The Secret of Success Is Not What You’d Expect

In his new book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that success is less about innate ability than birthdate and luck.

 

By Sabitri Ghosh/ Source: The Globe and Mail

 

Malcolm Gladwell knows a thing or two about success.

 

His previous books, The Tipping Point and Blink, have sold more than three million copies combined in North America alone. He reportedly commands fees of $40,000 (U.S.) per speaking engagement and, in 2005, Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

 

Not bad for a kid from Elmira, Ontario.

 

Now, Mr. Gladwell - whose trademark blend of social science and storytelling appears regularly in The New Yorker - is out to reveal the secret of success.

 

Outliers, due out next week, looks at everyone from hockey players to lawyers and software billionaires to make the case that success has less to do with merit or psychological makeup than with arbitrary factors such as when and where you were born and what your parents did for a living.

 

Mr. Gladwell discussed his findings at his home in New York.

 

Outliers is subtitled “The Story of Success.” How did you define success?

 

It was very, very consciously a narrow definition. I was interested in occupational success in the work that we do. Obviously, that’s not the full definition of success. I’m not interested in happiness: This book is squarely about what happens when you go to work in the morning.

 

The book thoroughly demolishes the myth of the self-made man or woman. Was that something you consciously set out to do?

 

Very quickly, as it became clear the kind of themes that I was interested in, that’s what I was running up against: There was a kind of existing narrative of success. … It’s had so many mythical expressions - Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Carnegie and Horatio Alger - and in the 19th century it took hold so strongly. I feel like it’s become part of the architecture of American society. We haven’t taken a step back and challenged it, which I was trying to do.

 

Can you explain why it’s no coincidence Wayne Gretzky was born in January?

 

Hockey players and soccer players are overwhelmingly born in the early part of the year - hugely disproportionately - and the reason is that the cutoff date for hockey and soccer around the world is Jan. 1. When people start recruiting for all-star teams and rep squads, when kids are 8 and 9 years old, they pick the kids they think are the most talented. But at that age, the most talented kids are simply the ones born closest to the cutoff date because they’re bigger and more mature. And then you give them special coaching and they play more games and they practise more, so by the time they’re 17, 18 years old, they actually are better. … Kids born in the second half of the school year also underachieve - which is why [parents] hold their kids back. What’s curious is that it persists - that you see, if you have a cutoff date for school eligibility at Jan. 1, the December-born kids are underrepresented in college admissions 15 years later. So it’s not trivial - it makes a lasting difference.

 

You also assert that you need 10,000 hours, or about 10 years of practice, to be a world-class expert in virtually anything.

 

Anything that is cognitively complex seems like it requires at least 10,000 hours. … It’s deliberate practice, so it’s focused, determined, in environments where there’s feedback, where there’s a chance to really learn from mistakes. What’s fascinating about this notion that expertise arises only after 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is that it seems to apply incredibly broadly to an astonishing array of different professions - from playing chess to writing classical music to being a brain surgeon to playing hockey.

 

Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, jokingly refers to himself as a “no-date nerd” who cared only about computers growing up. So, being an obsessive loner can actually help you become successful?

 

Absolutely. Getting 10,000 hours is so hard that the only way to do it is to be obsessive in a certain way. It might be a bad thing to be obsessive-compulsive in normal life, but if you’re a research scientist, it actually could be a really good thing.

 

But you found that simply having a really high IQ or mastery in a certain field means little if you don’t have practical intelligence.

 

A critical part of high achievement is not a function of your IQ, your analytical ability, the size of your hard drive in your brain, but rather, a function of your ability to navigate the world and get what you want from the world. … We radically underestimate how much high achievers rely on that practical side.

 

You interviewed Chris Langan, who is a genius. Yet he hasn’t won a Nobel Prize and most people have never heard of him.

 

He has an IQ closing in on 200 and he has not been a success by any conventional measure. I’m trying to explain why has he failed. And the answer is that he doesn’t have any of that other kind of intelligence - practical intelligence - and it’s crippling, even though he has a brain that works better than almost anyone’s brain in North America.

 

Are some people doomed to failure simply because of the lot they’ve been handed in life?

 

We vary greatly in the degree of natural advantages that we’ve been given by the world: That’s why governments step in and provide opportunities to try and level the playing field. That’s why social interventions to provide opportunities are so important. Because the world’s not fair.

