Tying a knot when you're at the end of it might be key to hanging on

“When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”  -Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Quotivation Day #3  November 26, 2010

Today’s quotivation  is from Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30,  1882 – April 12, 1945 also known by his initials, FDR) was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war

His message re-iterates the long standing dictum that all motivators promote: Don’t you quit!

The one thing that get’s people to a place where they make the decision to give up is, not really so much about how tough it is, but the length of time that must be endured between the starting point and the successful finish point.

The sad truth is none of us like unending pain. We’ll do anything to avoid it. In fact, one thing that researchers know about humans is that we are not all that rational when it comes to what discomforts us.  We actually hate to lose more than we like to gain and that is a factor that kills a lot of new entrepreneurs from continuing to pursue their dream of financial and  time independence as well as personal autonomy.

Of course the entire personal development industry is dedicated to correcting this problem. But they are just about out of rope themselves. That’s because over the last 100 years the message “don’t you give up” has been so over-repeated that it’s lost most of its ardor.

As usual the old 80/20 rule applies. Only 20 percent can ever get to the point where they overcome enough to actually call it a real success the other 80 percent are left hanging.

But I like working with the end-of-the-ropers. For one thing they have usually come to the point where they have rejected a lot of the extraneous BS that is so common in the personal development industry.

All I have to do then is deliver real truth for a change. Not some wordy truth but a gut-based strength type truth that they can both feel and see as well. A truth that’s tied firmly to the one single enduring attribute that guarantees that we finish what we start every time: PERSISTENCE.

So… if you’re nearing the end of your rope here’s how you can tie a big knot in it and find the key to surviving over time.

More power to you my friend.

PS: If you’d like to learn more about how to make your mindset more resilient to difficulties that lay ahead check this out these free videos.

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“How the heck are you doing?”

I asked an acquaintance whom I hadn’t seen in a while.

He appeared outwardly optimistic but in a fatalist kind of way. Further discussion revealed that he was indeed somewhat worried about his job security with the local newspaper.

“They say it’s the worst economic downturn this generation has ever seen” he said, confirming my impression that he was preoccupied about something.

But this reaction was the exception. Often times if I meet someone and I introduce the subject of the current economic troubles they tend to clam up. It becomes obvious that they’d rather talk about something else.

Anything else. It’s making it difficult to get a good grasp on how people are coping.

Last week GM in Oshawa Ontario permanently closed its truck plant after 60 continuous years of operation. 2,500 workers
lost their jobs. Chrysler is set to axe a raft of dealerships in the US and GM will soon follow that action here in Canada.

GM was the largest company on the planet for a long time.

I can’t bring back GM or Chrysler but I think I can help those folks who need it most.

That’s why I’m offering the one-time use of my H.E.R.O. Personal Success Discovery Machine for free to a few of the many who may have recently been laid off and are feeling “uncertain” about their future. I will be screening candidates and selecting those who I feel could benefit the most.

But first I’d like to know what’s happening out there and how you’re feeling about your future.

Please take this poll:

Results will be posted here in my blog.

Please participate. It’ll only take a minute.

Thanks for your help

n

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“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

President elect Franklin D. Roosevelt said that 76 years and two months ago.

He was eloquent in his attempt to deliver on the promise that the American people could pull out of the depths of the economic troubles that they then faced.

It’s weird.

I read the text of that speech and I felt like any minute now I could be hearing it being said for real by President Obama as it poured  out of the clock radio beside my bed while I sipped this morning’s coffee.

It’s that relevant.

When things are bad and we feel powerless to change them (like the workers at Chrysler Corporation must do) what we all want is to have more hope. We all want someone to stand up and tell us how to get that hope.

But, like Seth Godin said in his blog post today, “I don’t know what to do. You do.”

Lots of us want someone to tell us what to do. That’s why we elect politicians isn’t it?  But like Seth says, it’s not the pat answers – the ones that those business gurus who try lead us provide – but the kinds of questions they ask that we should listen to.

I agree.

Questions are very powerful because they cause us to come up with our own solutions for things that are tailored to our own unique situation.  As the world’s first “immunity coach” the only advice I give people is to not continually pursue success but rather learn to deny the sting of failure (after all there’s so much more of it) by strengthening your immunity to it and therefore your mindset.

The process I use forces them to ask themselves questions – a lot of

questions – by applying the formula of H.O.P.E..

It’s an acronym that stands for:

History
Opens
Perception
Expands

What I mean by that is this: If you were to carefully examine your past success history you’d find that there are certain nuggets of gold buried in those times when you had no choice but to overcome difficulties.

These are your personal stories. The highlights of your life that will Open to you greater Perception of the success ‘juice’ that powers the HERO within you.

Once you find that hidden HERO it Expands into all areas of your life and your future can then unfold without so much fear because then…

you’ll be the person you hoped for.

More power to you my friends,

David.

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I stumbled on a tweet by yaslani in Twitter awhile ago.

It was heart-wrenching.

She was worried about her co-workers who were just informed today by the company they work for that their services were no longer required.

I don’t know Yaslandi.

Never met her.

She’s thousands of miles and three time zones away at least. Wouldn’t know her if she walked up to my front door and knocked.

But, after reading her blog post, if she did rap on my door I’d probably invite her in for a nice cup of tea. She seems like that kind of person.

These days a lot of office workers like Yaslani are suffering from persistent panic attacks about their own jobs let alone having to feel bad about the misfortunes of their comrades.

But I can understand her mindset.

She, like myself, is an artist and artists always feel things.

After all for an artist to feel things, and then to express them in whatever medium they can, is their job.

I think she’s got a great future in it too.

I think that’s the job she should stick with.

