Disclaimer: We can’t guarantee your success in life, because I don’t know you, your situation, and your work ethic and/or if you have the desire to make positive changes in your life that brings success.
This book is dedicated to my precious daughter, Sarah Faith, her little cousin, Sara Nava (who succumbed to cancer at age four) and any family that has, or is, dealing with someone suffering from cancer.
“Mind Control” was developed from over 10 years of research, a lifetime of personal and business experiences. “Mind Control”, is a no B.S., make it happen book. We have not sugar coated anything here. This book was written to help motivate people to achieve total success in all areas of their life. This book will help you breakthrough problems that have been holding you back from reaching your goals and dreams. I spent seven years in “Corporate America” and four of those were in finance and six of which were in management. I have learned first hand what people face on a daily basis and what it takes to achieve abundance in life. I believe that most people have never learned the principles that bring success, financial abundance and happiness. This book is about helping people achieve wealth and success in all areas of their lives. We are committed to helping people reach their goals in life, in their finances and in their business. This book is designed to give you options in life and a plan for success. If you do work for someone else, I know you need a paycheck and you need to pay your bills. However, this report gives you some options that you may not have thought about before and is designed to get your creativity flowing in a way that will propel you to personal achievement and success.
“Mind Control” is actually two books. I have broken the two books down in to sections. The first being personal success and the second is on leadership and business success.
Section One: Personal Success
Anything you want in life can be yours.
Anything you want to achieve in life can be yours. Just like the law of gravity, there is a special connection to the universe that propels ones dreams into a reality. The law of success that allows one to achieve what one seeks in life is a law that is produced from a definite purpose in life. A person with a goal, a plan of action and one who takes action is someone who will find a way to produce the results in which he or she seeks. Just like the Swallow who fly’s south for the winter, a person needs to know the general direction, in which they are headed to make their journey in life a success.
“To profit without risk, experience without danger, and reward without work is as impossible as it is to live without being born”.
A.P. Gouthey.
To obtain anything in life that is worthwhile takes work, planning and a plan of action that will not compromise nor will it wither over time. Having a definite purpose in ones self is what makes one commit to achieving greatness in ones life. If there is something you want in your life, you can have it. The person you desire to have in your life can be yours, if you learn how to discipline yourself and mind to attract what you want in life
“A man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it. He should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts. It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object, according to his nature at the time being; but whichever it is, he should steadily focus his thought forces upon the object, which he has set before him. He should make this purpose his supreme duty, and should devote himself to its attainment, not allowing his thoughts to wander away into ephemeral fancies, longings, and imaginings. This is the royal road to self-control and true concentration of thought. Even if he fails again and again to accomplish his purpose (as he necessarily must until weakness is overcome), the strength of character gained will be the measure of his true success, and this will form a new starting point for future power and triumph”.
James Allen 1864-1912
Programming yourself for success.
Your mind is just like a computer, how you program it will determine what you will receive in life and your successes. Your mind is very precious when it comes to determining what it is fed. Your mind, or brain, is like a computer. Your mind will only react to the commands that it is fed. Your mind is the most comprehensive and sensitive computer in the world. No one is sure of what your brain and/or your mind is, but we have come to understand that the brain and mind are very sensitive to the stimuli that we give it. By stimuli, I mean what we tell our brain and mind in terms of the conscious, subconscious and/or verbal will determine how we will react to any given and all situations. One can destroy themselves in terms of physically and mentally just by what we tell our brains. Likewise, we can lift ourselves to great heights, success and wealth just by the way we use our mind and brain. Example, someone who complains of health problems, whether real or imaginary will certainly manifest those problems in their life.
Happiness is a choice, as is success.
Happiness is achieving what you want in life. To me, the true meaning of happiness and success is doing what I love for work, building a life with the person of my dreams, spend time with those I love, the financial freedom to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, be in the best shape of my life and have the time to relax and see the world. There are only two true certainties in life: your time here on earth is short and the only thing in life that is certain is life will change. Just like happiness, success in any endeavor is a choice. There is nothing that can’t be done in life. The goals and dreams that you hold dear can and will be achieved if you know how the laws of success work.
Doing what you want in life.
Happiness in your career or business comes from doing what you love to do. Family pressures and pressure of that of friends torment too many people. It seems that most people have an idea of what we should do in life and as a career. People’s opinions are just that, opinions. Opinions are cheep and success is incredible. We all know the saying that opinions are like; well you get the point. Some of these people have good intentions and some want us to sink to their level of what life should be. Remember that misery loves company and others may try to live vicariously through you. Whether those giving advice have your best intentions in mind, or not, people will try to send you in a direction that they think you should go. The problem is that if you have your own goals and dreams in life, you know what you want out of life and a career.
The feeling of hopelessness, despair, unhappiness and failure comes from not doing what you want to do in life. A person who seeks the approval of others to fulfill their own happiness will never be successful nor will they ever be happy. Living your life for other’s is a waste of time and sure to cause you many problems over your life including possibly a divorce, your health and everything you have ever wanted in life. Look at the person who is very happy in life, his or her career and with their family life. The person has produced a life that is fulfilling to them and they have chosen their own path. There are many jobs that are held, but hated, marriages that are tolerated, but unhappy. It is a personal tragedy for someone who goes through life and is miserable. Why do you see so many people living on the streets, kids being violent and people who have no patients for their family and/or other? These are the ones who have never learned to live their lives for themselves. These are people have been influenced by others who have no regard for the person living their own life. The result is a life that is not successful, nor is it happy and prosperous. Remember, you have a choice to live the life you truly want.
The relationship, life and career you want.
There is nothing more taxing on a person than to be stuck in the relationship, or job that they don’t want to be in. Doing something that you don’t want to do in life is like living a long slow death. For whatever reason, many people suffer through a life of pain, agony and dissatisfaction because he or she doesn’t have the personal will to make the changes necessary to live the life they truly desire. We go through life thinking if the only the world and people would change the way they treat us, we can have the dream life we deserve to have. Nothing can be further from the truth. The only things in our lives we can control is our attitude, our situation, our lives and our relationships (for the most part) to become the person we desire to become and live the life we know in our hearts we can live that will produce happiness. The bottom line is to love people and love what you do. There is nothing sadder than someone who goes through life with the burden of “if only I would have, or I should have”. How sad it is to live life with lost opportunities. Life is short and you have choices in life that will either produce the results you desire and/or reserve you to a life of shortcomings, failure and or misery
The relationship that completes your life, partners for life.
The best relationships are those where each spouse and/or partner is supportive of each other and the other partner’s dreams. Nothing can replace the continuity that two people in love share when they embrace one another in their love, goals and dreams. There is nothing that can’t be achieved when two people in love work together to make their life the way it can be. How beautiful is a love shared by two people who are willing to build a life together in love, happiness, harmony and a set of goals that will make their dreams come true be worth? On the contrary, there is nothing that can restore the love that is lost between two people who are un-supportive of each other and who have no regard for the other person’s goals and dreams in life. Over time, the person who is feeling un-supportive will lose the sense of love and happiness that God gave us to feel between each other in a loving relationship and life. The family who works together for a common goal will never lose the passion that is God given. The passion that will last a lifetime in love, happiness and passion is definitely heaven sent. Nothing can replace a love and/or a relationship that is lost to miscommunication, or one that has lost it’s way due to a partner not being supportive of the of the other when one has a goal in life. No one person is the same and sometimes the other person has a different goal. It is hard for a person to understand someone else’s goals and dreams when they are not supportive of them and what they want to achieve in life. When resentments run deep, many relationships where the partners not supportive of each other are incurable in the fact that the love that they once shared will not survive. A relationship without passion is domed to fail and love will cease to exist in the long run. The cost of a lost love or relationship is a personal disaster. Whether we admit it or not, a loss of love is very costly to a family in terms of love, pride and children.
Sometimes, when children are involved, abuse has occurred, and/or unfaithfulness has taken place, we need to find a place where love and appreciation is commonplace. Too many people tolerate their situations and relationships, but on the other hand there are many people that give up on love too soon. The problem, in my opinion, is lack of communication and a lack of truth to one’s self. Lack of communication is a killer to any relationship and lack of truth to one’s self is only setting the person up for failure at a future date. Both problems can be cured if both partners are willing to make a pact to work together and commit to the same goals in life. I believe that the lack of truth to one’s self is due to not wanting to know what is really happening in the relation. If you bury your head like an Ostrich, you will lose everything that is important to you in life. Not knowing in the long run can hurt you more than knowing now. The person who is unfaithful will surly pay the price in the long run and lose those they professed to love. The person, who cheats on their spouse, or love ones, is only concerned with their own personal satisfaction and will never truly have respect for the other partner. Whether it is admitted quickly, or not, it is only a matter of time until the relationship dies. The key to a long lasting, happy, healthy and loving relationship is to communicate with one another on a daily basis. Give love and support to each other everyday. The death of a love is a personal tragedy.
There is no other way to describe it. The loss of someone that you love is something that is very difficult to overcome. Whether it is from natural causes or personal disagreements, the loss of someone you love can personally destroy you. How many times have you heard someone say that they wished they would have done something different, or said a couple of words that would have made a difference in their relationship and/or marriage. There are many times in life where pride, being stubborn and stupidity get in the way we really feel about others we really love. What a waste to not tell people about how we really feel towards them. Words not said are opportunities lost. Opportunities that would produce the greatest gift life could ever give you. Love is the most incredible blessing that God has ever blessed us with. Wasting time on pride will never produce a healthy love and life with the person you truly love. If you want to receive love you need to give love and tell that special person in your life how much you love them everyday. When you have a disagreement with you spouse or partner, can you still look at the beautiful things in life like a sunset, or the stars and break up the argument? Have you ever stopped an argument and said, “Look at that beautiful moon, rainbow, sunrise? If not, why not take the time? Life is short and relationships can be too if you don’t take care of them and cultivate them. Affection, time and love are the water, sun and oxygen of the garden called love. Neglect nothing in your relationships and learn to love the people in your life.
Job satisfaction, the trapped life that produces misery and how to avoid it.
One of the most profound things an individual can do to produce happiness in their life is to work in a field that they love. If you love what you do, life, happiness, health and success will be yours. Many people tolerate the job that they hold for reasons that really have no meaning when it comes to success and happiness. How can people who live in the most prosperous country in the world not work in a field that they enjoy? How can someone who collects garbage be successful and content in life? They love what they do. How many people live their life trapped in a career that they hate? “I can’t leave my career, because I can’t afford the pay cut” some will say. But what is the cost in terms of family, health, personal satisfaction and in life. Those who love what they do have better health, are more satisfied, have happier family lives and can make as much or more money than in a career they hate. Growth and wealth comes to those who achieve in a career, or business that they enjoy. It is much easier to prosper, learn, grow and get promoted in a field that you love to work in. On the other hand, someone who hates his job may spend a good portion of his workday wasting time and not really accomplishing anything of real value to his or her employer. Wasted time in a job that is tolerated, or hated is a wasted career and a wasted life, period. The stress that many people face on a daily basis is due to the fact that they are trapped in a career that they feel they must stay in to make everything workout. Their feeling trapped could come, and usually does, from financial pressures, peers and/or family members. No matter how well-intentioned people are, everyone is different and so are each person’s goals. The only person who knows what career goals and/or business goals are right for you is you. The person who you look at in the mirror every morning is the person who knows the true you. If you are in a career that you are not happy with it is time to do some soul searching and figure out what you want out of life. The career path that you might discover, is the correct path for you, is starting your own business. What is it that you want to achieve in life? What is your main objective in life? What career or business would you really like to work in?
Think potential, long-term, job satisfaction and not instant gratification.
Exploring the possibilities of a career change, or starting your business can be an exciting experience. At the same time it can be a very nerve racking. We, as people, don’t like change. Making a change in your career or starting a business to many is like pulling teeth. They know that their life would be better and happier if they made the change they want, but they have a hard time getting started. When making a career change or starting a business there is some planning that you need to do. Take a look at what is the potential of the career or business that you are starting? In terms of financial, what are the financial possibilities? How much money can you make? Will you be rewarded for your efforts, or will you be only compensated for putting in your eight hours per day? Is there a compensation schedule for your production? What are the long-term possibilities of your new career or business? Are you going to be happy in your new venture in the long run? How satisfying will the career or business be to you? Will you enjoy your new work? If you are looking for just instant gratification, you will surly not be happy in the long run and your growth as a person and professionally may suffer. We will be going over a whole series of setting yourself up for success in life, business, personally, with health and with family a little later on. Right now you need to start to focus on the possibilities that you have in front of you. Success takes time and is done in steps. You can’t eat an elephant in one bite, nor can you be a success over night. I heard a very successful and well known business man once say it took me 12 years to become an over night success. Now that doesn’t mean it will take you that long to succeed, but success is a process and so is character building for success.
Explaining your failures, what the hell, it is not my fault.
There are over a million and one reasons why people fail to succeed in life. “The time is not right to make a change”. “I am not supported by family and friends to do what I really want in life”. “I am not lucky enough to be successful”. The list of achieving excuses goes on and on. But, ask someone who is successful and the answer for success is simple. “I was successful when I was dead broke. I knew what I wanted in life and in my career. I built a plan of action for achieving my goals and dreams. I took action and wouldn’t take no or can’t as the final answer”. When someone takes this approach to life, his or her goals and dreams, there is nothing that can’t be achieved in life. If you take this same approach, you to will be successful in everything you want in life.
The greatest way to wealth.
This is the $1 Million and possibly the $1 Billion answer to wealth. If you wish to create wealth and have financial abundance in life, there are a couple of principles that are a no lose situation. If you want to achieve anything in life, there are three things that will produce what you want in life. One: help people in life. Two: Help people achieve their goals and dreams. And, last but not least, give 110% of your self to bettering other people’s lives. My business is based on helping people achieve abundance in every area of their life: mentally, physically, spiritually, financially, socially and with family. My goal is to help as many people in my life as I can. To be more specific, I want to help at least 10 million people. If I personally help 10 million people through my book, website and personal consultations, I do know that the affect will multiply. What I mean is that those people I help will inevitably help other people and as a result, they will help many people as well. But, remember you can only help those who want to help themselves. Don’t waste time with people who want something for nothing. Everyone needs help in life, but those that are deserving of your help are those that are willing to help themselves. I learned this valuable lesson when I was in the investing business. I wasted a lot of time on trying to help people who will not do anything to better their lives. They said they wanted to achieve success, but they didn’t want to make the necessary changes to achieve their goals and dreams.
Give more than is promised. Add value and reap the rewards.
If you want to ensure your success, give more than is expected by your customers and clients. The value added bonus of calling your clients for a customer check up to make sure that our customers are happy with your product and/or service is something that will keep a successful relationship with your business sales base. There is nothing that will make your customers feel better about doing business with you than to make your customers feel needed and wanted. Not only does this make great business sense; it also makes a customer for life. Customers tend to forget you if you do a one shot sale. However, the businessperson that keeps his name and products in the mind of his customers will receive repeat business and referral business from satisfied customers. Giving bonuses to your customers, such as a free ebook, a free report, free consultation or something that will benefit your customer, ensures you success in business.
Defining Wealth.
Anyone who has spent time building a successful traditional or online business knows that it takes work, time and dedication to make it a success. I know there are a lot of get rich quick schemes out there and some that say that you can make $5 billion gazillion in two weeks. Now there may be some programs that you can make good money in a relatively quick amount of time, but without actually doing work you will not make the Internet, or any business for that matter, work for you, nor will you be successful. There has been a lot of talk in Washington DC that the rich have won life’s lottery. I don’t buy into that theory. First of all over 80% of millionaires are new money (the first time they have ever had money), 84 percent inherited less than 10 percent of household net worth and 61 percent never received a dollar from inheritance, gifts, or trusts. According to Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D. writer of The Millionaire Mind, most are people who created wealth building their own businesses. And secondly, if you have a problem with rich people you need to change your focus. Instead of feeling cheated you need to focus on how you can use the same principles to create wealth in your own life. When I see someone who is successful, I always ask myself “how did they do it”? “How can I use the same principles in my own life”? “How can I obtain greater success”? Aren’t these three questions better to help you succeed, than looking at someone who is successful and felling cheated because you haven’t reached their level of success? Wouldn’t it be more beneficial to your success to take this approach? You see success is built on a system and the system never fails. There are pathways that lead to success. Success is built on sound principles and work. Now I am not saying that there aren’t people who walk into success, or successful situations, but that is not the normal situation. Some people would say that rich and successful people are lucky. The best definition I have heard of luck is; “luck is when opportunity meets preparedness. And the opportunity will only make the unprepared look ridicules”. Use successful principles to your advantage and you to can become one of those people that the un-initiated call “lucky.” Below is an outline that we have used to build our web businesses. We also use these principles in our lives and we believe you can use these same principles to achieve personal success, build your business, or start one and become successful as well.
The vision of success: Discover how to chart your path to success.
The most important decision you could ever make in your life is to decide exactly what you want. How can life give you anything if you don’t even know what you want yourself? It can’t. In order for you to become successful, become the person you desire to become and live the life you really want to live; you have to know what it is you want and where you are going. We will get into this in a minute, but first lets define success.
What is success?
Well, it depends on the individual. To some, it is having a lot of money, a million-dollar house with a four-car garage and having four of the most expensive luxury cars available. To others, it is simply paying the bills, living debt free and owning a small house on an acre of property. You see everyone’s definition of success is different. The person who sets and achieves the simplest of goals is just as successful as the person who has achieved goals that brings wealth in the millions. Goals are based on what an individual perceives success to be. If you don’t like setting goals, you need to change your attitude towards goal setting and realize goals are a must when it comes to achieving success in any form. Your attitude towards goal setting, reading “Mind Control” to its entirety and using this information will determine your success or failure in life. How great is your want and desire to achieve what you want in life? What is success to you? What are your goals? What do you want your business to be? What product or service do you want to offer from your business? What do you want from you online business? What is the outcome you hope to receive from your online business? What company do you want to work for? What position do you want to hold at work? Where do you want to be in a year, two years, five years, in 10 years, in 30 years? How much money do you want to make from your business? How much will you invest? How much will you give to charities? When do you want to retire? What do you want to have in your life? What kind of home do you want? Where do you want to live? How many vacations do you want to take per year? Where do you want your children to go to school? How will you take care of your parents in their later years? What kind of health do you want? What kind of shape do you want to be in? Do you want to be skinny? Do you want to be in great shape? Do you want to run marathons? Do you want to rock climb? Do you want to ride horses? Do you want to ride motocross? What more would you do with complete health?
These are all questions you must ask yourself if you want to be successful. Now it is not enough to say well I want a lot of money, I want a big business, I want to be successful, or I want a successful business. You need to be specific. You need to find figure out what is your definition of success and write it down on paper. If you want $10 million dollars, than you need to write down $10 million dollars. If you want a Porsche, or Hummer, write it down and get a picture of the vehicle you want and make it real. How would you feel if you were completely healthy? What more could you do in life? You see generalizations don’t inspire you or your subconscious to take action on a continual basis. You need to have definiteness of purpose to make it happen. You need to be clear on your goals. Write your goals down now! Be very specific, leave nothing out and dream big.
Close your eyes and see your self-realizing your goals and dreams. How does it make you feel? How does your future look? Is it brighter? Is it better? Does it inspire you? How will you live? What kind of house will you live in? What type of car will you drive? When will you retire? What school will your children go to? Where will you go on vacation? Will you run your business from home? Who are you committed to become? What newfound freedoms will you have? Will you have more time to travel? Will you have more time to spend with family and friends? Will you have more time to fulfill your dreams that you keep putting off? If your goals inspire you, than make your goals and dreams come alive. Make it real. Success is here for the taking if you are willing to make it happen and commit to it!
Now do the opposite. Look into the future where you didn’t get clear on your goals, dreams and success. How does your future look? Is it what you would consider it to be successful? Does it make you want to get up every morning with a smile on your face? Are you excited about going to your job and listening to your boss? What about having to deal with traffic? What about your goals? What pain do you experience when you realize you will be working for 40 plus hours per week for 40 years? How does it feel knowing you will probably never reach your life’s goals, your financial goals, your goals you have set for your family, your health goals, the time freedom you seek and the happiness you so desire?
Look at the two scenarios above, one of achievement and the other of settling. Which future do you want to live? I know you know the answer. The only questions you should have now are:
- What are you going to do to reach your goals?
- What vehicle will you use to get there (how)?
- What plan of action will you use?
- Why do you want to achieve your goals (success, money, freedom, time freedom, car, house, travel, etc.)
Now, if you are not inspired by your goals, then your goals are not real. They are more of a wish. Wishing for things will never bring you success, riches or abundance. If this is the case, you need to figure out what your real goals are and what success really means to you and do the exercise again. If you’re having problems setting goals, you need to figure out what your outcome is in life and why you want to achieve your goals and dreams. You need to be honest with yourself and make sure your goals are your own. What I mean is, sometimes we have goals that other people say we should have. In our attempt to make others happy, we strive to reach those goals. The problem is that if the goals you have are not what you really want in life, it will be hard for you to stay focused on achieving those goals. Be true to yourself and you will have a greater chance in achieving your goals and dreams. If you are in a comfort zone, chances are you will not do anything until there is a problem in your life, personally, financially or in health. At that point come back and use this book as your “Steps to Success”. If you are going to use this book as your “Steps to Success”, you need to write down your goals, dreams and determine what success means now! Do it now if you have not already. When you are finished with writing down your goals and dreams, prioritize them. Which are most important and which goals are you going to achieve first. What goals are for the next month, next year, three years from now, five years from now and so on.
The decision. Deciding on your future and success in life.
Now that you know what you want out of life, what is the next step? Decide that you are going to reach your goals, dreams and your definition of success. Now that sounds simple enough. But, if it is so simple how come 97% of people who reach age 65 are dead or dead broke? When I worked in the financial planning business as a registered representative, I managed a district of registered representatives and one of our jobs when we sat down with clients was to determine what the person’s goals were. After we went through their goals we would make our investment recommendation and an investment plan based on their goals and dreams. The problem was that most people were comfortable in their situation and didn’t want to change anything, or change their spending habits. This was one of our biggest obstacles in our sales process. The other problem we faced was that they really were not clear on their goals and dreams. The goals they gave to us were merely wants. People don’t like to sacrifice today for tomorrow. Most people want instant gratification. The only time they change anything is when they encounter pain, try to avoid pain and /or when they want to receive pleasure. The problem with the 97% of the people who reach age 65 that are still living is that most of them never became clear on what they wanted in terms of life, health, financially; mentally and exactly how they wanted to live. They never made the decision to change their life, live a life of meaning, success, happiness, health and abundance. Stay out of the pits and traps of life. You can have anything in life, if you decide that you are going to achieve it. Decide Now that your future is worth its weight in Gold! Make It Happen!
Take action. Make it happen and avoid the failure of procrastination.
The best way to get started on your new life is to take action. What do I mean? There are two parts to this question. The first part, you are taking on a new life. When you make changes in your life, set new priorities and set new goals, your life is basically a new life. Your life takes on a new meaning and a different direction. You are leaving the past behind and you are making a new start. Secondly, with every goal, New Year’s Resolution and dream, the only way to realize your goals is to start them in motion. Put your plan into action now (decide what means or avenues you will use to make your goals and dreams come true)! If you put it off, you will realize that after a few days, weeks, months or years you still have not done anything to achieve your goals and dream. Whatever it is that you need to do to get started, do it A.S.A.P. You need to set your plan into action now! If you are a person who needs help in a certain field, or industry, find someone whom has achieved the level of success you want to obtain and figure out how they did it. Find out if they will be a mentor to you and help you along your journey. Now remember, when you find a mentor, you must commit to respecting their time and knowledge. Never miss appointments you have set with them. I know that life happens and sometimes things change, but they are taking time out of their busy schedule to help you and their time is at a premium. If you are not 110% committed to the mentor process, don’t waste their time. Another thing you can do is to order a brochure, or information about the goal you wish to obtain and put pictures of your goal where you can visualize it everyday. For instance, if there is a house you want, put a picture up on the mirror in the bathroom, or in your room. One of my favorite things to do is to make a collage of all my goals and dreams. More specifically, I take a framed corkboard (they sell for about $5 to $10 at Office depot and other office supply stores); put my goals in the middle and surround by pictures my goals that I will achieve. This way I can review my goals everyday to ensure I stay on track, have a vision of my goals and set in motion my mindset of achievement of success everyday. Make your goal as real as possible. The more emotion you have toward your goals, the more likely you will be to act and to get your subconscious to move you toward your success.
Now figure out what avenue or plan you will use to achieve your goals and dreams. This may take some thought to come up with the best avenue. Remember you are building your future. Design the plan that works best for your life and goals. Whether you are going to start a business, elevate your success level of your existing business, or use a different venture, use the avenue that will produce the best results (an avenue that excites you and is something you’ll enjoy doing will be the best avenue for you). If you need more money to achieve your plan, you may need to take on a second job. But, don’t get caught up working so much that you don’t have time to work on your plan. If you don’t work on your plan, you may not achieve your goals and dreams. If you do take on a second job, remember this is for the short term and is just a stepping-stone on the pathway of your success.
Avoid the failure of procrastination.