 

You point out, though, that poor kids learn just as much as wealthier kids in school. Where they fall behind is during summers. How can we address this discrepancy - short of having no summer vacation for students?

 

There’s no way around it. There’s no shortcut. One of the things that drives me crazy about a lot of educational reform ideas is that they try to find shortcuts: a charismatic principal; a cool technology; a fancy new school. All of those things are beside the point. This issue is, do you have enough time in school to master the things you need to know. And if you’re a poor kid, you don’t, because you’re not learning at home at the same time. … Poorer families should be made aware of the disadvantage that they’re operating in and then given the opportunity to deal with that disadvantage by having their kids go to school longer. It’s about giving people choices - educating them and giving them choices. That’s the way to solve that problem.

 

Do the rules and principles of success that you lay out in Outliers apply to your own success?

 

I spent exactly 10 years at the Washington Post. When I entered, I was not a good writer and I was not a good reporter. And when I ended, I was. So I very much, very, very much, associate my success with the 10,000-hour rule. … But that’s the point of the book: You should be able to see reflections of your own life in the lessons.

 

So do you think you’ve figured out the equation for success?

 

No, because so much of it is outside of our control. I will only say that there are common elements. The common elements are: some kind of opportunity to work harder than your peers - that would be a critical element; some kind of opportunity to see things that others can’t see - that’s the generational thing; and a fit, a good fit, between your cultural legacy and what you choose to explore.

 

But from a cost-benefit point of view, why should society invest in creating opportunities for people who haven’t received the sort of breaks you write about?

 

Because we squander talent. Even in a country like Canada, where hockey is a priority, an obsession, we’re squandering a huge amount of hockey talent without realizing it. We could have twice as many star players if we just changed the institutional rules around finding talent. To me, that’s such a powerful lesson. Because it just says, look, in a simple area like hockey, in a country that cares more about it than almost anything else, if you’re still squandering 50 per cent of your ability, how much more are we squandering everywhere else?

 

 

 

 

 

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Body Swap Illusion Tricks Mind

Source :Karl Ritter, Associated Press

Discovery News Dec. 2, 2008

 

 

 Shaking hands with yourself is an amusing out-of-body experience. The illusion of having your stomach slashed with a kitchen knife, not so much.

 

Both sensations, however, felt real to most participants in a Swedish science project exploring how people can be tricked into the false perception of owning another body.

 

In a study presented Tuesday, neuroscientists at Stockholm’s renowned Karolinska Institute show how they got volunteers wearing virtual reality goggles to experience the illusion of swapping bodies with a mannequin and a real person.

 

“We were interested in a classical question that philosophers and psychologists have discussed for centuries: why we feel that the self is in our bodies,” project leader Henrik Ehrsson said. “To study this scientifically we’ve used tricks, perceptual illusions.”

 

It sounded intriguing enough for me to try it, though entering the laboratory on Monday, I was having second thoughts. The first props I saw were two kitchen knives, three naked dummies and a prosthetic hand sticking out from behind a curtain.

 

“You have the right to say stop at anytime if you feel uncomfortable,” said Ehrsson’s colleague, Valeria Petkova, as she rubbed my left hand with electrolytic gel and attached electrodes to the middle and index fingers.

 

She assured me I was not in any danger. Still, a nervous tingle rushed through my body as she placed the headset over my eyes.

 

In the first experiment, the goggles were hooked up to CCTV cameras fitted to the head of a male mannequin, staring down at its feet. Through the headset I saw a grainy image of the dummy’s plastic torso. I tilted my head down to create the sensation I was looking down at my own body.

 

At that point, it didn’t feel very real. But when Petkova simultaneously brushed markers against my belly and that of the mannequin, the effect started setting in. As my brain processed the visual and tactile signals, I had a growing impression that the mannequin’s body was my own.

 

That was good fun, until the gleaming blade of a bread knife entered my field of vision. Petkova slid it across the dummy’s stomach, sending shivers down my spine and a pulse of anxiety through the electrodes. My heightened stress level was illustrated by a spike in a computer diagram shown to me after the experiment.

 

“Approximately 70-80 percent of the people experience the illusion very strongly,” Petkova said.

 

Apparently, I was one of them.

