Week 22-24: Game on

You know, after having done a huge amount of work every day, every week for the last six months, I found myself taking some time off. I have been reading The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino still, but I have been resting more. I have been letting my mind relax and get used to the new me. The title of this blog was six month journey to a better me. Now I have arrived. But though I have arrived at this new destination, I am no where near finished. In fact I am just starting. This new me is about to launch a whole new presence in the business world, and in many ways I already have. I have already transitioned out of being the front man for our brick & mortar businesses and am letting the store managers take on that role. I am taking on the mack seat to their day to day decisions and working on growing the business. Let them manage. I just went to a conference for another business I am in and they are on fire. I am ready to re ignite that fire and expand my business into new markets in Illinois and elsewhere. This Texas boy might just need to go back to Chicago. The thing that excites me most about that is the people that I can help and the lives we can change by helping others get what they want. What everyone wants.  More money and more time to enjoy it.

It’s a pretty simple formula. If you build with me, you will enjoy more time to spend with the people who matter to you, and more money to enjoy more things during that time. To go more places, see this beautiful country, this beautiful world. Even if you do not join my team and build your business with me, let me show you how to build the resolve and confidence to build whatever business you want to, pursue your dreams whatever they may be, and I’ll be your biggest cheer leader. There is no person who is willing to make positive changes in their lives, to strive to attain that which they never dreamed they were capable of attaining, that I would not be delighted to help. Soon I will post a link to the course I just completed. If you have found that you can’t attain the level of success that you know you are capable of. If you found that you seem to stop just before you are really successful, that you seem to shoot yourself in the foot every time you get things going right. I can help you solve that problem. Not today, but soon. Stay in touch. I’ll keep posting about my successes after the course so as to inspire you to create the life you deserve. As Michael Breed says, “Let’s do this!”

 

Week 21: Where Have You Been?

So it has been several weeks since I did my blog post. And what several weeks it’s been. As I finished tiling our bathroom I got criticized, not for doing a poor job, although I have never laid tile before. The tile job looks real good. My wife has showed her friends pictures and several of the wanted to know if I would redo theirs. Keep in mind that I did all of this while overseeing the operations of our two stores. And even though I have a great team of managers and employees I still need to be there much of the time. So I worked very hard on this tile job. I had several weeks of acts of service in preparing for this big day. They included setting the tub, laying the backer board nice and straight. Sealing the enclosure water tight to prepare it for laying the tile. Then is was go time.

I started on Wednesday when I went to the tile store and bought a sample to show my wife. I brought that home and she said, “This is your project.” But I have learned that when she says things like that she means, I want to be involved in this decision so you had better press me for an answer.  So the next day I timed it so I was at the tile store when she got off work. I called her and asked her to come around the corner from where she works at our son’s school and she agreed. We spent several hours looking, comparing and then finally decided on a completely different tile than the one I had picked the day before. I am glad we did.

So that was Thursday. Then Friday I returned to the store and bought the materials. Grout, tiles, accent tile sheets  and I was ready to go. I was pretty scared but I was ready. Press through the fear they say. I had a tile saw and several other tools needed to mixing the thin set and spreading it on the wall. So I went to work. I started in the late afternoon and was up until about 1:30 cutting and laying tile (gladly the neighbors did not call the police because that tile saw is loud) on Friday night. The after work on Saturday I was up will midnight grouting the tile. Finally I finished caulking Sunday after our webinar. That too took until late in the evening. But when I got in the shower Monday morning with my new shower head that filters out all of the chlorine and solids from the water, raises the PH and then runs it through a citrus stage that makes you skin feel very soft, I was very happy.

Well so what does that have to do with anything? Well the comments I got immediately were not, Oh that looks terrible but neither were they wow you really did it. Wow you must be exhausted working so very hard till late at night but you got it done. They were not, wow that looks great (at least not at first). Actually my wife did say it looked very good right at first. But then it was, you spent much of our emergency cash. Why did you have to do this right now. Why could you not have waited and planned this out over a longer period of time. OK all reasonable questions but what she did not and still does not realize is this project needed to be done. It was an constant reminder to me that I had unfinished business that effected my family is a very direct and inconvenient way.

Every day I looked at this shower that was not available was a day that I knew I had failed. When I had reached the point where I had enough, it need to be done. And right then. It was a mountain that I needed to climb. It was a struggle and a fear I needed to overcome. It was something I did not know how to do, I had never done it before but with enough belief, a clear vision of the outcome (I had found a picture online of our exact bathroom with a tile job I liked and printed it, pasted it to the mirror and the back wall of the shower as I was prepping it for the tile.)