To me, procrastination is total failure. Procrastination is the silent killer of goals and dreams. For whatever reason, most people have procrastinated in their life. For some, it is waiting for the perfect time to get their project, goals, dreams, work, workout schedule or term papers started. For others it may be pure laziness, or because they were just not focused on what they really wanted in life. You could say that the pain of taking action was greater than the pleasure they would receive by achieving their goals and finishing what needed to get done. Whatever the reason is, people have trouble, from time to time, getting going. The problem is most of us don’t see that their lack of effort is having a negative effect in our lives. We put off what needs to be done until it becomes a crisis or when we realize that we have done nothing to achieve our goals. We get into a situation that we need to make it happen, and then the pain of not completing the project is greater than that of not doing the project all together. Remember that there may never be a good time to get started. What I mean is, something will always come up or get in the way. Whether it is paying bills, watching a ball game on TV, doing household chores, or just taking care of day-to-day tasks, we never find enough time to make the changes that would be beneficial to the quality of our lives. When it comes to our goals and dreams or our New Year’s Resolution, we realize that after a year we still have not taken the steps to move us toward what we so desire. The time to make your life what it could become is now! To put off your goals and dreams another day, means that you will live the same life you have been living until change is made. The goals and dreams you seek may take months and/or years to accomplish. The time frame for each of us is different. But, the longer you wait the harder it will become to accomplish your goals and dreams. Your life will become more complicated with bills, obligations, new family member and other time consuming activities. Remember when you told your parents you were going to go to work and stop going to college for a while”? Most of them replied with something to the effect of “if you don’t finish school, you will probably never go back”. For the majority, this was true until we figured that we were stuck in a dead end job. For others, they got caught up in their life and settled for what life offered. Now I am not saying school is for everyone. In fact some of the most successful people in the history of the world had little schooling. Remember that education comes from the Latin word Educo that means to educe or draw out from within.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as a NOUN:
- The act or process of educating or being educated. 2. The knowledge or skill obtained or developed by a learning process. 3. A program of instruction of a specified kind or level: driver education; a college education. 4. The field of study that is concerned with the pedagogy of teaching and learning. 5. An instructive or enlightening experience: Her work in the inner city was a real education.
If you have little schooling, that does not mean you are not educated. A person, who has little formal education, runs a successful business or successfully manages people is educated in their field and in human relations. What you seek in life will only come to you when you take action. Action of making it happen, educating yourself in the field of your choosing and taking the necessary steps that will bring you success in your life. The time to achieve your goals is now! The time to set your plan in motion is now. The time to set a side time to make your plan real is now. Don’t wait for things to fall into place, because the odds are that they never will. Set up a schedule everyday so that you will have time to make your goals and dreams a reality. If you don’t, the reality is that you will never achieve your true potential and the life you are currently living may be as good as it is going to get for you. The only way you will achieve your goals you set for one month, three months, six months, one year, two years, five years, ten years and so on is to take action today. Don’t let procrastination kill your goals and dreams. If you do, you will pay the price for a lifetime. Make your goals and dreams a reality not a fantasy.
Success: Lessons adults can learn from children.
Do you have children? If not, I’m sure you have been around your friends, or relative’s children. Have you ever-watched children play? Children believe that they can have the world. I have a three-year-old daughter, Sarah, who loves to watch Barney, Toy Story and other Disney movies. She will come up to me and say, “Dada, I can fly”! And then she goes running through the house and acts as if she can fly. What do I say? I say, “Yeah Sarah you can fly”. I know some people would say, “you can’t fly, it is impossible”. But, who is to say she can’t fly? I wouldn’t tell her that she couldn’t fly. Who knows what she has in mind for the future? Maybe she wants to be a Buzz Lightyear (a toy Space Ranger from the movie Toy Story), or a pilot. She loves planes and maybe she wants to fly. This is only one example of many that children have a creative imagination. They use their imagination to make things happen and to have fun. I love it. How else would a three-year-old try to ride a one-foot long by nine inch high stuffed horse from Toy Story 2 named Bull’s-eye? As a parent, it is like living a second childhood. You get to play, watch Disney movies and have fun. Children know what they want and usually find ways to make their dreams come alive. When I ask most adults, what do you want in life? It seems that most adults have lost their creative spark. Most will reply with something like ” I want a comfortable life, peace, to pay the bills, security and enjoy life”. The problem with this type of statement is that it is not specific and this means that the person is settling for whatever life will give them. Now when you ask a kid what they want in life and they will tell you I want a Buzz Lightyear toy, a Winnie The Poo Bear, and a pool, the world and then some. You see children are specific and not lacking in their goals in life. Children know exactly what they want.
Children will not settle for what life will give them. Adults on the other hand will. Why? Most adults have listened to other people about what they should do and become in life. Adults ask advice from their friends who have no idea how to be successful in their own life, let alone know much about the goals of others, or the industry that they give advice about. Most adults have preconceived opinions about success, how it works and how to make it happen. Never ask advice from someone who is not an expert in the field you seek success in, or from someone who doesn’t have goals in their own life. You see adults have received far too much bad advice from too many uninformed people. Many or us have been told that they can’t do it (reach our goals) from so many unsuccessful people and have let other people’s preconceived opinions rule our destiny. It is no wonder why most people never truly reach success on any level. Children on the other hand have not been beaten down with you can’t, you’ll fail, and all of the other limited concepts peoples have about success. The other major part of failure is the pain associated to success. It astounds me that other people fail in life because they are afraid of failure. Failure is pain. The brain is always trying to avoid pain and receive pleasure.
The great “Success Coach” and motivator Tony Robbins explained in his tape program, Personal Power ll, that “Ultimately, everything we do in lives is driven by our fundamental need to avoid pain and our desire to gain pleasure; both are biologically driven and constitute a controlling force in our lives”. B.F. Skinner, I believe, was the first to come up with the behavior of the pain-pleasure principle, but Tony Robbins has taken it to a new level of understanding. Most people associate pain to taking risks, achieving goals and taking actions that leads to success. Children, on the other hand have no concept of failure. They try to walk, they fall down, they get up and fall again, and they continue this process until they achieve their goal of walking. When most adults fail, they are whipped. Failure is final and the process will continue until settling for what life will give us is the best we can hope to achieve. Failure is part of the process of life. If we continue to try until we succeed, we will succeed. We have to succeed. When you exhaust all avenues that lead to failure, the end result will be success. We must record our path, what doesn’t work, what has brought us success and what results we have experienced. Be like the scientist who is developing formulas to solve diseases. He records all formulas, failures, successes and results. Children’s success results in the formula of trying to walk is fall down, get back up until they can walk. The process of success is the result of trying different things until the desired result is achieved and completed. Remember that a failure is not a failure until you accept it as such. I don’t call setbacks failures. They are just setbacks. Setbacks are lessons in the process of success and to me just an education to learn from.
Desire and failure: When failure is not an option.
What sets people apart when it comes to success and failure? Desire is the answer. But what is desire? Why is it that one person can achieve total success in all areas of his life and another person fails miserably? How could it be that a person who comes from poverty, with no resources, becomes successful in the endeavor they seek? While another person who has every advantage in life, wealth, family, opportunity, health and everything it seems would help him succeed, fails completely? The answer again is desire. Desire is the unseen driving force that propels us forward to taking action on a consistent basis. Desire is the unwavering rock that doesn’t take no or can’t as the final answer. Desire doesn’t let problems, setbacks and failure stand in the way of progress. Desire is the uncompromising force that doesn’t allow someone to settle for the plight of what life offers. It is unknown to those who get lost in the failures of life. Desire is faith in achievement, faith in the infinite, faith in the future, faith in achieving that which you wish to obtain, faith in yourself and your abilities. This is not to say that you need to be arrogant or cocky. Quite the contrary, a person who is sure of him or herself is not one who treats people harshly or rude.
They treat others with respect and dignity. On the other hand, a person who is not sure of them-self is not nice to be around. They mask their insecurities by giving the appearance of overconfidence. They treat other people as if they are worthless. This defense mechanism is a way to not show their weakness to others. They don’t want people to get to close to them in fear that other people will find that they really are weak and not self-assured. Have you ever noticed that people who are very rich are some of the nicest people you will ever meet? They understand the law of helping others and that success is obtained through other people. They know that you can only accumulate wealth through the efforts of other people. Nothing in this world is ever created, brought to distribution, purchased or services provided by just one person. Very rich people are sure of whom they are and it shows. Now I know that there are exceptions to every rule, but the majority of the rich I have met are nice and they treat others well. Those who want you to think they have more money than they actually do, over compensate their position by being rude and unpleasant. They live well beyond their means and are one set back away from bankruptcy. They live the lifestyle of the ultra-rich and have a mountain of debt to prove it. Their stress levels are so high that their health pays the price. I know this is not always the case, but this has been my experience when dealing with these types of people. Plus, the stress that they feel from their debt is enough to push anyone to the breaking point. Remember; never assume that you are too good or that you know everything in life. If you do, you are now warned that your have made a fatal mistake in both personal growth and happiness. No one can know everything, and the minute you believe you do, you now have what I call “Screwed-Up Head Disease”. When you have “Screwed-Up Head Disease”, you will stop learning and your growth, as a human being will cease. Not to mention, that pride comes before the fall.
Lack of self-confidence a key ingredient of failure. Self-doubt brings failure, which manifests itself in physical and mental forms in our lives. Look at the downtrodden of our society and you will find many of them have lost their faith. Their faith has been replaced with doubt, misery and hopelessness in their lives. I don’t care what personal success, business success or motivation books you’ve read or tape programs you listen to, the same truth reveals itself to us. Our lives are a product of our thoughts. Where you are at this point and time in your life, is a collection and culmination of your thoughts. Where are you in your life? What is the main contributor to your life’s circumstance? It is your thoughts that have led you to this point in your life where you now reside, either good or bad. What sets the successful people apart from the failures in life, can be measured in how the successful, have used their mind and thoughts. You see everyone has problems in life. How you deal with your problems is up to you. What your future will be is based on how you deal with problems, in life and how you control your mind’s focus (we have a section below on Beliefs that is more in depth on focus, the Conscious and Subconscious Mind). Now the equation of desire is not settling for less than one seeks in life. Desire can lift a person to the top of the world, while self-doubt can only lead to pain, misery and failure. Don’t focus or concentrate your efforts on your problems. Focusing on your problem(s) will only make your problem(s) bigger until they consume you and your thoughts and you will manifest greater problems in your life. Your mind works best when it looks for positive answers, because you are telling your brain you have the power to solve the problem. If you must focus on your problem(s), then focus on the solution to the problem(s). Figure out how you can solve the problem and use solutions that produce the best results and move on. Your main concern and focus must be on where you are going and how you can make your dreams come true. If you are in financial peril, your focus should be on getting out of debt and obtaining riches. If you live with phobias and worry about problems that may come true, your focus should be on how you can get control of your life and your thoughts. Remember this phrase and commit it to memory. :”If you don’t control your life, your life will control you”. Remember that animals cannot plan ahead and control their own lives for the most part. If we are not in control of your life, would it be safe to say that we are no more intelligent than an animal? I know that this is not the case, but think about it. We have the ability to plan ahead and control our lives, our destiny, our financial picture, our physical address and our health. Our desire for a better life, happiness, health and wealth come from our ability to plan ahead and not settle for less than we can be.
Don’t concern yourself with what if this goes wrong, or that goes wrong. If all you do is focus on the fact that something might go wrong, subconsciously you will manifest it in your life. This includes good, evil, personal problems; health related problems, wealth, pain, misery, poverty and sin. Your mind’s focus is your window to the your future. Your desire to live prosperously, healthy, successful and fulfilled will keep you focused on your dreams, when life offers you the plate of scraps the truly successful leave behind.
In his grate tape program, Lead The Field, Earl Nightingale explains: “No one is without problems; problems are a part of living. But let me show you how much time we waste in worrying about the wrong problems. Here is a reliable estimate of the things people worry about: things that never happen, 40% percent: things over the past that can’t be changed by all the worry in the world, 30 percent: needless worries about health, 12 percent: petty miscellaneous worries, 10 percent: real legitimate worries, 8%”.
“In short, 92 percent of the average person’s worries take up valuable time, cause painful stress-even mental anguish-and are absolutely unnecessary”.
“Of the real, legitimate worries, there are two kinds: There are the problems we can solve, and there are the problems beyond our ability to personally solve. But most of our real problems usually fall into the first group: the ones we can solve, if we learn how”.
“There must be millions of people today who feel they are being barred from the life they want because they look upon problems not as challenges to be met but as wide chasms beyond their ability to bridge”.
Don’t blame others for your own failures.
Your failures are of your own making. I know things happen that we cannot control, such as an act of God, people ripping us off, etc. However, your thoughts are your own. You are responsible for your life and your decisions. If you have experienced failure, misery and pain in your life, you have created your own feelings and problems (the loss of a loved one may not be necessarily your fault, especially when it comes to death). If others easily influence you, you have chosen to be influenced by them. This means that you might want to question people more about their motives and what they are offering you. If you suffer from health problems, it is quite possible that you have not taken care of yourself, you don’t eat healthy, your mindset is one of lack and you don’t exercise on a regular basis. If you suffer from financial problems you probably have not taken the proper steps to insure financial success in your life. I know that most people will not admit their failures.
Their hardships are a result of other people cheating them, the world is against them, life has not been fair to them and tons of other excuses that allows them to keep making their misfortunes the blame of everyone but themselves. But if they were to analyze their life they would realize that the failures, misery and pain they suffer on a continuous basis is of their own making. There are millions of victims in our society. These are people who have chosen to be victims and their rescue, in their own minds, is sympathy from other people. He or she tells everyone about their misfortunes, how badly others have treated them and how life is not fair. While we have a tendency to feel sorry for people who are down on their luck, have a disease, been raped, violated, abused mental problems or physical ailments (as well we should), the victim is a victim of their own making. They are the failures of society, by choice. Their mindset is that of lack and feeling cheated. For the most part, the person with the victim mentality is a capable human being who can achieve anything in life if only they would change their goals, thought process and mindset. Remember that everyone fails! No one is perfect, no one can be successful all the time and at everything they do. The difference is that successful people don’t look at their failures as failures. They look at failure as only setbacks. They find lessons to be learned and opportunities within their setbacks. It was once written that each failure brings with it a seed of equivalent success. Do you realize that on average (the median), every millionaire has declared bankruptcy (financial failure) 2 1/2 times before they become millionaires? No matter where you are financially, or in your life, you can turn your life and financial situation around at anytime. Instead of being frustrated, angry when a problem or setback occurs, you need to look at how you can benefit from the unpleasant or undesired result. How can you use the experience to your advantage? How can you make the result a success and what opportunity has become available to you? The worst-case scenario is that you know what does not work in that instance and you received and education.
The desire to change: The controlling factor.
Most people will not make changes in their lives until there is a problem. The problem could come in the form of financial disaster, failing health, loss of a loved one, the breakup of a relationship, etc. This seems insane to me. Why would you wait for a problem to smack you in the face, before you would take steps to avoid unpleasant experiences? If you understand human nature, you realize that we work on the basis that will do anything to avoid pain and we are always trying to achieve pleasure. This is why we have trouble making changes. We believe, consciously or subconsciously, that change will bring pain into our lives. Haven’t you heard the phrase” no one likes change”. Why? The unknown may lead to pain in our lives. What about the pleasure aspect of change? Well, the need to avoid pain is greater than the need to achieve pleasure. But, if you were to look at what “not changing” is going to do, or would cost you (pain), and how changing would bring pleasure to your life, you would come to understand that change is actually simple to make. The problem is we take forever to make the decision to change. How do you change? You need to know the cost of your present problem or situation on the short, medium and long-term. What is the price or cost is in your life? What is the price you will pay over the course of your life? How will making changes, bring pleasure and success to your life? What will you gain or how will you benefit, by making changes that have held you back in the past? How can you make this knowledge work for you? You need to analyze every area of your life and see where your present situation can be changed and bettered. What areas are you lacking, in your life? You need to know what you want, like we did in the section, The Vision of Success. Now analyze where you need to make changes to achieve your goals and dreams.
Here are the main areas of our life to look at:
1) Personal or mental
2) Physical
3) Financial
4) Family
5) Social
6) Spiritual
What do you want from these areas of your life? What changes do you or would you need to make to make your life the picture of success you dream of and hold mentally? You need to be brutally honest with yourself. If you have not analyzed your life, decided to make the changes necessary to achieve your goals and dreams, the time is now! The time is now to build your future. If you want to achieve your goals in six months, one year, two years, five years, or 10 years, etc. the time to act is now. The longer you wait, the harder it will become and the more side tracked you will be. I know that some of this information is repetitive, but the information if key to success. You need to use the information to your advantage.
I told you earlier that I used to help people with their financial planning. When I worked for an investment company, we would meet with clients, find out what their goals were and then guide them in an investment plan that would best help them achieve their goals. I cannot tell you how many people were not willing to make changes in their lives to reach their goals and dreams. They would not save money or very little. They would not change their spending habits and they would spend the majority of their money on instant gratification. They never made the connection that if they sacrificed in the short-term, they could achieve everything they wanted in life and that in the not so distant future they could live with abundance. They never prioritized their life’s goals and besides sacrifice means pain. Their thought process was short-term. They didn’t see the big picture. They never analyzed their life, their future and how pain and pleasure ruled them. They were prisoners to their own ignorance. The result was a life that was lived day to day and they will pay the price in the long-term. What do I mean by paid the price in the long-term? I met with clients both young and old. Some of the older people I met with lived very well, but many lived their life in the same manor as describe above (short-term). These were people in their 50s, 60s and 70s. They had a major problem from their mindset of short-term thinking and instant gratification. They never became clear on prioritizing their life. They never looked at the big picture and never used pain and pleasure to their advantage.
They lived their whole life for today. They never planned for the future. They never sacrificed in the short-term and now they were stuck. Most of them were now motivated, because the pain of the reduction of their living standard (from retirement) and the realization that living on social security was not security at all. They had little or no retirement savings. Their main goal was to have enough money when they retired to live the same lifestyle that they were accustomed to living throughout their working life. The problem was that they never saved their money and they were trapped. After analyzing their financial situation, they learned the harsh reality that they were going to have to invest thousands of dollars per month to reach their goal of their continued lifestyle and their financial situation would not allow it. Most were in debt, broke and/or they didn’t have the financial means to make the necessary investment on a monthly basis to make their golden years golden. Their usual response was “I wish I met with you 30 or 40 years ago. This was very troubling to me. It also left me with an empty feeling inside knowing that I couldn’t help them and to have to tell them that there was nothing I could do to help them. The look on their face was that of hopelessness and frustration. I went into the investing field so I could help people. I knew that financial pressures created the greatest stress in people’s lives and that finance was the one area that most people knew the least amount about when it came to planning for the future. I would try to convey the message of planning ahead to people who were younger, many would not listen, but many did. I figured out that the people who would not listen, to my advice, would not make changes in their lives until they had enough pain in their current situation or until they used the pain of living a future of lack and the pleasure of achieving a life of abundance to propel themselves to make the necessary changes. I learned a valuable lesson from this; you can only help those who want to help themselves. I could only help the people who had figured out the pain pleasure principle. The pain was a life of instant gratification, future of retiring poor, living on social security, financial lack and living day-to-day. The pleasure was a life of achievement, financial abundance, success, wealth, travel and security. The above scenario is far too common in our society. Do you think that someone in their 60’s or 70’s works at McDonalds because they want to? Some may, but for the most need the extra money. You need to decide what life you are going to live. The above could happen to you! You are not immune to this life of failure. Use the lessons above to build your future and use your desire to make it happen.
Are your beliefs holding you back from everything you have ever wanted in life?
People’s beliefs control their success in life. This is a fundamental principle that a great majority of people seems to not understand. We are victims of our belief system when our beliefs limit our achievements. Nothing pains me more than to see a person who keeps them self at the lowest end of the economic scale because of their beliefs. What I mean is people have beliefs that do not empower them to achieve what they really want to achieve in life. It is sad to see someone who is a minority live with the belief that because of racism and slavery they can’t succeed in life. They follow people who make millions of dollars a year. These leaders enslave their followers into a life of anger, hatred, misery and despair. Their leaders have ingrained into their followers belief system that they can’t succeed unless they follow them. The problem is the beliefs of the followers have internalized, don’t empower them to success and achievement of their goals and dreams. Plus, these beliefs don’t solve the problems facing the community; they enhance the problems that the community continues to face on a daily basis. And the leaders are now in a higher demand position. Or a kid who has parents that are not successful in their own lives, is told his or her whole life that they are too stupid to succeed. The kid will go through life believing that this is the case. He or she will never achieve anything that is worthwhile in their life, they will believe they are doomed to failure and they are. Do your beliefs empower you to succeed or are they robbing you of what you really want in life? You need to take the time and figure out what your beliefs are and how they are affecting your life. Most of the time others give their beliefs to us. And in many cases, we don’t even know we have a choice about what our beliefs are or will be. Just like most of life, you have a choice. You can believe you will succeed and prosper, or people, and certain things are against you succeeding. Your success or failures in life largely depend on what your beliefs are. If you have beliefs that are keeping you from success, this would be a great time to analyze and change them to beliefs that will empower you.
Knowledge. Discover why general knowledge will never lead to success.
Anyone, who has spent any time online, knows that the information on the Internet can be overwhelming. The Internet moves so quickly it is hard to keep up on the latest trends, newest technology, new programs, computer software and everything else that the “Information Superhighway” has to offer us. There is a lot of information for every aspect of life on the Internet. From marketing, to software, to how to guides, to web design, how to becoming a systems engineer and more, the business world has become very complex. How do you decipher what avenue to take and become successful or what you will need to learn to be a success. The key is to focus on an avenue that you enjoy, or are interested in and learn all you can about that field. To try to learn everything there is to know about business and the Internet today to make money, will leave you with little time and much knowledge, which is general for the most part. General knowledge will help educate you, but it is not how wealth is created. Focusing your attention on and learning a specific field creates wealth. Whether it be marketing, software for consulting purposes, software development, ad copy writing, science, health and nutrition, to name a few, to be successful, you need to focus all your energy in one field. I know that I offer products other than “Mind Control”. In fact, I offer products in nutrition, but I have studied health and nutrition for over 17 years. I also offer products for marketing and travel, but most are affiliate programs. For the last 17 years my focus has been in total success: personally, physically, mentally and in business. I have made all four areas a study to become successful myself in each area and help others with the same. Every product I offer is proven and successful. I don’t offer products that are unproven! I will only offer products that I know will benefit you, the customer.
Learn everything there is to know about the field you choose and test different theories, different formulas and try different approaches until you have mastered the field. Most people jump from one field to the next and never figure out why they cannot become successful and rich without knowing their field. They go through life and fail at everything they try. They’ve never learned that in order for them to succeed in their field, they are going to have to be educated in that industry. You don’t see a plumber trying to develop land and you will not see a scientist trying his hand at ad copy writing. The same is true for success in all fields. Become successful by mastering your chosen field. After you have reached the stage of success you seek, and you have interest in another field, than go on and master another field. If you are bored with your current industry, maybe you have already mastered it, or maybe you have just quit learning. If you see no reason for being in the field you are presently in, or you are not happy where you’re currently are employed, than go ahead and change fields. Maybe you need to start your own business. Have you ever dreamed of working for yourself? Have you ever dreamed of working from home? The commute would not be bad. You only have to travel form one bedroom to the next. What would it be like? Maybe you already know your field and you could be successful on your own. Have you ever thought about becoming a consultant in your industry? Maybe you don’t want a boss anymore. If this is the case, make the change and start your own business. But, you will have to use mastery as your guide and you will reach your goals and dreams.
This whole mastery concept took me a long time to understand. When I was younger, I used to get bored and would move from one thing to the next. My problem was, I wasn’t into mastery. I just wanted to know enough to get by and make some decent money. After a few years of not being overly successful, I made a decision that I would learn to master my field. Now, there is always room for improvement and something new to learn. I’m now open to learning as much as I can about my industry and become better than I am currently. If you take the same approach, you’ll be successful as well.
Learn to think.
Over the past 30-40 years, there has been a change in the way we deal with problems, situations and life in general. We seem to have changed our relationship of how we think about things to how we feel about things. Think about it for a minute. We are a society that is consumed with feel and felt instead of think and thought. We have become a very emotional society. Why do you think there are a lot of people who have to use Prozac (and other drugs) to help them fix their emotionally wrecked lives? Don’t get me wrong there are some drugs that are needed, but not all. We use feelings to solve problems and the end result is a solution that is of little logic. Emotions have their place, but the mind is where we are able to solve problems to the best of our abilities. When was the last time you sat down with a pen and a note pad to solve problems? When was the last time you sat down and wrote how you can do your job better? When was the last time you wrote ideas of how you can better your business sales, services and marketing efforts? Most people never use their problem solving capabilities to find solutions to any situation. Learn to think and solve problems. Take a legal pad, pen or pencil and solve your problems. Set aside time everyday to figure out solutions to become successful in life, business, with family and finances. It is easier than you think. Write down the problem and find 10 solutions to the problem. If you need to make more money, write down 10 ways you can make money. If you have health problems, write down 10 ways you can improve your health. These exercises will work incredibly well for you. One of the greatest benefits you will receive is that you will find that you will not be overwhelmed by problems anymore. You will find that you are in control of your life and you will be able to find solutions to your problems. Try it and you will be amazed at the transformation of your life and success you will encounter.
The Master and The Slave.
