It was awful. He wasted away for 8 years from Type I diabetes. Amputation, Blindness, heart Attack, Dialysis, Stroke, the whole bag. But it wasn’t really diabetes that killed him. I think it was a broken heart.
I can’t say for sure. But it broke my heart to watch him go down like that.
My best friend at the time, Jon, he overdosed 7 years later. Heroine.
My step-father at that time, Charles, he committed suicide 16 years later. That was last year.
The three most important men in my life at age 16, are now all dead. Since I am alive, I think I owe it to myself and the memory of these men to go for my dreams. That is reason # one.
My grandfather immigrated here from Ukraine at age 7. He had 8 brothers and sisters, and his parents were escaping religious and political oppression. They had a hard time, couldn’t get in for two years at Ellis Island. Spent two years in Mexico. Came back through Ellis Island and settled a section in Auburn, Michigan. He worked hard. Worked at Defoe shipyard, worked “down to the Dow” (Chemical) and built three houses. He put his wife through school. Went to night school to learn english and get a high school diploma. Watched both his kids die. Cleared weeds after work to save money for the first house. And Reinhold Braun ministered to the sick, the dying, the shut-ins and the lonely for 40 years. He busted his butt so I could have a better life. That is reason # two.
My daughter. Period. That is reason # three.
My stepdaughter. Paloma has another father, but I am her dad.For whatever reason, he hasn’t had the where with all to be a part of her life. Now I ask you, should a kid miss out on having a dad? Sometimes going for my dreams means that I am away from home, speaking, traveling to a seminar. But going for my dreams makes me a solid person. I can be a present dad to both of my girls. That is reason # 4.
Ultimately, I am so freakin’ passionate about life. I am endlessly interested in everything. Like Oprah said, “you can do anything you want, you just can’t do everything at the same time.” So I figure, I’d better get after it. One thing at a time. Well, Ok. I end up going for three to five things at a time. I can’t help myself. Really.
I could go on. It might do me good. What are your reasons? The world needs dreamers. America needs dreamers. Your family needs dreamers. “If you have built your castles in the sky, your work need not be lost. That is where they should be. Now put the foundation under them.” -Thoreau.
I believe this more strongly than most anything. Dreams make life rich, full and beautiful.Go for your dreams. More importantly, dare to open your heart to your dream. My dad stayed closed and it killed him. Be willing to feel the cold sting of rejection, criticism and disappointment. In the end, those individuals that dreamt big and failed will have no regrets. Those who kept the dream in their souls will have to wonder… did I lose the chance?
Why do you keep going? Please post your comments. This is an incredible question to ask.
It took about three weeks of weaving in and out of winter retreat, but I am DONE!
The final push happened tonight from 10 PM to 1 AM.
Of course I know that early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. But with young kids and a home office, as many entrepreneurs would confirm, it can be heard to be without interruption. That is why I tend to write books from 10 PM to 1 AM as well.
Here is the video clip of the final 2010, 12 month plan. 12 months is the minimum required to have a business working for you! I teach some version of this in each seminar that I offer; The Awakened Life Program, The P3E Project: Indestructible Success and the Men’s Mastery Course.
There were three steps to this:
1. Learn from 2009. Time to review and analyze the previous year. Address weaknesses and faults as well as success and strengths. Brutally honest with praise and critique.
2. Look within. A process of going after any core issues that may get in the way of me playing big. Looking at beliefs and perspectives that limit creative thought. Then getting clear on the WHY questions, why do I want to do the work I do? What are my values? What do I want to contribute?
3. Create a Vision and make it a Plan. The natural next step is to take the inner expedition out onto the page. I mind map the year. What I know for sure. What is the top focus. What are secondary and supportive. What needs to be cut. Then, after working and reworking the mind map with fine detail of project planning, I take it to the 12 month wall calendar. I bought a $5 desk calendar from Wal-Mart, tore it into 12 months, and tacked it to the wall. Presto! A 3′ by 5′ wall calendar!
If you are wondering why I was whispering; my kids are asleep down the hall!
And the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWChHm6fY_0
Lord, create in me the vessel of your Grace.Make me an instrument of your Love.
I now command and demand that the highest and best that I have to give the world be made manifest in and through me.
I now claim financial mastery. I now command the power of my subconscious mind to align my life with the principles of wealth and power.
I am a source of wealth.
I am a creator of wealth.
