Tuesday, July 31, 2007

The Best Measure of Success

Ask someone what they think the best measure of success would be for a new business venture, and they will likely reply with an answer centered around money; as in: has the venture made any money, or how much money has the venture made?

And while the money is certainly a critical componant, the movie The Secret is trying to teach us something a little bit different than that. So what is the best measure of success?

The answer to the question flys by so quickly in the movie that you probably missed it. The answer is on a card taped to John Asseref's vision board. No one in the movie actually says these words, but the card says "Joy is the best measure of success". Profound!

Now the business venture must ultimately be profitable; because joy will not last if the venture that is what we want to do is not able to surplant the current income we have, which is earned from what we may like to do and what we are doing currently.

Joy comes from using our talents to serve others. Some believe that serving others is designed to be a non-profit business. Many churches teach that service does not count if you are actually paid for it; then it's not service, its a business.

I would agree with that sentiment except for one small problem, that problem being that we were placed here on Earth (generally) without an endless supply of cash already given. As a result, we have to do something that earns us money. I think that some of these churches would say that we earn a living with drudgery, and then find joy in the volunteer service of others.

Why do they have to be separate? If we can arrange a way to be paid for the service that we render that gives us joy, then is that not what we should do? It does not mean that we cannot contribute time to volunteer causes (or money), but it gives us permission to make money doing what we love to do.

The joy and the magic of life will not be fully realized until we are able to spend all of our time doing what brings us joy, and being paid enough doing it to provide financial freedom, however we may define that.

Joseph

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Where Should You Rank When Using Your Talents?

If the message did not come across clearly as you were watching The Secret, one of the main points of the movie is that we increase our chances of being successful a hundred fold if we put our energy into creating what we love, and not competing for it. When we create in an area where we have been blessed with talent, then we will have the "inside edge" in that area.

And some of you shrewd readers already recognize a competition theme here in even talking about where we would rank; please forgive me, I am talking in terms that the general population can understand. It is clear from the movie and the Wattles book The Science of Getting Rich, that we must get rich by CREATION, not competition.

But here's the skinny: If there are ten distinct talents in the world then someone who is creating based on theirs should statistically land in the top 10% of that industry.

If there were twenty distinct talents in the world, then someone creating with theirs should land in the top 5%.

If there were 100 distinct talents in the world, then someone creating with theirs should land in the top 1% of that industry.

If (as seems likely) there were more than 100 distinct talents in the world, then someone creating with theirs would be well within that top 1%.

So if you are not presently in the top 1% of some industry, I would ask the following question:

Why Not?

The answer might be that you are not leveraging your talent, or it could also be that your talent is now being expressed in an environment where it is little appreciated and where the money earned from it is bounded by contract of employment.

People who are living in the magic and abundance of life have all done two specific things in relation to their talents:

1. They have joined or set up a business system that allows them unlimited income from using their talent(s). Their earnings become now a matter of how many people they can help. The more people they help, the more money they earn.

2. If their talent(s) do not fall within the areas of Sales and Marketing, then they hire or partner with someone who is talented in these areas, because they realize that the world's greatest talents will not find full expression if no one else knows about them.

Not in the top 1% yet?

What are your talents?

Joseph

Friday, July 13, 2007

Think and Speak Your Way to Prosperity

In my mind, the entire purpose of the movie The Secret is to help us to begin to think a little differently about a few things in our lives; and the movie also talks about how adding speaking to that increases its power.

Close to 98% of us grow up learning and especially hearing lack thinking most of the time. If we did not hear it from our own parents, then we heard it from several other sources. Someone who grew up without all of this is fortunate indeed.

For the rest of us, there are some things that we need to get clear in our mind in order to overcome the lack thinking, and so that we may begin the prosperity speaking. The prosperity that we seek will follow only after we have learned the language of prosperity and spoken it for a while. We will not be able to speak it until we get it entrenched into our thoughts.

1. While you may have been a victim in the past, you now realize that you have more control of your circumstances then you ever thought possible, and that you have a clear choice in any matter as to whether you will be a victim. At first even if you still feel like a victim of something you will not add power to it by speaking or complaining about it!

2. You now understand clearly that we will obtain prosperity through creation, not competition. You will abandon all the false ideas that someone else has to lose for you to win. You must completely destroy within your own mind any idea that some dishonesty will be required on your part in order to succeed. It is the competition mindset that says that we must gain advantage over others in order to win; you now know that this is false doctrine.

3. As a follow up to the last item, you now understand that your prosperity comes from helping others find their prosperity, and that it comes quicker as you help more people.

4. You understand clearly that you are blessed with a talent of some kind that will allow you to be in the top 5% of your industry when you use it. How do you know what your talent is? You will find it by doing these three words: Follow Your Bliss. Spend you mental effort setting up a way for you to get paid for doing what you most love to do, and make sure that you get paid more for it as you help more people with it. Once this is done, then you are set up to succeed. Since it is hard to think prosperity if basic needs are not met, do not quit your current income until your new venture(s) have at least doubled it.

5. Do what you can to be around other people who speak prosperity. The group around the office water cooler may not be the best choice. If you do not have any good ideas as to how to accomplish this, I will give you one: Go attend a meeting put on by any Direct Sales/Network Marketing Company. You do not have to join the company to go. There will be people there who think and speak prosperity.

Sound like a lot to do? Does this sound hard? Here is what I think is hard: Forcing ourselves to live an unremarkable life takes a lot of mental effort! Some of us are just so used to it now that we no longer perceive the effort. Our soul longs for the magic of life, and we will surprise ourselves with what happens when we start moving in the right direction!