There are laws that most people have never figured out that determine the difference between success and failure. The laws that I speak of here are the relationship of “The Master and the Slave”. These laws are a must learn for anyone who desires success and financial abundance. The law is self-evident for those who know how to make their life prosperous and is foreign to those who fail to meet their true potential in life. The laws of the Mastery and the Slave have nothing to do with racial status at all. They have everything to do with achieving success, wealth and living a life that is yours. The American Heritage Dictionary defines a Master as someone who has control over the action of another and defines a Slave as one who is bound in servitude to a person or household as an instrument of labor. Now that we have defined the two words how does this equate to success and failure?
The Master.
The Master is in control of his or her destiny. The master builds his life and becomes a total success. He makes his goals and dreams a reality. Usually he makes his way in life, builds his own business and works for himself. He understands that he is in control of his own life and that his decisions are his own. The Master makes it known, through his non-verbal actions, that he is the one in charge and that he will answer to himself for his actions. He is someone who has learned the principles of working for himself creates true wealth. He usually has people he employs and has his employees help him build his empire. The Master knows that a slave will never achieve anything of real value in life. He never stands in line picketing for more money. Instead, he makes the decision to make more money and he does. He is someone who knows exactly what he wants in life and has made a plan for obtaining his desired goals. He makes his way in life and sails from one success to another.
The Slave.
The person who never achieves true success in life is a slave to others. He gives his hard labor and time to someone else he makes wealthy. One who is a slave never has figured out that he has a choice in the matter. Most people receive advice from people who have enslaved themselves to others in the name of security. The person who seeks advice from someone who has enslaved him or herself will only get advice that is contrary to the law of the Master. Ben Franklin once said something to the effect of “he who puts security over freedom is deserving of neither”. A slave will have neither security of freedom. Security, when it comes to making money, is an oxymoron. How is trading your precious life’s time secure? The reward for security is financial lack and lack of time freedom. How is there security in a job, when downsizing is occurring on a regular basis? Security is a state of mind. Security comes down to how one feels about the situation. How does being a slave to someone for 40 plus hours a week for 40 years equate to security? It doesn’t at all. Now I know our parents, grandparents and many others have told us that you need to find a secure job and work there your entire life. Why? So we can enslave ourselves to a company. So we never really know the true meaning of time and financial freedom? Security is a trap that keeps people from true success in life.
You see, you have a choice in the matter. You can be either the Master or the Slave. God blessed you with a brain that allows you to have total dominion over your life. You have the power to build anything you desire. The advances we experience everyday in technological, buildings, bridges, cars, aerospace and everything else we use, were built by people who dreamed to improve the quality of life for themselves and others. These people are the Masters. They decided to be in charge of their own lives and make great things happen and they did. They didn’t want to settle like the masses have and they didn’t want to enslave themselves to others. They made a plan to achieve their goals and dreams and made their vision into a reality. You have the same opportunity, as did they. But, you have an advantage over many of history’s truly successful. The computer, information age and many other technological advances have made it easier than ever to become the Master of your destiny. You have to ability to build a business for only a couple of hundred dollars and market your products or services to the world, via the Internet. There is so much opportunity in the world that you can be the Master of what you desire. You can build a company from scratch in a relatively short period of time, become rich and never subject yourself to slavery again. The choice is yours. You either control your life or others will. This was not written to denigrate you or others. In fact, quite the opposite is true. I believe that most people have not been taught or figured out how this principle works. I also believe that you can do whatever you so desire in life. Don’t let words like security or guaranteed make you a prisoner in your life. Make your life count. Become the Master of your life, your time and your financial situation.
The Business, the Master and the Slave.
If you own your own business, or are thinking of starting one, you know that it takes time, work and dedication. Your dedication pays off in the form of financial and time freedom. At least it should. Many of us work long hours to build, expand and maintain our businesses. We decided long ago that we were through being a slave to others. We started our business to achieve every goal we set. We wanted more from life than the scraps that life offered us. So we took action to make the changes in our lives. Many of us have found out that we have become slaves to our business. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy working for myself and have worked a lot to build my businesses. I have spent many days and nights that I was so busy working; I lost track of time and the next thing I knew I had worked 15 to 16 straight hours. Most of us business owners don’t watch the clock. The problem is that we have so much to do that we have to work a lot. Well, now the business has become the Master and we are the Slaves. We are in a similar position as we were when we have worked for other people. But you may say, “What am I supposed to do, let my business slip”? No, you just have to work smarter. I know that is what most people will say, but it is true. Let me give you some advice that will make your business run smoother and put more time in your life. What you need to do is make a list of your top 10 tasks you need to accomplish for that day. Prioritize the list by a matter of importance, with number one being the most important and number 10 the least of importance. Work on completing your list starting with number one and move on down the list. Whatever you don’t get finished that day you add to the next day’s list. This way you will accomplish your projects one at a time. You will be amazed at how well this will work to make things happen. Most people will do part of one thing, jump to another and nothing really gets finished. The next thing you know, you feel like you are going around in circles, you are stressed out and overwhelmed. With this new plan, you will be amazed at how well things will go. Never forget why you started your business. Get control of your business and become the Master and not the Slave. We will be talking more about leveraging, automating, marketing, saving taxes and building your business later.
Money The Master.
How many of us go through life and never figure out that we are slaves to money? Do you realize that people get most of the stress in their lives from money, or the lack there of money? Do you realize money controls people’s lives and it is the one subject that most of us are ignorant in? Why would someone not want to know how money works and how to make money work for them? We work to make money, so we can have things in our lives like food, a house, a nice car, a vacation once or twice a year, a TV, etc. We are foreign to the concept that money is the Master of our lives. I know this doesn’t sound great, but it is true. Money will determine where you live, what kind of car you drive, what size house you live in, how much property you have, what types of vacations you can take, how many vacations you can take this year, whether or not you will live debt free, your health, if and where you will have time to work out and stay in shape, what kind of life your family will live, what schools and college your children will attend, how much you can help others, how much control you have over your life, what time freedom you will have, when you will retire, when you will work (build a business and make this a reality), how much time you have to spend with family and friends, what type of boat you will have, whether or not you own vacation property, whether or not you own income property, if you will be able to travel and the list goes on and on. What you need to do is to figure out how you can make money make you money. You need to discover how you can become the Master of money then money becomes the slave. This concept can transform your life and allow you to be in control of your life. Get your money working for you instead of you working for money. Master this principle and you will become rich.
Just a Side note: Do you know that the most secure investments pay the smallest returns? When a large majority of people invests, they want guaranteed rates of return on their money. A guarantee, when it comes to investing, means you are guaranteed to lose money over time. It is a historical fact that the stock market has out performed all investments since 1926. The stock market has grown at an annual rate of return over that time period of about 10-11%%. Bonds have performed at about 5-6% over the same time period. Now I am not saying you should be foolish with your money, invest in the most risky investments and waist your money. I personally like options (puts and calls). Options allow you to leverage your money and a small movement in the stock price means a large movement in the option price. Options are very risky though and I don’t want to go into the whole investment field and/or strategies right now. I am seriously considering writing a book on investing, investment strategies, how to make money in the market and how to secure your wealth. I will keep you informed about the book, because it is a burning desire of mine to help people make money and understand how to create wealth. But for now, you need to educate yourself on how investing works and how to make money make you money. There is a rule in investing called “The Rule of 72”. It goes like this. If you want to see how fast your money will double, you take the interest rate you are receiving and divide it into 72.
Examples:
- 4% rate of return: 4 divided into 72 = 18 or 18 years is how long it will take for your money to double.
- 6% rate of return: 6 divided into 72 = 12 or 12 years is how long it will take for your money to double.
- 10% Rate of return: 10 divided into 72 = 7.2 or 7.2 years is how long it will take for your money to double.
- 12% rate of return: 12 divided into 72 = 6 or 6 years is how long it will take for your money to double.
- 18% rate of return: 18 divided into 72 = 4 or 4 years is how long it will take for your money to double.
- 20% rate of return: 20 divided into 72 = 3.6 or 3.6 years is how long it will take for your money to double.
This gives you an idea of how important it is to educate yourself on how money works, how security and guarantees in investing can cost you a lot of money and financial freedom. Another rule of thumb is that you secure your lump sums (large amounts of money) with bonds, government securities, or more secure investments. You invest smaller amounts of money (usually amounts under $10,000 – $20,000) in investments that give you a higher rate of return. If you only have about $20,000, secure about $15,000 and invest the other $5,000 in higher yielding investments. Also, Dollar Cost Averaging (DOC) is where you invest money on a monthly basis into an investment account, such as a mutual fund, individual stocks, bonds, 401k, IRA, etc. When you dollar cost average, you don’t worry what the markets are doing. What I mean is don’t worry if the market is going up or down. Besides, if the market goes down, stocks are on sale. I know that this is reverse from what most people believe. Most people pull their money out of their investment when the market takes a down turn. If the market does go down, and your investments are worth less than when you originally purchased your investment and you pull your money out, you will lose money. With Dollar Cost Averaging you don’t need to concern your self with what the market is doing. Dollar Cost Averaging is for building wealth and should be looked at a long-term investment plan. You need to educate yourself on how different types of investment strategies work and how the different investment vehicles work.
The first rule to becoming rich is to pay yourself first! Save a minimum of 10% of each of your each paychecks. If you don’t pay yourself, no one will. I know you have bills that need to get paid, but you need to put money aside for yourself in order to have financial abundance. This is a must in you financial planning strategy. It may be hard for you to do this at first, but after a couple of months, you will not even miss it. Plus, you will start to build a nest egg that you will have for your retirement and reaching your goals. Remember the rule of 72 and get your money making you money so you can be the master of money and not the slave!
Persistence. Testing is the difference in success and failure.
Whether you are looking to make changes in your business or personal life, one of the most important parts of success is persistence. In business we sometimes call it testing. Persistence or testing is the ability for one to continuously take action to obtain a certain goal. The results of a person’s actions need to be recorded to find out what actions produce the best results for obtaining that goal. In business, this means testing different ad campaigns, different sales letters, different ad copy, different marketing techniques and different avenues of advertising. In your personal life, this might mean different financial strategies for solving a money problem, or trying a different exercise program when you’re looking to improve your health. The main focus of persistence is the results that different approaches bring. We need to see if our results are bringing us closer to our goals or taking us further away from them. Over time and through different tests, we can determine what is the best approach to achieve our desired goal. One thing that we must never forget is that you never know when the breakthrough to success will come. Let me repeat, “You never know when the breakthrough to success will come”. The action you take might be on a small scale or a something that appears very simple, or even insignificant but the result may be the one answer you have been looking for the whole time. Be very thorough in your approach and in your daily tasks, if you don’t, you may not do the small things, or those tasks that seem insignificant that bring the breakthrough you seek. Through testing, you will discover what works (also, because of your testing and recording, you know what doesn’t work. The main point you will need to remember when testing is to never forget what your desired outcome is to be. If you lose sight of what your goals and dreams are, the ability to take action and be persistent will become harder. If you are frustrated and find yourself associating pain to your testing process, it is likely that you will have a hard time with developing different approaches. The problem most people face, when it comes to success, is they never became clear on what the truly wanted in their life. They had generalizations about what they wanted, such as, a lot of money, a nice house and multiples of other unclear desires. Since people are not clear on exactly what they wanted in life, persistence was a problem. Testing seemed to be more work than it was worth. And all the people that said, “they couldn’t do it” were proven correct. Now, we have already gone through our worksheets, figured out what we really want and made a plan of action. The persistence and testing part becomes essential to fulfilling the plan of success. We can have all the goals and dreams, the best plan, the greatest motivation, intentions, but without action, persistence, testing, we are destined to fail and settle for whatever life decides to give us.
Never Give Up.
The greatest rewards and hardest part of persistence is to never give up. Anyone can give up. Losers give up all the time. That is why they are called losers. Remember the old saying “winners never quit and quitter’s never win”. As stupid as we may think this saying is, the saying is true. Rewards are paid to those who have stuck with something long enough, educated themselves in their industry, thoroughly tested and had the foresight to know exactly what they wanted in life. Huge rewards are waiting to the person who is willing to do whatever it takes to succeed, as long as the actions and the business dealings are honest and ethical. Conversely, the bottom layers of the financial and social structure are filled with individuals that have given up on their goals, dreams, businesses and opportunities. Their lives are mired with failure, as is their mental state. They never figured out how to get clear on what they wanted and in turn they’ve lived their lives frustrated and poor. The goals, dreams and opportunities you seek are available to you. The doorway to your goals and dreams are there and all you need to do is take action and open the door. With all your desire, determination, might and methodical planning you can achieve everything you seek. You just need to keep your eye on the prize and review where you are going on a constant basis. When things seem tough, review why you don’t want to keep living the way you’ve been living. Remember, you already know what your outcome will be if you continue on your current path and don’t achieve your new plan of success. Never give up on your goals and dreams. You can try different approaches, but never give up. The price for quitting may be too great for you to bear and the rewards you seek may be more than you ever dreamed or imagined. I worked with a guy when I was in the investment business who was so broke financially he used to throw his bills down the stairs and the bill that landed the on the lowest step was the bill that he was going to pay. However, he never gave up and he went on to be very successful and rich. He could have given up. In fact many people told him he was stupid not to give up. He stuck with his plan, kept working on it and he was paid handsomely for his stick-to-itiveness. Now I am not saying you should go broke and do the same. What I am saying is, there are great rewards to be obtained if you are persistent and never give up.
The Mental Edge of Success.
To say there is a mental edge to success is an understatement. Success stems from the mind’s ability to focus its powers and its thoughts in a direction that propels us to take total control of our lives. Yogy Berra once said, “Baseball is 90% mental, the other half is physical”. I know this is kind of a funny statement, but “Baseball being 90% mental” is true. Let me share a little story with you. I love working out, running and riding motocross. I try to stay in shape and improve my health on a continuous basis. I was working out at the gym the other day and had hit a plateau on the bench press. Which means, I was having trouble increasing the amount of weight I was lifting. I had not been increasing my weight strength for about a week and a half. I had been eating healthy, kept the same workout schedule and rested when I felt fatigued. I was starting to get a little discouraged and decided to try an experiment. What I did was focus on the weight I had been unable to lift, told myself I was going to lift the weight three times and focused on succeeding at my goal. And you know what? I lifted the weight three times. Now you may say what does this have to do with success in life or business? It has everything to do with success. To be successful, you need the mental edge that says I can and I will accomplish my goals and dreams. I will learn everything I need to be the best I can be in my given field, in my desired profession, or in my competitive sport.
A large part of the success you seek is going to come down to your ability to keep your mind sharp and know that you are already successful because mentally you can already picture yourself achieving your goals and dreams. In other words, in your mind you have already achieved the goals and dreams you have set for yourself. You can visualize yourself with all the pleasure of achievement. You see yourself in possession of everything you have set your mind to achieving. By doing so, you will add emotion to your goals and dreams and, in turn, you will be telling your brain that achieving your goals and dreams is total pleasure and not achieving them is pain. When you are not feeling very self-confidant about a situation in business, or life, for that matter, you will have to use your mind as your mental coach. You will have to use your mind’s focus to assure yourself of success. Have you ever-watched athletes in competition talk with themselves? The reason they talk with themselves is because they’re using their mind to get that mental edge, or to put themselves in to a zone. I heard a Psychologist awhile-back say that “when an athlete talks with himself that there really is a part of the brain that acts as the coach (Subconscious Mind) and gives athletes the mental edge to succeed”. Conversely, that means that you can give yourself a mental disadvantage depending on how you focus your mind. If you’re not confident and don’t believe you will achieve something, more than likely you will not. You are in control of your mind. You need to focus on how you can use your mind to give you the mental advantage for success. If you lack self-confidence, you need to strengthen the areas that produce these feelings of inadequacies and make sure they don’t wreak havoc in your life. Don’t concentrate your focus on self-destructive thoughts. People who have achieved what you seek are probably no smarter than you are. They have just channeled their focus to that of confidence, used their mind to get a mental advantage and achieved success. Work on strengthening your thought process to make it constructive in your life’s success. Think of your mind as a muscle. If you want positive results in your life, you need to exercise your mind much the way a body builder exercise his muscles to achieve optimum results. Channel your thoughts on positive successes and that you can and will achieve everything you seek in life.
How to avoid the failures of goals.
I love to set goals. Goals are, in my opinion, important to achieving success. I prefer a method of not only setting goals, but also look for the attainment of dreams. This sounds simple. In fact, you might have said “DA”. But, there is a problem that people face when they set goals. Most people set lofty goals, which is great. The problem is they set deadlines that are impossible to reach. I am not saying that you should aim low when setting goals, quite the contrary. I believe some people set goals far too low. Because of this, they’re not motivated enough to actually reach them. Or, even worse, the person gets excited about their new goals and what they are going to achieve in their life. They tell their friends and family about their plans of achievement and success. Their family and friends tell the person every reason in the world why they cannot succeed. These people are dream stealers and you can’t expect people without serious ambitions in life to share your excitement. They will not understand what you have learned here in this book. But, the biggest failure of goal setting is the time limit you set for obtaining your goals. We have all set goals that we were so excited about we could hardly sleep (if you have not experienced this great joy, you need to work on what you really want in life and do the exercises lined out in this report). We decide we are going to achieve total wealth and have everything we want in life within three months. We may be broke now or in debt, but within three months we are going to be a millionaire (I know this may be an exaggeration but people do set incredible goals). Obliviously, this is very unlikely to happen, but it could. I don’t believe in telling people what they can’t do in life. Because, some people could actually make this plan happen. We can achieve great things in life if we put our mind to it. The problem with most of us is we have busy lives, we don’t follow our plan, we don’t work on achieving our goals and dreams on a continuous basis or we are not educated enough in our field. In three months, we realize we didn’t reach our goals, we are failures and everyone who said “we could not do it” was right. Now we have experienced pain from setting goals. No wonder people don’t like to set goals. A better approach would be a more realistic time frame, say like a year, or two, or five. You could also just set the plan up as something you are going to achieve and not put a deadline on it and make it a dream. Either approach will work depending on your situation. If you have experienced pain with goal setting, the second approach might be best for you. This will elevate the stress, pain of failure and reaching a deadline. Now I am not a big fan of the second approach, because it doesn’t make you take action right now, but for some it may be the best solution. If you do the this plan, you must follow through and not get side tracked, or you will end up experiencing pain in a couple of years when you realize you didn’t do anything. If you are a high-energy person, your goals and dreams are so strong in your beliefs that you can attain your plan in an incredibly short period of time, than go for it and make it happen. You never know where someone is in their life, what drives them, or what pain they are trying to get rid of in their life at the present moment. You may decide to play with the different approaches to see what works best with your life and situation. Never make achieving your goals and dreams painful. If you do, you will find it hard to set goals, achieve success and follow through on your plan.
The Money Magnet: Principles for attracting wealth.
This is an experiment I did a few years back. I was at a point where I was struggling financially. I was working hard, had my goals and dreams set, but I was not getting anywhere financially. One day I had an epiphany. At the time, I figured out that my focus towards money was why don’t I have money. Remember what we focus on in our lives on a continuous basis we will experience in life. I decided that I was going to do an experiment. What I learned was incredible. I told myself I was a money magnet. As stupid as this may sound, I really focused on and told myself I was a money magnet. I knew I was going to attract money in my life. I felt extremely positive towards money. Before I was frustrated and angry by the lack of money. I changed my focus on money and the result was I started to accumulate money. The more money I received the more positive I was with my association to money. This may sound dumb or stupid, but something as simple as this can make serious changes in your life. Most people, when they try to make changes, go for changing everything in their life. Many times this is good, but sometimes-simple little things are what make the differences. Don’t over-think success. The changes will be different for each individual and each situation. You will have to make the determination of what needs to be changed in your life and how it will comply with your goals and dreams. There is a saying that I want you to remember. It goes like this “don’t get in way of your success”.
If you are like many of us, one of your goals is to attract money, or gain wealth in your life. You will need to do a couple of things to make this happen in your life. You need to figure out what your preconceived opinion (association) to money is. What are your thoughts about money? Are they positive or negative? Many people believe that money is the root of all-evil and that people with money (the rich) are terrible people, they don’t care about anyone, they are mean. I don’t want to be thought of as a mean. Some people equate working too much to making money. Some people even feel guilty for having money and they spend the rest of their lives redistributing other people’s wealth (do politicians ring a bell) to compensate their own guilt. Now, they wouldn’t give away their own wealth, but hey other people don’t need money like they do. Have you ever realized the people who say that money doesn’t matter are the people who do not have an abundance of money in their own lives? Interesting how that works. You can attain any level of financial success you wish in this world. There is plenty of money to go around. You need to decide what you want in terms of money and figure out how pain and pleasure have ruled your financial situation. What is holding you back from really achieving your financial goals and a life of abundance? Really analyze this situation. I have stated this before, but it is worth reading over and over again. Money will determine just about everything in your life. What do I mean? Money will determine where you live, what kind of car you drive, what size house you live in, how much property you have, what types of vacations you can take, how many vacations you can take this year, whether or not you will live debt free, your health, if and where you will have time to work out and stay in shape, what kind of life your family will live, what schools and college your children will attend, how much you can help others, how much control you have over your life, what time freedom you will have, when you will retire, when you will work (build a business and make this a reality), how much time you have to spend with family and friends, what time of boat you will have, whether or not you own vacation property, whether or not you own income property, if you will be able to travel and the list goes on and on. Money is not evil. What people may do with and to obtain money can be evil. Money is going to determine the quality of life you, your family and your friends will have. You see it is your preconceived opinion (association) to money that will determine how much money that you will have. Become a money magnet. I don’t care what your preconceived opinion is about this exercise. Just try it for a month or two, record the changes in your finances, personal life and see if the quality of your life has improved. You may even find that new opportunities will become open to you. I am positive you will be pleasantly impressed.
Your results are in direct proportion to your actions.
The results you receive in life are in direct proportion to your actions. If you only give little to your success, goals, dreams, business and your life, you will receive little in return. If the grass is greener in someone else’s life, they are watering more and taking better care of their grass. What I mean is people who are successful take steps on a daily basis to better their lives. They do the necessary tasks that propel themselves in a successful direction. They make more business calls. They make more plans for attaining their goals and dreams, and their actions consist of little wasted time. They don’t spend hours watching TV or playing video games. They put their plan into action and work everyday on making their life better. If you are not experiencing the results you want in your life, you might be wasting time on things that don’t help you achieve your goals and dreams. Have you ever calculated out your day and examined where your time is spent? I do a lot of research for my businesses online. I look for new products or services I can offer my clients that would be beneficial to them and myself. I have noticed, on occasion, that I have spent hours researching companies, become side tracked and looked at things that are more for personal use than for business. This is a waste of time. I did not put the time I allotted for my business research to good use and subsequently I didn’t achieve my objective. The result was time wasted that I planned for business and not personal use.
It is OK to do personal stuff, but not when time is set a side for business. If I were to do this on a regular basis, my business results would suffer and in a year I would waste weeks of time. I would not get the results I am committed to achieving and would not reach my goals and dreams. Keep records of your time throughout the day and see where you are wasting time. Prioritize your schedule so that you have ample time to work on your goals, dreams and business. You can and should allocate time for fun and leisure, but make sure that they are in their respective places. Make sure your focus is on activities that will be beneficial to your goals and dreams. Find the best tasks to work on that will best help you achieve what you seek in the most efficient manor. If you are avoiding certain areas that you know you need to work on, but you have an approach avoidance to taking action, change your focus and look at what the price will be if you don’t do what needs to be done. If you don’t like making sales calls, but know you must if you are going to achieve your goals and dreams. Look at how much not making the calls will deprive you in life and how it will negatively affect your goals and dreams. The best way to concur your fears is to take Nike’s advice and “Just Do It”! The rewards will far out weigh any pain you have associated to taking the necessary action. If you are to obtain the results you seek, you will have to take every necessary action to ensure success. Just like security is a state of mind, so is fear. Use your fear and emotions in a constructive manor and channel your all your energy toward success. Act on your goals and dreams like some one is putting a gun to you head and if you don’t take action you will pay the ultimate price. Essentially, you will pay the ultimate price through a life of frustration, disappointment, a life of lack and failure. Your motto should be, I will keep taking action until I succeed and achieve my goals and dreams.
Never stop learning.
One of the most important lessons people can learn in life is to never stop learning. Learning is fundamental to people’s success and continued growth. The world is always changing and to not learn on a continuous basis is personal suicide. In fact, when people stop learning they tend to die mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically and in many cases financially. The law that leads us to prosperity and personal growth is our ability to move in an upward spiral on the learning curve. We need to learn if we want to become the best we can be in our lives and in our professions. It amazes me that with so much available knowledge on millions of different subjects, how someone could chose not to learn and better them-self in the process. The understanding of life, finances, health, wealth, the universe, science, business, mechanics, computers, electronics and countless other subjects offers us an understanding of how things work and allows us master different subjects if we so chose. The possibilities are endless and we as human beings need the mental stimulation. We need challenges in life to keep the mind fresh and alert. Earl Nightingale said one of the best sayings I ever heard about reading. He said, “Someone who does not read is no better off than someone who cannot read”. Ignorance has to be the greatest failure ever known to mankind. Ignorance is laziness, ones lack of becoming the best we can be is the surest way a person can guarantee failure in their life. One who moves through live from one success to another is usually educated in the field they have chosen. Without the necessary education, either personal or through schooling, an individual will achieve very little or nothing at all in life or business.
