Famous Quotivations # 9 – Jan 28 , 2011

“I couldn’t wait for success so I went ahead without it.” -Jonathan Winters

Do you have a wait problem?

Know what I’ve noticed over the years?

A lot of us have wait problems.

No, I’m not talking about the heavy kind of weight. To be sure, obesity is certainly reaching critical mass here in Canada and in the US, but what I’m talking about is a problem that has gripped almost all of us no matter what the size label says.

The wait problem I’m talking about is metered by the pendulum not the tape measure and it’s probably more virulent than you would think. In fact the number one reason for highway deaths each year is speeding in an attempt to beat the clock.

So, why are we going so fast? We can’t wait to get to where we’re going.

See the wait problem?

We can’t stand to wait for anything so we surround ourselves with things that deliver quickly. Microwave ovens, email, rapid transit, TV and internet with high-speed cable, and, of course, pizza.

Clearly, we hate waiting. We want stuff and we want it now.

Instant gratification has become the new normal. Too bad our immune system, the one that looks after our thinking not the one that takes care of our body, hasn’t kept up to this speed increase. It’s been a mindset immunity massacre.

As a result all the old methods of personal development, the ones that were authored way back in the 30′s and 40′s, don’t work near as well as they once did.

One of the most devastating effects of this bias for all things instant is when it comes to success.  When a new entrepreneur doesn’t see their dream unfolding quick enough it tends to kill their motivation to carry on. They loose the ability to muster enough passion and persistence to keep running the business efficiently and learn from their mistakes over the long haul.

Studies show that, on average, fifty percent of all start-ups fail during the all-important first five years of being in business. Same for relationships (What’s that? You refuse to make me happy every single day? I’m outta here!)

Sure, you shouldn’t wait for success to happen but don’t quit trying new things to make it happen. Consistently working every day toward the end goal is key to getting through the dreaded timeline of the learning curve.

It could well be that success in anything is always going to be further than you think. But what if the reward of knowing that you could do it on your own is worth the wait?

It’s Friday. Consider your self quotivated.

PS: Is this about you?  Do you have a wait problem? Is success running away from you? Maybe you should check out my new “Mindset Immunity Explained webinar happening every Tuesday at 6PM pacific. You can learn more by going to www.Mobiusman.com/webinar

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One of those days.

You’ve had them, your best friend, wife, or husband has had them.  Certainly your parents, teachers, and peers have had them too.  I know I’ve had a few of ‘em and for me its mostly because I stumbled along and became something I never intended to become.

A pioneer.

You who have been around the block awhile know the old saying: pioneers end up with arrows in their backs – settlers end up with the booty.

See but I couldn’t help it. Ever since I can remember I’ve always been very interested in newness. And it’s led me to this.

Being a pioneer by mefault.

Let me give you some background.

My dad was a successful doctor and so he was his own boss. But he worked in the same small set of offices for over 30 years – his entire career. It was the same office he first had when a young doctor out of med school.  He even lived in it until he had enough money to  buy his first house marry my mother. It was located in an older medical building where the wood floors creaked and the hallways and tired elevator had a stinky musty medical smell to them.

In the end that medical practice, the same one where not one of his children was near qualified or even faintly interested in ever taking over, became a bit of a dog to unload before he could retire for good.

Personally, I didn’t want it because it seemed so routine, too complicated technically and kinda boring. Besides, I never even got close to a med school never mind serving 12 odd  years to train for the job they call doctor.  High school was enough for me.

I liked newness.

So I went to college and trained in graphic art and design. At least the school was new and we were encouraged to create new ideas and that suited me fine. It was interesting and, if you got into the right advertising company, it could be a lucrative career too.

So that’s what I did. But early on I followed my dad’s lead and decide to work for myself after working for another guy for just a year or so. Now, because I was in business for myself, I learned real soon that I’d better work on myself first and that meant getting into the self-development thing big time.

To make a long one short after a while I got quite disenchanted with the poor results I got from all that reading and learning and practicing. I started to investigate the field of personal growth more closely and eventually stumbled onto what would later become my cardinal contribution to this field. The H.E.R.O. eMachine.

But having something created is just half the battle. Still have to get it “out there” in the public awareness. That’s when I realized I’d unwittingly become a pioneer in a whole new segment of this industry.

Something I call, playfully, “organic” personal development because it delivers natural gut-based motivational mysteries that guys like Napoleon “Shill” could only talk about in books. I had conquered the barrier of the imagined for the realness of a new open mysterious portal of intelligence and energy. All of it emerging from deep inside.