Last thought: Time will be required, and there will be some number of failures along the way. When you see them you will know them for the sign that they are, which is the sign that you are on the right path. How can we ever learn anything if we never fail? The answer is that we cannot, and if we never learn anything then our life cannot change.

I end with a recent Note From The Universe (Mike Dooley, tut.com): Fear, Joseph, can only be experienced when one pretends they're not in control.

I could say the same thing for doubt. Successful people know how to replace doubt and fear with love.

Joseph

Monday, July 9, 2007

Have Other People Attracted Some of Your Actions?

In the movie The Secret we learn about the Law of Attraction, and the movie focuses mostly on what we attract to ourself. But what about what other people around us are attracting? Are we fulfilling the attractions of others with some of our actions (without even trying to)?

Case in point. There have been a couple of recent occurrences in my life that were strange, because my actions were strangly out of character for me, and I do not have any reason why I did the things I did.

1. I am normally a very friendly and courteous driver. I always let someone in if they are trying to get in. Except this one time. This one time I totally made great efforts to block someone from getting in for no reason at all. I did not know this person, I was not in a bad mood, I had not had a bad day at work, in short I had absolutely no motivation to do what I did, but somehow I did it anyway. I spent the rest of the day wondering why I had done that.

2. I recently took the kids to one of these pancake type resturants. The service was good and I gathered up cash at the end to pay the bill and add the tip. I had clear in my mind that I wanted to pay the $59.00 bill and add a decent tip, say $6.00. So I left $65.00 on the table and left thinking I had left my normal 20-25% tip that I always do for good service.

It was not until about three hours later that I looked back and realized that I had only left a 10% tip, and that waitress would be wondering why I shorted her. Well you might say that it was just a brain freeze and I was not thinking right, and I would normally agree except to say that this does not happen to me. I never do tips in my head and come out with the wrong answer. So I spent the rest of that day wondering why I had done that.

Here's a possibility: Those people attracted my actions. Perhaps the first person was in their vehicle affirming how bad the traffic is and how unfriendly the drivers are and how everybody always tries to cut her off. Perhaps the second was thinking here's a guy with four kids who are breaking all the crayons and making a lot of noise, he will probably stiff me, that always happens to me.

Well unfortunately I do not know either person and I do not expect to ever see either of them again. So I wonder if similar things have happened to you? Have you done some things that were out of character for yourself and later wondered why you did it? Have you noticed that others acted out of character towards you in an unexpected way? Can you think of any way you might have attracted that? You may not be able to, because it could be a subconscious attraction drawn from programs running in your mind.

What do you think?

Joseph

Monday, July 2, 2007

When Good Stops Better

In the movie The Secret, Bob Proctor asks why do we think that about 96% of all the money that is being earned is being earned by the top 1% of the money earners?

If you are not one of the 1% folks, then is it because good is stopping better?

I see a lot of this first hand. My wife is an Independent Consultant and Regional Vice President with Arbonne International. In the course of doing this business, she has the opportunity to talk to many different people who will initially express interest in the unlimited income opportunity that Arbonne offers.

What we find, however, is that if these prospects perceive that their life is pretty good overall, even with those few things that they complain about, then they are less likely to pursue the Arbonne opportunity. People are not stupid. . . they generally know that to succeed in a Network Marketing Business is going to require that they change their thinking, which is an exceedingly difficult thing for some people to do. I do not wish to pick on the post office, but there are many who will do their day jobs through sleet and snow and rain and dogs and everything else before they will give one ounce of effort towards thinking in a different way. Why is that?

It's because that is what we know, and we will generally choose the problems that we know over the fears of the unknown every day of the week. It is a classic and epic battle of "security" versus "freedom". Some believe that security and freedom are essentially the same thing. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I cannot emphasize this next statement enough: Seeking Security reduces Freedom!

You know it is true. It starts the day we apply for and receive our first full time job. We exchange anywhere from 45 to 90 hours a week (counting commuting) for a secure paycheck, so that we can have money that we can count on. With this arrangement we may eventually obtain financial freedom, but that financial freedom will not include time freedom, and thus is not truly freedom. A similar situation occurs for many retired persons: They have the time freedom but not the financial freedom to do much with that time. It seems to be very few who have both time freedom and financial freedom at the same time.

No, I am not saying that it is time to quit your full time job today. In fact, just the opposite. If we are not able to meet our basic needs of food, clothing and shelter then we will not really be able to pursue our dreams. But what are we doing with our free time? Are we seeking freedom, or are we bunkered in security, which security includes protecting ourselves from ever failing?

There are literally hundreds of things that could be done in that spare time for those seeking freedom; but ALL of them involve us receiving training that will allow us to think a little differently. That training need not be expensive, especially at the very first. As an example, I again cite a Network Marketing business like Arbonne. In this kind of business you have an upline manager who is paid only when you succeed, and as a result they have a strong financial motivation to train you to succeed. Through experience in this type of business, we can learn the effects of failure, and further learn that it is only a stepping stone to success.

Every successful Network Marketer that I know (and I know at least 50 of them), tells about how they failed at first, but how instead of quitting they just simply tried to learn what they could from the failure and kept going. They generally say that it took them five to ten years to truly come to the understanding of what this Network Marketing business was all about. Their success did not generally come until after they had made that realization.

It is funny to me when people say that we are asking for a lot with a Network Marketing business. I mean ten years is a long time, and a really big commitment! But here is the truth: What is really asking a lot from you is this idea of security, and you will give up more and more of your freedom the longer you seek it. Its no different in world events! How much freedom are we willing to give up in the United States now in the name of greater security from those who would attack us? Here's the kicker . . . has giving up ANY of that freedom really made us any more secure?

So here is a great Secret that is not in the movie The Secret: The best security comes from seeking Freedom first, not security.

Learn.

Joseph