If you are going to be successful in life, you need to make learning a life long habit. Learning is a must to achieve total success. One who learns little in their field or business will achieve little in terms of success and prosperity. Are you successful in your business or career? Do you know everything there is to know about your field? What new information or technologies have been developed that you have yet to study? Are there things right now that you would like to learn, but haven’t taken the time to read up on them? Are there things that you could do that would make learning more fun? Remember how pain and pleasure controls our lives? If you have trouble learning, or don’t like learning, maybe you look at learning as painful and not a pleasurable experience. Maybe it is time for you to figure out what you could gain by learning and what it will cost you if you don’t learn. Remember that you are in control of your mind and your thoughts. You have the ability to change anything in your life, if you so chose. If you are having trouble learning or feel it will cost you too much time, look at the cost of not learning. If you do use the information you have learned to make you rich, just think of how much more free time you would have to enjoy life and learn more. Make your life the life that you desire and learning is a great part of that life. If you don’t learn, the cost in your life, your finances, your physical body, your time freedom and every other area of your life might be more than you are willing to pay. Make learning fun. Understand that learning is your light to a brighter tomorrow. Learn all you can and reap the rewards.
Treat people well: Never cheat, lie or steal.
Treating other people well should be a no brainier, but to some it is not. This simple truth has to be the most overlooked success principles in the world. I know there are many honest business people. I know there are a lot of people in the world that will cheat and lie to people in order sell their products, services or improve their own situation. I also know there are people who will steal from others, including their own family members. The only way you can make money is through other people. They either buy your services, your products or they don’t. If you are ripping people off, lying to them, stealing from them in your business, you will not be in business for long. You will never have repeat, backend sales, and/or word of mouth business, because your business tactics will get around. These types of businesses and business people are into short-term success. But, I don’t know if I would call lying, cheating and stealing a success of any type. These people will make money for the first year or so and then everything will fall apart, and rightfully so. I have no idea how someone could take advantage of other people this way. They are the most selfish S.O.B.’s alive and they should not be allowed to do any business dealings. If they screw enough people, they will be out of business and headed to jail. You see when people rip others off; they are setting in motion their own demise. They inevitably will pay the price for their dishonorable deeds. Call it Karma, if you will. But, life has a way of taking care of these types of people in due time. It is only a matter of time until the axe comes down on them. Treat every person, client and customer with respect and honesty. Don’t take short cuts. Short cuts will pay only in the short term. You have probably heard this before but it is true. To me it is the “Golden Rule” and it goes like this: treat others the way you would want to be treated. You must build your business on honesty and trust. This will ensure your success for the long term and allow you to live with a clear conscious.
Live within your means.
Ben Franklin gave us the greatest secret to wealth. He said, “that the road to wealth lies in augmenting our means or diminishing our wants. Either will do. But the quickest way to wealth is to do both at the same time”.
One of the first principles of wealth is to live debt free or to keep your debt under 50% of your income (20% would be better, but I am a realist and know that it is hard to do unless you make a lot of money). Don’t use credit to purchase things that will decrease (depreciate) in value. If you do, you will not only be losing money, but you will be paying interest on the items as well. Live your life where you pay for most of your purchases in cash. The key is if you cannot afford to buy it with cash maybe you don’t need it or you can’t afford it. I know this sounds like a boring life, but instant gratification is one of the biggest problems we face today. You need to discipline yourself, learn how to sacrifice today and live in abundance tomorrow. Get your money making you money and then you can have more things than you ever dreamed possible. I know you need credit to survive in today’s world and we need to buy things on credit from time to time. But, today’s society is filled with emotional sales pitches, how you will receive total pleasure for buying their products and pain if you don’t. Advertisers have learned how to use psychology to make sales. That is why we are a nation of debtors. Psychology is a great tool for making sales. It keeps the company going, the employees employed, transportation companies working and usually they produce a good product for us the consumer. The problem is that not many of us are aware to this concept of selling and we end up going into debt and sometimes bankruptcy. Remember what Benjamin Franklin said, “Creditors have longer memories than debtors”. This is very true. Which scenario do you remember the most? Would you say that you think about and remember more when you owe someone a thousand dollars or when someone else owes you a thousand dollars? Most people remember they owe someone money when they see them. On the other hand, we can’t wait to find the person who owes us money.
Don’t try to live your life trying to keep up with people who are richer than you are. They maybe living on credit and swimming in a sea of debt. Make a plan, if you don’t already have one, to get out of debt and start investing. When you become debt free, financially secure and you have money making you money, you can start to enjoy life more and start purchasing the things you want in life. If you are, or when you become financially secure, make a plan that you will never have to worry about money or debt again. Look at your life as if you are a business. You are the owner, the financier and the worker. If your business isn’t profitable, or has a negative cash flow, you will not be in business long; you could end-up in bankruptcy court and/or with bad credit. Now I am not saying to live your life without having fun that would be painful. What I am saying is plan ahead, live debt free and make your life so much better than you could have ever imagined. Remember the Master and Slave Principle. Be the Master of your life.
Know yourself.
One of People’s greatest failures in life is they don’t knowing their own strengths and weaknesses. You may say, “I know what my strengths and weaknesses are. I live with myself 24 hours a day seven days a week”. But have you ever done something that you asked yourself “why did I do that”? Or, “that was stupid, what was I thinking”? It could be that you have never taken the time to sit down, and really figure out why you do what you do or why you take certain actions. I know there have been situations in life where when I reacted in a harsh or angry manner towards someone. They may or may not have deserved it, but I reacted in a way that was not beneficial to the situation. In most cases, I was acting out of frustration. Being frustrated has been a weakness of mine; it is something I have worked on to change. I still catch myself making this mistake from time to time, but now I am aware of the problem and am able to control the situation better. Do you know what your greatest weakness is in life? Have you ever sat down and written down all of your strengths and weaknesses? If you have not, you really should. After you make a list of both your strengths and weaknesses, work on your weak list first. Read through your list and improve on your weaknesses daily. Work on improving your strengths, but your main focus should be on improving your weaknesses. Then, when you get in certain situations, you can catch yourself making mistakes that have cost you in the past. If you need help with your list, here are some tips that might help you. Do you feel frustrated, angry, unhappy, cheated, guilty, tired, unmotivated, etc. on a daily or regular basis? If you do experience negative feelings regularly, you need to write them down on your list. Analyze each feeling and determine why you are experiencing these feelings on a continuous basis. Are there certain situations that bring these feelings to the surface? If so, you will want to determine why and when you realize that the undesirable feelings are coming out you will now be aware of them and you will be able to stop them from occurring. This will take some work and time to combat these feelings. So don’t get frustrated if you are not able to control them at first. These feelings could be affecting your life in a negative manner. They could be costing you relationships, your family, your job, your marriage and everything else in your life. When you discover how to control your feelings, you will have a much better control over your life. You will improve your life, the lives of people around you, become a better person and quite possibly improve your financial situation.
Eliminate stress.
Stress can kill you, make you ill and/or deteriorate your health. Stress is something we all deal with on a daily basis. One of the fundamentals of success is to reduce and if possible eliminate stress. If you are stressed out most of the time worrying, trying to meet deadlines, paying bills etc., you need to find ways to reduce your stress. I have a couple of stress relievers that work in my life. I love to workout, fish, hunt, mountain bike, but the best stress reliever for me is motocross. To get out of the house for a day on the track, get a great workout, have some fun, get an adrenaline rush and think about nothing but having fun and riding hard. I get back home; I am tired but totally stress free. I could have gone riding in the worst mood and completely stressed. But, after a day of riding, everything is better, my mind is clear and I am no longer stressed. I usually go riding on Sunday morning. By the time Monday morning is here, I feel great and ready for the week. I know not everyone rides motocross, but you should have an outlet that allows you to alleviate your stress. It could be tennis, golf, basketball, football, softball or any other hobby or exercise. Pick a sport or hobby and make it a priority to participate in it at least once a week, minimum. I prefer exercising over all other stress relievers, because it not only gets you away from everything, it also allows you to get exercise. Exercise is not only healthy; it changes your state of mind and gets your focus on fun for a while. If you don’t have a hobby, you really should find one. You will not only feel better from exercising, you will also realize your focus in your life is better as well. Exercise will not only help you improve your efficiency at work, but it will help you deal with problems and stress. Exercise will also help you get in shape, become healthier and build self-confidence. Stress is the silent killer. Like all other problems, stress will not go away until you take action to do something to relieve it.
If you have a physical aliment, there may be certain things you can do to enjoy exercise at some level. Thank God for the scientific breakthroughs that have made peoples lives better. Talk with your doctor, physical therapist and make a plan to better your health.
Gratitude.
Most people go through life feeling cheated. Their focus is on why problems keep happening in their lives, why they’re always getting screwed, and why people aren’t nicer to them. What they don’t realize is, their life is a reflection of their attitude. Their attitude toward life and others is that life and other people owe them something. But, life and others don’t owe them a thing. In fact they owe life a thank you for being blessed to live on this beautiful planet. They should feel grateful to have family and friends in their lives. I know that not all relationships are happy and harmonious, but what part have they played to make their relationships with others un-enjoyable? They may have a bad attitude toward others and in return they experience a life of unhappiness and pain. The person who feels cheated should realize that they owe others respect and kindness. They don’t receive these two aspects of their relationships with others, because they don’t give them in the first place. They feel cheated because they have no gratitude towards the blessings in their own lives. Gratitude is the foundation that leads to success. Gratitude is the magnet that attracts opportunities and positive forces in our lives. A grateful person is one who is thankful for everything that he or she has in their life. They know they have been blessed with a great life and because he or she is grateful they will experience many successes and happiness in there life. A grateful person understands he or she has been blessed in life. He or she doesn’t feel cheated, ripped off and doesn’t hold resentments toward others. The person lists everything they are grateful for in their life and they are paid handsomely because of this attitude.
Negative attitudes destroy everything in there paths, leaves people feeling unhappy and bitter. A negative attitude can never breed success, only misery and feelings of being discontent. If you are feeling cheated in life, you need an attitude adjustment. You need to realize you are blessed in life. You don’t live in a Concentration Camp do you? There are many things to be grateful for in your life. You need to write down everything that you are grateful for in life. I don’t care how bad your life may seem, there are people, opportunities and/or other blessings in your life right now. Remember there are many people who have it worse than you do. Every time I am feel bad about a situation, or something going wrong in my life, I see someone who is worse off than I am. Here are a few of things that have made lasting impressions on me to be grateful in life. At one point in my life I felt that everything was going wrong in my life. If you have ever been there, you know what I mean. I guess you could say I was feeling cheated. I was driving my car and stopped at red light. I saw a black gentleman in his fifties who was walking down the street. The problem was one of his legs didn’t work very well, or was a couple of inches shorter than the other. He was struggling to walk and when he put his weight on his bad leg he bent down. He was basically swaying from side to side just to walk. I felt incredibly bad for him. I looked up to the sky and said, “I get your point Lord”. “I have no problems in life”. Another time was when I wasn’t really feeling badly about anything in my life, but was reminded that I have no problems in my life. I again was at a stop light and I saw a girl who was about 13 years old. She was using crutches to walk, because neither of her legs worked. She would put the crutches in front of her and would throw her braced legs forward so she could move. I donate a lot of time and my web design services to help children suffering from cancer. I still can’t understand why children have to suffer, but it is something that has affected me personally. My daughter (Sarah Faith) had a cousin who died from cancer two years before my daughter was born. If you have ever had the terrible experience of watching a four-year-old die from cancer, suffer for over half of her life from surgeries and treatments; it is the most empty and hopeless feeling in the world. It still makes me cry to this day. If you think you have problems, are feeling cheated and are ungrateful for the blessings in your life, remember there are people who have it worse than you do. Make your list, read it daily and discover how you can live a grateful life. With your change of attitude, you will discover opportunities and other good things will happen in your life.
Don’t worry about what others think.
Live your life the way you want, as long as you are not hurting or ripping off others. A successful person will break from the crowds and make his own way in life. He or she becomes a leader. They make their own paths in life. They don’t play the game of follow the crowd. Most people try to fit in with the others. They play a game of follow the follower. They never made the decision to make their own way in life and they, in turn, live an average life at best. You have choices in life about how and where you will live. Will you live at the top of the economic scale with the top five percent of moneymakers, in the middle with the average-middle class, or will you live at the bottom with the people who live a life of misery, poverty and failure? The choice is yours to make. You can have whatever you set your mind and heart on in life. The problem is most people go through life and accept what life has to offer. Most people, let other people of little or no success, determine the way they are going to live and the level of success we will achieve. They ask questions, advice and listen to people who know nothing about success, goals and achievement in their own life. They let other people dictate how they are going live. They follow people who have never figured out what truly successful people know. In the end, they find themselves living the same average life as those who are not successful at all. You should not listen to those who have not obtained the level of success you seek to achieve.
Now I am not saying that there are people that don’t have good ideas, what I am saying is, do not to listen to negative people and those that will not be beneficial to your goals and dreams. People have preconceived opinions about success; whether through their own failures or the influence of others, have no idea about what it takes to be successful. Many people are uncomfortable about other people being successful, because of their own failures in life and in their own selfish way they don’t want anyone being more successful than they are. If you let other people who are failures or unsuccessful influence your success, you will build doubt in your life and the result will be failure. You are the master of your own life. Many people don’t know about the information contained in “Mind Control” and they will never achieve greatness in their own lives. Become a leader and chose the life you desire. Don’t worry what other people say. Their opinions don’t mean a thing to you or your life. The same people who said, “you couldn’t do it” are the same people who will try to hop on board your success train and tell you “see I knew you could do it all along”. Make the decision that you will live in the top five percent and have a life of abundance. Don’t worry about judgmental people. Judgmental people are people who have failed in their own life, for the most part, and are bitter that they never figured out how success works. They are failures in life. They are miserable people. The only time they are happy is when others fail and when people around them are unhappy.
Now I know that some people’s goals in life are to have a job that pays well, a nice house, a couple of cars and take vacations a couple times a year. These people are successful, if those are their goals. But, people who settle for less than they can be are not very successful, in my opinion. Why, because they never took the chances that would have made a difference in the life they truly desire. They never looked for the answers that lead to success. They never took the time to figure out how success works. They may have nice things in their life, but inside a part of them is empty. They have settled into a life style that would be very difficult to change, unless the pain of their emptiness and current situation drove them to change. Life is much like a game. You either will be a winner or a loser. You will finish at the top, near the top, in the middle or at the bottom. You either achieve your goals, and dreams or you settle for what life offers. If you are having trouble with this, you need to analyze what I am saying and dissect it. Read it again and again until it is eternalized. Study other people’s lives. Look around you. I do believe you will agree with me if you analyze the situation. What you need to figure out is do you want to win or lose at life. The choice is yours to make. Do you want to be a leader or a follower? Be a leader and lead a life of success, financial abundance and live your life the way you want to live. Don’t settle in life, when life can offer you so much more. Lastly, don’t let other people’s opinions, or what they think determine your success in life. If you do, you will find that there is an empty space inside of you and you may never know true success.
The balanced life.
Anyone who has built a business, or worked on being successful, more than likely, has been guilty of working too much. I am guilty of working over a hundred hours per week, from time to time. They say, “There is a price to pay for success”. For each of us, the price is different. Many times we get so caught up in building a future for ourselves we forget to live in the present. We work hard so some day we can have everything we have ever dreamed of, time for our families, a life of total financial and time freedom. But, what most of us forget is that, we are not taking care of our present lives and parts of our lives suffer. Each person has his or her own part(s) of their life that is lacking. It may be their marriage, their health and/or their family life in general. We use the excuses I have to succeed, we need the money, someday things will work out and I will have more time and money. And over time things fall apart. We lose our marriage, our families, our health fails and we are left with only our business or our job. When we work too much, we have a tendency to not work effectively. Our production suffers, our focus is lacking and our business success slows to a crawl at best. We are under pressure to make our business happen, get a promotion and we are under pressure from our families for lack of time spent with them. It seems we are getting it from all sides. But, if we don’t work a lot, we will not achieve our goals and dreams. You know the phrase “I am damned if I do and damned if I don’t”. We must work hard if we are to be successful, but the price of success may be more than we can bear. The key to success is to keep a balanced life. Not only are you going to have to set time a side for your business, but you will also have to set time a side for your family, you wife (or husband), your health, your friends and make the time to relax and enjoy life. What good is achieving what you want financially, if you lose the people you love, your health and end up alone? My definition of happiness and success is doing what I love for work, building a life with the person of my dreams, spend time with those I love, the financial freedom to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, be in the best shape of my life, have the time to relax and see the world.
What is your definition of success? Have you defined it? You need to. You need to make time for all things that are important to you in your life. You need your health to be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor. I had a couple of father figures die a few years back. Both suffered long bouts with cancer and what they both told me was “when your health goes, you have nothing left”. “I wish I would have started running and working out years ago”. Just like in business, don’t leave anything in life to chance. Your partner in marriage may end up feeling cheated from the lack of time spent together, start resenting you and your business. What you will need to do is set up a time schedule where you have allocated time for success, your wife (or husband), your family, your friends, becoming healthy and working out and time to relax and enjoy life. As you can see I am big on lists, but if it is not on paper and read frequently, you will forget and fall back into old habits. Don’t let your personal life suffer on your pathway to success. If you only wind up with half of what you deemed success to be, the price may be too steep. Live a balanced life and a life of total success.
Have a sense of humor, laugh and laugh often.
It is plain to see that God has a sense of humor. I believe God must laugh at us when we do stupid things much the same way we do when we watch America’s Funniest Home Videos and other programs about stupid things people do. God gave us the ability to laugh, blessed us with a sense of humor and the gift of enjoying life. I learned an incredible lesson from my mom when I was about 18 years old. It didn’t make sense at the time, but over the next couple of years I came to understand what she meant. The lesson was to laugh when things were going bad. At the time she told me this, I felt like everything was going terrible in my life and it seemed like I was fighting the world. I asked her, “How do you laugh when everything I was trying to do was not working out?” I kind of blew off our conversation, because my parents were stupid at that age. I knew everything and adults had no clue about anything. I know most kids at that age feel the same way. But, that conversation stuck with me over the years and one day I was having a bad day and everything just wasn’t working. One of those days where you feel like you should have just stayed in bed. Most of us know the kind of day I am talking about. Finally, after being a completely frustrated, I just sat down and laughed about the whole ordeal. I mean I laughed until my stomach hurt. When I finished laughing my mom’s words came back to me and I understood what she meant. I felt tremendously better. I guess you could say that my perspective of the situation changed and since then I have tried to laugh when things went wrong. We as human beings have a tendency to get frustrated, angry and just plain irritated when our plans fall apart. Many of us tell ourselves that if this goes well and that works out then everything will lead to a beneficial outcome we desire. Unfortunately, we can’t control the outcome of events. We can, however, control how we react to any given situation. We have the power to either turn a negative into a positive, a failure into a success and/or a lesson learned. We can also laugh at any situation. Haven’t you ever heard the phrase; “someday we will look back at this and laugh”? Why not laugh now? Laughing will definitely lower your stress level, because you can’t be stressed out when you laugh. If you don’t believe me, try it. It is impossible to laugh and be stressed out. Your brain has no association to stress when you laugh. If you are having trouble laughing at a situation you find yourself in, put on a CD or a video of your favorite comedian. It will take your mind off your problems and definitely change your mood. Life is too short to be unhappy and/or miserable. Life happens, but you have the ability to control your mind and your thought process. Don’t take life too serious, if you do, you could find yourself in ill health. If you stress so much that you affect your health, you will compound your problems 10 fold. Plus, when you lose your good health you might find out that the problems you stressed on were not that significant at all. So why don’t you put things into perspective now? Humor and laughing are good for the soul, your health and your ability to be successful in life. Laugh and laugh often. It beats the alternative.
Make amends with family, friends and dealing with the past.
As we all know, life is short and much too short to live with regrets. There is nothing sadder than to see people going through life carrying the burden of guilt or anger that comes from a problem that was never reconciled. Not everyone agrees on everything and when it comes to differences of opinions, some people can’t even agree to disagree and move on with life. Sometimes people argue to no end, and the result is the two never want to talk or see each other again. They go through the rest of their lives angry, until the pain of guilt and pride eats them up in side. They usually have continued problems in their lives and never equate that the problems that they encounter, on a continuous basis, are because they never made amends with the other person. Some problems are bigger than just arguing. Maybe someone was rapped, beaten, molested and/or mentally abused. The person who has been violated needs to deal with the problem(s) and get help. Therapy may be in order to get their life back on track. Whatever the case may be, you need to take care of the problem(s), move on and live a productive life. Whatever you are dealing with, consciously or sub-consciously, may be affecting your life and you may be sabotaging your own success. If in fact you are sabotaging your own success, there may be issues you need to deal with. Maybe someone told you were too stupid, not smart enough, you weren’t worthy of success and/or you were a failure. Whether you are dealing with mental scars, physical scars or both, you need to take action, deal with the problems and put them behind you A.S.A.P. Dealing with these problems is not easy. This is not a way for you to relive the past and experience the pain all over again. This is a way that you can finally move on to make your life the success you deserve. Doing this will ensure you have a future of happiness and fulfillment. If you don’t take care of these problems, you will live a life of misery, sorrow, pain and frustration. If you have a problem taking care of the problems, this will be the biggest thing you can do to do to better your life. You may not be ready yet, or you may not be experiencing problems as of yet, but when you realize you have a problem take care of it. Now I am not saying that everyone has had these problems, if you don’t you are blessed. You may, however, know someone who is dealing with problems like these and maybe you can help them. Remember this book is about success and achieving what ever you want in life. If you are having problems dealing with the past, you will probably not achieve success in life, because you are not feeling worthy of success. On the other hand, you may achieve success but you may be miserable. To me happiness is a part of success. The bottom line is deal with problems that are holding you back in life, put the past behind you with good conscience, and move on to success.
About six years ago, my Stepfather died from cancer. We had had our differences in the past and we had built major walls between us. Right before he became ill, I made amends with him. I told him that “I know we had our differences in the past, that was all behind us now and that I loved him”. “Let’s move on and forget about the past”. We ended up having a much better relationship from that point on and we no longer argued. How do you think I would have felt if he had died and I never made amends with him? I would still carry a lot of guilt to this day. I would have kept telling myself “why didn’t you take the time to make amends and just put the past behind you”? We both felt better and the problems of the past were no longer an issue. Are their people in your life that you should make amends with? If you don’t make amends with them, you may pay the price in the form of guilt for it for the rest of your life. Don’t burden yourself with guilt of the past. There are millions of people who live their lives in therapy; unhappiness, misery, pain and disappointment, because they never made amends with others that they should have and/or they never dealt with the problems of the past. The price for not taking care of these problems is very steep and unnecessary. Remember that success is simple, but not easy. The problem we have with success is we complicate it too much. Take care of the things that need to be taken care of and move on to success and happiness. One last thing, life is short and you can’t say things to people once they are gone. If there is someone you love, but have not shown them or told them how you feel, today would be a good day to let them know. You may never get another chance to make amends with them.
Forgive those who hurt you.
One thing you must do to succeed in life is to forgive those who have hurt you in the past. This doesn’t mean to forget the past and make the same mistake twice. Like the country song Forgive, written and sung by Rebecca Lynn Howard, says, “Forgive and forget, relive and regret”. This just means to forgive those that have hurt you, move forward in life and with your plan. We all need forgiveness. None of us are perfect and we have hurt others from time to time in our lives. To those we have hurt, we need to ask for forgiveness. When we are hurt and are asked to forgive the party that hurt us we must do our best to grant their wish. That doesn’t mean that you have to take back person you loved who cheated on you. But it may take some of the burden off you. Forgiveness may take time for both parties involved. If you do hold a grudge against others, you may pay the price by feeling cheated, or ripped off and/or you may shut down and raise a wall around you as to never get hurt again. The problems with walls are that those who never deserve to have to deal with our problems of the past will pay the price as well. And many times, you may lose loved ones or potential relationships because of your unwillingness to ever be hurt again. The problem with the putting up walls so you never get hurt again is that you may never let someone love you either. What if you didn’t let the person who was perfect for you (your soul mate) love you? You could live a life with regret, unhappiness and never being able to feel true love. The price could cost you a hell of a lot more than forgiveness. Plus, now you feel even more cheated because you just lost someone you love because you didn’t want to get hurt anymore. This is a vicious cycle and you could lose out on everything you desire in life. You see you can start to sabotage your own success when forgiveness is much cheaper. Don’t let your pride get in the way of you moving forward and your granting of forgiveness. Pride can destroy you. Do you think it is an accident that pride is the First of the Seven Deadly Sins? I don’t think so. Get out of the way of your success and move on. Don’t make things more difficult than they need to be. Forgiveness is not expensive and the benefits are numerous. Forgiveness is an important part of true success and happiness.
The “Wealth Mindset”.
To accumulate wealth, you need to have the right mindset. Most people tend to focus on being comfortable, paying the bills and the like. We have talked about this before so we don’t need to rehash it again. The only thing I will say about being comfortable is that if you are comfortable in your life you will not do anything to change your life until there is a problem or something inspires you to change. Being comfortable is a dangerous place, because we never grow when we are content. This is where having goals pays off. If you have goals, you send a signal to your Conscious and Subconscious Mind that you are not content in life and you need to keep striving for the obtainment of your goals. No matter how successful you are, if you don’t set new goals you will become settled and comfortable in life. The “Wealth Mindset” is one that is needed to obtain wealth, your goals and dreams. The question is how do we go about obtaining the “Wealth Mindset”. First of all we need to realize that there are two mindsets that we need to get rid of in order to achieve wealth in life, finances and everything we do. The mindsets I speak of are that of Communism and Socialism. If you buy into either of these mindsets, they will keep you from ever achieving what you want in life. To believe that it is perfectly fine to take from the productive members of our society and give to the unproductive is wrong and will manifest a life of lack and financial failure.