 

The second experiment was more benign. This time my headset was connected to cameras mounted on a round hat that Petkova was wearing. We faced each other, extended our right arms and shook hands.

 

Now that was weird: I was supposed to have the sensation of shaking hands with myself. The illusion wasn’t perfect as I couldn’t quite recognize Petkova’s grip as my own, even though that’s what the goggles meant to make me believe.

 

Perhaps the session was too short. The actual study, in which 87 volunteers participated, consisted of repeated sessions that gradually provided more accurate data. The results were published in PLoS One, the online journal of the Public Library of Science.

 

The principle finding was that under certain conditions a person can perceive another body as his or her own, even if it is of an opposite gender or an artificial body.

 

“These findings are of fundamental importance because they identify the perceptual processes that make us feel that we own our entire body,” the study said.

 

Ehrsson said the study built on a previous experiment known as the “rubber hand illusion” in which participants were manipulated to experience a rubber hand as their own.

 

Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford, said the Karolinska study was a “step up” from other research on the subject. “This goes beyond other recent studies, where you’ve taken ownership of rubber hands and rubber legs,” said Spence, who was not involved with the study.

 

His only concern was whether there might be any lasting effect on participants.

 

“The questions is what happens if you did it much longer? If you were in there for days and weeks. Would it be like something out of Total Recall?”

 

Spence said, referring to the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger science fiction movie about a virtual vacation that turns into a nightmare.

 

Ehrsson suggested the findings could be applied in research on body image disorders by exploring how people become satisfied or dissatisfied with their bodies. Another possible application could be developing more advanced versions of computer games such as Second Life, he said.

 

“It could lead to the next generation of virtual reality applications in games, where people have the full-blown experience of being the avatar,” Ehrsson said.

 

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New collapse footage of WTC7 and North Tower - Nov 2008

Since my book Hidden Secrets of Many, But One deals very strongly with advance psychic connections to 9-11 I am always interested in newly discovered 9-11 information .

Best wishes,

Donald Ryles PhD

Send a Free Paper Card to a Soldier at the Holidays

     This is not what I usually post, but today this was brought to my attention through a friend in the supernatual and I am sure many of my readers from around the World have a father/ mother, brother/sister, or husband/ wife serving in the military or know someone in the military. This is a great service that Xerox is currently doing. The site says that you can choose from many designs( designed by children and teens) and select a pre-written message or write your own and then a PAPER card( not an e-card) will be sent to the troops. I urge you to check it out at:

http://www.letssaythanks.com/Home1024.html

 

 

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Soviet cosmonauts conceal truth about UFOs

Source : Pravda Online

 

The UFO phenomenon never existed in the former USSR, at least in the official records. There were numerous stories about unidentified flying objects which could be heard from susceptible individuals, but Soviet cosmonauts never said anything on the subject, although they had a lot to share.

 

 

Former Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Kovalenok appeared at a press conference devoted to unusual and anomalous phenomena in space. He said that he had witnessed something inexplicable during his work on board the Salyut orbital station. The cosmonaut said that he once saw a strange object on Earth’s orbit. He asked his partner, Viktor Savinykh, to fetch a camera. While Savinykh was trying to find the camera, the object exploded in front of Kovalenok’s eyes. The object split into two parts and had something like a bridge connecting those parts. The dumbbell-like object disappeared before the other cosmonaut was ready to photograph it. A strong radioactive emission was registered on Earth soon after the explosion of the mysterious object.

 

Kovalenok said that many of his colleagues had witnessed something unusual on a number of occasions, but they decided not to bring those issues to the public attention.

 

Pilot Pavel Popovich was on a flight from Washington to Moscow in 1978. The plane was flying at the height of about 10,000 meters, when he noticed a triangular luminescent object flying on the same trajectory with his aircraft. The speed of the triangle was higher than that of the plane – more than 1,700 km/h, whereas the jetliner was flying at 1,100 km/h.

 

Cosmonauts Gennady Strekalov and Gennady Manakov saw a bright spherical object appearing in the cloudless sky above Newfoundland in 1990. The sphere disappeared without a trace ten seconds later.

 

In 1991, Musa Manarov was observing the module with the new crew nearing the Mir Space Station, filming the process on video camera. He suddenly saw an antenna-like object separating from the module. He informed the cosmonauts inside the module that something had undocked from them. Nevertheless, it never became possible to identify the object, although it was filmed on camera.

