The Best Years of Your Life… Now!

I’m going to share with you a remarkable discovery I made several years ago. The discovery is this:

It possible to shape-shift!

Physically alter yourself into a completely different person in a matter of weeks …I know because I’ve done it myself!

I would literally walk up to people who I had known for years …And as they looked at me in a puzzled manner I would announce to them that I was Bob Baran …I used to get a kick out of watching their reaction, their disbelief and then the big smile that would come over their face as they looked into my eyes and recognized me.

How did I pull it off? How did I shape-shift so dramatically that people didn’t recognize me …Well it was easy once I made my mind up to do it. You see in our culture and the lifestyle many of us have we tend to add on pounds as we get older.

Believe me, I know this first hand.

We also tend to wear the same clothes and keep the same haircut …In other words our appearance remains very predictable and consistent over time.

Now if you would like to experiment with the power of shape-shifting here’s what you do …Lose 20 pounds if you’re a man or 10 pounds if you’re a woman.

Unless you are very overweight this may be enough to literally reshape your face and allow your clothes to hang on your frame differently.

Now I would expect you to contact your health care professional before engaging in any kind of weight loss diet to make sure your health is being monitored.

Oh, and this is important, once you decide to lose the weight take a picture of yourself at the weight you are right now …Then put this picture away in a safe place.

From my experience once you decide to lose the weight you will probably drop the twenty pounds for men and 10 pounds for women in about six weeks or less. Begin a simple exercise program along with this… maybe 15 minutes a day.

The interesting thing about exercise is that it is cumulative.

The positive effects are greater as you become more consistent with it over time …Once you’ve reached your 20 or 10 pound goal …You must do two things:

Number one …Go to a hairdresser and change your hairstyle. In fact do something fun! Remember hair always grows back in time! Number two …Go and buy yourself some new clothes! That’s right get some clothes that matches your new hair style!

The next thing I want you to do is to take a picture that shows you in your new hairstyle and new clothes …Now go get that picture you took of yourself when you made the decision to attempt this shape shifting experiment …Now look at the two pictures.

Do you see the difference …Do you see the shape shifting that has already taken place?

Now go out and socialize …And watch the reaction from your friends who haven’t seen you in a while!

For some of us that 10 or 20 pounds is going to be a good healthy start on the process of revitalizing ourselves and our lives. This is fun, easy and the weight loss goal is doable. Like I said, probably going to happen in around six weeks …And it’s going to be a powerful example of how it feels to begin to take back control of your life.

We’re only talking a relatively few pounds here …And for those of you fortunate enough to maintain your ideal weight …For you it’s the new haircut and the new clothes will be your shape-shifting!

-Bob Baran

An update on Shape Shifting…

A little over a year ago something happened to me that changed my life…

I sat down at the piano and just played.

I had no idea what the first note or last note was going to be.

In a little over two hours of recording time it became an album that made it onto the Grammy ballot in four categories …A CD that sold more copies on it’s first day of release than all of my other CDs combined had during the previous two years!

Something special, something amazing had happened!

It was magic

You see, I consciously tapped into the quantum consciousness, part of my mind, the seat of feeling and imagination, and the music played through me. It didn’t happen by accident either …It was the culmination of a series of experiments I had been making for several years in every aspect of my life…

Finding true love …Building my dream house …Launching a record label …Being awarded a trademark for my own original style of music! …And now, reaching an entirely new place within myself where music flowed from …Effortlessly …Magically!

Ironically, I was able to make all of these dreams come true within a short period of time! Dreams that I had held close to my heart for over 30 years suddenly fell one by one into place….

My solo piano album “Escape Music ® A New Dawn” was the crowning achievement of my musical career. Second only to the single most important achievement: Finding true love.

24 months from the time Gwen and I launched our record label and we had made it to the Grammys!

I had fantasized about creating spontaneous music since I was a young man …And then to be recognized by the Recording Academy for my breakthrough accomplishment! This was remarkable because it was result of the very same process I used to make every one of my dreams to come true.