But now I had the problem that all pioneers have: cutting an uncharted path through the rugged countryside where there was no path before. Lots of slings and arrows came my way and some found their mark.

For example, at one point my wife and I lost all we had when the bank came and shut down our fledgling goat dairy. After that I was diagnosed with a serious hyper thyroid disease. At the time we we’re both in our mid to late 50’s. Not exactly a good time to seek out a new career.

We’ve gotten over those traumas though so I’m not looking for sympathy here. No, not by a long shot. In fact we’ve both laughed at least once every day right through the whole time of it.

Couldn’t help ourselves. Natural joy and freedom from over-worry is part of the effects of using this invention just once. That’s the kind of thing that H.E.R.O. delivers from the inside of you to the outside instead of the other direction.

That’s been part of the problem. Great results but, till just recently couldn’t explain it very cogently. Better for me if it didn’t work at all – at lease then I could choose to move on to something else the hell with helping others find this most unusual source of adaptability.

At least then I could shake this pioneer career and maybe look for a position as a settler.

Or, maybe not.  After all every day even one of “those” kinds…  has a newness in it.

As usual I’d love to hear your ideas, thoughts and questions in the comments area below.

More power to you.

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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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The Mobius Monday Minute - This is the first of a new series of posts that will appear every Monday about motivation, personal development, and mindset immunity.

Photo: Morguefile.com

Today I want to talk about one of the biggest mindset stumbling blocks many of us will ever encounter. It’s all embodied in one little three-letter question: HOW?

This question may look tiny on a page but in real life it can pack a wallop of intimidation. Everything from a small crack to a huge canyon.

The difference in dimension is determined by the addition of the kinds of words we use after the word “how …?”.

Example: How can I …? (fill in the problem)  How do I …? (Fill in the area of missing information) How could you …? (Fill in the situation)

The thing is with a three letter question like “How?” is that it looks benign but in fact can be wonderful or it can be woeful.

On a good day it can force inquiry by badgering us for answers.  That’s great exercise in the short term but often none of those answers will be available immediately and the search can quickly escalate into a pile of hard work to satisfy that need to know.

And that takes motivation and drive that sometimes must be sustained for years on end.  All the while that “HOW?” questing keeps eating on us chewing up our motivation and nullifying our drive. It’s that kind of demand for dedicated effort that weeds out a lot of us from ever feasting at the table of success.

The only reason it didn’t stop me cold was because I had made a discovery that, through its very nature, forced me to keep going. It had an astounding effect on my resilience and determination.  I knew absolutely that I had to find a way to cogently describe its cause. I felt that the world needed to know.

That has kept me very future oriented even when small victories seemed far off.

Of course not everyone is going to be able to maintain their motivation over the long haul that’s a given. Success rates in anything are always consistently low.

That’s because this little question with the three letters in it can morph into an excuse to stop altogether.  “I didn’t do it because… I didn’t know how; “… to get the funding; “…to find the tools I needed” “… to talk with the right people.” – just fill in the blanks with your particular situation.

I’ve personally used at least one of those a time or two and, believe me, it is a road to nowhere.

When I first became familiar with the how? question years ago it was when I started to talk about human motivation in the context of explaining the workings of the human thought process.

I’d been using a three-step model that began with the word “thought” and ended with the word “action”.  In between those words was that little question but you wouldn’t recognize it because in this case it was using an alias.

Here it’s called the “analysis”.  It’s an appropriate word though because the word “analysis” means “breaking down” or” taking apart” and that is precisely what it does to our self- motivation.

It is the embodiment of the dangers of the “How?”  We don’t just get stuck in it we get stopped by it.

In my model I use the three stages of an idea as it progresses through the thought process: Thought – Analysis – Action. Can you guess where the most stress comes from?

If you said right in the middle you’d be right on. That is the most toxic of any of the three stages. It’s the ingredient of the destructive force of the three-letter question: “How?”

So, if you find yourself wandering in the land of the “How?” take your exit as soon as you can or use it to push yourself to new discoveries about yourself. Get into some action – any action – and you’ll soon meet with abundant satisfaction and contentment just from learning by doing.

Hey, even if you’re answers are wrong you’ll be better off then stuck in the mire of the three-letter question.

Then, if you want,  you can become a teacher and show others the right path by asking them: – “Anyone here need to know how?”

More power to you my friend.