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Photo: Morguefile.com

The first three words out of a baby’s mouth:

1. Mama
2. Dada
3. More

Since the day we’re born we all want more. More nourishment, more comfort, more love.

More of everything.

But as long as there have been humans walking this earth there’s one thing we’ve all want more of than anything else: Happiness.

My focus on this site is all about the “happiness mindset” and how to develop and how to maintain it through the “new immunity”. But today I want to talk about one particular aspect of the debate about how happiness is achieved…

More money: Does it bring happiness or not?

I was working on this post when I came across a CNN piece written by Peter Bregman. In it he makes the point that having happiness and having money are not to be confused.

Indeed, Mr. Bregman points out that maybe, in this particular time in human history, we need to learn to be happy with less.

I can’t agree more.

After all, trying to add to our happiness by throwing money at the problem only ever works for the short term. Then it’s back to wanting… more.

Now let’s be clear here I’m not saying that money isn’t necessary. We all need money.

Our personal existence depends on having the basics of life met each and every day. And that does cost money. But when it comes to happiness, research by University of Illinois psychologist Edward Diener, a.k.a. “Dr. Happiness”, shows that additional income does little to raise our sense of satisfaction with life.

Today’s challenges are so complex and pervasive that our happiness has come under constant attack especially since job losses are at an all-time high with whole industries in peril. However despite that, the most recent Gallup Poll shows that consumers, at least in the US, are experiencing a slight easing of worry over finances (34 on the scale) within the last two weeks (down from 38).

But stats are always changing and there’s no guarantee we’ll see a lasting improvement at all.

There’s always hope though. I’ll talk about that in a post a few days from now (look for my next new post: “H.O.P.E. for the Future”).

For now there’s a funny quote from Kin Hubbard that sums up the happiness debate:

“It’s pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness. Poverty an’ wealth have both failed.”

More power to you.

…David

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I have a friend who lives in Orlando. That’s the same town that’s home to one of the world’s happiest of theme parks on earth: Walt Disney World. It even has its own famous mouse.

My friend likes to believe that he lives in paradise citing the pleasant weather, fine dinning, and the ability to rub shoulders with others of his economic class. But two years after hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans there was Fay which left a mark on the greenery of Orlando’s paradise. Many trees were uprooted and some homes damaged. Just after that I recall him saying something about the possibility of relocating to Canada, his wife’s birthplace.

But that notion was short lived. The fine weather returned to warm and balmy once more and he returned to normal too as the city workers gathered up the torn-up trees and disposed of them. Out of sight and out of mind.

But that was last year. There’s a new storm in town now and it’s not going to blow over any time soon. It’s the storm of economic change that so many around the world are now going through. It’s making him weak in his 70 year-old knees. Certain realities related to his investment portfolio have caused him to come to grief despite the sunny days, the warmth of deep plush carpeting, and the merry sounds emanating from the theme park.

It turns out that the guy that he sold his business to a few years ago is now about to loose his house and probably will very soon be in default of the motgage payment due my friend. He may be forced to take the business back and that will cost him even more cash every month.

The loan application for the luxury home that he’s been building down by the water’s edge has been denied by one of America’s largest mortgage companies. Of course, they themselves are in trouble and so loans aren’t so easy to get even if you’re considered well-off like my friend is (was).

To make matters worse his current home is now worth a lot less that it was just a few months ago. But this story is not really about my friend. It’s about the three blind mice. You see my friend is just an example for the all-too-common practice of adopting the “attitude of the day”. That’s the ever-changing motivational structure built of one’s emotional house of cards.

The three blind mice are the three types of attitudes that anyone can  select: positive, negative, and complacent. The default level of motivational voltage they generate is something of a Goldilocks experience. High, low, and one “in between”. The problem is these pesky mice, which invade our thinking early on in life, tend to blind us from all that we naturally had going for us, and work to replaced it with motivations that now correspond to happenings outside of us instead of inside of us.

Loose a pile of money on the stock market? That’s negative – cue the frown. Win a pile of money on the lottery? That’s positive  – cue the smile. Everything in between is just “ho hum” and that’s not all that great either.
Hard to enjoy your life if all you feel is generally unmotivated. Fortunately, that last one is not the most common of three mice people walk around with. Having only these three to choose from is rather limited I’ll grant you that but that’s how they run.

Not to fret though the human complexity begins to become more evident when the psychologists get into the game. Armed with the carving knives that came with their PhD’s they busily make charts, form profiles, and configure diagnoses as to how we can best deal with all our off-kilter emotional baggage. Heck they’ve been at it for over 100 years now. They’re still dong it pretty much the same way today except the drugs they use are better and now they can get advances from their next book deal.  (Psychologists! Don’t get me started.)

Personally, I don’t like mice.

I think that we we’re doing just fine when we didn’t have any. For one thing our eyes were a lot clearer. Of course that was back before our third birthday. You do remember it don’t ya?

Back then we didn’t need these mice to interpret the world. All we had was the joy we got from the doing of simple things. No investments to concern us. No political choices to ponder. Just the raw motivational energy pouring from our gut to our mind promoting objectivity and love 24/7.

My friend seemed to pine for those days too, even though he may not have realized it. Just the other day on the phone he said: “Sometimes I think it’s better not to have had anything”.

In my work with H.E.R.O.  I’ve seen what could be the return path to a real paradise. Maybe we can’t be kids again exactly, but perhaps we can get some of our objectivity and joy for life back despite what’s going on “outside” of us. I think we’re going to need it too. Every day I hear of more and more evidence pointing to the building of a generalized crisis of mindset. A tsunami of crappiness.

Darn mice. Grab your cleavers everyone, let’s cut their tails off!

More power to you.

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