Dirk de Bruin (perhaps better known on the internet as Diggy) has released his Confidence Black Book, a complete 30-day guide to becoming a more confident person in all areas of life.

I had initially assumed that it was about dating, but it really has a much broader scope, covering diet, exercise, relationships, career, and other things. In short, it’s about conquering limiting beliefs that stand in the way of increased happiness, success, and goal achievement.

I appreciate that he based the book on his own personal experiences, as he spent seven years learning how to build confidence and the kind of life he wants to live. That’s how he can say for certain that his stuff works, because he used it all himself.

While I thought he had a lot of good insights in the book, I cheated by skipping the 30 daily tasks he gives. (Tip: don’t do this!) I also skipped over the bonuses (12 motivational videos and an NLP visualization method video, so there’s even more value than meets the eye.

He’s set up an opt-in page to a series of free videos with tips and insight into becoming more confident. I haven’t seen them, but if you want the secret to indestructible confidence, you know what to do.

I want to try a little experiment, if you have a minute.

Think of a two digit number between 1 and 50. Both digits should be odd, but not the same number. Don’t scroll down until you’ve picked a number.

…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
Just keep thinking about your number…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
I’m starting to see it now…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…

Is your number 37?

I saw this on a TV magic show a long time ago. A guy was doing this to random people on the street, and there were only two different reactions. Either he’d be wrong, and they’d wonder why anyone would even try such a dumb trick, or he’d be right, and they’d be amazed.

Although it might seem that there are many possible numbers that fit the given conditions, there are only eight (13, 15, 17, 19, 31, 35, 37, 39). And for whatever reason, people pick 37 far more than its fair share – the show claimed it was more than half the time.

So the trick doesn’t always work, but when you guess someone’s number with complete confidence, it’s hard for them not to be impressed.

We know that “people don’t do random,” even when it comes to meaningless things like picking a number. I’d wager that 35 is a common choice and 13 is not, though I couldn’t really tell you why. I actually picked 37 the first time, and changed it to 39 only because I realized that 37 was too obvious.

People have wonderful abilities of intuition and pattern recognition, but a downside of this is the tendency to see meaning when it’s not there. Sometimes a random number really is 19, despite our desire for it to be 37.

Oswin Craton has a nice article about extrasensory perception, and how he was able to make many people think they had some degree of ESP with a test involving questions like the 37 thing.

(However, beware of the straw man argument – out of all the people I know who say they’re psychic, none of them claim to be mind readers.)

Please leave a comment with the number you picked – I just want to see how often this works.