Always Be Better

Hello, and welcome back to "Always Be Better" with Mel Windham. Today we're going to explore more of the world of brainwashing. Four years ago, I produced three introductory videos on this topic. If you haven't already seen these videos, I highly recommend them, as watching these three videos alone could change your life, and help alert you to what's going on around us. Though, I'm hoping this video will do fine as a standalone, so if you like, keep watching, and then you can go back and watch these other three videos later.  As a quick summary, the first video talks about our autopilot -- how we can train the brain to remember macros, so we can do multiple things at the same time. In the second video, I explain how we can train, trust, and retrain our autopilots, and increase our own effectiveness. In the third video, I talk about how we can corrupt other people's autopilots using the very same techniques, only in this case, it's called brainwashin...

Hello and welcome back to "Always Be Better" with Mel Windham. Today we return back to politics and the last of my three videos featuring the "Power of You." Today we're going to explore something called Social Cycle Theory. As we look back on history, you may see certain patterns. Each country has good times and bad times. Times when freedoms are great, and other times when autocrats are in control. Prosperous times and destructive times. And throughout the millennia, different philosophers and social scientists have tried to capture these patterns in a type of formula. And as you may guess, these formulae come in many different varieties, each with their own nuances and differences. But overall, each of these theories have in common the idea of some kind of cycle.  You can even see this idea in one of the oldest books -- the Bible. Here, we can see such a cycle in the account of the Jewish people after Moses led them to the Promised Land. The people enjoyed ...

Hello, and welcome back to "Always Be Better" with Mel Windham. Today we're going to switch over to the Spiritual Track. But before we start, I'd like to remind you that as I've said before, my goal is to have everyone enjoy these conversations, including people of different faiths, and even atheists. So, I will do my best to keep these discussions agnostic. Also, I want these first three videos of this year to share a theme in common: the power of you . You'll see where this is headed by the end of this video. And one last observation before we begin... When we touch on religious, philosophical, and spiritual items, it's impossible to rely on evidence and logic alone -- this is something I'll explain in a later video. Nevertheless, I find these topics intriguing and often important, because they are all connected to our human experience. I will not be providing a water-tight proof, but rather some unique ideas that are always fun to discuss. I'll...

Hello, and welcome back to "Always Be Better" with Mel Windham. Just like I did a year ago, I thought I'd come outside again and have another one-on-one talk with you. And I'll cut straight to the chase. I'm concerned. In a perfect world, we would all live peacefully. Everyone would love and help each other. Strong leaders would guide us and show us through example the best way to succeed and prosper, giving us a strong foundation -- a top-down model of living. However, last year I've come to realize that we can no longer rely on our world leaders. There's just too much hate, corruption, deception, and power-grabbing. More and more our leaders are teaching us to hate our opponents, and are encouraging division. At times I wonder, who's going to come and save us? Who is left among us that has any remaining honor, integrity, intelligence, and a sincere desire to help make this world a better place? Where could we find such a person? Could that person b...

Hello, and welcome to "Always Be Better" with Mel Windham. It's been a while, but I'm back. My 50th topic will be on our Circles of Influence, by far one of my favorite items from the 7 Habits, and the source of much of my success. Think back to the last few weeks -- a major election here in the US. When the results were announced, half of us were ecstatic, and the other half of us were shocked and depressed. We knew it was coming -- it would only be a matter of which candidate would win. Now that it's all over, do you remember what came next? If you're anything like me, your life probably continued on as it had been before. I had a day of reaction, and then ... well ... I had work to do, and it was time to get busy again. Because when it comes down to it, each of us really can't do anything about these types of big items. There is certainly a lot we can worry about. Nuclear war, poverty, foreign threats, stock market crashes, immigration concerns, elect...

[Note about this transcript -- it is approximately the same as what is said in the video -- the same material is covered, though the video might be more fun to watch.] [Mel starts at the white board, writing notes as he goes along.] Hello, and welcome back to "Always Be Better" with Mel Windham. Today we're going to do something fun ... an experiment. But first, during this exciting election year, let's consider a claim from the 2020 election. From 1980 to 2016 (10 elections), there were 19 counties that successfully voted for the candidate who won the presidency. That is, they all voted for Reagan in the 80s, then Bush Senior, Clinton, W Bush, Obama, and finally Trump in 2016. An amazing feat. These are called bellwether counties, because they seem to "predict" the national outcome. Perhaps they are purple and more sensitive to the overall national trends -- nobody quite knows what makes these counties so special. They're just really good at picking t...