Do you notice how long some of these athletes have been coming to the games in hopes of claiming a medal?  4? 8? 12 years some of them have been coming back.

Determination.  Persistance.  Think about the training that goes into to qualifying for the Olympics.  Then times 2 or times 3 … times 4 YEARS.  Think about what it takes for a salmon to swim back upstream to spawn.  Envision you had a FRACTION of that determination to achieve the things that have been on your To Do list year after year after year.

What a rock star you would be if you could just get it together and Do It.

No time like the present.  Write and let me know how you are doing with those New Year’s Resolutions.

Later…

No blogging for a long time.  Been doing other things.  Might as well keep kicking in now and then, my online journal of sorts.

Gave up for now on having my own business and having speaking and writing and workshops work for me to pay the bills.  It can be done, I have really good material and my day will come.  I just happen to be really good at high end communication network engineering for the US department of defense … so that is what I am doing for now.

So there!  I did I did I did see a puddy tatt!

Plus, since I was going to make SO much money as a personal growth enthusiast, I would have EASILY got into the $250K and above “rich” people bracket that Obama has targeted to pay even MORE taxes.

He doesnt get it. Stoopid Democrat Tricks … try out for Letterman.  That discussion is for another day.

I’m just getting started.  Who cares if anyone reads this (how many times has THAT line been typed in a blog?)

This week’s Principle is Believe in Yourself.  I have been listening to Wayne Dyer’s latest audio book, Excuses Be Gone (recommended).  It mentions another book called The Biology of Belief and how establishing a positive mental position for your intentions at some point goes beyond the thinking and starts to influence your actual cellular biology.

Heady stuff … I believe it.  And, as we are discussing, that is the first step.  Someone said the same thing about the Law of Attraction: you can either not believe in it and it will act on you without your participation (I prefer “full attention”) or you can believe in it and have it work for you.

At the end of the day, what is wrong with more positive thinking?  Decide what one thing you want more in life right now.  Financial stability is popular.  To be a ranked USTA tennis player.  To have self confidence to stand up to a bullying coworker.  Put it into words and stand in front of the mirror, looking yourself in the eye and repeat the affirmation over and over, until you feel energized (or someone comes in and wants to know what’s wrong).

After awhile, I find that I cannot help but feel better. “I will be a million dollar a year public speaker in 3 years.  I am knowledgeable, funny and helpful and 1000s of people will benefit from hearing what I have to say about being wealthy.”

That’s it - I am heading to the mirror right now.  What are you waiting for?

As you may have noticed, it’s not working out to one a week either…so what?  When I work though each of these principles and figure out what they mean to me and how I can integrate my expereinces into what I teach others, THEN I move on.

Last time time I broke the different areas of our existence (ya know … life?) into 9 areas, physical, mental, financial, etc. (Mark & Jack post No. 6) to be used as categories for goal setting, etc.  You may have 5 or 16 or you might like 9.  It don’ matter tah me … do your own thing.

Set goals in each of these areas, implement an action plan (a HUGE factor in success … some of us are AWESOME at making To Do Lists and never finishing) and move on to the next fun thing.  Some of these can be brief.  A Physical goal for example might be “exercise 4 times per week” and/or “weigh 175 lbs. by Dec 31 2009″).

Could be complex too as you figure out your financial goals for different phases of your life.  I actually recommend this, SPECIFICALLY for financial goals.  If you say, “I want financial independence by age 48″, that is not specific.  It is much more realizable to look at the next 30 days, the next 6 months, the range of 6 to 24 months, 2 years to 5 years, etc. and identify things like net worth, cash flow, debt, hard assets, etc. for those time frames.

It’s OK to start with, “$2.5M liquid net worth by age 48″ but you will have to break that down to an action plan that is starts in immediately.  Then, and this is the good part, you tie that into the other aspects of your Living Wealth Plan and figure out where that monetary wealth is coming from (vocational), what you need to do to get to it (mental, realtional) and who you have to be (personal, spiritual) to get there.

Someone once said that the best thing about becoming a millionaire is not the million dollars but the type of person you become along the way.

Now that’s a plan.

8 years ago today I was sitting on an airplane in San Jose, CA when they annonunced a short delay.

Then they announced an air traffic control hold on all take offs.

Then they asked us to get off the plane.

When we got back into the terminal, the world had changed forever.

Wealth is not measured solely in monetary terms. Today, remember to be grateful for what you have (that you even have a 401K or other assets to complain about puts you in a small % of people on Earth). My grandma used to say that any day on the right side of the ground is a good day. Today, tell someone… anyone … that you appreciate them. It will make them feel good. Might make you feel good too!

Cheers to your wealth!

What I do - and what I teach others - is to break things down into the different areas of their life that are important to them.  In my book, The Wealth Manifesto, I use these as the different categories of wealth (or wellbeing) in your life.  These are the ones I use (you may have different ones):

1. Health and fitness (physical)
2. Learning (mental)
3. Relationships (relational)
4. Service (charitable)
5. Self-esteem / Self-worth (personal)
6. Work and career (vocational)
7. Fun / pleasure (recreational)
8. Spirituality / religion (spiritual)
9. Money (financial)

The idea is that you take each of these categories and - surprise - decide what you want.  Folks, this is basic goal setting, so be sure to consider the basic tenants of goal setting, often remembered by the acronym SMART:

Specific, Measureable, Actionable, Realistic, Time-based.