What I had experienced was not an accident or a one of a kind thing …I have been doing it in every aspect of my life …This process I was using was real and it worked again and again.

I realized it was time to dedicate myself to what I believe is the most important undertaking of my life …Laying the groundwork which would enable me to teach others exactly what I’ve leaned …How use this very same process …Teaching others how to make every dream they have come true!

All of my efforts and the efforts of my wife and partner, Gwen, have been focused during 2007 to bring forth “The Intentional Prosperity™ System” A twenty four lesson interactive online life coaching course that will allow me to take you by the hand and teach you everything I know about creating magic in your life…

And, yes, it is magical when you experience your dreams coming true …Love, money, experiences, accomplishments …It’s all possible when you know how …And in a days “The Intentional Prosperity System” is going to be ready to show you how…

And take you to places you’ve only dreamed of.

-Bob Baran

Rent a popular horror movie and you will instantly realize music has the power to create the feeling of dread, insecurity and hopelessness. It has to do with the mind’s need to complete patterns …When music is introduced which does not follow a “natural” harmonic pattern, the music literally throws the mind into a state of panic …Especially if the listener has little or no previous experience with that type of music.

The discordant style of music featured in a typical horror movie can be lumped under a “stylistic umbrella” called “atonal music”. This is music that does not follow a “natural” harmonic pattern …Like the music of Mozart which follows the natural harmonics of the 12 tone music system. All Western music is based on just 12 notes…

What is a natural harmonic?

When two different tones are heard at the same time one of two things takes place in your mind…The anticipation of completion or the feeling of completion. Believe it or not, Western cultural music is comprised of these two things going on …Every melody line and chord progression is based upon this simple principle.

On the other hand, “world music” tends to be based on the continuous drone and/or a re-occurring rhythm …Which is a single note or group of notes that create the feeling of completion, along with a repetitive hypnotic beat.

Discordant or atonal music is the kind of music that leaves you hanging…

Waiting for the next step of the musical pattern which never comes …This translates into a feeling of confusion because your mind expects this next step …Couple this feeling with a visual experience associating the discordant musical segment with the fear, uncertainty and doubt (which is the hallmark of any good horror flick) and you have successfully created the feeling that your “worst fear” is about to happen.

Popular music has for the most part always employed the anticipation, completion technique …In other words, you didn’t feel like something was missing or you were left hanging when the song was over. Whatever the song was, it felt like a completed story had taken place by the time the song finished …This was pretty much the rule of thumb for pop music until recently…

In the last few years popular music become inundated with a peculiar mix of what I call “dread and drone” music …A mix of atonal elements with a re-occurring rhythm presented as a drone based type of groove. What’s interesting about this is that the music generates and supports a feeling of dread and hopelessness using the rhythm and drone elements normally associated with world music …Then a staccato rhythmic verbal barrage (which acts as the visuals in a horror flick) is thrown in to further cement the feeling of dread and hopelessness…

Locking in dread and hopelessness is not a bad thing as long as you complete the process by uplifting the listener to hope and safety …My concern is that we have a generation of individuals who dwell in the “anger zone” and have no way to constructively climb out of that place. The zone has become it’s own lifestyle rather than a passing phase of life which those of us who have evolved from adolescence to adulthood are all too familiar with.

Exploiting the natural fear, uncertainty and doubt which comes with adolescence has been the hallmark of pop music for a long time …Keeping people in a suspended state of personal development and calling it a lifestyle is a relatively new and cynical departure …And no longer serves as a healthy venting of the emotional confusion which is brought on by young persons’ dealing with the realities of life.

The beauty of the “blues” for example, is that it focuses on the hopelessness of a situation while simultaneously lifting you into a joyful resolution …Which gives “blues” music its uncanny healing properties.

Today’s urban pop culture is failing it’s audience by not providing a way out of the dread and hopelessness it continues to serve up. It is pure exploitation to keep an audience stuck in a stage of evolution where you actively prevent the realization that an individual does indeed have the power to change his or her life and live one’s dreams.

Hey, I was raised on the Detroit side of 8 Mile Road. You could see Pershing High School from the front of my house. I understand urban music only too well. I was once part of the culture that created it.

