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.

Are You Immune Enough?

by David

When I talk to people about mindset immunity they look at me funny, like I’m suggesting that they should be numb to everything.

Zoned out like some kind of zombie.

That’s not what I mean at all. I mean that your thinking should react to stress like your body reacts to disease. As if your thinking mind had its own immune system because I believe it does.

In the body when a pathogen comes in to do damage it’s met head-on by the active agents in the blood that are there especially to defend their territory from the invader.
They work to neutralize the effects of the virus on the rest of the body. They’re smart too; they remember things for the next time it happens. If you get a particular strain of cold virus, for example, they will fight it off then after it’s gone the system ‘remembers’ what it did to overcome the attacker. Next time that same virus comes along and tries to get a foot-hold the system will recognize it and quickly mobilize to eliminate it with greater efficiency than before.

Computers have immune systems

This is what our computer virus protection is modeled after. Would you turn off your your anti-virus protection, drop your firewall, and then go surfing on the internet?

Probably not.

Then why would you take your thinking, unprotected as it is, out into the world every day? If we can design a machine to have a type of immune system then why can’t our human thinking have one as well?