I am a sustainer of wealth.
Wealth flows from the creative genius within me.
I use my time, my money and my attention wisely.
I use my wealth for good.
I contribute to my family, my community and the world.
I celebrate the creation of phenomenal, lavish, opulent, extraordinary wealth.
I say yes to life!
I am now in line with the Divine Plan for my family.
I allow the principles of Life to establish harmony in my family and I decide that it starts with me.
I am eager to see what great opportunity can and will emerge as I release the past, open to the possibility of empowerment and focus on the best in myself, my wife and my children.
It was a successful first Awakened Life Seminar… and one of the big hits was the extensive working of the Dream>Vision>Goals>Plans>Action process.
For those of you in the Men’s Mastery Course, the P3E Project or Awakened Life, or anyone that is interested in skillfully giving 100%, here are some resources that I have found for thinking big.
1. 12 month, 4 month and 2 month wall calendars. Remarkable Calendars offers 3′ by 4′ wall calendars, about $40 each. Wall Calendars claims to have the largest at 10′ wide and about 4.5′ high, priced at about $340. Big price difference. At-A-Glance, probably the most well known, has 2′ by 3′ standard sizes at about $30 each.
2. GTD Large Work Flow Poster is the next level of organization from productivity expert, David Allen. This, along with one of the above calendars, will be my next important productivity investments.
But even with the best ideas, tools and techniques, it it still up to you to put in the study time, to upgrade your mind first, so that you can integrate a new way of being, then thinking, then doing.
How d0 you make the shift into increased ability to use these tools?
How do you get the focus and the drive in the first place?
Stay tuned for more questions to focus and educe the drive within you!
One of the greatest personal development gurus of all time. Phenomenal Success Principles Detailed In Precise Language. Woo Hoo! Can’t beat that.
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One of the greatest feel good dance scenes of all time. Oh yeah! Put that in your pipe and smoke it! Shake it, Shake it, Shake it. Move that body nice and sweet and sexy!
Today I shed my old skin which hath too long suffered the bruises of failure and the wounds of mediocrity.
Today I am born anew and my birthplace is a vineyard where there is fruit for all.
Today I will pluck grapes of wisdom from the tallest and fullest vines in the vineyard, for these were planted by the wisest of my profession who have come before me, generation upon generation.
Today I will savor the taste of grapes from these vines and verily I will swallow the seed of success buried in each and new life will sprout within me.
The career I have chosen is laden with opportunity yet is fraught with heartbreak and despair and the bodies of those who have failed, were they piled one atop another, would cast its shadow down upon all the pyramids of the earth.
Yet I will not fail, as the others, for in my hands I now hold the charts which will guide me through perilous waters to shores which only yesterday seemed but a dream.
Failure no longer will be my payment for struggle. Just as nature made no provision for my body to tolerate pain neither has it made any provision for my life to suffer failure. Failure, like pain, is alien to my life. In the past I accepted it as I accepted pain. Now I reject it and I am prepared for wisdom and principles which will guide me out of the shadows into the sunlight of wealth, position and happiness far beyond my most extravagant dreams, until even the golden apples in the Garden of Hesperides will seem no more than my just reward.
Time teaches all things to he lives forever, but I have not the luxury of eternity. Yet, within my allotted time I must practice the art of patience, for nature acts never in haste. To create the olive, king of all trees, a hundred years is required. An onion plant is old in nine weeks. I have lived as an onion plant. It has not pleased me. Now I wouldst become the greatest of olive trees and, in truth, the greatest of salesman.
And how will this be accomplished? For I have neither the knowledge nor the experience to achieve greatness and already I have stumbled in ignorance and fallen into the pools of self-pity. The answer is simple. I will commence my journey unencumbered with either the weight of unnecessary knowledge or the handicap of meaningless experience. Nature already has supplied me with knowledge and instinct, far greater than any beast in the forest and the value of experience is overrated, usually by old men, who nod widely but speak stupidly.
In truth, experience teaches thoroughly yet her course of instruction devours men’s years so the value of her lessons diminishes with the time necessary to acquire her special wisdom. The end finds it wasted on dead men. Furthermore, experience is comparable to fashion. An action that proves effective today, will be impractical and unworkable tomorrow.