Then as I had for the several steps that got me ready for completing the job, I wrote it down on an index card that said I will completely re tile the bathroom before… and put that Sunday’s date. Now it did not matter what else happened that week, the bathroom tile job was going to get done. I wrote it, I read it every day out loud with enthusiasm, I had a clear image of what the outcome would be, and I did it. Come hell or high water, I would not fail in this task.

All of you in the MKMMA course are saying, wait a minute. Our instructions for these acts of service  were to be things that did not cost anything, I remember that. But I had to test the theory. I needed to up my game.  If I write it down, have a clear image of the outcome, say it with emotion and fix a date that it must be completed, it happens. I have not proved that size doesn’t matter. Your acts of service can be as small as vacuuming my wife’s car, or cleaning the blades on the ceiling fan. The can be sweeping the kitchen or helping my son change out the starter on his car. Honda Accords are not as easy as Chevy trucks just so you know. But once you set the pattern, these acts of service can be as big as tiling a bathroom. I proved it. It is no longer a theory. Now it’s a fact. The formula works once the habit is developed and set. So even though the comments got me off my game for a while, the reality is that I have been extremely busy growing my brick & morter businesses for the last month. I’m working on things I have always wanted to do but never really had the confidence to attempt. Now I know that I can do anything.

And I have to add that my wife likes the shower enclosure.  As much as I needed to complete this project, ultimately I did it as an act of service for her. One of many and many more to come.

 

Week 20: WOW What a webcast!

Where to begin. This week’s webinar had so much in it that I was completely charged over and over again. Every week the revelations get better and better. The tools get more applicable and the information just keeps building on what we have been doing that I cannot keep from sharing.

We are at 20 weeks now. Webinars, exercises, flash cards, posters, recordings, affirmations, reading, reading and more reading. Sitting and thinking. It’s enough to make your head spin. But the coolest thing is, if I miss one, I feel like I have lost something. Like I have lost a day, or a part of the day that I was supposed to apply the practices and help myself get better. If I miss a reading, an affirmation or any of the multiple things we are doing on a daily basis, I feel sad. Like I have let myself down, because I have. All of these activities are changing my world within. They are helping me break out of the shell I have felt like I’ve been living in for decades.

For years I have felt like I am just this close to breaking out of this self imposed glass ceiling, or cement casing as it were. I have felt like I’m on the verge of attaining my true identity and becoming the person I was meant to be. Now through this course, it is really happening. and now that we are on week 20, it’s time to start applying this theory. To turn it into practice and make some significant changes. I have been inching myself upward. Studying, reading, reciting and trying to practice all of the things we are doing. But now it’s time to turn up the heat. And as my brother Dennis always says, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Well again, I’m ready.

So this week I get to (notice it’s a get to not a have to) read these two questions three times every day, “What am I pretending not to know?” and “What would the person I intend to become do next?” I love that one. Doesn’t that just put things in perspective. It makes me the objective observer. I am choosing who I want to become. So if I have a clear image of the person I want to become, then what would they do next. Carpe Diem. If I am going to become someone better than I am right now what better time than right now? As Michael Breed says, “Let’s do this!”

But wait, there’s more. Then we walked through John Wooden’s pyramid of success and low and behold, we have been developing all of the traits on that diagram. Every single one. I may not have perfected them all but I have been working on every single character trait that he listed as necessary to achieve my greatest success. WOW. That was cool.

Then I learned that I am a fox.  A fox knows lots of things but doesn’t focus on any one and therefore never makes any progress. I am a fox but I should be a hedgehog. A Hedgehog puts his head down and does one thing well. Darren Hardy said that success is not doing 5000 things well. It’s doing one thing well 5000 times. He is so right. So what should I do you ask? Well now I have a tool to figure that out. I have big plans thanks to MKE and my Definite Major Purpose. This tool will help me to realize those plans.

Then the topper of all the toppers. The Fabulous Davene shared why we tend not to want to break out of our comfort zone. Well I have been breaking out of mine for the last four months. I didn’t realize how deeply I had shrunk into that comfort zone until I tried to get out of it. I always thought I was a positive person. That I embraced change. That I was willing to do whatever it took to be successful. But for me, it was very hard to break out of that old blue print. It was very hard to really begin to see myself as the new person I want to become. And believe me, I want to become someone else. I want to become more. To give more, to live more, to have more, to love more and to be more. But I had not, as of yet, been able to make myself do the things that I needed to do to effect that change.

