Begin again in 2011

by David

“Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, only this time more wisely.”

-Henry Ford

Famous Friday Quotivations #7for December 31, 2010.

Every Friday I choose quotes that I think are motivating or inspiring.

Well well… here we are the last day of 2010.

The quote above from Henry Ford speaks about renewal. That’s why I choose it for today.

The failure quotient this year for me was high and that’s a good sign.

That simply means that in 2011 I will be that much closer to being worthy to drink from the golden cup of success.

I have endured therefore I am.

The evil of the enduring and continual learning curve has not claimed this here guy.

Won’t either.

I must keep going towards my goal of creating the best way of telling the story of how anyone can become “immune to failure” and beat the odds of becoming a worthless statistic on the road to success. I predict that I will do it in 2011. (Watch for my new DVD: Immune To Failure Essentials in the new year.) In fact just yesterday I made this point clear to copywriter and fellow blogger John Breese.

Is your time-line too long?

In reality it isn’t the curve of learning that does us in. The death of our ambitions is dashed on the rocky shoals of time. I’m not trying to be poetic here so let me explain a bit more.

We are all a bit impatient these days. This, after all, is the age of the microwaved five minute dinner, instant-on TV sets, video games that so easily let us start again even though we’ve been fatally cut down in a hail of laser bullets, and communications that…oh, don’t get me started.

Because of that need to feel impatient we are not at all accustomed to waiting it out by working it through. As a result we fail to see the vision of the future already completed as we would have it completed in our dreams. [I have always maintained that there is a difference between a dream and a vision but that is another issue.]

In other words… time itself will finish a lot of us off long before we are eligible to find ourselves waking up on the wrong side of the grass. Ambitions die with a silent whimper. After that we just go out and get our old job back (yuk!).

Not me though. Not now and not ever. Once this project is done I have a few others in my bucket to complete before the sky is darkened.

For now though I’ll continue on. Tomorrow is New Years day. You’ll find me here – same place same station – pounding this damn keyboard just as I have on any other day during the last 30-odd months straight.

Like Henry I want to start over tomorrow more intelligently than I did the day before when my head hit the pillow. I can only do that by going through a certain set of failures.

So tonight I will raise my glass and bless all the mistakes that have gone by the boards. Tomorrow is a new year and another day to start again.

I hope all of you who have ambitions will join me in turning them into a profitable future starting tomorrow.

Much success to you and to yours in the coming year.

PS: Looking for more balance and happiness in your life? Connect with me on my FaceBook page

Don’t Bother With Success

by David

Welcome to this edition of Famous Quotivations #6 for December 24, 2010.

‘Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.’

~Albert Einstein

Every Friday I choose quotes that I think are motivating or inspiring.

I recently found this quote on Leo’s blog .

I thought it, and the blog post that accompanied it, to be so in line with the way I feel about the subject of success attainment that I couldn’t resist making it the focus of today’s quotivation.

He claims that he was a success even from the day he started his blog. He says he had no readers then, but he was happy because he loved doing what he was doing.

Too bad not more of us think like that.

The reason we don’t, I believe, is because there is a problem with the term “success.” We can’t seem to agree on how to define it. That’s because it means different things to different people, and personal opinions can be touchy things when it comes to defining our station in life.

In my work, which I’m very passionate about, I’m often trying to add value to my clients. It’s sometimes a struggle. Because what I’m offering is an intrinsic experience, and it’s tough to make clear what it’s like before they actually get into the actual experience.

I’m attempting to find a way to explain that I’m out to bring them a state of mindset maintenance that is not too up and not too down, but in the middle. Like a teeter- totter that stays level. It acts sort of like an immune system. It mirrors the body’s immune system, except it looks after the thinking flesh rather than the physical flesh.

That’s my value.

In thinking about success, the common thing most people do is look at the bright, shiny objects (hype) that successful people often possess. But there is a reason why they call them “trappings” (stress).

In the early part of this century, when the super-rich John D. Rockefeller was passing on the family mantle to his only son, the treasure trove was referred to as a “heavy burden,” and indeed it was to the young John Jr. He grew up terrified of making a mistake.

Value, on the other hand, is about giving something to others. The magic of giving intrinsic value is that it’s bottomless. It never runs out because the more you give, the more you’ve got. Giving intrinsic value is the road to happiness because it changes lives with invisible enrichment.

Am I against making money?

Of course not. But let me ask you: Where does monetary success end? As Leo points out, for the wealthy, it doesn’t ever seem to. The feeling of needing to make more is never satisfied.

Personally, I’d rather stay on the side of more happiness.

Like Leo, the simple joy that I get from every experience I witness is of greater value than the money people might pay me for any service that I might offer them. That’s just gravy.

I firmly believe that we need not join in the chase for success but rather become so resilient to our own failures that a special immunity kicks in and happiness remains intact.

Something that, given the season, might be an important observation for a lot of us as we ponder our future prospects going into 2011.

More power to you and yours during this season.

PS: Looking for more balance and happiness in your life? Sign up to attend one of my free webinars. Put your name and email in the box over there on the right.