 

It goes without saying that cosmonauts informed their governing bodies of all those and many other strange incidents. All of the stories were most likely documented and subsequently classified.

 

Cosmonauts may often witness other inexplicable events happening in space, Vladimir Kovalenok said. A tape recorder switched on by itself and started playing the crew’s favorite film on the orbit once, Kovalenok said.

 

Psychologists often warn cosmonauts prior to their space missions that they may experience a phenomenon known as the altered state of consciousness. A Russian cosmonaut said in 1994 that he and his partner had numerous visions when they were working on board the Mir station for six months. It seemed to them that they were turning into weird creatures – animals and even humanoids of extraterrestrial origin.

 

 

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The Secret to Happiness: Stop Caring

Source: IlluminatedMind.net

 

Our lives are inundated with practicality and productivity. We think that if there’s no purpose to something, there’s no point in doing it. In reality the best things in life have no purpose.

 

We sacrifice our time and our sanity doing what we don’t want to do, so at some future point we will create the freedom to do what we love.

 

We seek happiness in things. We seek happiness in the acceptance of others, in material possessions, in social status. We even search for happiness in some future-promised afterlife. We sabotage ourselves and our entire lives because we fail to understand a very simple but easily overlooked fact.

 

The Search for Happiness is the Single Greatest Cause of Misery

 

You can’t find something that’s already there. Happiness exists now. It’s not something you have to find. That’s like trying to find your breath.

 

It’s the grasping of the mind that causes unhappiness. If you’re not happy, it’s because your mind doesn’t allow you be happy. And the reason your mind doesn’t let you be happy, is because you’re stuck in the vicious cycle of productivity, judgment and purpose. That’s not to say productivity is bad, or that doing things that have a purpose is wrong. It’s basing the reason for your existence on them that causes so much anguish.

 

When we place our happiness solely in “getting” something, completing a certain number of tasks on our to-do list, or achieving a goal, we’re fooling ourselves. We’re like a rabbit with a carrot stick attached to our heads. We keep chasing the carrot, but we never get there. We never stop to think that it might be the chasing that’s causing the problem. We’re too distracted trying to find a better way to beat the game. As soon as we reach one level of success, we’re hurrying to upgrade our search and move on to the next level of the chase. We never stop to think that it’s not the failure to win the game that causes our grief, but the game itself.

 

We neglect to realize that sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to stop participating in the problem. Sometimes the best way to to solve a problem is to just stop caring.

 

Sometimes…

 

The best way to solve the problem of not having a lot of cool friends is to stop caring about having cool friends.

The smartest way to be happy with the place you live is to stop caring about living in a two story house with a pool, a fireplace, central air and satellite TV.

The simplest way to be content with yourself is not to achieve greatness and praise, but to accept yourself fully for who you are now.

The quickest route to happiness is to stop caring about finding happiness and to start being happiness.

By not caring, we immediately release ourselves of the grasping of the mind. But it’s not easy to stay in this mindset (the mind loves to grasp); it’s something we have to constantly cultivate.

 

It’s especially difficult when our society tends to place more value on things, than on experiences. We value what we do more than how we feel.

 

This is completely ridiculous when you think about it. Because the way you feel should be more important than anything else. Isn’t the purpose of everything you do to feel good? Isn’t the purpose of that new car, that promotion, or college degree to give you a feeling of accomplishment? Isn’t that supposed to make you happy?

 

The problem with this is we’re basing our happiness on temporary things. We’re deriving our joy from an achievement, or an attainment. This isn’t true happiness; it’s an addiction. We get a short burst of endorphins to our bloodstream from our new TV, or new iPod, and then what happens? It disappears. It leaves us feeling empty and we begin looking for our next fix.

 

Our advertising and consumer culture doesn’t help this much. We are constantly bombarded with messages that we need this, or we need that. Incessantly, we hear: “Buy this and it will solve your problem!” If only we could solve that problem we may finally be happy. Wrong. It’s not the problems that are the problem. I mean, buying a more efficient vacuum or sowing on that button you’ve been meaning to for seven years is great. You may feel a sense of achievement for a few moments or days. But you’re still looking for happiness in a thing.

