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THE MINDSET THAT CAN UNDERMINE EVERYTHING – AND HOW TO CHANGE IT

One of the most harmful ways of thinking of ourselves is as a victim. It can make it nearly impossible to find success, financially or otherwise, and undermines our capacity for relationships.

Yet this mindset is not uncommon, we’ve probably all experienced it to some degree. But for some it can create a more pervasive atmosphere in their lives.

As researchers Rahav Gabay and his colleagues have shown, this mindset has four specific qualities that lead to three specific biases, and one onerous tendency, that can skew our view of the world.

Today we’ll look at how to move away from this kind of mindset, and re-orient toward taking effective, positive action.

Changing a victim mindset is much more complicated than the kind of “get over it” advice that’s so common – and useless.

We have reasons for feeling like a victim – sometimes because we have been seriously harmed in some way; sometimes because for some reason at some point it seemed like a good strategy to deal with challenging circumstances, and eventually became a habit.

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FLASHBACK FRIDAY – QARI BABA

jw-with-qari-babaAfghanistan, 1984. Yes, that’s me with the legendary Qari Baba, Commander of the Harakat Mujahaddin waging a war of liberation against the Red Army of the Soviet Union – and my dear friend. I told him he looked like a combination of Genghiz Khan and Buddha, and he couldn’t stop laughing. We had so many extraordinary experiences together – like blowing up the Soviet High Command of Bala Hissar in Ghazni.

After the war was won with the final Soviet retreat in February, 1989, Qari Baba became the Governor of Ghazi Province. Then Pakistani Intelligence (ISI) created the Taliban to seize control of the country. Qari Baba had to take up arms anew against them. In March of 2006, he was assassinated by a Taliban hit team on orders from the ISI. I will never ever forget him. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #111 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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MAMA CHEETAH

mama-cheetahThe Serengeti, March 2025. Mama Cheetah has two cubs to feed and protect – her mate is long gone, she and her cubs are alone. She must find something for them and herself to eat – but can’t be on the hunt for long, as hungry hyenas and jackals would love to eat her cubs.  And when she comes back with a fresh kill like a small gazelle, they all must eat it quickly before a skulk of jackals shows up to steal it.

It’s wonderful to watch how she cares for the cubs, giving them tongue baths, letting them tumble and crawl over her in play.  But these moments don’t last. Soon enough, she’ll be scanning the horizon, watching for any danger to her children, eager to be on the hunt again.

March is the best time to experience the Serengeti ‘nursery. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #304 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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IMPRESSIONISM’S ISLAND

lakshadweepBangaram Atoll, Laccadive Islands, India. The “Lacquered” islands or Laccadives are legendary for the glossiness of the Indian Ocean surrounding them. There are three dozen of these coral atolls over 150 miles off the coast of southwest India – but moorkh Indian bureaucrats insist on calling them “Lakshadweep,” Sanskrit for “100,000. Go figure.

Paintings of the French Impressionists of the 19th century merged dreams and reality. Here that is for real. The beauty in the Laccadives can be so astonishing that it seems surreal – like when the ocean and sky merge into one in a palette of pastels straight from the brush of Monet. Come to Bangaram and you’ll find yourself living inside a painting. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #172 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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THE WATERFALLS OF KUANG SI

kuang-si In the jungles of Laos less than 20 miles from the Laotian Royal Capital of Luang Prabang, you will find the entrancing waterfalls of Kuang Si. Multi-layered cascades of emerald green pure water pour into a series of pools ideal for swimming. The warm sun filters through the dark green jungle canopy. The laughter of Laotian children combined with that of the rushing waters adds to a unique serenity. Here is a place that will wash away all your woes. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #185 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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THE WORLD’S MOST UNUSUAL GRAVES

toraja-gravesiteEast of Borneo in Indonesia is a large starfish-shaped Island called Sulawesi, where in the south-central mountains the Toraja people have created one of the most exotic cultures on earth. They bury their dead in caves carved out of vertical cliffs, with balconies at the entrances lined with clothed wooden effigies called a Tau Tau as guardians for the departed.

The Toraja live in villages composed of family long houses with enormous peaked roofs of wood and thatch, decorated with exquisite painted art and scores of buffalo horns. While Indonesia is predominantly Moslem, the Toraja are a blend of Christian-animist. They are a gentle, peaceful people, marvelously welcoming and friendly. It is a priceless privilege to spend time with them, as I was able to during the summer of 2016. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #49 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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DEMOCRATS GRATEFUL THEY NO LONGER HAVE TO PRETEND TO BE NORMAL

U.S. — With the midterms finally over, Democrats across the nation felt an enormous sense of relief that they no longer had to keep pretending to be normal.