I had gotten used to being who I was. I guess I was comfortable being miserable. I think I had accepted the fate that I was not going to have the life I had always wanted. That my time would never come. That I was never going to grow my business and achieve that high rank. To walk across the stage at our annual conference and get the recognition that I so deeply desired. To go on the trips, drive the cars, take the vacations and provide the things for my family that I so wanted to be able to provide. Now I know why. And better yet, I know how to overcome it. And with the help of several hundreds of my closest MKE friends, I am developing the tools and resources to make things happen that I had only dreamed of before.

Every day is a brand new day. I have a plan. I work my plan. Beginning today I only do the things that I choose to do because they move the needle for me. But I also do things that serve others. I will get others to serve me, or better yet, to serve with me, because of my desire, my genuine desire to serve others. I have started a mastermind group here outside of the MKE family to see how I can serve this group of people. The person I intend to become has much to offer to this group and will help us realize our cumulative potential, all thanks to the MKE course. It really is an experience.

Week 19: I had it all along

As I read Haanel’s Master Keys this week, I was profoundly pleased to read again that the substance from which all things are created is infinite in quantity. So often we are told that this is not true but I believe that it is.

I meet with a group of friends in the early morning once a week. We talk mostly about politics, local state and national and the problems that they cause. You see, we used to meet somewhere else but there was one dear friend that kept talking so negatively about the people in his own party that some of us left to start another breakfast meeting. The idea was to get away from the negative talk and do something more positive. Now a few months later, We are kind of back on the same path. This past week, one of my friends made a comment that I think most people believe. I know I did. That money and resources are always limited. Zig Ziglar called that “Stinkin Thinkin.” He was right. But that is not what we are told as a part of the MKE course.

There is much evidence that the opposite is actually true. Abundance is actually everywhere, available to all. All of creation reveals abundance, even excess. All we must do is operate with that belief and follow the proven processes to realize the abundance that is available to us.  After years of interviews with the most successful people of his time, Napoleon Hill proved that their was a pattern to success. He took Haanel’s Master Keys and spoke to hundreds of people who had applied these principles and found that success was readily available for anyone who wanted it bad enough to work for it.

Yet there are so many that still believe that resources are limited. That success is only attained by those who did something wrong. Who took something form someone else to accumulate their wealth. No. Success is attained by those who apply the principles, tried and true, that have been proven over the centuries. And it is up to us to learn and apply those principles so that we can achieve as much as possible. We are to leave nothing behind, to leave it all on the playing field. To hold nothing back. Anything less is a waste of those abundant resources. I owe it to my family and to my future self to attain as much success as possible, while maintaining the best relationships with those closest to me that I can muster. Anything less is wasted resources.

I choose to believe that I have access to infinite resources and a life of abundance in all areas. That I have all that I need to attain this abundance. I have had it all along. I just did not know it. Now that I am learning not only that it exists but how to tap into those resources, I am feeling the power to grow. And the desire to help others grow with me. I am really liking the future me.

Week 18: Pre-Wired, Re-Wired or just Shorted Out

Michael and I were talking one day and he mentioned a mutual friend of ours that just seems to get it right all the time. He said, “People just come up to him and say,”Hey let’s do this.” He says OK and it makes money.” I listened and said, “Yes. And he has always been like that.” You see the person Michael was talking about was my brother. He just seems to have a way with things, business, circumstances that have helped drive his success. He has had a knack for making money even as a teenager. He bought some guitar gear from a music store. Sold one piece for what he paid for both and then eventually sold the other one for profit. He has partnered with several people over the years that have built several businesses which have served him very well. He seems to be applying the law of attraction effortlessly.  All of his business deals did not work out that well. But when he got knocked down, he did not stay down long. And make no mistake all of that success came from hard work. I can remember when he was in school, I was playing on the side of the house and he was sitting in the grass with his books in his lap doing his homework first. You see all of that law of attraction for him started with good habits.

I get Darren Hardy’s Darren Daily post and have since he started. If you have read the Compound Effect you know that Darren’s dad was a very hard working man. He pounded that idea into Darren’s head just like he pounded those iron weights into the garage floor every day at 6:00 AM to wake up his sleeping son. Then as he grew those principles were continuously affirmed and drilled into his every day life so that there is no surprise that Darren was a millionaire before he was 25.