-Bob Baran

Holding yourself up to a standard and questioning whether or not your decisions, actions and motives reflect that standard seems to be less and less common these days.

What I’m talking about is personal introspection.

When you are too busy focusing on what you are going to say or do next, you miss the opportunities to actually think about, analyze and learn from what you have already done. It s a real eye opener to discover what was really motivating your actions, how you implemented your decisions and an honest appraisal of the outcome.

It’s called holding yourself accountable.

The danger of not routinely appraising your attitudes, decisions and actions is that you will continue to act in a manner which may not be in your best interest. Either because of your ignorance, avoidance or outright denial that you may in fact be the real cause of certain reoccurring problems in your life.

It’s hard to admit you are wrong about something …Especially if it turns out to be something you really believe to be true and accurate.

When you get in the habit of making little compromises and justify those actions as being “just this once” or “this is a special case”, you lose a sense of what is right and what is wrong. Your world becomes an insecure gray color of uncertainty. The lack of regular introspection opens the door for this “slippery slope” kind of behavior and lifestyle to continue without any internal safeguards. Compromising once may be a mistake. Doing it twice is a pattern. Introspection helps it remain a fixable mistake before it becomes a habit.

If you don’t take a few minutes on a regular basis to review what you’ve been thinking and doing as well as an honest appraisal of your true motives, then your life is on autopilot …And there’s a good chance the your flight plan is very flawed.

Every system of human organization allows for some kind of course correction …If your personal belief system fails to allow you to review and adjust …Then you and your belief system are responsible for the problems you which occur again and again in your life. What you believe, justify and rationalize is always the biggest challenge to your ultimate happiness.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
-Socrates

“A life without introspection is a dead-end dream.”
-Bob Baran

I love movies, it’s one of my passions…

I have a serious home theatre set up and 600+ movies in my collection. Living ten miles from the nearest gas station and 16 miles from my favorite movie rental place it’s not surprising that I would accumulate quite a collection through the years.

So, it’s no surprise that I was introduced to Brad Bird, in a fantastic animated movie titled: “Iron Giant”, about eight years ago. It actually brought a tear to my eye! That’s quite an accomplishment for a “junk yard dog” from Detroit…(me). The movie had a message that got through to me: You can change, you are not “born” to be anything. You are not a slave to your upbringing or (in the case of the giant robot) your programming. Delivering a powerful message like this in a way that continues to resonate (in me) almost ten years since I first saw the movie is representative of real cinema art.

I guess the guys at Pixar felt the same way cause they snatched Brad Bird from Warner Bros, a few years ago and he went on to deliver another powerful animated movie with a message…”The Incredibles”.

It was when I watched the “making of” segment that I realized this was the same guy who directed “Iron Giant”. No wonder I was so blown away, Yet Again! A powerful message presented in a manner which raised the bar for all animation.

Last week I happened to watch the best animated movie I have ever seen, period. “Ratatouille”, again directed by Brad Bird, for Pixar.

Hey, I think “300″ is a masterpiece, to give you a sense of my taste…It’s just that “Ratatouille” is on a much higher level of story telling, character development, the highest level of digital animation to date and a visual experience which is absolutely stunning.

I would give the three Brad Bird animated films to any child (or adult) as a powerful teaching and entertainment tool. I would not give “300″ to a child or just any adult. In “Ratatouille”, Bird carries forward two powerful messages from “The Incredibles” …”If everyone is special, then no one is special” and “you have to be who you really are”. He builds upon these with “anyone can cook …not everyone can be a chef” (everyone has potential, not everyone is going to develop their potential) …And, you never know where the next genius will come from …So keep an open mind!

Living in a world where mediocrity is routinely promoted as “special”, it is refreshing to see something that really is special and deserving of recognition. If “Ratatouille” doesn’t garner an Oscar or two then we know the Hollywood community is afraid of acknowledging the startling truth any new benchmark brings to an industry …The fear that something outstanding will always make the mediocre more obvious.

-Bob Baran