Why? The answer is very simple. The person who believes that people with wealth should have less embodies a feeling of lack and being cheated by others. This mindset will, in turn, manifest a life of lack both personally and financial. I don’t care what your beliefs are on both Communism and Socialism. If you believe in either, or both, realize that the only people who get rich under either economic system is the Government and the upper Escalon’s of the Government. This is known as an Oligarchy. To me, the biggest lie over the last century is that Communism and Socialism are fair and just systems (that both systems bring liberation to the masses). Nothing can be further from the truth. The two have enslaved millions and over the last century more than 100 million people have been killed under the two tyrannical systems. Higher taxes keep the poor from getting rich, period! Remember that the three main points of both governments is a progressive tax structure, redistribution of wealth and the abolition of personal property rights. The more you make, the more they take (progressive tax structure). The redistribution of wealth that the progressive tax structure implements is again taking money away from the productive members of our society, their families and their ability to create jobs for the unemployed and the down-trident. There has been a lot of talk from Government officials about self-esteem. I am here to tell you that self-esteem comes from achievement, success and living in abundance. Why should someone who works 60, 80, 100 or more hours per week be penalized for their sacrifice in achieving their goals, dreams and producing products or services that improve the lives of others? There is no way in hell that someone who works that hard should be penalized to pay for an able body person to sit on their butt. I know I am someone who works that hard. No I am not going to tell you how to not pay your taxes with some program (but paying taxes is a voluntary system). I am not into giving that type of advice, but you can save a lot of money on your taxes. The two best ways to do that are:
Incorporate your business. I prefer incorporating in Nevada or Delaware. Nevada has no state or personal income tax. They are a secrecy state so you can keep your privacy and you are able to protect your assets from lawsuits.
Now I am not saying that that there are not people who need and should receive help, not at all. I know there are people who need help from time to time and they should get assistance either financially and/or with food. I believe in helping people. In fact, the reason I wrote “Mind Control” and I have donated a lot of my time, web designs services for children suffering from cancer over the last four years is because I want to help people. I believe that we should help people until they can get on their feet. The problem is that once people get into the system the Government’s job is to entrap the people and have them become dependent on the Government. It is much easier for the Government to control the people when the people need the Government for their basic necessity and survival. This is basically enslaving the people and not allowing the person to become the best they can be in life. This situation will almost always guarantee failure and never will it bring wealth to the individuals. The last study I heard about Welfare is it takes three workers to help one person on Welfare. If you do the math, the average worker in the Welfare Administration makes between $24,000 to $50, 000, or more, per year.
So we can safely say that the average worker makes $35,000 per year. Lets see, $35,000 times three that equals $105,000 per year to pay someone on Welfare $20,000. Wow, so it costs us taxpayers $125,000 per year for one person on Welfare to receive $20,000 ($105,000+$20,000=$125,000). How interesting is it that the people who work within the Welfare Administration make the most off of Welfare. Remember, these figures don’t include the upper management whose salaries range from $60,000 $100,000 plus per year. This is a cash cow for the Government. It is no wonder that they fight tooth and nail to get as much money as they can for the program, offer new programs and keep people enslaved to the system. The bottom line is that the Government is getting rich off the poor. Do you really think that a Senator or Congressman who makes over $1,000,000 per year ($200,000 salary plus perks) really cares for people that are poor? Or, do they care about growing the Government, taking more from those that work, building their own job security and increasing their popularity? The answer is very simplistic. Why would someone who is a millionaire spend $30,000,000 to $50,000,000 to become a Senator or Congressman whose job salary is $200,000 ($1,000,000 with perks)? They know that they will make millions over their tinier and when they either retire or don’t get reelected, they sign on as a consultant with firms that pay them millions per year. Many times, these are the same companies that they legislated against and now the companies want an insider to help them achieve better success and contracts. I am not saying that I am against business, quite the contrary. I run my own business and want to see people succeed. Companies need to make a profit in order to stay in business and employ people. The problem is that the Government creates this type of situation and the companies need to play by the rules that are setup by the Government. Now, I am not anti-government, just believe that the Government should stay out of our lives more. The problem is the Government needs to justify itself by creating problems and then solve them. I know this might be challenging for you, but if you really pay attention to the way the Government operates, you will discover that we pay a lot of money for what the Government creates as a problem, whether it is the environment (abolishing of personal property rights), or SUVs. Without a crisis, the Government is not needed, with the exception of the police, military and justice system. Our Founding Fathers were some of the most intelligent people to ever walk the face of the earth. They lived through tyranny and fought for all future generations to be free. Here are two articles that will prove my point and make you understand what freedom really means and what the “Wealth Mindset” is really about.
The Price They Paid
By Gary Hildreth
Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence?
Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the Revolutionary Army, another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War.
They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants; nine were farmers and large plantation owners, men of means, well educated. But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.
Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.
Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.
Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.
At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson, Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.
Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.
John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished. A few weeks later he died from exhaustion and a broken heart. Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates.
Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American Revolution. These were not wild eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians. They were soft-spoken men of means and education. They had security, but they valued liberty more. Standing tall, straight, and unwavering, they pledged: “For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
They gave you and me a free and independent America. The history books never told you a lot of what happened in the Revolutionary War. We didn’t just fight the British. We were British subjects at that time and we fought our own government! Perhaps you can now see why our founding fathers had a hatred for sanding armies, and allowed through the Second Amendment for everyone to be armed.
Frankly, I can’t read this without crying. Some of us take these liberties so much for granted…We shouldn’t.
_
A Visitor From The Past
By Thelen Paulk
I had a dream the other night I didn’t understand.
A figure walking through the mist with a flintlock in his hand. His clothes were torn and dirty, as he stood there by my bed. He took off his three cornered hat and speaking low, he said:
“We fought a revolution, to secure our liberty. We wrote the Constitution, as a shield from tyranny. For future generations, this legacy we gave, in this, the land of the free and the home of the brave. You buy permits to travel, and permits to own a gun. Permits to start a business, or to build a place for one. On land that you believe you own, you pay a yearly rent. Although you have no voice in choosing, how the money’s spent.”
“Your children must attend a school that doesn’t educate. Your Christian values can’t be taught, according to the state. You read about the current news in a regulated press. You pay a tax you do not owe, to please the foreign I.R.S. Your money is no longer made of silver, or of gold. You trade your wealth for paper, so your lives can be controlled.”
“You pay for crimes that make our Nation turn from God in shame. You’ve taken Satan’s number, as you’ve traded in your name. You’ve given government control, to those who do you harm.”
“So they can padlock churches, and steal the family farm. And keep our country deep in debt, put men of God in jail. Harass your fellow countrymen, while corrupted courts prevail. Your public servants don’t uphold the solemn oath they’ve sworn. They defy and rape the nation, and leave it’s fabric tattered and torn.”
“Your leaders ship artillery and guns to foreign shores. And send your sons to slaughter, fighting other people’s wars. Can you regain the freedom for which we fought and died?”
“Or don’t you have the courage, or the faith to stand with pride? Are there no more values for which you’ll fight to save? Or do you wish your children to live in fear as a slave?”
“People of the Republic arise and take a stand! Defend the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land! Preserve our Great Republic, and God Given Right! And pray to God, to keep the torch of Freedom burning bright!”
As I awoke he vanished, in the mist from whence he came. His words were true, we are not free, and we have ourselves to blame. For even now as tyrants trample each God Given Right, we only watch and tremble, too afraid to stand and fight.
If he stood by your bedside, in a dream, while you’re asleep, and wonders what remains of our Rights he fought so hard to keep, What would be your answer, if he called out from the grave;
IS THIS STILL THE LAND OF THE FREE AND HOME OF THE BRAVE?
_
Freedom is the most precious commodity in the world, but for many Americans, we take it for granted, because we have become comfortable in our lives. Most of us Americans have never had to fight for the freedoms we enjoy on a daily basis. For the people who live under tyrannical Governments, they would give anything to live the life we do. The first thing that you must realize is that you are already wealthy. If you live in the United States of America, you are already wealthy. You live in the most abundant society in the history of the world. There is an abundance of food, water, clothing, housing, medical care, employment opportunities, business opportunities, cars, freedom and a land where you can start with little or no money and become rich in every sense of the word: financially, physically, mentally, spiritually, socially and with family. Once you realize you are already wealthy, you will become more appreciative of what you have. Once your mind set changes and you do become grateful for the thing you do have, things tend to come easier. The feeling of lack, being cheated and the like, disappear. Why do you think a person who says, “they have nothing left to lose”, believes it to be true? Because in their mind, there is nothing left for them to lose in life. They are on a collision course for self-destruction. If you think the mind is not powerful, you are wrong. Do you think the person who believes that they have nothing to lose ever stopped to count his or her blessings or what they have to be grateful for? I highly doubt it. The problem is their mindset is one of lack and failure. In their mind they have nothing and life has become a doom fulfilling prophecy of their mindset. On the contrary, what about a person who comes to this country with no money, doesn’t speak English, and has just about every disadvantage it seems, becomes incredibly successful. Do you realize that immigrants from Korea have a higher standard of living than the average American? Why? The answer is very simple. They count their blessings everyday and are thankful to be in the United States. They have come from a country that is repressive and the Government is tyrannical. They don’t take living in this great country for granted like so many naturally born Americans do. The greatest aspect of the United States is you have the freedom to achieve anything you want to achieve in life. The only person who is stopping you from achieving your goals and dreams is you. I don’t care what excuse you use for not succeeding the failure is yours. It doesn’t matter if your family doesn’t support you, you don’t have money and you don’t get any breaks. They are excuses and that is it. Excuses are for people who have not figured out what they really want, don’t have a plan for obtaining their goals, don’t work hard enough to actually realize and follow through on reaching their goals. You have everything you need to become successful and achieve anything you want. The starting point is your mindset. The “Wealthy Mindset” starts with being grateful and expectant of achieving your goals. Your thought process will determine if you are or are not successful (we will be going into more detail about how your mind woks and how you can control your Conscious and Subconscious Mind to reach success on levels that you may have thought were unobtainable before now in a latter section).
What are your assets?
If you look beyond your present situation and the normal day-to-day life, you will find that you posses everything you need to become a millionaire and achieve anything you want in life. The problem is we tend to think of assets in tangible form. The two greatest assets you posses is your mind and your health. The mind is your richest resource in the world. Your health is quite possibly your most important assets. You need to stay healthy in order to become successful and live a life of abundance. The problem is many people live unhealthy lives, because they manifest a mindset that brings disease, destruction and failure. Your mind’s ability to keep you healthy is incredible. You will manifest in your life either a healthy life or an unhealthy life. The problem is we have little knowledge of how we control our own mind. In fact, we tend to let TV, doctors, psychiatrists and psychologist determine our health. If you watch TV, read the newspapers, you will see that there is a new phobia or a new mental disorder just about every time you turn around. I call this the “Psychological Screwing of America”. We basically have the medical establishment dictating how we live both mentally and physically. Do you realize the biggest drug pushers in the United States are doctors (medical and psychologists). Do you also realize that both make money for prescribing medication for the firms that make the medication? Do you realize that most, if not all, of the school shootings that were done by students in the United States were by kids that were on Ritalin (methylphenidate hydrochloride), Luvox (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor: SSRI), both of which are Prozac like drugs? Do you realize that youth violence and these prescribed drugs have a link?
These quotes and references below will give you some insight and facts about Ritalin, Luvox and Prozac. Got to the websites to get more in depth information and the problems with these and other mind altering drugs.
Today, helpful psychiatry has given way to “psychopharmocology,” or the drugging of patients to cover symptoms. The danger of well known and well prescribed drugs such as Prozac, Luvox and Ritalin are becoming more and more clear as more juvenile violence is perpetrated by “patients” being “treated” with these chemicals.
Mark Bedillion, Ms, Ed, CAC., author of Psychiatric Survivor: From Misdiagnosed Mental Patient to Hospital Director.
Ritalin “works” by producing malfunctions in the brain rather than by improving brain function. This is the only way it works..
Peter R. Breggin, M.D., Director, International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology http://www.breggin.com
On April 29 the Washington Post confirmed that Eric Harris, the leader in the Littleton (Columbine shooting) tragedy, was taking the psychiatric drug Luvox at the time of the murders. On April 30 the same newspaper published a story quoting expert claims that Luvox is safe and has no association with causing violence. In fact, Luvox and closely related drugs commonly produce manic psychoses, aggression, and other behavioral abnormalities in children and young people. Luvox is a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) that is approved for children and youth (up to age 17) for use in the treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder. However, doctors often give it for depression, since it is in the same SSRI class as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil.
Peter R. Breggin, M.D., Director, International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology.
The Journal of the American Medical Association released a study that shows that there is a tremendous increase in prescribing anti-depressants to preschoolers aged 2 to 4 years old! The “Terrible Twos” are just that! If you start throwing these drugs at preschoolers, what are we going to do for them when they hit their teens? There has been a connection between school shootings and the shooters having been on these drugs! Gun violence in schools has actually gone down since 1992, while violence in general has gone up in schools! If a majority of the school shooters were on (or had abruptly stopped taking) anti-depressants then it stands to reason that most of the other violence in schools may be related to these drugs as well! I have read a lot about the Oregon shootings and how Kip Kinkle had been on prozac. I had heard that, but now a Vermont Outdoors writer has said that “Just about every massacre that occurred anywhere in the U.S. and Canada over the last decade has involved an individual using a prescription drug called Prozac or one of its relatives.”
Ken Goodall of New Hampshire Outdoor News.
Think about the damage we are doing to our kids. We have become a dependent nation on drugs. D you realize we have the highest rate of liver and kidney disease in history? Why? The painkillers (aspirin, Ibuprofen, etc.) we take all the time are terrible for you stomach, liver, kidneys and the intestines. Now I am not anti doctor or medical establishment and believe that the medical fields are needed. But we do rely too much on drugs to fix our problems when in essence; they only mask the symptoms and not cure them. We have enslaved ourselves to the drug industry. In fact, nutritional products are, for the most part, better than drugs for curing many ailments we face today. I have been into health and nutrition for about 17 years now and if you want the best nutritional products available for health, depression, energy, consultations, articles and over all health go to our health resources page at http://www.wealthoptions.com/health_resources.htm. I have done my homework and when these products hit the main stream, it will change how the medical establishment works and prescribes medicine. Much of the disease, depression, cancer and the like are a product of our thought process and in many case brought on the use of drugs. We can manifest good health or ill health by the way we use our mind. If your thinking is chaotic, destructive and one that is negative, you will live a life that is filled with ill health and a life-style that reflexes such. On the other hand, if your thinking is that of success, health, abundance your life will reflect it in a healthy life and life-style. Your health for the most part is tide to how well you use your mind. Case and point: How did Lance Armstrong beat cancer and go on to become of only five riders to become a four time winner of the Tour De France and only the second person in history to win four consecutive Tour De France race? He used his mind to over come obstacles that would have killed most people and not to mention what he has accomplished in the world of bicycling. Lance Armstrong is the epitome of success. His goal was not only to become healthy, but also become the best bicycle rider in the world. His accomplishments have reached elite status of success. Lance Armstrong used his mind to accomplish more in a few years than most healthy people will accomplish in a lifetime! You have the same ability to achieve that statute of success. The main difference is, if you are a healthy human being, you don’t have to overcome a life threatening disease to achieve that type of status. If you do have health or physical problems, Lance is an incredible example of what can be. The choice is yours and you can do whatever you want in life and achieve anything you desire. To read more on the life and achievements of Lance Armstrong, visit his website (http://www.lancearmstrong.com) and see why Lance said, “Getting cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Mind Control”.
The mind is an incredible entity. No one knows exactly what the mind (or brain) is or how it comes to be the center of our being. The mind is by far the most advanced and awesome computer known to the world. The mind has the power to build empires, great wealth, heavenly plateaus and/or the power to bring poverty, destruction, and hell on earth. The mind is the only thing in the world that has the ability to make our visions, goals and dreams come true and manifest them into reality. Not only can the mind create everything that we construct to become real, but also the mind possess the ability to kill all life on earth. The human mind is the only mind on planet earth that has the ability to change the world, its landscape, and build cities as large as New York City. No other creature on planet earth has the ability to build, create and plan the way we humans do. What determines how well we do in life, what we achieve and how we make decisions comes down to how well we manage our own thought process and our minds. There is only one thing in this world that you really have control over and that is your thoughts and in turn your mind. How does a person who comes from poverty, destitution and lack reach the greatest heights of success? Your mind controls your ability to achieve anything that you want in life, your goals, financial gain, abundance, your dreams, or in many cases a life of lack and poverty. How does someone who is born with a “silver spoon” in his or her mouth fail to achieve anything that resembles anything that comes close to success and basically fails miserably? The answer is actually simpler than one would come to realize. The defining answer is controlling your own mind, your thought process and understanding how the mind works as a whole. To make my point, how did the Japanese Government get their pilots to become Kamikazes and kill themselves during World War Two? How did Hitler get the nation of Germany to back his evil plan? How did Osama Bin Laden get his overly zealous fanatics (and murderers) to kill themselves and over 3,000 civilians? It all comes down to controlling ones mind. Desperation breads desperate measures. In the case of Hitler, he was a madman who got millions of the German People to buy into his philosophy (brainwashing) of a “Superior Race” and that the Jews were the roots of all problems that their country faced. He also bread the destruction of all those who would be allies of the Jews. The same is true (brainwashing) in the case of the Kamikazes and Bin Laden’s followers.
How the mind works.
The first thing that you must realize is that you have complete control over your thoughts and how your mind operates. The second is, that you own your own mind free and clear. You don’t have to pay a cent for your mind. You were born with a gift to achieve anything that you desire and want in your life, your mind’s ability. There is nothing more valuable in the world than the human mind. Some might argue that a human being is the most valuable thing or commodity in the world, but without a mind, you can’t survive without the help of a life-support-system. But, when the life-support-system is unplugged, the person will die and no matter what computer or life-support-systems you use, you can never bring a person back to life in terms as the person that they once were. The brain is the greatest power on earth and at the same time it is very fragile. The way that you instruct and/or use your brain will determine your success in life. What you achieve in life, what heights you will rise to and/or depths you will descend to all comes down to your ability to control your mind. Everything that you are dealing with in your life, whether they be great, good or bad comes down to how you use your mind, period. Your ability to achieve anything in your life will come down to how you use your mind, either successful or desuetude. You have the ability to obtain anything you seek in life. The ability to achieve anything that you set your sites and heart on. You only need to decide what you want to make it happen. What’s the key? The key to what you achieve in life is your own ability to instruct and control your own mind.
The Subconscious and The Conscious Mind.
The Subconscious Mind allows us to tap into the vast and incredibly great resources of God, our father. Through our Subconscious Mind, we can ask for and achieve anything our heart desires. When we acquire faith (Faith to achieve, yes we have already talked about faith, but it is quintessential to success), implemented with desire our Subconscious Mind, implements energy and a connection to the universe that produces incredibly successful results that science can’t even explain. To say that we are superior to all intelligent beings is a false hood. Pride, being the first of the Seven Deadly Sins, tells us that we are not to be too prideful in life. It is no wonder that God put Pride first of all of the Deadly Sins. If we think we are better and more intelligent than anything in the Universe, we are doomed to fail in life, in anything that we try to build in the way of success and in happiness.
The Subconscious Mind can achieve anything that we want in life. We can accomplish great heights in our quest to become successful. Our Subconscious Mind allows us to connect with the lord in ways that are unimaginable to the faithless and those that are the victims of our society. If we analyze the mind, we have discovered through science that we only use between five to ten percent of our brain. That means that we have an unused portion of our brain that ensues 90-95% of our brain’s capacity. This is the portion of the brain or mind that science can’t explain in terms of how it works and/or what it possesses. We know that the Subconscious Mind is what heals every cell in our body (in fact, science has learned that our body regenerates every cell every 11 months, this could be why we are as old as we feel), our blood flowing throughout our body, our healing when we break a bone or get a cut, the blinking of our eyes and everything else that maintains the bodies functions. The questions of what the mind is are as limitless as is the capacity of the mind itself. It could be argued that a great part of the unused 90-95% of our mind’s capacity is what God intended for us to use in connecting with him, is the path that God intended for us to connect with God, ask and have our prayers answered or the “Invisible Mind”. Remember that the word desire comes from the Latin word meaning of the Father. Everything that you desire comes from God. You are blessed with the greatest gift in the world, your mind. How you use your mind will determine your success and/or your failure in life. Were the Profits chosen, or did they use their mind’s ability to connect with God? Were the Profits able to understand their own ability to use their Subconscious Mind to learn the wealth of God’s great teachings and understandings? We are people on the go, striving for success, wealth and happiness. We seem to have less time for our families, children, and don’t have the time to actually enjoy life. Why are the majority of the people in the world stressed, frustrated and unhappy? The answer is really quite simple. The major problem with most people today is that we are a people that have moved away from God, are stuck in jobs we hate and have never figured out how the mind works. Faith in God has been replaced with heart disease, strokes, obesity, unhappy lives and diabetes. Now, I am not a bible thumper, a churchgoer, nor someone who preaches to others about the way to redemption and the after-life, quite the contrary. Faith is something that you acquire when you are ready for it. You will (if you are lucky enough) find God when you are ready. Timing is everything in life. As it has been said before, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear”. Am I a Profit? No, I am far from it. I am just someone who has searched for the answers to success, wealth, happiness, health and abundance. My goal is, and has always been, to help others in all of the above. To help people live in abundance, mentally, physically, financially, spiritually, socially and in love. These are what the soul and heart desire the most.
Understanding how the Subconscious Mind works.
In his course The Invisible Factor, Bob Scheinfeld, Founder, The Invisible Path to Success (http://www.lifechangetips.com/t.cgi/246884) explains how the invisible mind can bring you anything you want in life. Bob learned much of how the mind works from his grandfather, who started the company Manpower and built it into a multi-billion dollar company, as well as, a Fortune 500 company. It was very timely that I received part of his study course when I was writing this section on how the mind works. In fact, much of what his information stated was very similar to the information that I had written. I really admire Bob for his works and wanted to add some of his information to help you, the reader have a greater understanding of the Subconscious Mind. Bob also explained that there is an incredibly large or universal network that we have all taped into and one that we use on a daily basis, 24 hours per day, seven days per week. This is what he termed the invisible mind. We are subconsciously sending and receiving messages to and from others and we are not even consciously aware of how or that we are even tapping into this universal network. The greatest problem with this is that we have no idea what we are send and what we are receiving, what messages are helping us in our quest for success and which are hurting us. We know that your invisible mind is asking for help in figuring out how to get you to where you want to be, but we are not in control of it consciously. Bob went on to say, “that we need to learn how to consciously train our minds to learn how we can use the messages that we are sending and receiving”. He made his point on very simple terms, of how, when he was 16 years old, at three-o-clock in the morning, he was in a very bad car wreck. At the exact moment it happened, his sleeping mother woke up, shot straight up in bed and knew that something bad had happened to him. Have you ever been sitting at a stoplight and been staring at someone and they looked right at you? Have you ever known who was calling you on the phone before you even answered the phone? Have you ever known what someone was going to say before they said it? The concept of all of us being connected at the unconscious was considered “new age” or “way out” for a long time, but it’s now being documented by scientists all over the world. I agree with what Bob Sterling says. He is a very successful businessman and he has very powerful and successful programs that is why I added a link to his website.
I want to expand a little more now on the Subconscious Mind or invisible Mind and how we can use it to achieve anything we want in life. The Subconscious Mind makes no distinctions of the information it receives. In fact, it is very similar to a computer. The computer can only work with the information it is provided with. It doesn’t evaluate whether the information is good, bad, helpful or destructive to ones life. The Subconscious Mind can only use the information that it is given. It will not make judgments on the merit, usefulness nor will it decipher how it will impact your life. The Subconscious Mind only works with the information that it receives from your Conscious Mind. The thought process of your conscious mind will determine your success and/or failure in life. The Conscious Mind is what we use in terms of our thoughts, the five senses and what we perceive to be reality. This is one of the reasons people have problems with faith. Faith is unseen and something that is not a tangible product. If faith were easy to understand and believe, everyone would hold great faith within himself or herself. It is much easier to believe in something that you can hear, see, touch, smell and feel than it is to believe in something that doesn’t manifest itself in terms of the physical. Faith comes from within and is set in motion by our Conscious Mind. Faith can only be received into the Subconscious Mind through our thought process of the Conscious Mind. When we believe that we can and will succeed, our Conscious Mind sends the belief to our Subconscious Mind. As a result, our Subconscious Mind manifests the belief and faith to the Invisible Network. Thus we attract the information, opportunities and resources to us and in turn we become successful in what we seek. The same is true of the person who uses his or her Conscious Mind to bring failure, lack and disease into their life. The Subconscious Mind will work with either thought process and produce the results according to its instructions through the Conscious Mind. The Subconscious Mind never makes distinguishes between the two different mindsets. It is you and only you that has the ability to achieve great heights and/or condemn yourself to a life of misery and lack. Has anyone ever explained to you how your mind works? Has anyone ever told you that it is you that can do anything in life? If it were up to me, every school, starting with elementary school, would teach how the mind, success and failure work. I am not anti school at all. But, the one problem I do see with school is that is really big on teaching people how to become good employees, with the exception of Entrepreneurship as a major and the likes. This means that if you have little education, you still can achieve anything in life you desire. If you are college educated, that is great and you have some very valuable skills and the discipline to succeed as well. The only person who can make you fail is you! Circumstances are just mindsets that have plagued your Conscious Mind and therefore have manifested themselves in your Subconscious Mind. In turn, the circumstances that you are facing, whether good, or bad are because of your thought process and the result is what you focus and mind have brought to reality in your life. Going back to the computer analogy, it is the same as if you programmed the computer with bad or productive information. You are in control of your mind, your computer.