Don’t Take a bath

by David

rubber duck takes a bath — If you payed for head-based self-motivation you could end up taking a bath

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” -Zig Ziglar

Welcome to this edition of “Quotivations” for December 17, 2010.

Usually every Friday I choose quotes that I think are motivating or inspiring. But today I’m doing something a little different.

Rather than being motivating I found this quote, from one of the original key figures of modern day Self-help, to be a less then a subtle complaint about one of the biggest faults of his positive motivational product.

It doesn’t last.

Never has and never will.

Poor old Zig. He’s been at this self-help game since before the earth was done cooling. A defensive quote like this one appears to bring out the curmudgeon in him.

It’s total spin though.

But there is something I’ve got to give him credit for. He’s always been good at adding a touch poetry to make his message more memorable. Remember the famous line “Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude”. Clever stuff like that sells well and it sure did for multi-millionaire Zig Ziglar.

But I still don’t buy it.

Want poetry? How about this: “Disable the fable about motivational spinners making you able”.

Ok, maybe it’s not as good as Zig can do it but, hey, I’m still working on it.

I believe that the real reason why motivation appears not to last very long is because of the type of motivation that’s being delivered.

What doesn’t last is the typical self-motivation injected toward your head-brain by clever artful dodgers like Zig.

Now, don’t get me wrong here, anyone who’s been at for over forty years, like Zig has, deserves some respect. I’m sure he’s helped some people along the path.

But we need some hard truth here.

The problem is that Zig, like all of his compadres today, did not and has not been able to recognize that there is another overriding motivational force that comes from the gut and powers through all the head-brain muddle causing a desired goal to be achieved despite all the great motivational sayings.

That energy, we refer to it sometimes as persistence and determination, cannot and does not originate in the head brain. It’s strictly a property of the gut brain (scientifically known as the enteric nervous system).

The problem with trying to change thoughts from negative to positive is that as humans we have a slight negativity bias to start with and the head-brain, which is always open to messages from the eyes and ears, can’t avoid reverting to and taking on the polarity of whatever has the greater amount.

In other words, there is a lot of negatively charged media fighting for attention with the positive stuff (poetry notwithstanding). It usually swings back to the negative side because that is often the default setting. Negative is also the polarity a lot of our perceptions happen to have about how our existence is treating us.

For example, you could be studying one of Zig’s great books and feeling very positive about your day. That’s until some jerk cuts you off in traffic or you get a flat tire on your way to work and suddenly bamm! just like that you’re back to where you started. You need to bathe your brain again in more positive juice.

The fundamental Problem…

It’s taken me a lot of years but I can now describe the fundamental problem with just three words: lack of immunity.

See the mindset is constantly under attack by our negative perceptions of our situation. But the body’s physical immune system is primarily a buffer against the attacks of pathogens and most of the time it works quite well.

But mindset immunity is another animal all together. It’s not physical it’s ethereal because thoughts are ethereal. The problem with it is that it’s too weak and too slow acting in most people to act like much of a buffer. But, here’s the good news:

I’ve found a way to fix that with this.

Not one of the best head-based motivators working today has ever thought of this approach before. If they did they’d have to change their whole business model to include one where they only deliver the result just once and it sticks.

Like I do.

They wouldn’t want to ever do that though. If they did their business could end up taking a bath… daily.

That’s it for today, consider yourself “quotivated”.

More power to you.

Times Change

by David

“The times they are a’changing” – Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan's original hand-writen manuscript of The Times They Are A'Changing — Photo: Sotheby's

Famous Friday Quotivations # 4 December 10, 2010.

Today a tattered and worn old piece of paper was sold at Sotheby’s auction house in New York. The buyer was a wealthy hedge fund manager who ponied up $422,500 for the artifact.

In this series I usually quote famous leaders who had written great unforgettable one-liners. But this time I came across something different. That old piece of paper that changed hands today was the original hand-written draft of Bob Dylan’s protest anthem “The Times They Are A-changing”. It rattled in my brain all day.

I was just beginning high school back in October 1963 when Dylan picked up a pencil and scratched out this song on a three-hole punched piece of paper. He couldn’t have known of course the changes that were afoot just a short time later when President John F. Kennedy was shot dead by an assassin’s bullet during a motorcade through Dallas. Many things changed that day.

Here’s the quote:

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

For Dylan this was a song to protest the war in Vietnam and the issue of civil rights. But for me now, some 47 years later, I see it as a reflection of the perils of not being adaptable to change.

Adaptability is an important human attribute and is a big part of what I cover in my discussion about my work and research as I continue to develop my theory of mindset immunity. Change is something that’s all around us and we’d better be good at handling it because one thing we can rely on is more of it in the future. Whether we’re ready or not.

Many are not.

That’s why I developed this.

Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, for your enjoyment, here’s my favorite cover of that great Bob Dylan song performed by another iconic trio of the 1960’s era Peter, Paul, & Mary.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oU7M4OeSRM[/youtube]

More Power to you

End Of Rope

by David

Your rope has a knot in it — 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.