You see for these two, proper prioritizing, work first, bust your hump and then have fun came natural. They were pre-wired for success. I’m not saying that they never failed but I am saying that they had a propensity toward success. The interesting thing is that they both have commented about things that are helping me greatly right now. Daily verbal affirmations speaking directly to the subconscious are kind of weird and unnecessary for success.

But or me, these things, these battles of the mind, these affirmations, this re-programming of my inner self, these things are necessary. I did not have that tendency to do what I needed to do when it needed to be done.Oh I had some success at an early age too. I went to work for Kroger when I was 16 and quickly got the easy Saturday morning job of restocking the bread and hanging out during normal hours in stead of working until 2:00 AM every Friday night. My senior year in high school I ran the frozen food department, albeit in a small store but I only worked 32 hours per week. I won a contest for having a 200% increase in frozen food sales. Pretty cool for a 17 year old. Then after I graduated, I was recruited to the biggest store in town at that time to run the dairy. I did that for the summer until I left for college. If I had not gone off to school, I would likely still be working for Kroger. Who knows.

But I didn’t have that sustainable drive to get things done. I worked hard, but I was easily tripped up and would regularly drive into the ditch just when things started going well. I wasn’t permanently pre-wired for success. I would do something that “shorted out” any long term success that I might be building. Then I would have to restart somewhere else. Sometimes in a different industry all together.

Then along comes MKE. This Master Key Experience is helping me to re-wire my brain for success. If you have never felt like you were your own worst enemy then you may not understand this. But to those who do, I finally started to get it. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t that I had not heard really good advice even from people like Darren Hardy and my brother, both of whom had applied all of these truths long ago. They just were not making it past my external filters. These truths and the habits that sustain them were not traveling that most difficult part of the journey of any valuable information, the six inches between my ears. But now it has begun. I am re-wiring my mind by attacking it with the weapons of truth. Between Og Mandino, Haanel and the tag team of Mark & Davene, I am chipping away at the cement that has for so long encrusted this polished golden statue, this diamond, not in the rough but fully cut and polished that shines uniquely bright when brought out in to the sun.

So which one are you? Are you someone who was pre-wired for success? Someone for whom not only success comes naturally but for whom long term sustainability and endurance are habits that were formed early in life and now are so well set that nothing that life can throw at you will even put you off the track. Are you living the law of attraction in everything that you do?

Or are you one for whom the track seems a distance dream. For whom there is always a smoldering catastrophe just waiting for a spark. Waiting for that situation, that decision point so you can either make the wrong choice or even worse, make no choice at all so that the chips fall where they may. And they always seem to fall in someone else’s lap. You may be a very positive person, like me. Always fairly happy and up beat but never really good for any long enough time to actually reap the benefits of your success. Well if this is you, this is your lucky day.  I can promise you that if you will only take a small leap of faith and believe that all of the success you have witnessed others enjoy is available to you as well. That you too can be the one that has all the luck. For whom things just seem to happen, effortlessly and consistently. Look for the next opportunity to discover and become your best future self and leave a legacy for those whom you care the most about, including yourself. Get Re-Wired starting today. Read the Master Keys and The World’s Greatest Salesman, as prescribed. The register for this course next fall when it comes available. Keep checking on this blog. I’ll let you know. You will be glad you did. I know I am. And we’re not even done yet!

Week 17 HJ: David Bowie was right!

About a year ago the world lost a great talent with the death of David Bowie. Kind of a strange chap, he had certainly left his prints on the worlds musical and pop culture. Between his hair styles, his strange and wonderful music and sometimes odd clothes he blazed his trail to stardom and made a place for himself in history. But that’s not what this blog is about.

Alfred Hitchcock used to use a device in his films that took you down a long path of a story line and then turned you on your heels into an entirely unforeseen direction to the real subject of the film. Like in Psycho. The first several minutes are about a beautiful woman who steels thousands of dollars from the bank where she works and makes her get-a-way to  a life she had been planning for some time. But then she meets a nut job murderer  who  is driven by a desire to protect his long dead mother to do things that no normal person would do. Well this blog is kind of like that.

You see when I was thinking about a topic for this weeks blog post, I was reflecting on the idea of the hero’s journey. Thus the HJ in the title. Well you can’t think of the hero’s journey without immediately thinking of David Bowie’s sone, Heroes. You see in that song he makes the statement, “We could be heroes, just for one day.” Well that sounds like a kind of a dreamers line. Not that Bowie was in any way unkind in his lyrics, but our story is much bigger than that. You see we are heroes. And not just for one day but for a lifetime.