 

It’s the same with productivity. If only we could finish all of the things on our to-do list, could we be content. If only we could accomplish all of our goals, could we finally be gratified. This thinking is based on the illusion that you’ll reach a certain point where everything is done. You finally made it! There’s nothing left in your inbox, all your projects are complete and your lifelong goals are achieved! Now you can rest easy.

 

But this point never seems to come, does it? That’s because there will always be things to do. There will always be challenges, because everything in life is constantly changing. If you reached a point in your life where you had no more problems, no more struggles, no more worries, life would stop. The game would end and there would be no point left in playing.

 

So… what can we do about this?

 

We Need to Stop Caring

 

That doesn’t mean we stop trying to achieve our goals or striving for personal growth. It just means that we no longer base our happiness on fleeting, semi-permanent things.

 

There are obviously some situations where not caring may have serious negative consequences (paying your rent). Excessive caring, however, is likely to make you miserable.

 

The reason caring too much can be detrimental to your health, is you’re so focused on the future. Your identity is too attached to outcomes. If something does, or doesn’t go your way, it will likely have an enduring effect on your mood for the rest of the day.

 

Instead, we should base our happiness on permanent things. Things that don’t change. Desires that don’t shift from moment to moment. We choose to find our happiness in living. In life itself. In fact, we don’t even need to “find” happiness. We can be happiness.

 

So stop searching. You can’t find something that’s already there.

 

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Unusual 7-7 happening…A Warning ?

 

 

UPDATE: I now feel this was most likely concerning the terror attacks of today Nov. 26 ( 3 days after the happening below) in Mumbai, India .

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    Anyone who knows about my book Hidden Secrets of “Many, But One” knows that I have had many strange psychic and unexplained happenings in my life relating to 9-11, terrorism,Iraq War, etc. I wanted to relay something weird that happened today (11-23-08) . 

      My DVD recorder re-set its date to July 7th sometime early this morning as I slept ( it recorded a preset show late last night with no problem). The date seemed familar but I could not remember it until later in the day. July 7th is the date that the London subway terror bombings took place in 2005 . The TV programs I had set it to record several days ago( for today and this coming week) were still as I had set them…except the machine thought it was July 7th.

      This could just be a case of an extremely strange computer chip glitch of some type…but…with the background I have in unusual occurances like this I felt it was most definitely blog worthy . If it is paranormal in nature I have no idea what it might mean or why it happened.

      I have seemed to be feeling a presence near me here at the Holidays but I am not sure if it is related to this occurance or not.

Best wishes,

Donald Ryles PhD

Mind Control Lawsuit vs. Microsoft and Walmart to Be Heard

Nanaimo man seeks damages of $2 billion from Microsoft, Telus, Wal-Mart, RCMP and others

 

By Paul Walton / Source: Vancouver Sun

 

A judge has refused to dismiss a “bizarre” civil suit brought by a Nanaimo man who is seeking $2 billion in damages from Microsoft, Telus, Wal-Mart, the RCMP and other defendants over alleged brain-wave control, satanic rituals and witchcraft.

 

Justice Fraser Wilson heard from five lawyers on Monday, arguing that the case brought forward by Jerry Rose is so outrageous it should have been dismissed immediately.

 

Rose’s claim states “that he has been subject to invasive brain computer interface technology, research, experiments, field studies and surgery” and also named the University of B.C. and the B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons as defendants.

 

Jennifer Millbank, a Nanaimo lawyer hired to represent Microsoft in the case, said that Rose’s two-page statement of claim is “nothing short of bizarre” and that it would be “impossible this would ever be a case for trial on the merits.”

 

But Wilson, while admitting the case was “certainly an unusual one,” said he had to be convinced there was nothing in Rose’s claim that could not be litigated.

 

Millbank said there is no scientific evidence to prove brain control is a possibility.

 

“I think this is akin to someone saying they sustained injuries because their boat fell off the edge of the world,” said Millbank. “My clients ought not to be subjected to what is a nuisance lawsuit.”

 

Rose, reading from a three-page statement, said the mind-control harassment continues with “brain-drain technologies” under the RCMP and tactics to prevent his case from going forward. Rose said he is asking for $2 billion because of a computer technology he invented that was stolen from him.

