"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other."
~ Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln knew what he was talking about on the topic of resolving to succeed. Just take a look at his résumé:
· Lost job, 1832
· Defeated for legislature, 1832
· Failed in business, 1833
· Elected to legislature, 1834
· Sweetheart (Ann Rutledge) died, 1835
· Had nervous breakdown, 1836
· Defeated for Speaker, 1838
· Defeated for nomination for Congress, 1843
· Elected to Congress, 1846
· Lost renomination, 1848
· Rejected for Land Officer, 1849
· Defeated for Senate, 1854
· Defeated for nomination for Vice-President, 1856
· Again defeated for Senate, 1858
· Elected President, 1860
He could have given up at any one of those failures. I am sure that most of us would have. But he resolved to succeed in his goals and he stuck with it until he did. That resolution carried him all the way to the White House and into the history books.
What will people write about you when you are gone from this earth?
Define your dreams, set your goals and resolve to succeed at them no matter what happens. Failures are not brick walls that stop you. They are merely tests of your resolution to succeed; tests of how badly you want it. And if your resolution is strong enough, those brick walls will be mere speed bumps that can never stop you.
Friday, March 20, 2009
An Important Resolution Most People Don't Make
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Can You Afford to Quit?
Hello, everyone! I know it has been a while since I have posted and I would apologize for my absence ... but I am not really sorry because I have been very busy in the pursuit of a major goal.
Shortly after my last post, I started a telecommunications business with ACN and I have been working hard this past month and a half introducing the business and the services we offer to everybody I know. It is an amazing opportunity and I am having a blast as I change people's lives and create a bright future for me and my family.
About a week after I started my business, I went to a conference in Idaho where I heard an amazing truth that has really stuck with me and I have been dying to share with all of you.
Marlene Brehm was the guest speaker from California and shared a lot of awesome information on the importance of having a proper mindset, the power of belief and a lot of other topics to help us succeed in this business. She shared one story of when she introduced the business to a well-to-do gentleman that she had become acquainted with. The gentleman saw the potential of the business and asked how much it would cost him to get involved.
"499," Marlene replied.
To Marlene's surprise the gentleman hesitated and was thoughtful for a few moments after which he replied, "Well, it will probably take me a few months to get that kind of money together. Check back with me here in a couple of months and I think I will have it all by then and we can get going."
Marlene was completely confused. This man was very well off and yet he was saying that it would take a couple of months to get $499 together. Then it dawned on her. He thought she meant $499,000! And in spite of that misconception, he was still committed to joining the business!
The point that I want to make with this story is how much more committed do you think that gentleman was to succeeding in ACN when he was ready to sign up with a $499,000 investment than someone who is only investing $499? Even those of us who are living paycheck to paycheck can stand to lose $499. But what if it was, $4,990? Or $49,900? Or finally the $499,000? At what point would the pain of loss become great enough to raise your determination to succeed to the "Do or Die!" level?
This is true of any goal or resolution we set. People who set the goal of losing weight and treat it as being only 20 pounds fail. It is those who realize it is 20 more years of their life that they will have due to healthy eating habits and regular exercise that win. People who set the goal of getting out of debt and treat the $50 that they could add to their monthly payment as insignificant stay in debt much longer or get deeper in debt. Those who think of that $50 as the key to getting out of debt months earlier and saving them thousands of dollars in interest (which it does) succeed and are out of debt sooner.
You have to accept the fact that quitting on your goals has a much higher cost than you think. It is the Opportunity Cost! Everyone who has ever taken an economics course will recognize this term as the cost of an alternative that must be foregone in order to pursue a certain action. When you quit on your goals and dreams (you can never fail - you either succeed or you quit), you automatically incur the cost of whatever benefits you would have realized if you had stuck with it until you succeed.
My initial cost when I started a business with ACN was only $499, but it is not a $499 business to me. I could quit a $499 business and not feel too bad about it. It is a $499,000,000 business to me because that is the amount of money that I leave on the table over my lifetime if I quit. And that is only a fraction of the value of the time and the adventures that I will have with my wife and my kids, the value of the friends that I will make as I work with others, and the value of the joy that I will receive watching other people's lives change for the better because I had the courage and the tenacity to keep going on my goals and to never quit!
Many of us are beginning to consider what resolutions we are going to set for the coming year. If you are not a resolution maker, I hope you have some goals that you are working on that will change your life and the lives of others for the better. As you set your goals and your resolutions, write down the Opportunity Cost of everything you give up if you quit. Keep that and your "Why" in the forefront of your mind whenever the going gets tough to remind yourself that you cannot afford to quit!