This life is our heroes journey. We are the main character in a movie that is not only playing, but also being written in real time. You only think you are passively living your life but you are the hero in your own movie. The really cool thing is that for many of us we thought the movie was about one thing. We thought it was about what happened to us. About luck, About fate. About the things that happen that are drive by other people, other circumstances, driven by other people’s agendas. But when we realize that this is our heroes journey, everything cha cha cha cha changes! And face the strange. Face the strange reality that we are actually capable of driving those very circumstances. We must realize that, as Geddy Lee (The bass player form Rush) said, “If we choose not to decide we still have made a choice.”  So if we choose not to take the reigns as it were, and take control of our own life, we are choosing to have no control of the outcome.

What Hitchcock would  have called a red herring is your life driven by the ideas, the pressures, the expectations of others. It is your life spent serving other people, helping build their dreams and helping to establish their legacies. What the heroes journey truly is, is you taking the initiative to establish your own plan. To write your own script, your definite major purpose in life. Your own life. Of your own choosing. And to not to settle for anything less.  You were created for a purpose and to spend you entire life avoiding fulfilling that purpose is a sin. So in honor of the late David Bowie, Let’s Dance!

See you in a few days

Week 17: Who is behind the wheel?

Did you ever stop and think about that? Who is controlling my life? That is a really big question. I doubt that most people have ever really given it much thought. AND even those that do don’t really honestly know. Most people might think that they are the masters of their own destiny. Then they sit down to watch a few hours of network TV and the local news. Well the Programming on the TV is designed to get you ready to receive the advertising so you will support the sponsors with your hard earned money that you got paid from your job that you got because you went to school and were programmed by your teachers, professors or their surrogates to go and be a good employee for some big company and have kids that you can send to school so they can be programmed…Are you getting this?

So actually few of us every really stop to think about who is telling us what to think. Few of us really take the wheel as it were and steer the bus we are on in a direction of our own choosing. Even those of us who own our own business. These so called self made men are being driven by other people’s agendas. I have had many days that I thought I had plans only to have them uprooted by an employee’s early morning text. “I can’t make it today because… So I have to drop what I’m doing and cover since I’m in charge. How many times have you had family, friends, even strangers do something that forced you to change your plans to accommodate their agenda?

I feel  like I’m just rambling but the fact is the only thing we can truly control is our thoughts. And if we are to control our thoughts we must first be an active filter of what thought we entertain. And that stuff Hollywood and the networks call entertainment is really not. It’s appropriately called programming. We must turn away from what the world wants us to spend our time thinking about and think about what really matters to us. That is our only real power. But boy what a power that is.

Haanel tells us in the Master Keys lesson 16 that the conditions which we meet in the world without correspond to the conditions which we find in the world within. Most of these are defined by past thinking and other forms of negative thought and must be carefully analyzed before being entertained. But we can form our own mental images through our own process of thought therefore defining our own world within. And when we define our world within, we activate the creative potential of our subconscious mind and it will manifest these images in the world without. Things will begin to take shape that will be otherwise unexplainable except for the fact that we have been focusing on the images of these things in our mind for some time.

Yes I know. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. As a man thinketh.  So is he. The Bible says, Whatever is true, whatever honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. So the next time you find yourself watching Law & Order, The God Wife, Madame Secretary or any of he American network TV programming, as yourself if it fits this description. If we dwell on the things that are being fed to us, someone else is driving the bus and we are just passengers. If we dwell on the things that we want in our lives, on the things that bring the greatest good to us and the ones we love, then we are taking control of that bus and we get to decide where it goes. This Master Key Experience is like a drivers ed class for life. If you are in it, great. You have taken the wheel and are deciding what you want to manifest in your own life. If you are reading this post and you are not in the course, you should contact me. It will stretch you. And once you have stretched yourself and increased your potential, you can never go back to the way you  were. You will never be the same. I promise.

Week 16: Real Courage

I had written prior about the thing that drew me into this course in the first place. Mark had asked a question about people attaining a certain level of success then kind of shooting themselves in the foot so that you never exceed it. It was that “hook” as it were that initially got my attention. As I have worked my way through the course, I have found that the old blue print under which I had been operating was what caused me to repeatedly operate this way. The repeated activities which are integrated into this course are designed specifically to rebuild a belief system that will replace this flawed personal blue print. As such we are in the process of developing a new design of our own choosing and not one that was build on the many voices we have personalized form our past.