Time Waits for No One.
Most of us live our lives as if we will live forever. Everyday passes and time is lost forever. We cannot borrow, save, purchase and/or steal time. Time moves continuously in its journey and our time here is borrowed from our infinite creator. Time is precious. Our time is limited to our minutes, hours, days, weeks and years we spend here on earth. How you spend your time is up to you. You can waste time on mindless and unproductive tasks or you can live life to the fullest. You can make the most of your short time here on earth by living a life that is truly satisfying with time freedom and wealth, or we can live our lives by just existing, getting by, or living an average life and for many an unhappy life. Most of us live only a half-life. What I mean is, that we go to work Monday through Friday (put in overtime when necessary). Pay the bills, take care of the house on the weekend and on Sunday we realize that there is a knot in our stomach because we have to get back to work Monday morning and live the whole process all over again. We don’t get excited about our life and we go through life day to day to only look forward to a couple of weeks of vacation each and every year. We have been brainwashed by our parents, society, the Government and others that this is a secure life and the way we are supposed to live. We come to the end of our life; we realize that our time is about to expire and ponder on how things could have been different if we had only lived the life the way we truly desired. We realize that we have never lived our lives with passion, energy, an abundance of quality time for family and friends, or with wealth and now it is too late to change what has slipped passed us in our limited time we were allotted. Time freedom is one of the most precious commodity known to man. The older you become, the more this fact becomes self-evident.
It seems we never look at life as short, or that our time here is borrowed and we never really gain an understanding of gratitude for what life can be. How can we understand gratitude when we are only working for a living and never really having the time and money to know the finer things in life? What it all boils down to is that you will not live forever. You will come to the end of your life and decide if you wasted your life, lived an average life or you truly lived an incredible life that is only filled with happiness, satisfaction, love and peace. You will never forgive yourself if you look back on your life and say “what if I only did this differently, that differently, or what if I took that risk”? What if you were to die tomorrow? Would you be able to say, “you lived life with out regrets and complete satisfaction”? Would you be able to say, “you accomplished great things in your life, that you helped others do the same and that you gave life everything you had”? Or would you look back and say to yourself “what if only I would have”? If you want to live life to the fullest, a life very few know, than the time to take action is now! There is never enough time to make the necessary changes that will make your life complete, unless you make it a priority. What can you do in your life to make your life the life you’ve always wanted to live? How can you change your life to make it compelling and of utmost satisfaction? How could you give the person you love more and improve your relationship together? Your life is limited by time in both death and obligations. You must decide what is truly important to you, in your life and make the changes that will make your life complete. Don’t wait for change to come without you taking action. Changes will never come until you make things change. Time will march on until your time has expired here on earth. You cannot change the past. The past is gone to the hands of time. However, you can take control of your life in the present and in the future. Make time your ally and use your time constructively to produce an incredible life worth living. If you don’t, your life will pass you by and so will your hopes, dreams and goals. It is your life. It is your time that you have borrowed from the creator, but wasted time is gone forever. The choice is yours. Take time seriously. Make your time and your life count. Make sure when you come to the end of your life that you smile with pride, happiness and fulfillment.
Never stop dreaming.
I have been called a dreamer numerous times in my life. When I was younger, I would tell people what I was going to do in my life and their reply went something like this “yeah, right you’re just a dreamer”. You will never do that”. I used to get angry and say something like “we’ll watch me”. Now when someone tells me I am a dreamer, I take it as a compliment. That means I am still alive. I still have dreams, desires, goals, hopes and ambitions. That means I still have a passion for living. It also means that the dream stealers of the world have not penetrated my creative mind. To achieve success, one must start with a dream. Dreams bring new meaning to our lives. Dreams make us get up in the morning and they change our attitude to that of a positive one. To think of all the lives lost to despair, simply because they no longer dream. If you are called a dreamer that is one of the best things anyone can call you. That means you know what you want, you have only to figure out the best way to achieve your dreams. With this book you are 90% there. The other 10% is action. The mental part of success is the hardest part and about 90% of the battle. The rest is up to you to take daily steps to move forward. Never stop dreaming. If you don’t dream now, you need to start and learn to live again. Dreams are what make life worth living. If you dream on a constant basis, feel blessed; you are one of the lucky ones.
Putting it all together.
I know there is a lot of information here to digest. Set your goals and make a plan of attack. We will be adding some forms for you to record your goals, “Steps to Success” a plan of action, action sheet with results received, contact sheet for clients and a follow up sheet for keeping track of customers and potential customers. These forms will keep you on track and allow you to track your success on a daily basis. The use of these forms is very important to keeping you on your pathway to success. Using these forms is a must if you want success.
As you become successful, or more successful, help people along the way. Everyone needs help in life and there are people in your life who could use your help to succeed, or in other areas of their lives. Just because you have achieved a certain level of success in life, doesn’t mean that those who have less are less important than you are. They are just having problems in an area or two in their life and could use some guidance or help. I mentioned before I donate my time and web design services to “The Rose” Sam Barris Tribute Car.
We raise money for children suffering from cancer. I don’t tell you this to make you think of me in a certain way. I tell you this so I can let you know that I help as well. I know we are making a difference in children’s and their families lives and you can make a difference in other people’s lives as well. The accumulation of money is only part of success. Helping others is part of success; as is health, time freedom, love, happiness, fulfillment and spending time with family and friends. Make it a part of your life to help others. In the process, you could learn so much about others; courage, strength, how blessed you really are and you made a difference in someone else’s life.
Conclusion.
I know this book will help you achieve everything your heart desires, but you have to use the information. I can only help people who want to help themselves. Return to this book often, read it and set new goals on a regular basis. If you don’t set new goals, you will find yourself getting bored and falling into old habits. When you fall into old habits, you will realize that you are going backwards. At that point you need to move forward with new goals and dreams. If you don’t, you could end up right back where you are today, or worse. Living a successful life is very rewarding, exciting and fun. While living a life of failure, is that of frustration and lack. Don’t sabotage your success. Success is a life journey. It is not something you do every once in a while. Success, like failure, takes time. I remember watching a documentary on the late great blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughn. He said, “It only took me twelve years to become an overnight success”. Even after he became a success, he brought his drug and alcohol problems with him. They almost destroyed his life. After he had enough pain from the drugs and alcohol, he went to rehab and got himself clean. Don’t fall into the same trap. Don’t just go for short-term success. What I mean is don’t just make changes that will last for a short time period. Make changes that will last a lifetime. Make your goals and dreams a reality. After achieving your goals you have set, set new goals and dreams and continue to move forward. If you do this, you will look back in a couple of years, see that you are so much further in life than you ever dreamed or imagined you could have ever been. You will have surpassed your current goals and dreams. Keep a journal with your goals and dreams listed in it and record your daily actions. This way you can evaluate your progress, you can see what is working in your life and what is not. Keep your eye on the prize you seek on a daily basis. Take all the energy you can muster, use all of the desire you have, work on your plan daily and make it happen. And remember to never ever stop dreaming. Dream big and the goals that seemed so far away will become a reality in your life. We will see you at the top.
Section two: Leadership and business success.
Leadership:
If you want to guarantee success in your life, become a leader. During the Great Depression, there were millions of people who wanted to work, a paycheck and to find any job they could. The problem was that most business owners all encountered the same problem. The business owners didn’t need workers; they needed leaders who would solve their problems of how to sell their services and/or products. Some things never change over time. If you want to ensure your success in life, business and with a job, it comes down to one thing, become a leader who solves problems for companies selling their products or services. The question is what is a leader? There is a big difference between a leader and a manager, as you will see. There seems to be a misconception in the business world that management and leadership is the same thing. Many managers believe that doing whatever it takes to achieve a desired result, goal and/or making sales numbers is perfectly all right. I have personally been at a company sales convention and one of the top executives of the company said laughingly “make sure you don’t do anything that is misleading or misrepresent our products” (wink, wink, nod, nod). It was as if he knew he had to say something about it, but it was more of a joke than anything else. It was nothing that was taken seriously at the meeting. In fact, everyone in the audience laughed at the comment. I know that my manager at the time took ethics very seriously as did other managers. Unfortunately, there are many people in the management field that are only concerned with the bottom line. Make your numbers, set new goals and make money at any cost. Instant gratification, expediency and personal gain are what are most important in business. Now this is not to say that all businesses are run this way, but there are a lot of business practices that should never be practiced. I know that CEOs are under the gun from shareholders, board of directors and the need to drive stock prices higher to raise new capital, but where is the leadership (or lack there of) of company leading the company, its employees, shareholders, board of directors, etc. The key to the bottom line is doing what is right, having a leader with integrity and doing business without compromising ones principles and/or honesty. What do Enron, World Com and Global Crossing have in common? These are some of the biggest companies in the world who’s’ managers did business without integrity and/or honesty. Greed, unlike what Michael Douglas said while playing Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street, is not always good. Just look at the affect that it has had on people’s lives, their stock portfolios, employee’s 401(k) plans and the economy at large. How many people have lost their jobs? How many people lost their retirement? How many people lost their fortunes? How many other companies lost money, accounts and had to lay employees off because of what the management did in these companies? Look at what the greed, dishonest, fraudulent business practices and lack of integrity of others have cost so many of us. There needs to be a revamping in the business management world. What the business world needs is true leadership. Cutting corners, shading the truth are all a result of bad management and not real leadership.
The foundation of management and leadership.
The Four F’s
The foundation of all-successful managers and leaders is to start with the basics. Many people in the field of managing people could benefit these simple strategies. But, first we need know what makes a manager a leader? A leader is someone who leads or guides. A leader is someone who genuinely cares about the people who works for them. The leader will lead by example and not use the do what I say and not what I do style. I don’t know if you have ever heard the phrase, what you are speaks so loud I can’t here what you are saying. In other words, the person you are and your actions tell others more about you than anything you tell them about yourself verbally.
The foundation of any person managing and/or in a leadership position should start with the four Fs. No I am not talking about anything that has to do with dirty language. The four Fs are very basic and very simple to implement. In fact, these are four Fs are common sense. What are they? The words are firm, frank, friendly and fair. I will expand on each of these words, how you and your organization will benefit from each of them.
Firm:
Be firm with your employees. This does not mean that you need to use coercion to get your employees to do what you want them to do. But, you do need to make sure your employees; co-workers and managers know where you stand. This means that you hold people accountable for their actions, responsibilities and job performance. You can’t let people get away with in-appropriate conduct, poor job performance, tardiness or anything that does not work to help the organization achieve its objectives for success. Managers, who aren’t firm, open themselves up to loosing control of their organization. Have you ever been around a spoiled kid? You know the scenario. Your sitting in a restaurant and next to you is a kid and his parents. The kid asks their parents for something he really wants. The parents tell the kid no and the kid starts to throw a temper tantrum. The parents obviously don’t want the kid to throw the tantrum so they give in to the child’s request. Now the child knows that if they ever want something all they have to do is throw a tantrum and they will achieve their desired result. Much like the parents, who raise a child and are not firm, someone in management or a leadership role will be challenged by their employees to see what their boundaries are. If you allow your employees to get away with things, you will loose your effectiveness and power. Too often I see people in management roles that tend to want to be liked more than doing what is right to make them successful. The person who wants to be liked by all has never grown up. They have never learned how to be a leader nor how to be successful. Much like the parents who want to be liked by their children, a manager who wants to be liked will fail as a manager and a leader. This is not to say you can’t be friends with your co-workers. In fact, I recommend that you are friends with your co-workers, but business is business and you need to treat your business as a business. There is time to play and have a good time with your co-workers, but that is better left to when you are off the clock. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy having fun at work, but everything has its time and place.
Frank:
Be frank with your employees. I don’t mean change your name to Frank and become someone you are not. What I mean is don’t beat around the bush when you are talking with your employees. Be strait forward and keep lines of communication open with your co-workers. How can your employees know what you expect of them if you don’t communicate what is expected? How can anyone know if they are doing what is correct or wrong, for that matter, if you don’t tell them? Have you ever been around someone who goes the round about way to get something or information out of you? Instead of them getting strait to the point they kind of touch on it, but never ask or tell you directly. Maybe they don’t want to upset you or just they are uncomfortable with what it is they are trying to ask you or say. I would say that this in not very effective lines of communication. If you want to have effective lines of communication, you need to be frank with your employees.
Friendly:
How do your employees perceive you? How do they talk about you when you are not around? Are you admired by you co-workers? These are questions you should ask yourself. I was in line at a bank one day. I like to watch people and observe their actions. I happen to see a manager sitting at a desk. He had “I hate my job” written all over his face. His actions were that of someone who is not happy with his life and his career choice. A young lady, who was a co-worker, came over to him to ask a question. He snapped at her. His reaction said “why are you bothering me”? “I don’t have time for you or your stupid question”. Wow, I thought to myself, “there is a lesson in how not to manage and why it is important to have goals in life to know where you are going”. How do you think that young lady felt after dealing with him? Do you think she will have an approach avoidance about asking him for help and/or a question when she needs something? I would have to say “undoubtedly, yes”. I would have to say that she would avoid him at all costs. The only reason she would even come near him is if she had to. How do you think she perceives him? What do you think she says about him when he is not around? Do you think other employees know that he is not someone you want to ask help from? The manager made the office environment one of uneasiness and confrontational. I know not everyone in management conducts himself or herself that way. But, how friendly are you to your co-workers? Do they greet you with a smile and genuinely say it is nice to see you? Do you intimidate your co-workers? How do you greet your co-workers? Only you can answer these questions honestly.
If you want to be an effective leader you need to be friendly at all times with your co-workers. I know there are times when the pressures of work, managing and sales figures can cause a lot of stress. But if you let these pressures negatively affect you, it will show to your employees. It will tell them that you can’t handle the pressures of your job. It will also tell them that you, as a leader, are not very strong and you maybe over your head. When you let stress affect your performance it is very hard to be friendly to others. I know it is almost impossible to be friendly all the time, but there is a simple solution. I alluded to it in the person success section of this book and it is to laugh at everything (with the exception of loss of a loved one or when someone becomes ill). Laugh when things go well and when things are tough. I know that for some, this will take time to do, but if you make it a practice, you will be amazed at how well you can handle stress and problems. Plus, you will be a much friendlier person to be around and you will be able to solve problems easier. Remember that there is nothing worth dying or loosing your health over. Be friendly to your co-workers and you will be amazed at how much more production you will get out of your employees.
Fair:
There is nothing more disheartening to an organization than favoritism. When certain employees are favored over others, it sends a message to those that aren’t favored that you are not valuable to me. You don’t play the right game to earn my favor. If only you were more of a yes man (or woman), you too could have favoritism. You know the scenario. Some people can do no wrong, no matter what the circumstance, while others are held to a hire standard. I have never understood the concept of preferential treatment. There is no need to favor one employee over the other. If you have ever gone through the experience of being treated unfairly, it is not a lot of fun. I have personally been there. I have had managers that took out there frustrations on me. When things went wrong, I was the one who was would here about it and the one who took the brunt of the wrath. It didn’t matter if I was at fault or not. People I worked with would come up to me and say, “What the hell is going on, it wasn’t your fault”. I would usually reply, “I know that is just the way it goes”. I tried to not let it affect me at all, but the truth is I was somewhat jaded over the whole situation. But, it was a learning experience. I learned first hand that there is no need to treat people harshly. I think sometimes that maybe my boss was threatened by me. He knew I was intelligent, but I didn’t want to play the game of a yes man. I always tried to do what was right to help the company profit and look for ways we could be more productive. There is no need to treat people that way. The main problem was he didn’t ask questions about the situation and would continuously focus on the problem and not the solution that would solve the problem. He had no clue about how to get the most out of people. If he would have looked at the big picture he would have seen that I would do whatever it took (as long as it was ethical and moral) to right the problem. Unfortunately for him, he built a rift between us and I just did my job to the best of my ability. In fact, when I started to train other employees to make the jobs run more efficiently, he would come to me and tell me that I didn’t need to teach them, just tell them what to do. I tried to explain that if I trained them it would make everything run more efficiently. I have always believed in helping others improve their worth and value. This not only made my job easier, help with production for the company but it also increased earnings potential of the person I was training. My boss, at the time, didn’t see it that way. He didn’t believe in the development of his employees. Looking back now I can see my boss was a control freak who was intimidated by people who could be self-sufficient. I know it doesn’t make sense, but some people don’t see the big picture even if it benefits them and their company. The bottom line is to be fair with people and treat them the way you want to be treated. Allow people to be themselves and let them grow as an individual. Not only will you receive their loyalty, usually your employees will do anything to make your company more profitable.
To me the above is common sense, but to others it is foreign. I call the above the “foundation” of management and leadership, because it is just that, a starting point.
Though many people in management and their companies could benefit from the Four Fs, there is much more to being a successful leader and manager. I will lay out a detailed success plan that all in management and leadership positions should use to become as effective and prosperous as they possibly can become.
Spend time in the field.
One thing that has never made sense to me is how people who run companies and managers in the higher echelons of management never spend time with those who are actually doing the leg work to make the company successful. As with most companies, decisions about how corporate stores, districts, offices and sales departments are made from thousands of miles away. How can someone who works in New York City know how to make decisions on how a store or office in Eureka, California should make sales? The people and the area are as different as night and day. The only way to make an intelligent decision on how to run an operation in another part of the country is to go out to the location and meet with the managers, employees and the people of the area. Plus, you need to know who your customer base is in different parts of the country. What may work in Boston, Massachusetts will not work in Libby, Montana. The concept that one marketing strategy or sales pitch works for all people and places is naive to say the least. I know most marketing campaigns are tested, but it should not be a one-size fits all strategy. The same goes for people. Every one is different and so are cities and towns. The Communist view that we are all equal, the same and that if it works here it will work there is a total false hood. Effective management and leadership is to circulate with you employees and co-workers. In his book Lincoln on Leadership, Donald T. Phillips writes how Abraham Lincoln made it a point to get out of the office and circulate with the troops. His cardinal mistake is that he isolates himself, and allows nobody to see him; and by which he does not know what is going on in the very matter he is dealing with. (Lincoln’s reason for relieving General John C. Fremont from his command in Missouri (September 9, 1861). Lincoln knew that the only way to effectively manage his troops was to spend time with them and made sure he was available to those in the trenches. Lincoln made himself available to those who called on him. He spent countless days and months meeting with his Generals, troops, the wounded, Congress and his military officials. It was this type of leadership that won Lincoln approval of those in the government, military, the country at large and eventually preserved the union.
Learn to listen.
Listening seems to be a lost art in today’s business world. The upper-level managers of today seem not to take the time to listen to their employees, customers and suppliers. It is much easier to talk than it is to listen. It seems, that we get caught up in talking (and thinking about what we are going to say) that we have a tendency to not pay attention to those that could make our business more successful and easier. Lee Iacocca, in his autobiography wrote, “I only wish I could find an institute that teaches people how to listen. After all, a good manager needs to listen as much as to talk. Too many people fail to realize that true communication goes in both directions.”
Communication is a two way street. How can anyone effectively communicate, or manage, for that matter, if they don’t listen to what is being said by those employees who are out in the trenches everyday? It is almost impossible to make educated decisions with out the facts and is definitely ineffective management. Not only are you unable to make the proper decisions, but your employees feel as if they and their opinions don’t matter. How do think your employees feel about coming to you to ask for advice? More than likely, your employees will not feel very good about seeking your advice. In fact, you are building a void in the communication process with your organization and staff. No one likes to feel like they are unimportant and people don’t like to only take orders from those above them.
Lack of communication, with your staff, can negatively affect an organization; I will show you a couple of personal experiences that I had to deal with and how it negatively affected my staff, the company I worked for and me personally. A few years back I managed a retail store for a company. The store I managed was number one in sales in our district of 20 stores. I had a great staff and we all worked well together. I made it a point to keep open lines of communication with every employee. If anyone ever needed to talk with me, I was always available. Our store was one of two stores in the area. My assistant managers went to college during the week and she helped manage on the weekends. Her father managed the other store in the area so she helped him with his store while she was growing up. It was great to have her in our staff, because her knowledge of the product line and how the store needed to be run was tremendous. She made life on the staff and me much easier. Weekends were our busiest time of the week for us in terms of traffic and sales. It was nice to have someone who could help take care of business and help everything run smoothly from the management side. One day, I received a call from her dad (Mick) with news that she had been transferred to another store. I was very surprised, because this was the first I had heard of the transfer. I had not been contacted by my district manager, regional manager nor anyone in upper management, of the company, who asked for me for my opinion, or to tell me of the transfer. Her dad said, “he was contacted by the her new manager and district manager that she was to be transferred immediately.
They figured that since Mick was her father, she worked for him and not me. I was a very surprised by the news. I felt that my district manager should have contacted me before the transfer had actually taken place. But, when I called my district manager about the transfer process, she explained that she thought I knew of the transfer. It was not a productive phone call; in the sense that it was not a big deal from her stand point. I would have appreciated some notice so I could be proactive in finding a replacement to fill my assistant manager’s position. It takes time to find someone who was good at managing and possesses the people skills necessary to help our store continue to be successful. This put me in a situation that now I was short handed and I was a little mad about the lack of communication that the upper management showed to me. It was as if, the upper management didn’t care about our store, our staff and me. This made the workload on the staff much harder and everyone had to work more hours. After about three weeks, I finally found a replacement for her. It took about three more weeks of training to get our new assistant manager up to speed and where he was efficient at his job. That was a loss of six weeks that it took to get a new assistant manager to fill in for the loss of our previous assistant manager. How much easier would it have been on the staff if we were given a couple of week’s notice that the transfer was to take place? I would have liked to have her help training the new manager. Plus, the whole staff wouldn’t have had to work as much. Having a couple of weeks notice about the transfer would have made life for everyone a lot better and easier. It would have been nice if the communication between district managers could have taken place and they knew what store she actually worked in. Another problem we faced was that our sales numbers fell a little bit, but we still remained at the top of our district. In other words, lack of communication cost the company money, the employee’s money (in bonuses) and an extra work load. One simple phone call from someone in upper management would have solved a lot of problems for our store and the company would not have lost money in sales.
A couple of months had gone by and everything was running smoothly in our store again. Sales continued to be great. One day I received a call from my district manager that I needed to transfer all of my discontinued and obsolete products to a new store that the company was opening up in the next couple of days. I asked her “where do you want me to send (ship) the products?” “Well, just transfer it on the computer and we will come pick it up” she said. “We are opening a clearance store right down the street from your store” she replied. “The store will be open through January”, she explained. I was really surprised to hear of this news. In fact, it was the first time that I had heard of this new store. It was the beginning of the holiday season (Thanksgiving and Christmas) and this was going to have a tremendously negative effect on my stores sales numbers. Our discontinued and obsolete products sell for about 25%-70% what the new product lines sale for. I asked her “don’t you think that our sales numbers in our store were going to suffer from the new clearance store”. “Why would someone want to pay the prices for our new product lines when the can go down the street and pay a lot less for comparable products?” She replied, “You need to put a plan together on how you plan on keeping your numbers up”. Remember we were the number one store in sales in our district at this time. I told her, “I would figure out a plan and fax it to her.”
Over the next few days, I figured out a plan that would have actually increased the stores sales by 10% over our sales plan (what the company hopes to make in sales and revenue). By my calculations, over the next few months we should be at a 20% increase in sales, compared to last couple of months and we would remain number one in our district. My plan was to join the local chamber of commerce. If we joined the local chamber of commerce, we would have a ribbon cutting ceremony, photo opt session with the chamber and its members. We would have an article written up on our store in the Chamber Newspaper with pictures. Plus, I could send out 1,000 flyers. The total package would have cost only $300. I faxed out the information to my district manager and waited for a couple of days to hear what her response would be. I was very confident that this would be a very good plan that would make the company and our store more money. After a couple of days went by, I didn’t hear from her so I called her. She said, “I didn’t receive the plan and I needed to refax it.” Again, I faxed the plan to her. After a couple of days went by, I called her again. She said, “I could not find the fax, but she had received it and I needed to refax it again”. Again, I faxed the plan to her. I still didn’t hear from her, so I called my regional manager.
I explained what was going on and that I have not been given an answer from her. A couple of days later I received a phone call from my district manager. She told me “I could not join the chamber, because if my store joined the chamber the other 230 stores might want to join their local chambers and it would be too costly to the company.” I needed to put together another plan that would work to increase our store’s sales. I replied, “Don’t you think we should try my plan as a pilot program and see if it works”? “If it works, maybe it would be in the company’s best interest to do this on a nationwide basis”. “We could use this as a test.” “No we will not do this”, she said. This whole process took over two weeks. To me, this whole process was a waste of time, energy and in my opinion my district manager didn’t really care about the store or me for that matter. I couldn’t understand how spending $300 to receive an increase in sales of about $50,000, over the next couple of months, was a bad plan. If we did use the plan as a test and made an increase in sales of $50,000 over our sales plan, to me this would be well worth having the company use this to increase sales on a nationwide basis. Nonetheless, the plan was shot down. Our sales did suffer from the clearance store and our store finished third in our district. Once again, lack of communication was the problem. Had I known in advance that the clearance store was opening, I would have had the ability to be proactive, instead of reactive. When my district manager and I reviewed the numbers, at the end of the year, I told her that my store would have finished number one in our district if the clearance store would have not opened and she agreed. The funny thing was that the company actually lost money, because the profit margin from the sales of the clearance store was so low. Yes, they did make a lot of sales, but they would have made more money if the clearance store had never opened. I just wonder how much the company and our store would have made if I were allowed to have implemented my plan?
