The Reality of Fear

One of the biggest barriers that all people have to overcome on their journey of success is fear. Fear of failure. Fear of rejection. Fear of change. Fear of responsibility and commitment. And the big one – Fear of success. It is fear (and all of its cousins like worry, anxiety, depression and self-doubt) that will turn your dreams into a chilling nightmare. This nightmare can turn into something so daunting that it causes you to loose hope. It doesn’t have to be this way. Fear was never intended to put you in a state of paralysis.

The reality of fear is that fear is human. Fear is part of growing and it isn’t going away. It is part of every person’s life and exists in every success story. In all the research I did for my book, “Conquer Fear!” I heard story after story of successful people who experienced fear. The names would change. The circumstances were different. But the fear was the same – and very real. What I noticed was the successful person was willing to face and expose their fear.

The difference between a mediocre success and a breakthrough success is your willingness to deal with your fears.

What about you? What hidden fear are you ignoring that is causing you to repel success? Acknowledging the fear is the first step to defusing its power over you and taking control over your emotions and your life.

Persuaders are Tremendous

All our lives we encounter persuaders. Those who were successful are largely responsible for the way we are. Because some of us are exposed to some positive persuaders we are drawn to become positive persuaders. I believe all successful persuaders are a result of having been successfully persuaded at some time in their lives.

What a strange world it would be if there were no persuaders. Life is one continuous series of persuasions. At home it is the parent persuading the child, the child persuading the parent, the salesman persuading the prospect, the lawyer persuading the jury, the boy persuading the girl or the politician persuading his constituency. And so on and on.

To be a persuader you must be persuaded and in order to continue to grow we must practice the art of persuasion. The old saying, “Nothing succeeds like Success,” fits the persuader perfectly. The earlier in life you begin, the fuller your life will become. It is only in sharing and giving that we realize what we have, and we can give nothing better than persuading others to worthwhile goals, right motives and eternal values.

I think it is safe to say that sometimes in our lives we will be persuaded to become positive persuaders seeking to give and share, or we’ll not be persuaded and spend the rest of our lives waiting for a break, taking and keeping.

I hope these thoughts on persuasion have increased your awareness of the great privilege and obligation of the persuader. The world needs one more positive persuader. It is you?

Overcoming Self-Limiting Beliefs

The worst beliefs you can have are “Self limiting beliefs.” These exist whenever you believe yourself to be limited in some way. For example, you may think yourself to be less talented or capable than others. You may think that others are superior to you in some way. You may have fallen into the common trap of selling yourself short and settling for far less than you are truly capable of.

These self-limiting beliefs act like brakes on your potential. They hold you back. They generate the two greatest enemies of personal success – doubt and fear. They paralyze you and cause you to hesitate to take the intelligent risks that are necessary for you to fulfill your true potential.

For you to progress, to move onward and upward in your life and your business, you must continually challenge your self-limiting beliefs. You must reject any thought or suggestion that you are limited in any way. You must accept as a basic principle that you are a ‘no-limit’ person, and that what others have done, you can do as well.

When I was a young man, coming from a difficult upbringing, I fell into the mental trap of concluding that because other people were doing better than I was, they must be better or smarter than I was. I accidentally concluded that they were worth more than I was. I must therefore be worth less. This false belief held me back for years.

The fact is that no one is better than you are and no one is smarter than you are. If they are doing better, it is largely because they have developed their natural talents and abilities more than you have. They have learned the laws of cause and effect that apply to their lives and work before you have. And anything anyone else has done, within reason, you can probably do as well. You just need to learn how.

Persistence

If you were to choose just one part of your personality to develop that would virtually guarantee your success, I’d like to suggest that you place persistence at the top of your list.

Napoleon Hill, in his classic Think and Grow Rich felt so strongly about this subject, he devoted an entire chapter to it. Hill suggested, “There may be no heroic connotation to the word persistence but the quality is to your character what carbon is to steel.”

Think about it. If you took a quick mental walk down memory lane and reviewed some of your accomplishments in the past – large and small – you would have to agree that persistence played an important role in your success.

Napoleon Hill studied many of the world’s most successful people. He pointed out the only quality he could find in Henry Ford, Thomas Edison or a host of other notable greats, that he could not find in everyone else was persistence. What I found even more intriguing was the fact that Hill made comment of the fact that these individuals were often misunderstood to be ruthless or cold-blooded and that this misconception grew out of their habit of following through in all of their plans with persistence.

It’s both interesting and sadly amusing to me that, as a society, we would be quick to criticize people for realizing they had an unshakeable power within them and were capable of overcoming any obstacle outside of them. This power would ultimately move them toward a greater chance of achieving any goal they set for themselves!

Milt Campbell is a good friend of mine. He and I have shared many hours together discussing the very topic of persistence. Milt was a Decathlete in the Olympic Games held in Helsinki, Finland in 1952. His goal was to capture gold for the US. Unfortunately, another fierce competitor who had taken home the gold four years previous in London wasn’t satisfied with one gold, Bob Mathias wanted two; Milt had to settle for silver. That did not deter Milt one bit. He had formed the habit of persistence and four years later in Melbourne, Australia, Milt won the gold medal, earning him the title of the greatest athlete in the world.

On numerous occasions Milt has said, “There were many guys in school who were far better athletes than me, but they quit.” I can recount story after story about individuals who overcame obstacles so great, but only did so because they dared persist. These individuals are no different than you and I.

