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Core Values / Creativity / Entrepreneurship / Inspiration / Living Life Abundantly — Comments Off on Choose Your Words And Control Your Destiny
15
Feb 13

Choose Your Words And Control Your Destiny

Your words are your reality. I have been reading about the power of the words people speak. These instructions they give their subconscious mind directs their activities and ultimately creates their reality. I have been paying close attention to the words I use when I am making statements. The idea boils down to expressing independence versus dependence and shapes our reality.

We all use these subconscious words daily. I was surprised how often I use words of dependence – which was not the reality I intended to be creating or the vibe I was giving off to the world. Have you ever said “I need… (fill in the blank)?” Using the word “need” expresses to everyone and anyone who will listen that you are thinking of yourself as dependent. You are a victim. Are you attempting to convey to the world that you are a victim? More importantly, are you attempting to convince yourself that you are a dependent victim?

Wishing, wanting and hoping are more of those words of dependence and will ultimately leave you unfulfilled. Remember, your words create your reality! If you catch yourself saying I “wish” I was rich, you are expressing to the universe that you are at its mercy and a dependent being. The reality that those words will create for you will is more wishing that you were rich and not the reality of being rich. If you say instead I “intend” to be rich, you will instruct your brain to begin formulating the blueprint to make it happen. Even in its subconscious state you still control what your brain thinks.

I am going to be rich.

I will go to law school.

I intend to take vacation next month.

Using statements like those above challenges your brain to solve the problem you just posed. You will develop a plan and achieve those goals. You will also not allow yourself to spend time shuffling through your “go to” excuses for not achieving your goals. Excuses are the “outs” we give ourselves when we set our list of achievements up from the beginning with those loophole words above.

Needing yields only more needing.

Wishing yields only more wishing.

Wanting yields only more wanting.

Hoping yields only more hoping.

I challenge you to pay attention and see how much you and the people around you use words of dependence. You gain knowledge of a person’s outlook on life. Do you want to surround yourself with or do business with people with a dependent victim mentality who will have a propensity for not achieving goals and making excuses? Refuse to be the victim by not speaking like one. Be empowered!

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Entrepreneurship / Living Life Abundantly — Comments Off on Improvise, Adapt and Overcome – What Works for the Marines Will Work for You Too
19
Apr 11

Improvise, Adapt and Overcome – What Works for the Marines Will Work for You Too

The United States Marine Corps was founded in 1775 to provide offensive and defensive support to U.S. sailors. Spending for this new effort was close to zero.  Therefore, much of the equipment including the field manual were Army hand-me-downs.  The Marines took this ill-suited equipment and adapted it to suit their particular needs at sea.  Born out of necessity to function and survive, “improvise, adapt and overcome” has become the mantra of the Marines and a framework which fuels creative thinking and unyielding perseverance.

Improvise, adapt and overcome is a way of thinking for any survivor – be he a Marine, an entrepreneur or any person faced with a roadblock in life.  It is necessary to train your mind through a mental boot camp to think, solve, recalculate, think again, develop a plan B, execute plan B and think more and not stop until the mission is accomplished.  If “improvise, adapt and overcome” is the framework of success, then “vision, understanding and perseverance” are the flesh to those bones and the fuel for the process of success. 

You need to have a clear vision and an understanding of what the mission or objective is.  What are we trying to accomplish here?  Once a clear objective is established, it’s much easier to clear away the clutter in the process and eliminate seemingly necessary tasks that are impossible to accomplish and not a requirement to meeting the objective successfully. 

For example, say your original objective is to go to Harvard Law School and to realize your life’s dream to be able to practice law.  You just got denied admission.  Is going to Harvard Law School your dream or is practicing law your dream?  Not everyone gets in to Harvard, but you can still realize your dream and accomplish your objective of practicing law by going to a different law school.  You will have successfully completed your mission or objective if you didn’t get deterred by the setback of one of the tasks along the way.  Life is full of setbacks and the person with the focus to visualize clear objectives and the perseverance to continue with alternative plans to accomplish their goals is the person that completes the mission.    

One of the most interesting lesions that I took away from business school was that 50% of new businesses fail in the first year and only 25% of all business last five years.  Any entrepreneur who has done any research on what it takes to establish a business has come across these statistics.  Everyone always thinks that they are different and their business will be different, but the statistics are the statistics.  There is a 50% chance your business will fail in 1 year and a whopping 75% chance your business will fail in 5 years. 

Entrepreneurs are sort of anomalies.  A real entrepreneur grew up thinking differently than the other kids.  Many entrepreneurs were out-of-the-box thinkers and didn’t fit in well in the formal school setting.  There is more that goes into the entrepreneur mindset than an out-of-the-box methodology and a burning desire to control their own destiny.  Entrepreneurs are fully responsible for their own successes and failures.

Success is easy to deal with.  Handling failure and the fear of failure are main factors contributing to whether or not an entrepreneur can bring his dreams to fruition.  Most likely your business is going to fail.  Have you failed as an entrepreneur?  Only if you quit at that point.  If you can use the failure as a lesson you will emerge a more powerful and successful business owner in the future. 