With the two above examples, I was never asked for my opinion nor was I told that either situation was going to happen. The lack of communication cost the company money, sales and made life harder than it needed to be for my employees and me. When I was finally asked my opinion (about increasing my sales plan), I was told no and again it cost the company money. The way both situations were handled was completely wrong. The way my district manager handled both situations, was not performed with any type of leadership at all and at best the two situations showed bad management. If you want to be successful in business, management and leadership, you need to listen to your employees, managers and those that could make your business or corporation more successful. No one person has all of the answers and everyone has a solution to certain problems. Brainstorming with your co-workers can be very productive and profitable. Learn to listen to your employees and you will become more profitable and successful. The last thing I will say to help you become more successful is to listen to your customers. Spend time talking with your customers to find out what they really want and how you could deliver better customer service.
Check your ego in at the door.
There is nothing more detrimental to the success of a business than people in a leadership position that have an enlarged ego and/or excessive pride (the dictator). People, who portray themselves as better than everyone else, the one who knows everything and the person who has too much pride is someone who is setting them-self up for a fall. Not only are these people unpleasant to deal with, they are not fun to be around. Is it any wonder that pride is the first of the Seven Deadly Sins (yes I have mentioned pride before, but it needs to reiterated)? I don’t think so. I think it makes complete sense. As a leader, you must realize much of your success is tied to the success of others. Making, or trying to make, people feel inferior to you will only come back to haunt you. Not only will you fail at gaining loyalty from your staff, employees, and managers, but you will also be facilitating your own demise. One of the biggest problems you will face is that you will not be able to persuade others to join you in making the company successful. You will be alienating good people who could be your greatest allies. A person who is intelligent will not play the game very long. It is only a matter of time until they will stop believing in you. Your cause will become apparent to all that your main concern is your own personal gain. You will end up loosing the brightest people, the ones who will bring you the greatest success and in the end you will (for the most part) be left with yes men and woman. This is one of the worst problems you could face. Not only have you used your leadership position to become a dictator, now, you no longer have many people who can make decisions. The people who are left will not take the initiative to make decisions, because they will be in fear of being chastised and or fired. These are the same people who can, in their own opinion, not afford to lose their job and/or make a change in their life. At this point, you have successfully all but destroyed the success of your company. It is only a matter of time until you will be replaced with someone who knows what true leadership is all about. Unfortunately, there are too much dictatorial managers in the business world today. I also know that there are a lot of very good managers, but only a small-portion who actually know what true leadership is. Leadership is foreign to most managers, period. I attribute the lack of what true leadership is to instant gratification, the lack of knowledge by many in the education establishment and those in management.
The Failure of Management Styles.
I have already alluded to the failure of the manager that acts as a dictator. To be more specific, the dictatorial manager has many faces that lead(s) to the shortfall of the company becoming very profitable, as successful as it can become and in some cases, the failure of the company. There is a misconception in the sphere of many managers in the management field who believe success comes at any cost. Manipulation to achieve ones goals is perfectly fine if you achieve a desired result. If coercion works, then, it makes good business sense for the bottom line. The corruption of power is not a problem unless you get caught. Do I need to mention Enron and the like again? I think you get the point.
I am not saying that all in management are only interested in the bottom line, just personal gain but sometimes we forget that all business is about people. We need people to help us build our business, achieve our goals and of course our customers are people. I know that there are a lot of very good managers in the business world, but we all have room for improvement and many of us have been pushed to shade the truth at times.
The carrot and the stick approach that is conducted by much of the management field in today’s business world is the wrong approach. If you participate in this type of management style, then you will feel the wrath and you better start looking for a new job in the not so distant future. We have all dealt with this type of person in power. Yes it will get people motivated, but for the wrong reasons. Remember, people will do anything to avoid pain and gain pleasure. We will do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. Loosing ones job is painful and sometimes it is still painful even if we hate our job. No one likes loss nor do they like to lose. Manipulating and coercing people to make them do what you want will only build resentment with those that are being treated this way. I am not saying that there are not times when someone needs to be corrected in his or her job performance. Quite the contrary, there are times to when people need to be reprimanded and I do believe firing people when they need it. But, you can either command respect or you can demand respect.
To command respect, is to be respected by others. The person who commands respect has people who believe in them, their goals, their vision and the path that they are traveling is the correct path. People will always respect the person who treats people well and the person who commands respect knows that you need to treat people the way you want to be treated. The person who commands respect is a people person. The person who commands respect is someone who takes a genuine interest in others, their families and helps people on their way to success. He or she builds strong alliances with others and builds trusting relationships with other co-workers, friends and his family. He or she is easy to talk with and their door is always open to listen to what others are saying. The person who commands respect is his or her own person, is comfortable within them-self and can sleep at night knowing that they always do the right thing. They have a clear conscience and it is evident to all that they deal with. He or she knows they need to trust the people who they work with and the alliances that they have built are with people who know exactly what the person who commands respect wants. There is no need for manipulation or coercion to get the job done. The carrot and stick approach is not an option when it comes to dealing with people. The person who builds alliances and trusting relationships doesn’t need to use these types of tactics to get things accomplished. Others are willing do what it takes to get the job done as long as it is ethical and honest. The person who commands respect doesn’t do things that are shady when it comes to business or in life. He or she is honest and trust worthy. They don’t have patients with people who lie, cheat or steal. Integrity is very important to them and they expect others to operate on the same level. The person who commands respect will surround them-self with people who have the same values. Now not everyone has the same values, so they find people who will conduct business on an honest scale. It is at this point that those who will do business unethically need to be relieved of their position and be replaced by new and trust worthy people (those who hold the same honest values). If you have been fortunate to work for a leader who commands respect, you will never forget them and you will always remember them as the best person you ever worked for.
The person who demands respect is not respected by anyone. In their own mind, they might think others respect them, but their vision is nothing more than a distortion in their own mind. Their sincerity is unreal and is as transparent as a window. The way they get others to do what they want is to manipulate and/or coerce them. The one who demands respect builds no real alliances just resentments and dissent with others. Their success, if it ever comes, is built on the short-term basis. True success will never be realized. They use others to better their own situation and their own personal gain is what their goal is. They step on other people to get one more step up the rung of the ladder. Those that work with he or she does it reluctantly and knows that the person who demands respect will do whatever it takes to achieve the desired result even if it means doing something that is unethical or fraudulent. The person who demands respect only cares about number one.
At times, the person who joins a corporation, or one who enters the political arena, the person starts out as someone who is honest, but having to play the game that is thrust upon him or her is sometimes corrupted. If they want to survive, they need to play the game and they will and need to do whatever it takes to reach their numbers or votes. This is a vicious cycle and eventually this style of management will destroy the person. So why do people manage and do business this way? It really is simple and comes down to two words; power and money.
First of all, those that demand respect are insecure with themselves. They do things to keep others on edge. When I managed a district for an investment company, I was one of three people who managed a district in our branch office (Financial planning). My manager was great and a true leader. He did anything in his power to help everyone in our office succeed. He was very honest and you could always talk with him about any problem, or any suggestions you had. I loved working for and with him. Unfortunately, he decided to leave his management position and go back into sales. He grew tired of working 80 plus hours per week, which is understandable. I too was working over 80 hours per week and it was very tiring to say the least. After he stepped down, a new manager came in to replace him. The first thing she did after taking her management role was to have every representative go through each and every file and redo them to her specification. This entailed rearranging every client’s folder. Everyone in our branch already worked 50 plus hours minimum per week. We not only had to set our own appointments, meet new and existing clients, but now we had to take on a new work load that was unnecessary. We spent countless hours doing something that was a waste of time. Our regional manager had already gone through our files to make sure that they were NASD (National Association Securities Dealers) and SEC (Security Exchange Commission) approved. Why did she make us do this? For, power, she wanted to show everyone who was the boss and that she was going to manage with the style that said it is my way or the highway. She had just demanded respect from those that she was now managing.
This didn’t build respect by anyone in our branch. In fact, she facilitated resentment among everyone. She also didn’t have an open door policy when it came to anyone who wanted to talk with her. She locked herself in her office, and when we did see her she was manipulative and coercive. To make things worse, I hired a very intelligent young man, named Joe. Joe was getting married and just left a nice paying job to come to work for us. I hired Joe and trained him to work in my district. When I hired Joe, my old branch manager was still managing our branch. Joe explained, when we hired him, that he would be able to come in for a week and he was getting married the following week. We had an agreement that he could come in for training and then go to his wedding and honeymoon. The problem with this situation was that we now had a new dictator that managed our branch. We also had mandatory Monday and Friday meetings in our branch office. Well, this agreement that my prior branch manager, Joe and me had was not going to be warranted by the new branch manager. She told Joe “he could go to his wedding and honeymoon, but would have to be in our office for the Monday and Friday meeting”. To make a long story short, Joe was fired over the situation, because he couldn’t be at the Monday and Friday meetings. When our branch manager fired Joe, I knew I could not work with, or for her anymore. I wanted no part of treating people the way she chose to treat people. I gave my notice within a week after the firing of Joe that I was quitting within the next week. I was the first of many that quit. My old branch manager, who went back into sales, quit soon thereafter I did. After a couple of months, only one person I knew still worked in the branch office. Before she came to manage the branch, we had a great office that worked incredibly well together. We had fun, we all helped each other and we had an open door policy with each other. In fact, all of the districts, managers and representatives worked together to make each other more successful. I washed my hands of the situation and the last I heard the branch closed as of a couple of years ago.
In other words, another business failure due to a lack of leadership, bad management to someone who used manipulation and coercion because of their management style. What is the cost of this type of management style? In just this one case thousand, if not, millions of dollars lost in sales, jobs lost and people who were treated harshly for no reason. If you look at the country as a whole, you are talking about billions, if not trillions, of dollars lost to this lack of leadership and bad management. How many people has bad management and the lack of leadership negatively affect families. How many people loose their retirement and life’s saving to the same dictatorial management? Too many, and it is time for a change in the business world! We need a return of ethics, integrity and treating people the way they need to be treated, period. Personal gain and the bottom line are not the only things that are important in business. Yes the business needs to be profitable to stay in business, but you will be more successful and profitable if you become a leader who commands respect.
Honesty and Integrity.
This section may make some people a little nervous, but the truth needs to be told. Nothing can destroy the moral of a company faster than the dishonesty of management. We have always heard the phrase honesty is the best policy but if you need to shade the truth a little it is ok. Not true at all. Honesty should be the only policy, period. If you need to lie to reach a goal, than you are in the wrong business. I know that honesty is not the only policy, but it should be. I know that there are people in the management field that will do whatever it takes to achieve a desired result. How sad is it that someone needs to be dishonest to reach a goal? To me, there is nothing worse (in the business world) than someone who is dishonest. In fact, if you are dishonest, it is only a matter of time until the bottom falls out and you will fail. Yes, I know, there are many people in management that do business in a way that is dishonest and they make a lot of money in the process. Almost all of these people do one of three things. One, they destroy the organization in the process of personal gain and instant gratification. Two, they destroy themselves personally, their family life and in many cases, they destroy their financial situation. Third, they do all of the above. No matter what your justification is to achieve something, there is a price to pay for everything you do that is wrong. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on the person you are, there is a voice in your head that will punish you for your wrong doings. Yes, I am referring to your conscience; the other part of your mind that will, in essence, destroy you from within. I know that some people can be dishonest and never think twice about it. I personally went to junior high and high school with someone who was a pathological liar. We were friends, he was fun to be around, but the more I knew about his personality, the more I wanted to distance myself from him. He actually believed his own lies. No matter how outrageous his lies were he believed any and everything he said. It was funny and sad at the same time, because he would tell someone that he did certain things, but they were complete falsehoods. I was personally with him at times and what he told others about the situation was a complete lie. Many of my other friends, experienced the same types of situations when dealing with him. Unfortunately, he had a mental problem. He was very smart, intelligent, personable, athletic and a pretty nice person. But, he will have a problem throughout his life with honesty. He always seemed to do well in life and financially. Even when he went out in the business world, he has done well for himself, but eventually, he will trip and fall. It is only a matter of time until; God, Mother Nature and/or his conscience will catch up with him. I know I said that “he had (and to my knowledge he still does have) a mental condition”, but life, sometimes has a way of correcting the situation. I hope and pray that he finds piece of mind, true success and happiness in his life. People, who conduct business on a dishonest basis, don’t have a conscience; have a mental problem with the truth or only care about themselves.
I know that the mind can be trained to do anything including kill other people, but someone who has a conscience will eventually have to be honest with the reality of their crimes. Now having said that, does that not speak for the need of true leadership? Hitler and Hirohito (Emperor Japan December 25, 1926-January 7, 1989) each trained millions of people to buy into their wicked philosophies and millions were killed. I am not saying that everyone is capable of Hitler’s and Hirohito’s insanity, but it does demonstrate what power in the wrong hands can do. There are many more dictators that have lived and or do live and tally of millions of people have been enslaved and killed due to the same type of dictatorship. I know that this scenario may seem extreme, but it tells a story of how power can be used for things that destroy people, countries and how negatively it affects people by the millions. On a lesser scale, I have already talked about Enron, Global-Crossing and World Com. You might be saying, “That is not even in the same sphere.” I agree, but think about all of the people’s lives each company has destroyed financially and personally. The scales of examples are different, but both have had a detrimental affect on millions of people. Everything needs to be put in perspective. People who have destroyed as much as Hitler, Hirohito and the likes have done is unthinkable to almost all of us, but there are many managers who will use personal gain and instant gratification to justify his or her own success. Hitler, Hirohito and the heads of Enron, Global-Crossing and World Com did things unethically, and the end result was incredibly negative. Justifying ones success through dishonesty and lack of integrity is completely wrong. If you do business in this fashion, it is only a matter of time until you will pay the price, as did Hitler, Hirohito, Mussolini, other dictators and the managers of Enron, Global-Crossing and World Com did. When you throw the boomerang, you too will have to deal with the consequences either good or bad. If you conduct business in the same manor as the above cases, you too will be hit with a devastating blow. If you think that honesty is not the best policy, then what is the cost in the end? I think I have made my case, but I know there are those who will still try to cut corners and achieve instant gratification. It is only a matter of time until you pay the price of your crimes.
Congressman JC Watts spoke of one of the best definitions, of integrity; I have ever heard. He said “integrity is doing what is right when no one is watching”. Think of the ultimate benefit in people’s lives and the positive affect that that type of leadership would have on the business (and political) world.
What sets a leader apart, from that of a manager, is honesty and integrity. However, honesty and integrity must be sincere. Without integrity and honesty, one tries to lead by mere techniques and, in essence, he or she is insincere and someone who can’t be a true leader. People can and will see through insincerity as if they were looking through a clear window on a sunny day. No one wants to follow someone who is fake and/or dishonest. People will put up with a boss who is insincere, but only for job security. Dissent will ring throughout the company, as people will talk behind the bosses back and bad attitudes will follow. In essence, the moral of the company will suffer and production will fall off.
A leader must be driven by values, morals and a sincere desire to help others. A leader must be genuine in his honesty and integrity. The above is known, in this case, as the leaders philosophy. He or she must perform his or her duties in a way that others can respect. Values are the foundation that drives organizations and is respected by those that are working within the organization. It is the job of the leader to lift the organization as a whole to understand and work within the values and philosophy that the leader wants to instill. A leader needs to uplift each worker to become better than they have ever been. The leader needs to provide the moral standards and the motivation to have each employee get out of the daily rut of everyday on the job. Only a leader can bring the values and philosophy that make others strive to contribute more than they previously have. It is the values of the leader that will help motivate others to become successful. An organization can only be as successful as its employees and employees can only be as successful as a leader‘s values, morals and integrity, which are instilled within the organization. It is the job of the leader to make sure he or she instills these values and philosophy through daily and constant communication and persuasion. Notice that I didn’t say coercion or manipulation when it comes to instilling the leader’s values and philosophy. Only through values, integrity, honesty and moral standards can you get anyone to willingly do anything at work, home and/or in life. Only a leader can motivate his staff, company and sometimes millions to his values and philosophy. What are your values and philosophy? Hopefully your values and philosophy are those that bread success and not those that will destroy other people’s lives. What is it that motivates your employees? Do your values and philosophy prove to be a win-win situation for your company and your employees?
If you are a leader, or plan to be one, you need to build your organization on win-win basis. What I mean, by win-win, is that one you must make your organization profitable and successful. And Two, you need to make it so that you help your employees achieve their personal goals. You can only be successful as a leader by helping and allowing others become successful. No one likes to feel stifled by someone they work for or by anyone for that matter. By allowing others to become successful, they will follow you and you will definitely win their loyalty. Remember, we are all individuals and we all have brains. Permit others to use their brains, make decisions and let them take initiative. Be patient with those who take chances and can make decisions on their own. Not every decision that people make will always be the right decision, but stand behind them while they work to better themselves, build your business and their loyalty to you. Now I am not saying to allow others to make stupid decisions and/or ones that will destroy the organization. In fact if you let someone who is uneducated in his field, doesn’t care about your organization and/or isn’t knowledgeable about your company make decisions for your company you are the stupid one, not them. However, you need to have faith in others that they will do what is right. One of the biggest problems that people in management have is allowing others grow and letting others take initiative to make decisions. This is one thing that sets a leader apart from a manager. Managers tend to be threatened by others who are trying to grow and expand in their position. It comes down to the manager feeling threatened by others passing them up and shows that the manager is really insecure in them-self and their abilities. A leader on the other hand, gives others the room to grow and expand personally and professionally. How can anyone have faith in you, your values and philosophy if you don’t put your trust in them to make the right decisions? The best policy for letting others make their own decisions is to not tell them what to do, but to make suggestions about what you would like to see happen. Leave the decision up to them on whether or not they will heed your advice. If they implement your suggestion, great, if not, allow them to grow with their decision and the results. I know that there are rebels who don’t like authority and there are vindictive people who will do the opposite of what you truly want to implement. It will not take long for you to determine that the person is a rebel or vindictive and it will not take long for you to find someone who will perform the job at a more productive level. But realize that the person with the ability to become your greatest allay might be the person who will you consider a rebel. I am not trying to contradict myself here, but many times the person you think is a pain is someone who has not been listened to about his opinions and suggestions. You need to be a hands on leader, know your staff and entrust your close allays to making the right decision. If you are a leader, this might be the hardest thing you have ever done, especially if you are a control freak! However, you might find that it is the best decision you could have ever made in terms of building your business, the bottom line and success for everyone in your company.
At one point in my life, right out of high school, I was an assistant service manager of a pool company. We serviced pools and spas. The owner of the company decided to get into spa sales. The owner of the company, Vince, ended up purchasing about 50 spas and decided to have a spa sale. Vince met with the local newspaper to put an ad in the paper for the spa sale. When Vince and the salesman from the newspaper met to discuss the sales ad, I listened to the two of them talk about which part of the newspaper to place the ad. They decided to put the ad in a section of the paper that was somewhat read. I made the suggestion that they should put it in the sports section. I knew that most business people, as well as, people with money were into sports and read the sport’s section on a daily basis. Plus, people who participate in sports are some of the people who use spas the most. To me, it made sense that the sports section would be the best section to get the most “bang for the buck” for the advertisement. Both Vince and the salesman, made me feel like I was stupid for the suggestion. They both said, “That will not work, let us do this”. I felt like my suggestion should have been at least considered, but who was going to listen to a young kid that was just the assistant service manager. How could he possibly have a clue about business and/or advertising? Later that day, after work, I talked with a man who was like my second father, Dee. Dee owned a car dealership, was very wealthy, and knew a lot of business owners and was a very successful businessman. I explained the situation with Dee about my dealings with Vince and the salesman. I explained that how I was perceived for my suggestion about putting the ad in the sport’s section. Dee replied, “See this is why businesses fail, because they don’t realize what would be best for their business”. Dee agreed that the sport’s section would have been the best place as well for the advertisement. He agreed with me that most of all business people, people with money are into sports and that people who play sports are the people who are most interested in spas. We held the spa sale at one of the busiest shopping malls in the area. The sale was successful, but we didn’t sale all the spas. I wonder how much more successful the sale would have been if we were to advertise in the sport’s section? I know that to find out the true results we would have had to done some testing in the two different sections of the paper, but I am pretty convinced that we would have done better by advertising in the sport’s section of the paper. The moral of the story is to listen to your employees and there are times that you should let them make decisions on their own.
You will need to have patience and an open mind in order to allow others to make their own decisions. This may not be easy at first, but you need to trust and have faith in the people you work with. Of course, don’t let anyone who is uneducated in the subject make decisions for your company. My reason for my suggestion was, everyone I knew who was in business, was financially set and played sports (which almost all of the business owners and people who were financially set do in the area) read the sport’s section of the local paper. Since I was not well accepted in my opinion where to advertise, I never made another suggestion about anything that had to do with advertising. If you don’t listen to your employee’s suggestions, it is quite possible that they too will feel that their opinion doesn’t matter. If you snap at your employees suggestions and make them feel stupid, it too will be likely that they will not want to suggest anything, because no one likes to feel stupid. This may be really hard for managers to let others make decisions, but the result will be tremendous if you have the courage to trust your employees.
Stand behind your employee’s decision.
This is a must when you let others make decisions. The only way you will ever build an alliance and trust between you and your co-worker’s is to back them on decisions that they make. Now, if your employee makes a decision that is blatantly destructive to you and your organization, you need to find out what their actual intend was and why it was detrimental to you and the organization. Remember you are building alliances with the people you are working with and this means that you are building trust with the people who work for you. You are building your organization with people you can trust and vise-versa. If you have someone who is detrimental to you and your organization, you need to find someone you can trust and build an alliance with. This type of environment builds a win-win situation for you, your organization and your employees (by letting them make their own decisions and backing them in the process). Your goal is to build your organization with your values, philosophy and with people who have bought into both. By doing the above you now have people who know what you want and will implement the same throughout your organization. This is the job of a true leader.
Have you ever worked for someone who makes you want to become the best you can be? Have you ever been associated with someone who knows how to make you push yourself past previous limitations? How did they get the best out of you? How did they make you become stronger than you ever thought you could be? One of the best people and examples of getting the best out of people is Bill Belichick, the coach of the New England Patriots (NFL Football). He is a coach that gets the best out of his players. He surrounds himself with players who learn to buy into his philosophy. He is a man who surrounds himself with other coaches and associates who implement his philosophy. He gets players to buy into his philosophy and the result was winning the Super Bowl in 2002. Now what makes this a more incredible feat is that going into the season the Patriots were projected by all analysts, sports show (TV and radio), magazines and newspapers to finish the season with a record of 5-11, or at best 6-10. In fact, the Patriots were predicted to finish last in their division. However, Belichick’s philosophy and leadership prevailed despite what the so-called experts predicted to be a failure of a season. Not only did the Patriots win the Super Bowl, but when the team was introduced at the beginning of the game, they came out as a team and not individual players (not individually introduced). When they beat the St. Louis Rams in the Super Bowl it was the second biggest upset in Super Bowl history. In fact they were a 14 plus point underdog. If you were listened to the TV, radio sport shows, read all the magazine and newspaper articles on the game, the Patriots should not have even shown up for the game. What made the difference with the Patriots winning the game? The players had all bought into Belichick’s philosophy, implemented his game plan and played better than anyone could have predicted. Belichick got the best out of each of his players. They executed the game plan to perfection and the result was the New England Patriots were world champions. Some people may say that football is just a sport and it doesn’t equate to the business world. I completely disagree. Professional Football is big business. You are talking about a sport that generates billions of dollars per year. Just like corporations, they try to get the best people to fill each position; they too need team players and people who will strive to become the best they can be. People who will work together, using the same philosophy that the leader has implemented and all reach to achieve a common goal.
Be able to accept criticism.
Everyone experiences criticism from time to time. Some warranted and some not. Everyone has an opinion about certain things. So it is not hard to imagine that you will receive your share if you are in a leadership and/or management position. The person in the leadership role needs to have a thick skin. When criticism is warranted, take your lumps and deal with the consequences. Yes that does mean swallowing your pride when need be. Learn from the experience and move on. The hardest criticism to take is the criticism that is not justified. Rumors, bad publicity from the media, disgruntled employees and someone who has a personal vendetta against you. All can cause you to deal with things that you never should have to, but that is part of life sometimes. If you are in the right, stick to your guns. No matter what others say or write about you, if you are honest, have integrity, treat people the way you want to be treated and help people in the process, you have nothing to worry about. The problems people run into is that when they do things that are wrong, dishonest and look out for only number one, things will always catch up with them. Remember, the truth never changes and neither does the story you tell. When people lie, cheat and/or steal, they have a tendency to forget whom they told what and things get cloudier as time goes on. Simple solution live, manage and lead by the principles listed above. When you do that, you don’t have to worry what others say about you. The truth will come out. It always does, whether it is good or bad and you have a choice in the matter. It is a whole hell of a lot easier to deal with the truth, not deceit, dishonesty and/or the lack of integrity.