PS: Have you noticed that a lot of personal development methods no longer pack the punch they once did? Could be the times. I went ahead and invented this simple little brain tweak that makes a huge difference in leveraging your efforts for creating a better version of yourself. Want more? Check out my FREE webinar here.

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Although I usually write quite a bit about “mindset immunity”  a while back someone asked me about my “Mobiusman” handle. This post is in response to that. It‘s also an add-on to a series of posts I had previously published beginning here.

Most people will not know what a mobius is although they might recognize it if they saw it. I have explained it in previous posts but here’s a quick refresher.

It’s an invention that, about 150 years ago, was credited to August Ferdinand Mobius.  He was a professor of advanced mathematics at the University Of Lipzig where he contributed to the advancement of a very esoteric sub-field of geometry known as “topology”. When he created the first mobius strip his interest was the examination of two-dimensional forms in three dimensional space. Originally he took a strip of paper and, before joining the ends to each other, gave one end a half-twist.

When I first saw it I was a young boy of ten or eleven years old. It was in an illustrated book on mathematics and I was immediately intrigued with it.

Many years later, when I developed the H.E.R.O. eMachine together with the theory of mindset immunity, I immediately employed the mobius strip as the perfect metaphor that symbolized the key points I was attempting to communicate to the rest of the world.

What better image then a simple construct like the mobius. In an amazingly elegant way it suggests a continuous stable loop of motivation as well as infinite possibilities. For myself and for others it has become an appropriate symbol of personal transformation caused by using the H.E.R.O. eMachine format just once.

There are a few key points that I like to use the mobius strip to help me illustrate. 

Key Point One: Duality Principal

I was continually invoking the idea of the double nature of humanity in my work. I’m a visual guy so I needed a physical structure with which to model the story of how the integration of both mindset and physical immunity work to improve the efficiency of the entire system.

In fact the mobius was so good at illustrating the phenomenon of transformation it was chosen by Gary Anderson in 1970 as a base for his design for the symbol for recycling. It’s still in use today.

Industry leaders, entrepreneurs, educators, and average families today need to get more out of existing resources because it’s more efficient to do so. This applies to physical as well as creative or intuitive resources as these produce results quicker and time – as they say – is money.

The idea of duality is deeply involved in what it means to be human. The idea of the two human natures, the physical and the ethereal, go back a long long time.  Discussions about these elements can be traced back to the times of the great philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato.

Key Point Two: Infinity

I really like the idea of infinity as it relates to how endlessly dual immunity can work to support each of its two parts. The symbol for infinity in mathematics is called the “lemniscate”. It basically looks like a figure eight lying down on its side. Lemniscates, if drawn in three dimensions and then rendered in the third dimension as a flat band, becomes a mobius strip.

Key Point Three: Freedom

It is clear to all of us that negative thinking makes us “stuck” and unable to move forward as we should. In a story, the first ever published on the surface of a mobius strip, I told of the opportunity for freedom of mindset that transformation brings.

I like to think that the mobius is a story about potential. I tell this story often with special emphasis on the two directions that information can travel. It can go to you or it can come through you. The latter being more easily comprehended at a gut level.

So, what’s your handle?  Do you have one? If so tell me about it and if it’s visual send me a picture of it. I’d love to hear from you.

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I always wanted a manifesto of my own so here it is. (More to follow in this series.)

When I started out into business years ago I was told early on that a positive mindset was essential for success.

But after repeated attempts to get lasting results from the usual methods, offered by the great gurus and authors of personal development, I came to the conclusion that something must be broken.

With all their books, recordings, and seminars I felt that they were doing is what has always been done. That is: Offering information on personal development TO me. I needed it coming THROUGH me so I could internalized it better and get to the place where they were but in far less time and with less effort than I had before. Otherwise, I’d just be the same as I was before and what would be the point of that.

Of course, a methodology that could do that didn’t exist back then so I set out to build one.  I decided to create something so different it would stand the old personal development model on its head. I didn’t want to just have information “transfer” from one person to another, I wanted a personal “transformation” from one person to another. In other words from the “old” me into the “new” me.

What I came up with is the H.E.R.O. Personal Success Discover eMachine.

Over the last few years I’ve been quietly perfecting it.  Creating the language for talking about it in an envelope of a new theory: The theory of Mindset Immunity.

This manifesto will outline how I want to contribute to the world by encouraging a conversation about these two new ideas. I’m hoping that by writing it I’ll get better at finding the words to articulate how these new creations can be useful to people like you.

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