 

“I’m not a lawyer, but I have proof,” said Rose.

 

 

 

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The Wall Street Psychic Who Predicted the Economic Meltdown

This woman knows nothing about finance yet claims she can predict turmoil in the markets months before it happens. Don’t believe her? Many blue-chip companies do – and pay handsomely for her ‘intuition’.

 

By Helena de Bertodano / Source: The Telegraph

 

A few blocks from Wall Street lives a woman who is not in the least bit surprised at the recent economic upheaval on her doorstep. In fact, she predicted it years ago and is rather enjoying it.

 

‘I love crisis,’ says Laura Day, a psychic who advises major corporations on how to direct their business dealings. ‘I love turning it around. I’m going to brag – in the last few weeks I’ve become a hero. My clients were all prepared for this. They were out of the market a year ago and now they’re ringing me saying, “The whole world is freaking out and I’m just sitting here calm.”‘

 

The 49-year-old mother has earned more than $10 million in the past 15 years advising corporations and individuals including Demi Moore, Jennifer Aniston and Rosanna Arquette. Day’s otherwordly expertise doesn’t simply encompass the financial; Arquette credits her with saving her daughter’s life by sensing a potentially fatal medical condition.

 

While there is nothing very surprising about the Hollywood A-list embracing the help of a psychic, it is harder to imagine mainstream businesses enlisting her services. She takes on five businesses at a time, each of which pays her $10,000 a month for 24-hour access to her. She will not name her clients, although some have gone on the record extolling her work. Gabriel Lawson, the executive director of the American technology giant Seagate, hired her two years ago as a consultant and told Newsweek, ‘She was amazing. Anybody who can afford her will get 100 times their money’s worth.’

 

‘In early July, right before the oil market dived, I said, “I wouldn’t be buying oil futures now,” and I predicted China’s current troubles eight months ago,’ Day says. Thanks to those and many other good calls, a prospective client can be on Day’s waiting-list for years.

 

Not that she swans into board meetings wearing a gypsy dress and bejewelled headscarf. Quite the opposite. ‘When I visit a company I make an effort to learn what their rules are,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to look like a freak so I go in wearing a blue suit, I take my notes and I only say something when I know it will sound appropriate. If the CEO hires me, I go in as a consultant. Most of the time the rest of the company doesn’t have a single idea of what I really do.’

 

So what does she really do? ‘What I do actually works best if I know nothing, so I don’t look at the market,’ Day says. ‘I’m a complete information desert. I just get a sense of the right thing to do. I’ll say, “I understand that you’re buying everything in China, but gosh I would hold off,” and then they figure out why. Or a medical research client will come and say, “We’re having trouble with the poly-whatever morph unit.” My intuition will target exactly what their issue is and I’ll say, “The seamed area needs something else to stick it together,” and they will know they need a different polymer. Or whatever. I let the words come out of my mouth even though I may have no idea what I am talking about; my client will know what to do.’

 

Does she believe she is channelling spirits? ‘I do not have an “in” with spirits,’ Day offers. ‘That’s a scary concept. I don’t want to be Guru Maharaja Day.’ Indeed, she prefers to be known as an intuitive.

 

‘I hate the word psychic,’ she says, through gritted teeth as she settles into her sofa and tucks her feet underneath her. ‘Because it means tea leaves and crystal balls and a six-floor walk up to a place that smells like cat’s piss.’

 

Day does indeed live on the sixth floor, but there is a lift up to her flat. And she does have a cat, as well as white pigeons and fish, but her flat smells of freshly brewed coffee. No tea leaves either. ‘I do not do tea, particularly not for English people because they’re always so snotty and critical of the way I make it.’ The flat is eccentrically furnished, but the nearest thing to a crystal ball is the disco mirror-ball hanging in the room where her 16-year-old son, Samson, plays his drums. She lives with Samson and her long-term boyfriend, Adam Robinson, and says the flat is divided into ‘girl zone’ and ‘boy zone’. We are in the girl zone, which incorporates the sitting-room with its brightly coloured armchairs, countless plants, coloured-glass candle-holders and, bizarrely, a table of rubber ducks.

 

Leading off the sitting-room is her bedroom with a bed covered in a lime-green bedspread and dotted with stuffed animals. Her bathroom, which has no door, is so crammed with lotions and bags and clothes that you can no longer see the walls. It seems safe to say that her style is anti-minimalist.