The problem that people who are dishonest run into having is they have to cover their tracks. Many times the tracks go in too many directions and it becomes impossible to cover up the problem. Now when these people come under fire from others, they have a problem that is compounded. Not only do they have to deal with the bad publicity, or problems with in the company, but now you have to deal with trying to cover up your lack of honesty and pay the consequences. The simple solution is to be honest in your business dealings and your life will be much more simplified. Remember the truth never changes!
Now if you have done your business dealings in an ethical and honest manor, when criticism comes, you will be able to handle it with a clear conscience. Unjust criticism will pass, as long as you can show that you have nothing to hide. Don’t complicate your life with shady business deals, lying to make the sale, or work without character, and integrity. The more complicated you make your life, the more you have to deal with in the future and the price to pay may be too great and cost you everything in your life. How do you think Enron came to fail? It all started with someone in the upper echelons of management blowing the whistle on the top people. The here was a business that, in the end, was built on business practices that were based on instant gratification, dishonesty, no integrity and outright theft. The result was the company folded (for the most part and will never recover); the top people are headed for prison, millions of innocent people lost fortunes, their retirements and their jobs. Look at the economy and the affect it had on the economy as a whole. Plus, Global Crossing and World Com’s failings were a direct result from the same business and account practices that destroyed Enron. Think about what the cost of doing business dishonestly can cost you, others and the economy as a whole? Could you pay the price for the cost of unethical business dealings? The decision seams to very simple to me, as I am sure it is to you as well.
Keep your head no matter what the situation.
One of the main things you must do as a leader is keep your head no matter what happens. One aspect of true leadership is finding solutions to problems and leading by example. We all face problems in life and business. How you deal with problems will determine how successful you will be in business and life. When problems arise, you will need to keep a clear head. The only way you can make rational decisions is to be able to think clearly. As a leader, everyone around you will see how you react in every situation. Whether you can deal with pressure, decisions made under pressure and how you react to problems will let others know if you are a true leader or not. One of the best shows of leadership happened with the days that followed the horrific day on September 11, 2001. We all know and remember that infamous day and don’t need to go into details. A true leader stepped up to the plate and brought our country together. President George W. Bush showed one of the greatest displays of leadership I have ever witnessed. I don’t care if you are a democrat, republican, like and/or dislike President Bush. Bush did what needed to be done to heal and bring our country together. The one thing that made itself apparent was that Bush’s compassion was genuine and real, as was his anger for what our country and its people had suffered (especially the victims and their families). Bush’s speeches were exactly what the country needed to hear from what our plan as a country’s was to how to deal with the anger and grief that we all felt. One of Bush’s greatest and most incredible displays of courage came during the World Series. As we all know, all sporting events had been suspended for a couple of weeks after 9-11 to allow our country and its people to heal. When the World Series resumed, Bush was to be the one to throw out the first pitch of the very first game since our country was attacked. Bush showed great strength by going out to the pitcher’s mound by himself. He could have surrounded himself with Secret Service Agents, but he left them near the foul lines. What made this event even more incredible, was when Bush threw out the first pitch he threw a perfect strike. The way the President handled himself over the weeks, months and years following the attack was an incredible display of leadership that was true and not fake. Bush kept his head through all of the events that followed 9-11-01, showed our country what a leader is and how a leader acts under incredible pressure that most of us could not even imagine. Bush was criticized by many during this time, but still kept the country on the right course. I do believe that at some time and point a book will be written on Bush’s leadership. I don’t agree with everything Bush has done (nor do I with anyone for that matter), but he was the man we needed at this time in the history of our country. Without Bush’s leadership during one of our nations greatest trials, it is hard to say how our country would have reacted and if anyone else could have brought our country together the way he did.
Dealing with bad attitudes.
One bad attitude can bring down an office. Bad attitudes are as infectious as the common cold and will spread throughout a company if permitted. The usual culprit is the employee’s feeling cheated, not appreciated and sometimes this is a result of bad management, but not always. When trouble arises within an organization, it is the job of the leader to make sure that bad attitudes never infect the organization. Without true leadership, companies can fail and many times do. When I managed a district for an investment company, this point was driven home by one my managers. Ryan was great and was great to work for. He was always positive and a true leader. He expressed the point that one bad attitude could bring down our branch office. Ryan was promoted to run a different office, but we kept in contact after he left. I have always distanced myself from negative people and before I went into management I would try to help those that were having problems with productivity. Some people I could help, but others seemed to be in the victimization mode. They wanted to be a victim. In fact, many people in our society want to live in the “I am victim” mode and you can’t do anything to help people who don’t want to help themselves. I have always been one who has wanted to help people and it took me a long time to figure out the victim mentality. The problem is people who live in victim mode are negative people; feel cheated in life and where they work. It is this type of person’s attitude that brings down organizations. Like I said before, “Ryan taught me that one bad attitude could bring down an office”. I learned this first hand what Ryan meant after Ryan transferred. We had a woman who was being trained for management, but she wasn’t someone who could manage effectively and definitely was not a leader. This became evident to the branch manager, Roy, and she was sent back into the sales field. I know that no one likes to be demoted, but sometimes people can’t do the job and become successful at it. She was jaded by the decision to go back into sales and her attitude was incredibly negative. She began to converse with others and her negative attitude began to affect others in the office. She started to make others in the office have a bad attitude and the result was descent within the office. Those that were affected by this bad contagious attitude, started to suffer in their sales and productivity. Roy did everything in his power to help her become successful, but she didn’t want to become successful. Her goal, consciously or sub consciously, was to destroy the moral of the office. She did a good job of it with quite a few of the employees and in the end she was fired. As for the others who were affected by her bad attitude, most were fired as well, with the exception of only a few. She destroyed a good part of our branch office, which took about a year to build, and it took us another six months to get new qualified people to replace those that were fired due to this contagious attitude. Roy did a great job dealing with the problem and I knew exactly what Ryan meant by saying one bad attitude can bring down an office. The whole office wasn’t brought down, but a good part of it was and it took a lot of work and time to rebuild the office. If not for Roy’s leadership, the whole office would have crumbled. I learned a lot about leadership from Roy and Ryan. But just think how much time and sales were lost to dealing with this problem. Think about how much more successful we could have been if we didn’t have to deal with this problem. Not only did her attitude have a negative affect on the office, she too made sure that she was not successful. How you deal with situations will determine if you are successful as a manager and as a leader. Roy was successful because he dealt with the situation with tact and true leadership. He kept the branch together for the most part and got rid of the problem. Dealing with bad attitudes can have a very detrimental affect on your organization. Surround yourself with people who will help you and not do things out of spite and vengeance. The solution will save you a lot of time, money and headaches.
Let people know where you stand.
The only way that anyone can possibly know what you want and expect from him or her is to tell. People are not mind readers. It doesn’t make a pleasant work environment when people are trying to figure out what you want from them. No one likes to feel like they have to walking on eggshells. I know that there are those in management that like to work in this type of environment, but mainly because they are trying to use their power to intimidate others. Usually, these managers are very insecure in them-self and try to make others feel insecure in order to control those that they manage. What a waste of time and energy. How can anyone that works for you become an ally and/or build an alliance with you if they are uncomfortable while working with and for you? They will not do either. They only thing that will work is to make sure people know where you stand. Be strait forward and honest with them and you will alleviate communication and work problems.
The common sense approach to leadership.
If common sense could be packaged and sold, it would be worth billions if not trillions of dollars in sales each and every year. The best way to lead others is through common sense. Of course, common sense is not common in today’s world. It seems that common sense has been replaced by how we feel about situations and doing what makes us feel good. Running our lives, business and managing by feelings is a sure way to fail. God gave us a brain for a reason. I am not saying to not be compassionate with others, because you should be. Everyone who works for you and with you has a life outside of the work place. Everyone has problems that they need to deal with when they are away from work. Remember, that almost everyone is working because they have a family to take care of and bills to pay. They may like you, their job, but the reality is they are there because they need the money. I have always been someone who allows others to take care of family and outside problems when they need to. Of course, you can’t allow people to take advantage of you or your generosity. Allow others to take care of their problems (including taking a day off or a half day when needed), but if there is something that you need to get finished, make a deal with them that you need their help in a certain project or function that you need to finish. This will make the situation a win-win situation. Not only will your employees respect you more, but they will also be willing to help you more and they will build a trust and respect for you that will compel them to go the extra mile in helping you achieve your objectives and goals.
Part of a common sense approach to leadership is to be consistent. There is nothing more disturbing at work than when you never know what to expect from your boss. I worked for a company at one point and the owner (Don) of the company had a tendency to yell at people instead of asking questions. Yes he was a control freak. Whenever he came to work, no one was sure what to expect from him. One day he was in a good mood and the next he was angry and completely unreasonable. In fact, some days he would be completely moody and would change from being in a good mood to a complete, well you get the point. It doesn’t take long for people to get sick of dealing with someone like that and you will never get the most out of those that work with and for you. It is very disheartening to the people that have to work for someone like that and the manager or business owner who acts in this fashion will never get 110% from their workers. In fact, you will be luck to get 50-80%. It has been over three years since I worked for that company and the last I heard he has lost a lot of very good and competent people, because of his attitude. Plus he now has twice as many people working for him who are doing the same amount of production that was previously completed when I was there. He was making a lot of money at the time I worked for him, but he did his part to destroy the success of the company either consciously or subconsciously.
Don fired the person (Rob) who was running the jobs for us even though he was completing jobs two to three weeks early on average. The main reason Don fired Rob was Rob got tired of dealing with Don. Like I said Don was a control freak. The final straw was when Rob gave Don six months notice that he was going to Mexico on vacation with his wife and some other couples that were friends of Rob. The day came when Rob was to leave on his vacation and Don was completely unprepared to have Rob leave of a week. Rob continuously reminded Don that he was going on vacation over that six-month period. We would have been fine without Rob for the week, but like I said Don was a control freak and really didn’t care that much about his employees. To make a long story short, Rob was fired shortly after he returned from his vacation. I too was fired about six months later after three years and having enough of dealing with Don. Others left the company and the last I heard his company was not doing very well compared to where it was when he had a great crew and staff. What a waste of time and money. Not only did Don have life going very well for himself and his business, but he also got in the way of his own success and is now paying the price. Constancy at home as well as the work place should be the norm, but many times it is not. Be consistent when dealing with your decisions, your staff and with all situations. Remember, as a leader, you can only be as successful as your employees and your staff. If you don’t think this is the case, try to do everything yourself and see how well you can do. It is impossible for you to do everything and you need others to be successful. Until you understand this simple fact, you will never be as successful as you can be and you will doom yourself to fail.
Common sense tells us that we, as leaders, have to be dependable. How can you have a dependable staff, if you, as the leader, aren’t dependable yourself? There is no way you can have a dependable staff. People that follow you will take on your traits and characteristics. Do as I say and not what I do will never work, period. Even children will not do what you say if you only talk the talk and never walk the walk, at least not for long. People, as well as children, are very perceptive and the only way you can get anyone to what you want them to do is lead by example. How can someone who does drugs tell someone else not to do drugs? It might work in the interim, but eventually you will have some of the people who follow you use drugs. A friend of mine, who was overweight and having some health problems, went to see a doctor. My friend had high blood pressure and was not in very good shape physically. The doctor he saw was more overweight than my friend (about 100 lbs. heavier and my friend weighed about 300 lbs.) and in worse physical shape than my friend was. The doctor told him that he needed to lose weight, take better care of himself and start working out. Here was a doctor who needed to take his own advice and use it in stead of just telling my friend that he needed to make some changes in his life. Yes the doctor was correct in his assessment of my friend’s health, but the doctor needed to practice what he preached. What do you think my friend’s reaction was about his visit with the doctor? The same as anyone else’s would be. My friend told me “how could someone who is in worse shape than me tell me what to do to better my physical being and health”? I got the point, as I am sure you do too. You need to be, as the Chevy commercial says, “like a rock”. You need to be the one who people can count on. You need to be the one that is dependable and the person your employees look to for guidance and strength. When people work for someone who is dependable, employee’s feel comfortable and at ease with you and your leadership qualities. If you do this, your employees will buy into your philosophy, will build an incredible alliance with you and help you achieve everything you seek to achieve.
Being flexible in business and life is common sense. I know that there are people who do everything strictly but the book. We have all dealt with people who are book smart but they tend to lack the common sense for success. Rules are guidelines and not set in stone! Let me repeat that, rules are guidelines and not set in stone! Too often, we deal with people that will not deviate from their plan and /or the business structure. Rules, in business, are there to make sure that the company doesn’t lose money and that the employees don’t make stupid decisions that could hurt the organization as a whole. Common sense tells us that we do whatever it takes to ensure customer satisfaction. The customer comes first should be common sense for all organizations, but seems to elude most. We have all heard the old worn-out phrase that rule number one is that the customer is always right and rule number two is, if you think the customer is wrong, read rule number one. These rules might sound stupid and/or out of date, but they make total and complete common sense. No organization can be successful unless it has customers that purchase the companies products and/or services. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that success can only be obtained when you sell you’re your goods or services. Here is a story that should make my point. I was a manager trainee of a retail store and my manager had to attend a corporate manager’s meetings out of town. I was left to run the store and basically was left to see if I obtained the skills to be an affective manager. My district manager was very interested in what I had to offer and if I could make decisions on my own that would make me a successful manager.
I managed the store for four days two, of which, were the weekend. As with most retail businesses, the weekends were the busiest times of the week. We had a successful weekend and on Sunday late in the afternoon we had a disgruntled person who had bought about $1,500.00 worth of our products. Her products were falling apart and had little success, to say the least, from our customer service at the home office. She figured that I would give her the same run-a-round about getting a refund and/or a replacement on her product. She was very upset with the way our company had handled her situation, especially since we had a three-year warranty and she only purchased the product within the last year. Even though she had purchased the product at another store, I knew that she needed to receive the type of customer service that we all deserve to have when we spend our hard earned money on a product and/or service. She was pretty irate to say the least. Our company rules stated that we were not to handle returns and/or exchanges over $1,000.00 unless we have authorization from our District Manager. I tried to contact my District Manager, Chuck, but was unable to reach him. Now, I am one to believe that you always take care of the customer and take care of their needs, with the exception of those that want something for nothing. Not only did I replace her $1,500.00 worth of products on the spot, but she wrote a letter to and called Chuck, saying, “how happy she was to have been taken care of and that she would now be a customer for life”. She also said “that she would tell everyone she knew about how she was treated to her satisfaction and would recommend us to all she knew”. As anyone in business knows, word of mouth advertising is the greatest and most affective form of advertising bar none. Chuck told me about the letter and phone call. He was incredibly pleased with my decision to take care of her and her situation even though I had broken one of our company’s rules. He also explained to me that rules are guidelines that are just that, guidelines. Guidelines are meant to be broken to achieve customer satisfaction. I was promoted to run my own store shortly after that weekend. Does this mean that I am a geniuses and/or incredibly intelligent? Does this mean that everything that I have talked about to this point makes me great? Not at all! Everything that I have talked about is common sense, or at least it should be. Not false and/or fake common sense, but the common sense that improves the lives of your customers and your organization as a whole. Flexibility means making your customers happy as well as increasing the value of your organization. Flexibility is the will to do what is right to satisfy your customers and allow your employees the benefit of becoming more successful. Flexibility is the commutation of success for your customers and your business. Business is building a win-win situation for all that are involved.
Customer service is the key.
The companies that will produce the greatest revenues in the future will be the businesses that give the greatest customer service. For the last 20 to 30 years, companies have put too much emphasis on the bottom line and not enough on customer service. The success of a company is based on the ability to sell products and/or services to their customers. Without the satisfaction of your customers, your chances for greater success will diminish over time. How many well-known companies over the years have fallen to bankruptcy and/or corruption? Everything you want to achieve as a business owner or a corporation is based on the satisfaction of your customers and the ability to produce results that are favorable to your customer. Anyone can make a sale, but the success of a company is in the ability to retain those customers that have built a trust in and already purchased something from your company. It is very cost effective and much more advantageous to a company to retain a satisfied customer than it is to find new customers. Building customer relations takes time, confidence in you company, product, service and how your company treats its customers. It only takes one incident of dissatisfaction in your product and/or your customer service to lose them. On the contrary, it takes a long time and a lot of money to win a customer’s loyalty and to win their trust.
I recently cashed a check at a well-known bank. I am not a member of this bank, but I use to be. I didn’t like the way they treated their customers and that is why I closed my account. Anyway, when I went up to the teller to cash my check, he told me “there is a $5.00 free for cashing the check since I was not a member”. I said, “Excuse me”. He said, me “there is a $5.00 free for cashing the check since I was not a member”. “However, you can waive the $5.00 fee in you fill out a credit card application or open an account with us”. I replied, “I am in a hurry, I have never had to pay for cashing a check at any bank”. “I had an account with you before, was not happy with your service then and now I definitely will not do business with you again. I wasn’t rude at all, just honest. This will never make me want to join their bank. I don’t believe it will make others join them either. I don’t like companies who use coercion to do business. This is very bad customer service. It tells me that their mindset is if you don’t do business with us, we don’t care about you!
I could add countless of other examples, but we have all dealt with bad customer service. The customer service field needs to be revamped to actually serve the customer. In fact, with many companies, it seams that customer service is an oxymoron and not customer service at all. The companies that will be the most successful and profitable, in the future, will be those that treat the customer well and those that figured out what customer service really means.
Catch your employees doing something right.
Too often people in management, look to catch their employees doing the wrong things. Of course, we want to ensure that our employees are performing their jobs efficiently and effectively. And to make sure we are successful as a company, we need our employees to operate in such a manor. But, you need to learn to praise your employees when they do something right. Talk about building moral and alliances within your organization, with those who work with and for you. Everyone loves praise and praise should be conducted in public. When you praise people it ensures that your people will go the extra mile to do the right thing. Now when people do need to be reprimanded for their actions, it should be done in private. There is nothing more detrimental to your staff than to be ripped by your boss in front of others. If you have ever had a supervisor reprimand you in public, it is not fun to say the least. Plus, you build a rift within your organization and many times you do more harm than good by embarrassing you employee. Again, these are common sense approaches to leadership. Treat your employees the way you want to be treated. This type of approach will help you in the long run and will ensure that you will be successful as a leader.
Promote risk taking, innovation and creativity.
One way to help your organization and employees become the best it can be is to embrace risk taking, innovation and creativity. I know that there are a lot of people in management that are scared to allow others the leeway to expand. I also know that people are afraid of change and that by allowing others the ability to become successful could mean that they could actually pass us up through promotions. However allowing others to take risks when it comes to creativity and innovation will allow your employees the opportunity to grow and help you become more successful. Not only will the people that work for you be able to contribute more to the business, but they will also have a feeling of contribution to the success of the organization. Allowing others the opportunity to help make the organization become more successful will also drive your employees to become more excited about their work. People are creative, for the most part, and those that take with initiative to contribute should be allowed to do such. Of course, this doesn’t mean allowing others to take stupid and/or uncalculated risks, but allowing them to take risks that can bring greater success. Where would we be as a society if the Henry Ford’s, the Thomas Edison’s, the Bill Gates, the Orval and Wilber Wrights of the world didn’t take risks to improve our lives? The above people were all people who took risks and had a vision that drove them to succeed. What happened when a man named Lee Iacocca was fired from Ford Motor Corporation and took over Chrysler? Many say that Ford made a mistake by not allowing Iacocca to take risks and be innovative. I do believe history has proven that Ford did, in fact, make a mistake by firing Iacocca. In fact, he turned around Chrysler, who at the time was failing financially. Most people revere Iacocca as one of the best leaders in business today. Are you stifling your Iacocca? Do you have someone who could take your business over the top? Do you have the fortitude to allow others the ability to be innovative, creative and take risks? Or, is the keep everything on an even keel the way you run your business? What are the consequences for not allowing others the latitude to become more success? The decision is obvious to me that success comes when people are allowed to grow.
Give support and time for success.
Success is not an overnight process. Positive results take time to be realized and sometimes our results are less than stellar. We are a results oriented society and that is a good thing. Success can only come through results that we work to obtain. The two biggest problems that you will run into when giving people the leeway to take risks, be innovative and creative is to give them time and support to succeed. Not everything that your employees do will be an instant success and nor will everything they do will be successful when they are being creative and innovative. But, you will have to give them the opportunity for success. What if Thomas Edison stopped trying to when he failed about 10,000 times when making the condescend light bulb? We might still be using candles for our light. When Author of Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill was instructed by Andrew Carnagy to go interview Thomas Edison to find out what it took to succeed. Edison replied, “If he hadn’t developed the light bulb he would still be working on it to perfect it and would not be meeting with him”. Edison knew that innovation took time and does everything that is worthwhile in life. What if Henry Ford stopped his innovation to make the motorized car? Would we still be traveling by horse and carriage? What if Bill Gates didn’t have the vision of having a pc in every house? Would we be in the technical age that we are currently in? Success comes to those who have the courage to allow innovation and creativity to flourish. Leaders much embrace risk taking, innovation and creativity. Your vision, as a leader, will give your people the direction and focus for success. If you are a manager and/or leader that is in an organization that doesn’t facilitate the above, you might want to find a company that does. You might want to push for the change the will bring greater success within your own organization. Remember, that you too could become the next icon of success in your industry. You could become the next trendsetter in your industry, by allowing others to grow.
Know your weaknesses.
As a leader, you need to have the courage to know what your own weaknesses are. What is keeping you from becoming the best leader that you could become? Is it anger or frustration? Only you can answer the question, if you have the courage to truly analyze yourself. Yes, this is not fun for us to do, but you need to be honest with yourself. Most of us are too prideful to admit that we do in fact have weaknesses. For me, my weakness is frustration. I hate to be frustrated. Frustration to me comes when I feel I am not moving forward. Frustration can come in the form of personal and/or business success being delayed. How do I deal with it? I understand that the laws of success will give me the answers to the questions I seek. I know that I will find a way to make that break through that I have been searching for. I also know that it is only a matter of time until I will achieve my objective. You can do the same. Any problem you face can be alleviated if you have the courage to face it and have made the decision to take action to make changes that will solve the problem. As for anger, there are ways to deal with it. Whether it is going to the gym, joining a kick boxing gym, and running, biking, hitting a heavy bag and/or taking karate. There is an answer for whatever personal problem you are facing. As a leader, need to minimize your weaknesses so that they don’t pop up in front of those that you lead. Does this mean that you need to be fake and/or act like someone you are not? Not at all, in fact, if you have read everything that I have written to this point, you know that I hate fake and fake people. What it means is that you need to bring out your better self and, in turn, you will bring out the better self of those that follow you. Knowing ones weakness is a must if you want to achieve optimum success. The cost of not knowing ones weakness can destroy your organization, leave you unemployed and cost you more than you are willing to pay over the long haul. Do what is needed to analyze yourself make the changes necessary to make it happen. Dealing with people can be stressful, but there is a productive and effective way that will allow you to be success as a leader, in business and in life. You have the ability to achieve anything in your life that you set your heart on. You can become the new leader in you field and the business world as a whole. You could be the next Bill Gates, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison or Lee Iacocca. You need to have the guts, fortitude and courage to make it happen. Do the above and the world will open up to you. The future is yours, grab it by the horns and run with it!
Conclusion.
I know there is a lot of information in this book. “Mind Control” was written to help people achieve complete success in life. It is my intent to help change the business world for the better. I can’t do this alone. It is up to you the person who seeks great success in your life, organization and business to implement these principles. You can achieve anything you want in life. You just need to take action and help people along the way. The person who does this will be the next leader and you will achieve everything you so desire. Return to this book often. It will help you on your pathway to be successful and keep you focused. Your future is what you make of it! Now get to work and make your future a reality.
Thank you.
I would like to thank my family for all their love, friendship and support over my lifetime. Thank you to Sandi Bownas for being my business partner, friend and helping me when I needed it. Thank you, the reader, for buying and reading “Mind Control”. Thank you for allowing me to help you achieve your goals and dreams. And most of all, I want to thank God for allowing me the blessings and guidance to write this book. And blessing me with the greatest family and friends anyone could ask for in life.
Michael S. Tehan
References:
Book, Lincoln on Leadership. Author Donald T. Phillips, Page 13
Iacocca: An Autobiography. By Lee Iacocca
Iacocca Page 54
The Price They Paid, by Gary Hildreth
Courtesy of Geoff Metcalf, http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/
Arcives: http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/friindex.html
A Visitor From The Past, by Thelen Paulk,
Courtesy of Geoff Metcalf, http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/
Arcives: http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/friindex.html
Tape program, Lead The Field. By Earl Nightengale
Pg. 49 Ben Franklin, Pg. 58 The $25,000 Secret.
http://www.nightingale.com/Products.asp?WCI=tProductDetail&ProductIDN=116&PD=L&SOURCE=AFF49949
The Way to Wealth, By Ben Franklin
http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/franklin.htm
Tape program, Personal Power II. By Tony Robbins
Day 2, Day 9
http://www.nightingale.com/Products.asp?WCI=tProductDetail&ProductIDN=14500&PD=L&SOURCE=AFF49949
Mark Bedillion, Ms, Ed, CAC., author of Psychiatric Survivor: From Misdiagnosed Mental Patient to Hospital Director. http://www.psychiatricsurvivor.com/
Peter R. Breggin, M.D., Director, International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology. http://www.psychiatricsurvivor.com/