If the cost isn't great enough to keep you from quitting, you either aren't thinking hard enough or perhaps you have set some goals that really don't mean that much to you at all. If it is the latter, it may be time to set more worthwhile goals.
So go for your goals and be determined to never incur the cost that comes with quitting. Because if you keep going long enough and are willing to overcome any obstacle that gets in your way, you will succeed!
~ Napoleon Hill
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Systematic Success
A few years back I had the good fortune to listen to a teleseminar hosted by Robert G. Allen and Mark Victor Hansen. The two of them had co-written the book The One Minute Millionaire and were challenging their listeners to become Enlightened Millionaires. During the course of the teleseminar, they spoke of one of Allen's favorite topics: leverage.
The principle of leverage is that using a lever and a fulcrum with the fulcrum placed close to the object you wish to move, you can use a small amount of force to move a much larger one. The longer the length of the lever on your side of the fulcrum, the less force you will need to successfully move your object.
~ Archimedes (C. 287-212 B.C.)
Leveraging for success is the idea that there are elements that will enable you to move the immovable and achieve the things you desire. The six that Allen and Hansen mentioned in their teleseminar for entrepreneurs are a mentor, a team, a network, the infinite network, tools and skills, and systems.
The concept of having success systems has been weighing on my mind lately because I failed to put some in place before tackling my goal of writing a novel in a month. I quickly realized that it would be impossible for me to achieve my goal because there were too many distractions and deterrents that were preventing me from writing efficiently and effectively.
You might be wondering what a success system is. A success system is an organized and streamlined process that is designed to...
I wasn't totally without success systems going into the NaNoWriMo challenge, but some had been neglected for a time to the point where they were no longer effective. My system for handling the bills and paperwork was no longer in place. My filing system had become pretty much non-existent. I failed to establish a system for keeping up on washing the laundry which is a chore that I lead for our family. I didn't even have a good system in place to insure that my writing would flow smoothly from one section to another. Other systems that I failed to put into place would include regular time with my family, minimizing distractions, regular writing times, sufficient sleep and so on.
After the first week of November, I realized that there was no possible way that I could succeed without doing serious damage to myself, my family and/or my finances, and I was not willing to do that sort of damage in exchange for the sense of achieving my writing goal.
I haven't given up, though. I decided that the best thing for me is to release my expectations of reaching the 50,000 words before November 30 in order to minimize my stress level. I am still writing, but I have decided to be happy with whatever word total I reach because that will be far more than if I had never done it at all. And I will have built up good momentum that will carry me on to the finish of the novel.
The second step I am in the process of taking is to reestablish the systems I had been neglecting and get them to the point of running smoothly again so that they will take minimal time and effort to maintain. And I am establishing new systems for the areas where no systems existed before. My new goal is to complete these by the end of the week so that I can focus more fully on my writing and make massive progress without fear of distraction or damage. At that point, I believe that I can write twice as fast as I will be able to focus fully on the novel without worrying about what is happening to my world around me.
Do you have systems in place when you go for your goals?
What are some of the things that occupy your time and attention and distract you when you should be working on your goals?
Perhaps you have housework issues and you feel like you are living in a constant mess. Some people hire a housekeeper to come in and clean as they could make more money by paying someone else to do it and use that time to work on their business. If that is not a valid system for you, take a look at the areas that you are struggling with and what the causes are of the problems in those areas.
In my home, the causes are primarily three little boys who love pulling out all their toys. Growing up, my mom instituted the 5-minute pickup rule. We were taught to get everything picked up at an early age in five minutes or less. She did that regularly with us throughout the day and we eventually stopped pulling so much stuff out.
But my kids aren't the only problem. We tend to accumulate clutter because we have developed the bad habit of just setting things down wherever we happen to be at that moment. I am encouraging myself and my family to never just set something down unless you are putting it in its proper place. We have been developing short-term storage systems for things that do not have a home, such as a decorative filing box my wife bought that sits on our kitchen counter by the phone where we put the bills that I need to look at and papers that we need to read through or file away in permanent storage.
For the deep cleaning, I know my wife has spent up to an entire day giving the whole house a thorough cleaning. Who has time for that? With the encouragement of the putting things in their proper place, I recommended that she set a regular schedule where she spends 15-20 minutes in a single room and give it a quick, but thorough cleaning. She could do the living room one day, the dining room the next, the bathroom the day after that (although with three little boys who have terrible aims, this is one room that may need two days a week), then the bedroom, etc. That way everything gets a thorough cleaning on a regular basis and it doesn't take a whole day or more to catch up. It's a great system!