 

Hanging in the sitting-room, opposite the black and white photos of Demi Moore embracing Day, is a card that reads, ‘Laura, because of you I see the world anew. I celebrate the day you were born. Much love, Jennifer.’ I imagine this is from Jennifer Aniston, who, along with Moore, threw a surprise party for Day last year. ‘They tricked me and told me they needed me and I should come out to LA. Jennifer had my hair done, Demi had my make-up done. It was a group effort just to get me to a party where I had to be the centre of attention.’

 

Usually she prefers to be in the background. ‘I’m an introvert,’ she says, ‘and a neurotic worrier.’ Blonde and pretty, Day is easy company, although prone to off-kilter statements: ‘Is it hot in here or is it just my perimenopause?’ she asks at one point.

 

She wears little make-up and no nail varnish, which is unusual in New York. ‘I don’t like to put on lipstick and a bra that makes your boobs look like they don’t hang to your waist.’

 

 

Day believes that her troubled childhood, growing up in New York, helped her develop her psychic abilities. ‘I had a suicidal mother and I needed to learn to call the police in time to save her.’ When Day was 12 years old her mother fell into a coma from which she was not expected to recover. Day ‘knew’ she would survive. ‘I could see exactly what was going on in her body.’

 

Nevertheless, three years later, her mother finally succeeded in killing herself.

 

Her career as a psychic began in her early thirties, shortly after her marriage ended (’I knew when I was walking down the aisle that I would get a divorce’) and she found herself in straitened circumstances. She had been casually advising a friend, a hedge-fund manager, on stock investments and asked if he would mind paying for her tips. He obliged and a career was born. Now she gives seminars on how to use the sixth sense and has written five books teaching people how to harness their own ‘practical intuition’. ‘Anyone can do what I do,’ she says. ‘It is an idiot’s gift.’

 

Day knows that some people scoff at what she does, but doesn’t care.

 

‘The nice thing about growing up in a household where the police come and knock down doors to take your mother to hospital is that you really don’t worry about what other people think.’

 

She comes from three generations of doctors, and her father, David Globus, has little truck with his daughter’s line of work. Does she ever discuss her abilities with him? ‘Are you kidding? My father just got convinced vitamins are useful.’ Nevertheless, he has been known to ring her for help. ‘He’ll call me up at seven in the morning and say, “Where are my damned keys?” I’ll say, “They’re in the maid’s bathroom in your grey jacket.” We don’t talk about how I know it; it would disturb him too much. It’s the same with my son. He’ll ask me things that don’t register as weird, like, “I lost my backpack at school, can you tell me where it is?”‘

 

I t must be very alarming to see what is happening in her own future. Does she foresee health problems or know how long she will live? ‘I get a sense of that, but everybody does. I repress less than most people, but the truth is you never read well in your areas of neurotic preoccupation. When you’re reading for yourself, your wishes and fears get in the way. I find when my intuition needs to tell me something it wakes me up from a dead sleep.’

 

Sometimes, she says, she finds her intuition predicting something that she does not want to hear about. ‘When that happens I just put my hands over my ears and go, “No, no, no, no.”‘

 

Day tells me that she can see into a person, even someone she has never met before. ‘I know them before they walk in the door.’ Somewhat nervously, I ask her what she intuits about me. ‘I don’t do it in interviews. If you come over another time and give me a glass of wine – because I’m a cheap drunk – you won’t be able to get away from me doing it.’

 

I ask her if she had anticipated that the current financial crisis would be as big as this. ‘I thought it would be bigger, actually, and I think it’s not over yet. These symptoms were cooking for years. I could feel this six years ago.’ She thinks it will be decades before the market truly recovers. ‘I wouldn’t expect to sell my apartment for the same price I could have sold it for a year ago – not until my grandchildren sell it.’

 

She says that she never underestimates the ‘weirdness’ of her profession. When I suggest to her that it has gained in credibility over the past 20 years, she shoots back. ‘Well, so has S&M, but people still don’t talk about it.’