Some of these voices are ones that we heard from others whose opinions we valued, about our capabilities; what we would or would not be able to accomplish in our lives. These could have been authority figures in our lives, people we looked up to or people we liked and wanted to emulate for one of a number of reasons. Maybe they were cool, had influence or had other qualities or things that we wanted. Well meaning though they may have been, for us to be limited by the expectations of others is a terrible shame.

Others of these voices were developed by the onslaught of media messages with which we have been assaulted for our entire lives. Few of us alive now have been around since before TV. And none of us were here prior to the invention of the wireless, know as radio. As Seth Godin says, the media was not invented first prior to the idea of advertising on that medium. It was the other way around. The idea of reaching a mass audience was the driver of developing radio and then TV. The first programs on Radio were sponsored dramatic radio shows. Then sponsored TV programs. Nad how appropriate to call them programs when their main purpose is to program the viewer to perform a certain behavior. Specifically to spend your money with the sponsor of that program. More recently they are designed to make you believe a certain way to relate to a certain segment of the population and to sympathize with a certain set of views so as to promote a social agenda.

Finally many of these voices are our very own. This source is based on those things we ourselves had said to ourselves about what we felt like we deserved. This type of inaccurate programming is the absolute worst. As we have learned in the MKMMA course, your subconscious mind has no defense against the sound of your own voice. I have this written on my bathroom mirror and on the whiteboards at both of my stores. I cannot emphasize this newly found truth enough to the people that I value. I used to ask the boys in our scout troop “Who talks to you the most?” Many of them would say their parents or their friends. Some might say their teacher, though most of them are homeschooled so that is still their parent. When I tell them that it is actually you that talk to you more than anyone else, they all kind of nod their head in agreement. You see I had the right idea about self talk long ago. Zig Ziglar said that we talk to ourselves constantly and that sometimes that was the only way to have an intelligent conversation. He may be right but the most important part of that idea is that we automatically believe that our self talk is true. Our subconscious does not have a mechanism of proving anything we say. Therefore, it automatically believes anything  we say. And more importantly it goes into action mode to realize any image we give it of ourselves, our future and our worth. The last of those is probably the most important.

What we believe about our own personal worth is probably the single biggest driver of our own success. If we do not believe that we are worthy of a high level of achievement, for whatever reason, we will never achieve a high level of success. As I have said before, You have to be before you can do and do before you can have. If you believe that you are only worthy of a moderate level of wealth and prosperity, or worse, you will only achieve a moderate level of wealth and prosperity, or worse. And in that process of keeping yourself down, you greatly limit your ability to bless those around you. That includes those about whom you care the most.  Those who count on you for not only your production of income, but more importantly for your example of what someone from your family, your clan as it were, is capable of achieving.

Maybe that belief is based on what you have told yourself in your past. Maybe that limiting belief os based on some guilt you carry from shameful acts you performed when you were young. No matter what your reason, now is the time to forgive yourself and get busy. Get over it and change what you believe first by changing what you allow yourself to say to yourself.

So you are thinking, wait a minute, the title of this blog post is real courage. I quoted Professor Dumbledor, the Headmaster of Hogwarts School before in what he said to Mr. Longbottom, “It takes courage to stand up to your enemies but even more to stand up to your friends.” Well I will add with absolute certainty that it takes even more courage to stand up to yourself. To purposefully change what you believe about yourself and develop the belief of a new potential, your real potential takes an enormous amount of courage. Not because of the fear that you might fail, but of the certainty that you will succeed. I have eom to realize that we are not so much afraid of not achieving our dreams. We are most afraid of the inevitability of actually reaching our potential and having the dream life that we, in the deepest inmost core of our being, truly desire. We are afraid of what it would be like to actually have so we do not do. We do not do because we are afraid to become what we must be to succeed.

We often hear that we are to shed the cement off of that golden statue of Buddha (valuable hidden treasure) that lives within each of us. The bible says we are to uncover our light that it may shine on this dark world. Whatever your beliefs, the truth is that we all have greatness within us. It is our purpose, even our responsibility to shine that light as brightly as we possibly can. To achieve as much as we can in this life so we can bless those that we can and to show the way for others to follow. The trail that we blaze by building our own future allows those that come behind us to find their way more rapidly by our example. That is what real courage is about. Becoming what we were born to become, maybe not fearless but in spite of the fear that we may have. We were brought into this world for a purpose. It is our responsibility to find that purpose and to courageously become the best version of ourself that we possibly can.