This is a technique anyone can use for many areas of their life like their bills, their yard work and gardening, cleaning and maintaining their car and anything else that is stressing them out because they haven't found time to get around to it because they know it is going to take a long time. If they would just figure out a system for how they would like to handle these areas and start working that system today, adding a little bit of extra time so that they could make headway on the existing mess until they are all caught up.
One major benefit that results from having success systems for dealing with your everyday cares and worries is that it frees up your mind so that you can focus on achieving your goals and dreams. You will no longer have to spend excess mental time and energy thinking about these dull and taxing tasks because they have a time and place where you can give them your full attention for a short amount of time and then you can forget it until its time comes up again in the rotation. How awesome is that!
So let's establish success systems for your life right now:
1. Write down three tasks or areas of your life that you don't particularly enjoy thinking about but you find that they are constantly weighing on your mind because you know you need to do something about them.
2. Identify and list strategies that you can put into place that will minimize your efforts in each area or keep them from recurring more often than is necessary.
3. Give them a regular time frame with a minimal amount of time for you to give these areas or tasks your full attention (preferably in the very near future if these areas are already stressing you out). This can be daily, weekly, or monthly depending on how often you think is necessary.
4. Explain your new systems to your family, coworkers, or whoever impacts these areas and ask for their help and support.
5. Go to work in these given time frames and then forget about them the rest of the time to allow yourself to focus on more enjoyable areas.
Leave me a comment to let me and other readers know what new systems you implement! Good luck!
Monday, November 10, 2008
A Small Favor...
If you haven't already, please read my post on my other blog titled A Tribute. I ask a very small and simple favor at the end of it that I hope you will indulge me by fulfilling it. Thank you in advance!
The Prosperity Game
I want to share with you a tool that I stumbled across long ago that makes an incredible impact on me each and every day that I use it. It is called ...
A lot of people around the world are struggling right now financially. And even those who are not may be experiencing an unusual amount of stress and fear due to the unstable nature of our current economy. If you fall into either of those categories, The Prosperity Game is exactly what you need. And guess what - it is absolutely free to play!
What The Prosperity Game can do for you is help to shift your mental focus from lack to prosperity. Most of us struggle with the mental aspect of financial success. We fail to recognize that we will only be as wealthy and as prosperous as we think we can be. We have no problem digging right in physically and striving for a goal, but our minds may be more focused on the bills that are due or overdue, how prices are rising, how the economy is declining, and we get stressed out about our current financial situation and often times our future financial situation. We hate looking at the Sunday ads because they are just a reminder of all the things we can't afford right now. And we wonder why our situation is getting worse and worse and worse.
The Prosperity Game helps you overcome all that. Anyone who has been introduced to the Law of Attraction knows that "where attention goes, energy flows." We may say we want to be prosperous and well off or, for some of us, simply financially stable. But where is your attention as you work for that goal? Is it on the being financially stable or better? Or is it focused on your current lack of money and the difficulty you have paying your bills?
Think back to the last time you paid your bills and the level and quality of emotions you were experiencing. This is a good gauge of where you are putting your attention. If you were stressed out or angry, most likely you were not focusing on financial stability. You were focused on instability and wondering how you were going to make ends meet until your next paycheck arrives. You were "resistant" to prosperity and abundance and opening yourself up to the energy of lack, struggle and difficulty. The Prosperity Game has a simple system that enables you to flip that switch, closing yourself off to that negative energy and opening yourself up to prosperity.
The way that it works is every time you log in to the game (not just once a day, but every time you log in so you can use this more than once in a day if you feel the need to), you are given a virtual "check" starting at $100 and growing every single time you play. It isn't an amount you had to work for or struggle for. It is an amount that is given to you out of the abundance of the universe. You are encouraged to focus on the joy of receiving that check for a moment and just experience how good that feels to have prosperity flow to you effortlessly.
Then comes the best part - you spend the check! You outline what you would buy or how you would spend that check that would make you feel good. You are encourage not to just give it away, but I give the first 10% to my church as tithing out of gratitude to God for such great blessings because that makes me feel good. But you spend it how you want to spend it.
The next step is you measure on a scale of 1-10 your desire. What this does is it gets you to start paying attention to your levels of desire because that is a tremendous moving force for becoming prosperous and is a good measure of your energy level.
After measure your desire, you measure your resistance on a scale of 1-10. This is checking how you feel towards this message of prosperity. It may be a bit high for the first little while if you are new to this way of thinking. You may have some internal beliefs to overcome in the early stages of the game that can wreak havoc with your resistance levels at the start and cause it to jump around. That is okay. Just keep playing the game. The object is to ultimately lower your resistance level to a naturally low level on a consistent basis, thus opening you up to the thoughts and feelings of prosperity. It may take more time for some than for others but it will happen.