Only principles endure and these I now possess, for the laws that will lead me to greatness are contained within the words of these scrolls. What they will teach me is more to prevent failure than to gain success, for what is success other than a state of mind? Which two among a thousand wise men will describe success in the same words; yet failure is always described but one way. Failure is man’s inability to reach his goals in life, whatever they may be.
In truth, the only difference between those who fail and those who succeed lies in the difference of their habits. Good habits are the key to success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure. Thus, the first law I will obey, which will proceedeth all others is I will form good habits and become their slave. When I was a child, I was slave to my impulses; now I am slave to my habits, as are all grown men. I have surrendered my free will to the years of accumulated habits and the past deeds of my life have already marked out a path which threatens to imprison my future. My actions are ruled by appetite, passion, prejudice, greed, love, fear, environment, habit and the worst of these tyrants is habit. Therefore, if I must be a slave to habit, let me be a slave to good habits. My bad habits must destroyed and new furrows prepared for good seed.
I will form good habits and become their slave.
And how will I accomplish this difficult feat?
Through these scrolls it will be done, for each scroll contains a principle which will drive a bad habit from my life and replace it with one that will bring me closer to success. For it is another of natures laws that only a habit can subdue another habit. So, in order for these written words to perform their chosen task, I must discipline myself with the first of my new habits which is as follows.
I will read each scroll for thirty days in this prescribed manner, before I proceed to the next scroll.
First, I will read the words in silence when I arise.
Then, I will read the words in silence when I have partaken of my mid day meal.
Last, I will read the words again just before I retire at day’s end, and most important, on this occasion I will read the words aloud.
On the next day I will repeat this procedure, and I will continue in like manner for thirty days. Then, I will turn to the next scroll and repeat this procedure for another thirty days. I will continue in this manner until I have lived with each scroll for thirty days, until my reading has become habit.
And what will be accomplished with this habit?
Herein lies the hidden secret of all of man’s accomplishments. As I repeat the words daily they will become part of my active mind. But more important, they will also seep into my other mind, that mysterious source that never sleeps, that creates my dreams and often makes me act in ways that I do not comprehend.
As the words of these scrolls are consumed by my mysterious mind I will begin to awake, each morning with a vitality I have never known before. My vigor will increase, my enthusiasm will arise, my desire to meet the world will overcome every fear I once knew at sunrise, and I will be happier than I have ever believed possible to be in this world of strife and sorrow.
Eventually, I will find myself reacting to all sitations which confront me as I was commanded in the scrolls to react, and soon these actions and reactions will become easy to perform, for any act with practice becomes easy.
Thus a new and good habit is born. For when an act becomes easy through repitiion it becomes a pleasure to perform and if it is a pleasure to perform it is man’s nature to perform it often. When I perform it often it becomes a habit and I become its slave and since it is a good habit this is my will.
Today I will begin a new life.
And I make a solemn oath to myself that nothing will retard my new life’s growth. I will lose not a day from these readings for that day cannot be retrieved, nor can I substitute another for it. I must not, I will not, break this habit of daily reading from these scrolls and, in truth, the few moments that I spent each day on this new habit are but a small price to pay for the happiness and success that will be mine.
As I read and re-read the words in the scrolls to follow, never will I allow the brevity of each scroll, nor the simplicity of these worlds to treat these words lightly. Thousands of grapes are pressed to fill one jar of wine, and the grapeskin and pulp are tossed to the birds. So it is with these grapes of wisdom from the ages. Much has been filtered and tossed to the wind. Only the pure truth lies distilled in the words to come. I will drink as instructed and not spill a drop. And the seed of success I will swallow.
Today, my old skin has become as dust. I will walk tall among men and they will know me not, for today, I am a new man with a new life.
If you work for yourself, I highly recommend reading through this book. I recently bought the Audio book of Og Mandino reading it and it is just lovely.
I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister
The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler’s sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.
Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.
Use this when you want to change stubborn patterns of thought and behavior that may be damaging your well-being.
Today, I determine what I think.
Today, I determine what I feel.
I step up to accomplish the seemingly impossible.
I give myself all that I need.
I treat myself well.
I give myself care and support.
I want what I really want.
I live with my brilliance.
I give myself the best life.
I am kind to myself.
I give myself the opportunity to thrive.
I give myself permission to be fabulous.
I give myself permission to be phenomenal.
I allow myself to move into the experience of complete and total fulfillment of my potential.
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I now claim total fulfillment of my potential.
Affirmative Invocation: For Actualizing Potential