Ever since the end of primary season, Democrats have had to act like real human beings, an effort that has been enormously taxing.

"It's exhausting, trying to act normal," said Democratic Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed. "I couldn't hang out with my terrorist buddies or anything. I was honestly starting to slip in the last few days of the campaign. I mean, I just outright said it's okay for me to walk into little girls' locker rooms. You're not supposed to say the stuff I actually believe until after the election. I don't think I could have held on another day. It's a relief to know that I can finally yell, 'Allahu Akbar' as much as I want now."

According to witnesses, Democrats have savored the opportunity to finally cut loose and be their authentic, deranged selves. "Now I can relax and be my creepy self," said Texas Senator-elect James Talarico. "Holding it in every time I wanted to do or say something really disturbing, it's been brutal! I can finally breathe again."

At publishing time, Democrats had announced that all those drag queen story hours that briefly disappeared were "so back."

~ Babylon Bee reporting

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HALF-FULL REPORT 10/30/26

Welcome to the Halloween HFR!  It was Trump’s Trick or Treat Time in Brazil this week. We’ll get to the Trick or Treat Midterms soon, but the story of how Trump Saves South America is what we first have to start with.  The link is to my X post on Wednesday (10/28) hours after Flavio and his family arrived safely in Miami. It starts:
“Every waking hour now, Trump is holding another rally in another state to save the midterms from Democrat crazies hellbent on destroying the USA. So he decides to save South America as well. Just in time. 48 hours ago all was lost. Now there is hope.”
Flavio’s escape is right out of a thriller movie. Trump, Rubio, and Argentina’s Javier Milei engineered it and are now heroes to tens of millions of Brazilians and people throughout all South America.

Of course, they are villains to the Scumbag Left.  Typical is this TDS-diseased Massachusetts Dem:

This retard has been in Congress since 1997 (shows you the 2-digit IQ of Mass. Dem voters). Check out his Wikipedia entry: he has never had a real job in his entire life, knows absolute zero how a free market economy works.  He is mentally ill with Trump hatred. As Chairman of the House Rules Committee, he orchestrated both of the Dem impeachments in 2019 and 2021.  Which brings us to next Tuesday (11/03).

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MEMORY LANE TO 1983

Instead of an Archive this Monday, how about a trip down Memory Lane to 1983, and an interview I gave on what was to be come known as The Reagan Doctrine – President Reagan’s strategy to rid the world of the Soviet.

Here you see how I conceived and implemented it at the start. The interview takes 58 minutes so you may want to take a break or two during it.  Do yourself a favor and fast forward past the first 45 seconds so you won’t damage your eardrums with the loud intro music.

I can’t believe how young I looked 43 years ago!  Time take its toll on all of us. Comments are very welcome – let me know your thoughts.

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NETANYAHU’S CAPITALIST REVOLUTION IN ISRAEL

Lost in the current debate over Israel and Hamas is the utter transformation of the former over the last two decades.

For years, Israel was a Socialist backwater. A welfare case, filled with smart, hard-working people whose economic system rendered them dependent on the charity of others.

But that was before Benjamin Netanyahu.

The MIT-educated Netanyahu, a longtime friend of Donald Trump’s father, Fred, believed strongly in the power of freedom and free markets to transform Israel’s future. He dreamed of the day when Israel might be the Hong Kong, Singapore, or Silicon Valley of the Middle East.

Beginning in the 2000s, he began to make it exactly that.

The Israel Test

My friend George Gilder — tech guru, father of Supply-Side Economics, and Ronald Reagan’s most-quoted living author — described this transformation in The Israel Test. In it, he posed a moral question that doubles as a growth model: When you encounter excellence — the engineer who invents, the founder who amasses a fortune by creating value — do you admire him or resent him?

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TREASON INTERRUPTED

Erica Chenoweth is a political scientist  who theorizes that, with 3.5% of a given population, it is possible to mobilize them into a force that can overthrow an existing government or inflict transformative social change.

I think that has to be qualified at least to take in governments and cultures that don’t have a habit of killing the participants and ringleaders once they become known (the Soviet Union, China, and most recently Iran come to mind).