For Marines in the theater of war, their decisions can result in life and death of the individual and/or the unit.  Improvise, adapt and overcome is a simple way to remind them that nothing goes as planned and you need to keep your head in the game and systematically move on to the next option until they complete the mission.  Professionals and entrepreneurs have the luxury to build on this framework with a more cerebral approach and implement vision, understanding and perseverance to their own mission.  Success is a process and a journey.  There will be setbacks along the way.  Keep focused and keep working towards your objectives.

Accomplish the mission.

 

 

 

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Education / Entrepreneurship / Investments — Comments Off on Why Failing Will Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You
20
Jan 11

Why Failing Will Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You

Winners always win right? Wrong. Every winner is a product of a long line of failures plus an ounce of luck and a pound of persistence. Winning is actually a process which needs to be developed. Part of the process of winning is learning how to fail. Learning how to fail will provide you with powerful lessons to apply to the next business venture or your next trade.

Learning how to fail takes a lot of work. Luckily, failures usually mount quickly, giving you mounds of material to sift through for lessons. When dealing with a failure, it is necessary to pick apart the event to see what went wrong, what you could have done better and what you will do differently next time. The earlier you get on the learning curve the faster you will progress through the necessary setbacks and begin to win.

A loser will not do this.

A loser will quit because the weight of the failure will prove too much to bear. A loser curls up in the fetal position and waits for someone to make it better. They are unlikely to be able to get the loss or failure out of their mind and these thoughts will fester and hinder them from taking future risks – eventually turning them into a bitter loser. A bitter loser will have stern warnings and violent head shakes when conversing with any individual still working on the process of winning.

Obviously, the bitter loser is the worst kind of loser. All optimism for life and an irrational blame game with risk has developed. Avoid a bitter loser at any cost!

Failing is the best thing that can happen to you. You learn adversity, determination and humility – all necessary attributes for a successful life. Whenever someone brags about a life without failure or an investment portfolio without loss, I am always skeptical. Either that person has not ever pushed themselves to be great, never took chances or is dishonest. Maybe this person has never left the cozy confines of their comfort zone.

Living in your comfort zone is a recipe for monotony, average investment returns (at best) and a run-of-the-mill life.

Like any pain in our lives, a failure stings, burns and makes you sick to even think about. These emotions will not last. Only you will know when you are ready to apply the lessons learned and get back on that horse – whether your horse is the stock market, an entrepreneurial venture or a relationship. Accept and embrace failure as a necessary bump in the road and a valuable education. Ask yourself, “what can I learn from this setback?”

Avoid becoming a loser by keeping an open mind to the possibilities that lie ahead for you in the future. Be wiser next time and your failure will make you a better winner in the markets and in life.

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Living Life Abundantly / The Jones' / Wealth — Comments Off on What is Wealth?
17
Jan 11

What is Wealth?

Some are born with it. Some achieve it. Some will never experience it. Some just don’t get it. It was many years ago that I began to study the fundamentals of wealth creation. Some people have it and some people do not. The people that had it seemed to have much more fun than the people that did not! As I examined more closely, the wealthy seemed to live a more fulfilling life – and this fact was the driving factor in my personal quest to get it. I wanted a more fulfilling life.

What do you think of when you read the word wealth? Most likely, the first thoughts that pop into your mind are all the things that you can buy. Perhaps a 60-inch LCD television with remote control that can launch a rocket as well as turn on the fireplace is your dream? Or maybe a yacht moored out in the pristine blue water of a Mediterranean bay (complete with wait staff of course)? Or even a shoe closet bigger than your college apartment stocked with the finest shoes hot off the New York runways. All these things are fine and would be really cool to have, but there is a danger in this type of thinking.

Motorboat photo by Maxine Simpson via Flickr Creative Commons

Wealth is a subjective. When are you really wealthy? I recall watching an interview with a hedge fund tycoon that talked about his yearly income which was in the billions. Yes, you read income not wealth or net worth.  This guy admittedly could buy anything in the world and couldn’t spend his money in ten lifetimes. This is an extreme case to show you the sliding scale of wealth we are dealing with. Many people consider themselves wealthy if they can merely control their own life and make decisions on what to do with their money – in other words, they don’t have it spent before they make it.

People often mistakenly associate wealth with success. Although wealth may be a result of successful planning or even achieving one’s goals, it is impossible to measure success by the amount of wealth a person has accumulated. Like wealth, success is subjective. I am sure you can think of hundreds examples of success being achieved with no creation of wealth. The birth of a baby, the finishing a marathon or graduating with a bachelor’s degree can all be examples of success without the presence of wealth creation. Moreover, a person born into a wealth may project success as they have their driver drop them off at the front curb of their high school. Therefore, success may be achieved with or without wealth and wealth may be achieved with or without success.

When you measure your wealth by the amount of things you have or can have, you end up empty and always craving more. I believe wealth offers freedom and options for your life and should be defined as such. If you didn’t have to go to work what would you do? If you actually had the option to plan out your entire day from scratch, would you go to the beach, play a round of golf or write a novel? My challenge to you is to measure your wealth simply by reflecting on your day. How did you spend your day? Did you do whatever you wanted to? The most important thing wealth will buy you is freedom. What you do with your freedom is up to you.

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