 

Week 15: Who made you so perfect?

The good news is, since we were fearfully and wonderfully made by the creator of the universe, It was him who made us perfect. We are made in the image of God. He is perfect, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, so therefore we are connected to all of that.

I was sharing this idea with a friend of mine, who used to be the pastor of our church. And he said, “What Jesus actually said was that we were to be perfect as he is perfect and even more so.” So there it is from the most credible source we have ever had on earth.

So what does it mean to be perfect? Well, it means that we were made perfect. That we have perfection potential within all of us. Though we may be a work in progress, he meant that it was possible to be perfect even here on earth. Unlike the preacher discussed in the Law of Compensation by Emerson, who spoke as if all of our rewards and benefits of this life would not be available to us until the next. The truth is that all of the abundance available in this life for those who only seek to enrich themselves, is available to those of us who seek also, even first, to enrich others. The scriptures say seek first the kingdom of heaven and all these will be added. The best example of this principal is written in 1st Kings. Solomon has just become King and God appeared to him. He told Solomon to ask what he wished God to give him. Solomon’s request was for an understanding heart so he could judge wisely and serve the people of Israel well. He did not ask for riches, power, long life or any of a number of things that he could have. This pleased God.

Now you can call him infinite intelligence if you like but the fact is the omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent creator of all things and source of all things was pleased when Solomon asked first to serve. So much so that he blessed Solomon with more wisdom that any person on the planet. And more wealth, more power and influence as well. What Solomon did was apply part five of Hill’s rules for success, which we call the Blue Print Builder.  No wealth or position can long endure, unless built upon truth and justice. So with that each of us in the Master Key Experience is building our future on the same principle. Therefore we all have access to the same blessings as Solomon did. And since there is much more wealth, position and influence as well as many more people on the earth than there was back in the times of 1 Kings, we should all be able to have plenty without taking any good from any other person.

So therefore I for one will continue to spend my evening quiet sitting time focusing on my vision, which is broader than just the things that I would like to achieve in life. It also includes all other members of my family, even my in-laws. It includes business partners and members of a master mind that I am building here in town with people that are not in my business. We are all about different things but I am convinced that this group can do just about anything if we join together in good faith and become one mind, a MasterMind. Maybe we could open a hot dog stand.

Week 14: October Sky; the story that is in each of us

So this week we were assigned a very difficult task. We had to sit and watch several films, many of which I have really enjoyed for years. That’s hard work.

October Sky is the one I really like. It is the story of the son of coal miner making it big as rocket scientist. His path to doing so is one of tenacity, dedication to a singular purpose and an unyielding belief that he was capable of becoming something better. His friends stuck with him through the long process of developing a rocket that will actually fly. They exhibited the four traits required to build persistence.

First they had a definite purpose and a burning desire. Homer Hickam did not want to spend his life working in the coal mines so he had a plan to become a rocket scientist. His two best friends went along for the ride. Then when he broke all social norms and befriended the weird nerdy kid in the class, they really started to make progress.

Second, they had a definite plan. Homer and company found a place to shot off their test rockets, build a shield and continued to make prototype rockets until they succeeded.

Third, against all odds and many nay sayers, they shut off their minds to all negative thoughts, pretty much. That is one of the most difficult pieces of this puzzle for all of us. That old voice telling us we have never done that before. That no body form our family has ever been a rocket scientist, or whatever. Of it they have, you’re not like them. They are just lucky or smarter or any of a number of adjectives that we can dream up to explain why we will not achieve success. But they kept that negative influence from keeping them off their path to greatness.

Fourth, as there were four of them, along with their teacher and an occasional letter from Werhner von Brauhn,  they were a mastermind. They would work together on achieving their mutual goal. Encouraging each other as they went, these four kids stayed the course, eventually breaking through and earning their place in history.

Films like these probably stretch the truth a little for creative expression, however they are good for our own inspiration. The basic story is our story. Each one of us has this level of success within us. We can each achieve the object of our definite major purpose. We can achieve greatness, whatever that means to us individually. And it is different to each one. Yet the formula is the same. Persistence, by these for traits will accomplish any goal, no matter how big or small.

So why not think big!