Regardless of the outcome of the mid-term elections in a few days, the Left knows that Trump, and we, are taking their myriad anti-American operations apart bolt by bolt, and they are determined to stop us.

It appears that Chenoweth’s ideas are a cornerstone for a broad-based resistance strategy that, while it has been going on now for some time, is about to take on a new life, focus, and urgency.

The evidence of this has been uncovered in recent days.

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WHY IS CARNEY CHOOSING CHINA OVER AMERICA?

We’re into five or six months now of the Canadian-American trade wars.

It’s kind of Orwellian in the sense that the dispute only involved about 2% of the half-trillion dollars of trade that goes back and forth across our northern border. And because Canada has been running up a $50 billion to $60 billion annual trade surplus, and that’s not the greatest contributor to our trillion-dollar—prior trillion-dollar—trade deficit, you would think that they would make a gesture, just say, “We’re going to lift the 250% tariff over a certain level on American dairy, cheese, etc., and maybe we’ll just go down from about $50 billion or $60 billion in surplus, just for appearances, optics, to maybe $20 billion.” And they could solve it.

Instead, Prime Minister Mark Carney has taken this trade dispute and used it for his political future, his political career. He basically was given somewhat of a vote of confidence in Quebec and Alberta.

That was the point. He got elected by drumming up this hatred of Donald Trump, and I’ll be candid, of the United States. But here’s what’s really strange. He’s now posed, as I said earlier, as a leader of the middle nations.

So get this: He has 75% of his trade with the United States, with almost no transportation cost, and over a small dispute over agricultural products that at most might cost Canada $10 billion or $20 billion of its huge trade surplus, he’s really destroying the entire American-Canadian relationship.

And here’s what he’s doing, and everybody thinks it’s because of Donald Trump’s crudity, his bombast, but this is more existential. He’s doing three things…

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GEN Z AND CONSERVATISM – WE NEED TO BACK THEIR PLAY

[TTP: There is so much “news” happening right now, but this article offers such a foundational hope – our youth, checking IN instead of checking OUT.]

In Alabama, the Yellowhammer State's Republican leadership recently launched The Project Future Generation initiative, to connect young people with the Republican Party through outreach, engagement, and direct involvement with local party activity. It is a robust effort to build the generation that will hopefully carry conservatism and Republicanism forward.

I'm glad someone has gotten the memo. There is too much denigration of Gen Z on both the Left and the Right, and part of that fuels the missteps and stupid takes on both sides in their faulty attempts to engage Gen Z in politics, not to mention life.

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BACK TO BASICS

“Life is a state of dynamic equilibrium (movement and change combined with balance), rather like walking a tightrope. Your continued life requires that your body manufacture tens of thousands of chemicals in the right amounts, at the right places, and at appropriate times. Accumulated damage at the cellular level (regardless of cause) will interfere with this balancing act. Finally a stress comes along (an infection, a mutation causing cancer, or simply exertion from shoveling snow) that you could have handled easily in your youth—but now it pushes you too far from your living dynamic equilibrium, and you fall off the tightrope of life into your grave.” –Durk Pearson

Durk was a fierce advocate for a person’s right to information that concerns him or her. His Life Extension books, and his later ones, were all written with the lay person in mind, not only scientists and doctors. He wanted us to understand our own bodies, how they work, and how to make them work better for longer. And a number of folks have expressed interest in that, so let’s take a good look inside.

Let me introduce you to some “key chemicals that participate in your living and aging.”

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RITUALS OF PREPARATION

Change and growth is, first and foremost, an active, creative process. Charting a new course for ourselves, even if we’re only talking about a specific habit or two, involves envisioning what we would like different, how we would like it to be different, and what steps we need to take to get there.

Then, most importantly, it requires the commitment to take action, which involves creating the structures that will guide us through the steps and keep us on track; the scheduled appointments, the deadlines, the people who will keep us accountable.

Successful people actually use less willpower than less successful people, because they set up effective rituals, appointments, and accountability structures that build into their day what they would otherwise need willpower to achieve.

Twyla Tharp, the great dancer and choreographer, in her book The Creative Habit, talks about “rituals of preparation:” what creative people do that prepares them to work. This is hers:

I begin each day of my life with a ritual: I wake up at 5:30 am, put on my workout clothes, my leg warmers, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to the Pumping Iron gym at 91st Street and First Avenue, where I work out for two hours. The ritual is not the stretching and weight training I put my body through each morning at the gym; the ritual is the cab. The moment I tell the driver where to go I have completed the ritual.

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