Then you have the opportunity to record your comments about the experience. How did it make you feel? What changes are you experiencing? It is a great way to record your development as you move from the feelings of lack to the feelings of prosperity.
Two other tools that are included in the game are your own personal Gratitude Journal and your personal list of 100 things you would like to be, do and have.
The Gratitude Journal is an awesome tool because it really helps you shift your focus to what is good in your life. I believe I have posted here before about how you can be grumpy and grumble about your electric bill as you pay it or you can write a simple "Thank You!" note thanking them for the service that lights and heats your home and their efficiency and accuracy in processing your payment and slipping that note in with your check. It is absolutely impossible to feel negative when giving a sincere expression of gratitude!
The list of 100 things you want to be, do and have are a reference point for the game as your "checks" come in. But it also serves to free you from the feelings of limitation. It enables you to think freely and openly about what you really and truly want rather than limiting yourself to thinking about what you can have.
The Prosperity Game really is a simple, yet amazing tool and I hope you choose to play. Let me remind you again that it is 100% free of charge and you can play it in less than five minutes, especially if you really know what you want. It will really change the way you feel each and every time you play and you will begin to feel more prosperous and abundant, which is the first step to fully experiencing that in your life.
If you do choose to play, leave a comment here saying simply "I'm in the game!". Then come back again and share your experiences that result from the game so that others can see how you have benefitted from this tool as well.
In closing, here is a quote about what playing The Prosperity Game can do for you:
By writing checks, using your imagination, writing the memos, focusing as you write, and feeling no resistance as you write the checks because there will be no fear of overspending, you will achieve what is necessary in the achievement of anything: You will have made a statement of desire while you are in the state of non-resistance, or better said, in the state of allowing.
So, not only will you have the benefit of an expanded imagination, but your point of attraction will shift, and your life experience will then shift as well. Not only will your financial situation improve, but all manner of things that you have focused upon with pleasure will begin to flow into your experience.
Joyously playing this Prosperity Game will not only improve your financial state of being, but every aspect of your life will improve as well. It will not only help you to activate more vibrations around things you want, but it will assist you in focusing, more of the time, in a way that allows the things that you want to flow into your experience.
Playing this game will cause you to offer a more expansive, expectant vibration. And it is our promise to you that manifestations will begin to arrive in response to your changed vibration.
-- Abraham-Hicks in Ask and It is Given pages 177 – 181
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
A Secret of Success
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
There is no such thing as an overnight success. Even the people who explode into seemingly instant popularity on the stage and screen put in their time and efforts hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year to hone their talents to the point that they were recognized as a success. Even the American Idol contestants sang their hearts out in front of their bathroom mirrors dreaming of one day being a star.
What dream do you have? Are you willing to work harder, longer and later than the next person to achieve it? If you are, your chances of success are awesome!
Friday, October 31, 2008
Inspiration Found in an Unusual Place
On my NiceGuyBlogging blog, I like to post various movie quotes that I find entertaining or interesting. While looking for a good Halloween quote for today, I actually found a good inspirational quote from an unlikely movie. Here is the quote:
Madame Leota: What are you doing?
Jim: Hey, you leave me alone. Just get out of here and leave me alone.
Madame Leota: Oh, I see. You're just going to sit there, feeling sorry for yourself.
Jim: Tell me why not. This whole thing was my fault. We should've never been here in the first place. Supposed to be at the lake. We'd be sitting by a warm fire right now. And I made us come here. And now it's too late.
Madame Leota: No. It's never to late.
Jim: Hey, look, I tried to get in there, and I can't, all right? I tried! I failed!
Madame Leota: You try. You fail. You try. You fail. But the only true failure is when you stop trying.
Jim: What do you want me to do? Huh?
Madame Leota: Try again.
The Haunted Mansion
It is easy to fall into the trap of feeling sorry for ourselves when things don't work out. We feel like a failure and so we sit down and wallow in our misery. But what many of us don't know is that we may be sitting right on the one yard line with victory just ahead of us.
I have been telling my wife and kids this for years and I am going to share it with you as well. Nothing can defeat you! Nothing can cause you to fail! You only fail if you choose to stop trying! The only thing that can stop you is you!!!
So, when you feel thwarted, discouraged or down, remember the words of Tim Allen's character in the movie Galaxy Quest:
NEVER SURRENDER!
