have already given two quotes so I shall end with a further two.

 

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure” – Marianne Williamson

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life” –Muhammed Ali

 

            We do not like to think of ourselves as being powerful; in fact, we are conditioned to feel helpless. After all, could you imagine a society of proud, strong individuals that felt empowered to take control of their destinies? Well politicians would certainly have a far harder time selling the drivel they spew forth on a daily basis. But more importantly we would not see the amount of depression and hopelessness we do today. In fact, a feeling of helplessness and a lack of power is one of the most common factors in suicide. If nothing else, you must take back the power that your limiting beliefs are keeping from you. You will be uncomfortable, you will feel stressed, but you will be better for it. 

 

Why you think you suck

 

            When you were five years old you were happy with life. Your challenges included writing your name, and not wetting your pants. You could make a friend by simply walking up to another kid and saying you liked his or her shoes. As you grew up things changed you learned about perceived differences in people, if you were particularly unlucky you discovered things like racism, and elitism. Concepts that make zero sense to your innocent mind. After all they still had cool shoes. So why do people come to hold these counter intuitive mindsets? The answer is social conditioning.

 

Social conditioning is the social process of training (or conditioning) individuals of a society to behave in a generally accepted manner. Subtly training individuals to accept and maintain the social norms that are long established. Upbringing, media, educational systems, and wider popular culture reinforce them. The image that always comes to mind is that classic ‘uncle Sam’ propaganda poster with the tagline ‘we want you’. Just add the additional line ‘to do as we say’.  The fact that human being are social creatures and in our evolutionary past social conditioning was a huge benefit. It allowed us to learn valuable and at times life saving knowledge. However, that same ability has been perverted in modern society, it is why people are able to commit horrible acts, or perpetuate racism, and elitism. Furthermore, it is why you cannot just walk up and make friends with the kid in the cool shoes as you get older.

 

At some point in life you have heard what I call ‘the word of they’. ‘They’ are an enigmatic group of social manipulators and lawgivers. ‘They’ say this, and they say that. The question I ask people is ‘who the hell are ‘they?’’. At some point in time people started to personify social conditioning as ‘They’. Worse people began to accept these pseudo rules as gospel. From fiction to fact in a few facebook likes. This social conditioning is why some individuals can gain an unfairly negative self-image. I remember sadly a student I worked with that told me that there was no place for him in society. When I recovered from such a bleak outburst and questioned him about this belief, he told me his Dad had said it to him. This sort of relationship is exactly what takes place between yourself and society. You are the kid, and society is the Dad passing on this horrible message.

 

Earlier I spoke about limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs are the side effect of social conditioning. For example ‘I am a nerd, and that is not cool’. This is a statement I used to believe until I reached year nine in High School. I was not a dumb kid, but I really had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that ‘they’ do not mean anything. I started to reject parts of social conditioning, and I found that people gave me less trouble about it. I use the analogy of splashing around sharks. A further effect of social conditioning, especially in Australia, is watching other people fail. We seem to have developed a vicious love of tearing people down. One needs only take a cursory look at the internet, and in particular facebook to see this. This means an increase in negative self-image. After all it is all fun and games until you see someone like you being made the face of jokes. The truth is that living in this sort of environment is toxic. You need to transcend it.

 

The first step is to stop and have a real self-assessment, hence why I made you do the first exercise. Go back now, and not only identify those limiting beliefs, but assessment where they came from. If it comes down to something that ‘they’ said, then drop it from your head. It is not an authentic lifestyle. Build your own self, and make sure that how you live, is based on how you want to live and not how you were conditioned into believing you are ‘supposed to live’.

 

So why should you care, or even be aware of social conditioning? You need to acknowledge social conditioning, because almost everyone you will meet is affected. So having a measure of social awareness will help you interact more confidently and effectively with others.




The Final note here:

    It is worth noting I have been working on this book for a while, and during the process off writing it I was continuing to grow and change. The book will cover this growth and hopefully take readers along with me, and end with a very satisfying if not surprising ending. I want to make people challenge how they think, to swallow the hard facts IE Cement Pills, and be armed with the tips, tricks, and lessons IE Silver Bullets needed to deal with it. As you can see from sample chapter this is not a passive book. Readers will be active participants, you are expected to keep track of and make changes as you read the book. Culminating in what I hope will be a small measure of self actualisation. 

    Remember though life in general is never static, and you will always be changing. What I hope to do with the book is help those who are stuck, lost, or unsure what to do. Because, deep down I believe that happier, confident, and competent people help make the world better. Rising confidence raises all boats so to speak. 

    Wish the Khan luck as I venture out into the wild world of trying to get published, and if you find this promising be sure to share this with the hashtag #CementPillsAndSilverBullets.

    As always remember hospitality is sacred.