 

But what makes Day so much more engaging and less odd than one might think is that she happily admits her fallibility. ‘I screw up all the time. My intuition is rarely wrong, but sometimes I interpret it wrong. Recently, a dear friend lost her job and was in a panic. I told her I saw her getting her job back [the following] Tuesday. She didn’t get her job back, but her mother died on Tuesday and left her a lot of money. What I had been looking at was not her job, but whether she was going to have money to pay her bills. So I screwed up.’

 

She shrugs. ‘As I always say, if I were God I would be paid more.’

 

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A Bad Economy is Good for Psychics

By Ryan Singel / Source: Wired Blog

 

Katrina Spears, a self-described internet medium, was running errands Sept. 30, the day the Dow plummeted 770 points.

 

“When I got home that day, I had messages from 30 clients,” Spears says.

 

While it doesn’t take a psychic to see that tough times lay ahead for the economy, online practitioners of the divination arts say they’re seeing a marked sift in the questions posed by their clientele, with anxious consumers increasingly asking what’s in store for them financially in the months ahead.

 

Believers who normally seek psychics for advice on a cheating spouse are now asking whether a pink slip is in their future, and internet psychics across the board saw a spike in traffic in the days following the initial market crash.

 

The boom in superstition is a predictable response to troubling times, says Columbia Business School professor Gita Johar, who’s studied the phenomenon. “If the future is uncertain, people turn to psychics,” Johar says. Consumers tend to embrace the supernatural when confronted by stress, combined with uncertainty. “You have an illusion then that you can then control the outcome. People want the illusion of control.”

 

Spears is one of many self-described psychics, empaths and mediums who make a living giving online readings by instant message or phone on sites such as LivePerson.com and AT&T’s Keen.com. Spears performs readings by online chat for $2 to $3 a minute, and says that since September she’s been talking almost exclusively with Americans who are concerned about their economic futures.

 

“People ask if they are going to lose their house or if they are going to find a job soon, or am I going to be laid off,” says Spears,

 

“Usually I can give some time frames, and for some people, it is clearly ‘yes,’” Spears says. “I can tell them if another job is coming and a time frame for when they will get another job.”

 

Hourly rates for online psychics typically range from $100 to $1,000 per hour, but those steep rates haven’t seemed to deter the monetarily anxious from reaching out.

 

Another IM reader, Pure Empathy, says his business has soared since the economic downturn. He charges $2 a minute and says he gives away lots of free time.

 

“It’s really starting to pick up,” he says. “People are more depressed, and I can easily make $150 to $200 a day.”

 

“Finances are coming up a lot more lately,” he adds. “People want to know when their finances are going to get better. I tell them I don’t see it happening until middle of next year — we are going to have a long down period.”

 

But not all psychics are having bullish times in a bear market.

 

Amaya Elliot, an intuitive and spiritual consultant who also does IM readings via Live Person, says her business has already entered its own recession: It’s off 50 percent from months ago.

 

This time last year Elliot — also known as Autumn Dancing Heart — charged a higher rate and made a “fairly nice living” off four to eight sessions a day.

 

The drop-off is a bit unusual, though, according to Elliot who has been reading professionally since 1999. “Usually in times of crisis — war and usually in economic crisis — business picks up,” Elliot says. “Not this time.”

 

Elliot might take some solace in Spears’ reading of the U.S. economy.

 

“Things will improve in March, April and May and start progressing from there,” Spears says. “We are not about to go into a holy war that means everyone will have to eat rice and beans for the rest of our lives. But it is back to basics, and people won’t shop as much.”

 

Spears also says that her initial spike of new business has declined, but that her American clients remain economically worried.

 

“Things are back to normal,” Spears says. “I have several clients in Australia and for them every day is the same as usual, but people in the U.S. are stressed about jobs and the economy.”

 

All three say their job isn’t just about making future predictions, it’s also about giving good advice and listening to people’s concerns.

 

“I answer all of my questions using my cards or gifts, but I make sure to tell them to use common sense in spending, to not quit a job that is a sure pay until another job is secured, and to make sure to use a budget and stick to it as best they can,” Elliot says. “I also remind them that readings are entertainment and not a necessity, to keep in mind the things that are wants and the things that are needs.”

 

Sometimes people ask the obvious, according to Spears.

 

“Sometimes a person asks what does that person feel about me,” Spears says. “If he doesn’t call you in four weeks, that tells you other things are on his mind, and you are not it.”

 

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