Like all personal growth things, THE most important thing is the discipline to not only set these goals but take action.  You have to do something … as I noted in my previous post, if you dont, who will?

More on my challenges in actually making this happen and what you can do to avoid some of the pitfalls in the next post.  I’ll also talk about how important it is to know what you dont want.  Have a great Labor Day.

This week’s Principle is Decide What You Want.  What DO you want?  Aladdin’s lamp type question: if there were no limitations on your asking, what would be on your list?

“If they granted you one final wish, would you ask for something, like another chance?”
- Steve Winwood, fr. The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys

Understand one thing: this is one of the most important things in your life for you to decide.  Consider this:

1. If you dont know, who does?
2. If you dont say, who will?
3. If you dont put these things (what you want) in front of you as goals, values, objectives, dreams … whatever you want to call WHERE I AM GOING TO TAKE MY LIFE, how do you think you are going to get there.

And the other thing that I have found is that it is harder than you think.  Next time I’ll post some of what I have learned in doing this in my own life and how you can make some progress on this in your life.

While I am thinking about it, here is one of my favorite quotes on this subject:

Cheshire Puss,” she began, rather timidly… “Would you tell me,
please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where…” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Works … sometimes.  Think about it.  How many starving artists and musicians are there?  How many frustrated athletes who were the best in their high school and never started in college let alone get into the pros.  Plenty of stories of people who followed their dream into bankruptcy.

What happened?  If this is my “purpose” Mr Smart Guy, why didnt I succeed.  Where is my Nike endorsement contract?  Why doesnt The Donald return my calls?  Why is God messing with me.

Actor Kirk Douglas had a great line (paraphrasing): “God answers all prayers.  Sometimes the answer is ‘No.’” I suppose the quick way to wind down this post (part of my committment to write shorter blog posts) is when you are looking for your purpose, your passion your place, you have to be honest with yourself: is this real or just something you THINK you want?  It is referred to as a ‘calling’ for a reason: is this what is really calling you or is it your ego talking?  Recognizing that it doesnt always work out and you may have to ‘do what pays,’ for awhile longer while the planets line up is a call you may have to make.

I quit a long - and highly profitable - career in engineering to do my own thing.  I was pretty successful but a) it was not quite right (more on that in a later blog) and b) I was not paying my bills (that is called cash flow negative in the financial parlance.  I more into the idea of writing a book and being a trainer/speaker than having that be a call I was answering.  So I went back to work in engineering.  Now, my situation has changed in many ways and I am getting back into writing and speaking for more of the right reasons than I had before.  I’ll get to that next post.

Heard a good joke from a homeless woman yesterday on the beach in La Jolla, CA:

What to know how to make God laugh?  Tell Him your plans for the day.

Some people drift aimlessly through life.  Others specifically state that humans (themselves included I suspect) have no purpose or that the question - what is your purpose in life - is meaningless.

I dont buy it. 

If you get into a spiritual arguement about the meaning or existence of God, free will and if you have a role as a part of God’s plan, I agree - this might make your head hurt.  However, if you are able to discover how your life has meaning and significance you are on the right track.  How do you do this?This is exactly what I teach people how to do in developing Your Inner Expert, my method of helping people to develop a niche that is willing and able to compensate you for what you do best: Be Yourself. 

The first step is to Identify Your Inner Expert - who you are, what you want and the passions and capabilities that will go into the creation of value so you can have whatever you want.  This is where you start to understand your significance, and, I believe, your purpose for being here.  It’s kind of like a bonus.  You do what you are good at and passionate about and can have a good quality of life right (pretty standard ’self-help’ advice)?  How about if you look at it like, you are good at these things, attracted to and passionate about certain thing BECAUSE they are part of your purpose?

You have a better idea? I love to hear it.

One of the “taglines” I was using for awhile (I actually stated it on my website as a part of my purpose) was “To understand and transform individual human potential into significance, joy and prosperity.”

I can live with that.

This is the last post for week 1: Mark & Jack: 52.4 Weeks of Living the Success Priniciples.  As such, it’s my final comments on Taking 100% Responsibility for Your Life (Success Principle #1).  In his book, The Success Principles, Jack Canfield notes a “formula” for success that he attributes to Dr. Robert Resnick, a psychotherapist in Los Angeles: Event + Response = Outcome.

If you look at my previous posts on this Success Principle, you’ll note that I have been talking about this to some degree: the only thing you truly control is your response to the world around you.  No one else will make you mad, happy, jealous, deranged, blissful or any of a number of others states of emotion and consciousness.  You do all of that.

What I think is even more powerful about this formula has to do with the realization I came to when I really started applying it to my daily life.  Canfield notes that if you are not getting the results you want, change what you are doing.  More importantly (or really … taking it a step further), is that if you are not getting the results you want, maybe you not only have to changed what you are doing, but change the result you are looking for.  This can get into a much deeper metaphysics discussion (Law of Attraction and such) but for now, think about this;

What is the outcome you desire and what are you willing to do to get it?

Once you figure out the answers to that, once you have attached your emotions and passion to achieving those outcomes, goals if you will, I think it is easier to assess how your responses are consistent with and supportive of the outcomes you seek … or not.

Bottom line: if your response (e.g., getting angry, eating more, cheating on your taxes) is inconsistent with the outcome you seek (serenity, physical fitness, integrity respectively), then you obviously dont want them badly (or clearly enough).  It’s not all about the response, you control the outcome too.