Five New Products on The Man Sphere

It's been a really hectic couple of weeks. Last week I was on holidays from work, so I took the time to get The Man Sphere tweaked up a bit with some new articles (published this week), along with putting the finishing touches through my affiliate network on the launch of the TMS Metabolic Nightmare.

In addition, I really put the hammer down on my diet and workout programs in preparation for Monday's photo shoot with Revolve Talent. By switching to an intermittent That alone was worth the price of admission, but I'll save the pics for after the touch ups are done!

This week, even though I'm back to work and scrambling to get caught up on correspondence and other items of emergent crisis, I finally also got the first category of new retail info products ready for the Sphere. The first set is entirely devoted to self-confidence and overcoming the basic block most guys have with moving forward after they've suffered a demoralizing setback like divorce or job loss.

These are the products we just launched today:

Positive Thinking and Self-Talk Tactics Revealed: A comprehensive guide to using self-talk to produce positive thinking and project a happier, more confident, and more successful self. Self-talk is one of the primary motivators in both driving people into a depressive state and pulling them out of one, and this guide helps the reader through that process to create a healthy, positive state of mind.

How to Build Your Self Esteem: A great guide to not only reveal what self esteem is and how to determine your own level of self esteem, but also on how to enhance your own self esteem and that of others. Becoming a leader who encourages others and takes pride in their own accomplishments is one of the hardest balancing acts there is, and this report shows you how to do just that.

51 Ways to Overcome Shyness: An excellent addition to any course on confidence, this short, easy to follow report walks you through overcoming one of the biggest obstacles most guys face in trying to achieve their goals. Whether it's engaging in conversation with a stranger, speaking your mind at work, or getting a girl's phone number, shyness is one of those unfortunate states that gets in the way of true confidence. This report tackles all of that.

The Power of Self Confidence: This four-page report is packed with useful advice on how to build self-confidence. The power of self-confidence lies in creating new opportunities, and trusting oneself to see them through. Even just using the simple daily exercises in this report can help guys get back on track and taking charge of their lives. A must have free report for anyone looking to boost their confidence.

These haven't been released as affiliate products (as yet), but they are starting to generate some buzz already. We're merely retailing them of course, but they will form one of the info product cornerstones of the Man Under Construction project, which is the whole point. Watch for more products in the coming weeks, as we build our platform for the big release of Man Under Construction (can you tell I'm getting excited?).

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The strange lives of bass

Some of you might know that I work at a small, out of the way animation studio in the country. Right outside my window is a beautiful vista, complete with a nicely stocked bass pond.

Watching the birds and following the signs of spring as they've gradually unfurled has been a great distraction over the last couple of weeks, and now that the weather is finally becoming reliably warm getting out for a walk (and hopefully soon also some terrain training) is a daily ritual.

Well, let me tell you about this bass pond...

There's a pretty healthy population of largemouth bass, and an even bigger population of various sunfish. Pumpkinseed and bluegill seem to be the most prevalent. No, I haven't done much fishing, but I may this year just because it's been a while since I've wet a line.

Anyway, there is one large-ish bass my bosses have named Freddy. Freddy lives under the dock, and is missing most of his tail fin. He's also fairly tame, and enjoys a snack of cat kibble from time to time.

But that's not what I'm writing about today. Today I saw the strangest thing I've ever seen bass do. Along the shoreline, where it's nice and warm (but still devoid of weeds, being early spring and all), smaller bass and sunfish like to sit and warm themselves. So do the minnows they snack on.

Under normal conditions, bass are ambush predators. They hide in cover or rest suspended in deeper water and strike at unsuspecting prey fish. That's important.

Today, I watched smaller bass -- sometimes alone, sometimes as a group -- rush at schools of minnows and then suddenly stop short of striking. It thought this was bizarre so I observed. Well, damned if they didn't pause a moment, and then strike one at a time.

Follow me on this. What they were doing was rushing towards a school of minnows and the stopping. The startled minnows fled into shallower water, but were trapped against the shore. From there, the bass could just dart in and grab whatever minnow they wanted.

No word of a lie, these bass were actually corralling the minnows against the shoreline for easy pickings. Yikes!

Since I've never heard of bass either a) working as a team or b) strategically corralling their prey, my only conclusion (until I hear otherwise, of course) is that this is an adaptive behaviour...something they've figured out, and then taught to others. We know they remember -- Freddy, for example, always returns to his territory under the dock, and knows the sound of footsteps will get him some kibble, even though it's been half a year since he's been hand fed. The rest of the fish know when a human silhouette appears on the shore there's a chance someone will be dumping a bucket of minnows (my boss keeps the pond stocked with bait fish as well, to feed the bass), and flock closer to the shore.

But this was a complete surprise. I find animals fascinating, because the more we learn about them, the more we realize how adaptable we are. If they're so remarkable as to develop a new hunting strategy in the absence of good cover, how remarkable must we be in overcoming obstacles that block our success? I think I'm going to mull this one over for a while.

And get my tackle ready for the season.

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