Ultimately persistence becomes a way of life, but that is not where it begins. To develop the mental strength – persistence – you must first want something. You have to WANT something so much that it becomes a heated desire… a passion in your belly. You must fall in love with that idea. Yes, literally fall in love with the idea and magnetize yourself to every part of the idea. At that point, persistence will be virtually automatic.

Persistence is a subject I have studied all of my adult life and I can tell you one thing I know for certain: very few people ever, mentally or verbally, say to themselves… this is what I really want and I am prepared to give my life for it, and thus, they never develop the persistence to achieve it.

Persistence is a unique mental strength; a strength that is essential to combat the fierce power of the repeated rejections and numerous other obstacles that sit in waiting and are all part of winning in a fast-moving, ever-changing world. As Napoleon Hill found out, there are hundreds of highly successful men and women who have cut a path for others to follow, while leaving their mark on the scrolls of history… and every one of these great individuals was persistent. In many cases it was the only quality that separated them from everyone else.

It is generally believed that a lack of persistence is a consequence of a weak willpower. That is not true. A person could have a highly evolved willpower and still lack the persistence required to keep moving forward in life. In more cases than not, if a person lacks persistence, they do not have a goal that is worthy of them, a desirable goal that excites them to their very core.

Though willpower is important in moving a person toward their goal, if there is ever a war between the will and the imagination, the imagination will win every time. What that means is: you’re powered by desire and fuelled by the dream you hold. Once you start to use your imagination to help you build a bigger picture of your dream, to define and refine it until you get it just right in your mind, the emotion that is triggered by that desire far outweighs any force that may be caused by sheer will alone. I am not suggesting the will does not have to be developed, it does. It must become highly developed in order to direct you toward the image with which you are emotionally involved.

Your intellectual factors hold the potential for enormous good when they are properly employed. However, you must remember that everything has an opposite and any of your intellectual factors can turn, without warning, into destructive lethal enemies when they are directed toward results that are not wanted. It is easy to find individuals who are persistently doing what they don’t want to do and achieving results that they do not want. A lack of persistence is not their problem; that person is persisting to their own detriment. Ignorance and paradigms are the enemy that we must defeat. Everyone is persistent. Our objective must be to put persistence to work for us rather than against us.

Vision and desire have to be the focus of your attention if you’re going to develop persistence into the great ally it can become.

Another excellent example of persistence was demonstrated when, in 1953, a beekeeper from Auckland, N.Z., Edmund Hillary and his native guide, Tenzing Norguay, became the first two people to climb Mt. Everest and return, after having tried and failed the two previous years.

Hillary had two obvious character strengths that took him to the very top —- vision and desire. Even despite the seemingly insurmountable challenges, he had no trouble persisting with the strenuous acts that were required because every act was hooked into the image of him standing on top of the mountain. They were expressed because of his persistence, but he was persistent because he was emotionally involved with the image. Without persistence, all his skills would have meant nothing.

Persistence is an expression of the mental strength that is essential in almost every profession, where repeated rejection and obstacles are part of a daily routine.

In closing, let me give you four relatively simple steps that will help you to turn persistence into a habit. These steps can be followed by virtually anyone.

1. Have a clearly defined goal. The goal must be something you are emotionally involved with, something you want very much. (In the beginning, you may not even believe that you can accomplish it—the belief will come.)

2. Have a clearly established plan that you can begin working on immediately. (Your plan will very likely only cover the first and possibly the second stage of the journey to your goal. As you begin executing your plan, other steps required to complete your journey will be revealed at the right time.)

3. Make an irrevocable decision to reject any and all negative suggestions that come from friends, relatives or neighbors. Do not give any conscious attention to conditions or circumstances that appear to indicate the goal cannot be accomplished.

4. Establish a mastermind group of one or more people who will encourage, support and assist you wherever possible.

What do you dream of doing with your life? Do it. Begin right now and never quit. There is greatness in you. Let it out. Be persistent.

Quote

“Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.”
- Napoleon Hill

Einstein’s Formula for Success

Albert Einstein had a formula for success. Can you believe that? One of the greatest minds of all time developed a math formula for success! I suggest you read this carefully — this may be the most important math equation that you will ever see.

Einstein said, ‘If A equals success, then the formula is: A=X+Y+Z.
X is work.
Y is play.
Z is keep your mouth shut.”

Einstein no doubt had an excellent sense of humor. Let’s look at the 3 variables in this equation. They are:
1. Work
2. Play
3. Keeping your mouth shut!

1. Work: Albert Einstein had a tremendous work ethic and because of that gave more to society and modern science than any person in recent times

2. Play: Einstein, however, did not work 24 hours a day and made time for fun and relaxation. His idea of fun may have been different than yours, but that doesn’t mean it still wasn’t play.

3. Keeping your mouth shut: Finally, my favorite part of his success formal is to keep your mouth shut. I genuinely believe that the person who talks the least says the most. A friend of mine complains that the woman he is dating talks too much. I don’t know how to break the news to him; however, the problem is not that she talks too much. It simply is the fact that he is irritated that he isn’t able to talk. Now, let me just say this is not a generic man and woman statement. I am speaking about a specific person that I know. His desire is to constantly talk and because he likes to talk so much, he will talk in circles. If you let him talk long enough he will repeat the same thing three times and then contradict himself. His desire is not to hear but to be heard.

Albert Einstein, on the other hand had nothing to prove. He felt no need to be the “Chatty Cathy” he could have been with his knowledge. It wasn’t important to him to talk to everyone he met and talk over their heads to demonstrate his IQ. Instead, he learned the value of quietness and solitude.

Shift your mind set from being a talker to a listener. It has been said that you can make more friends in 5 minutes by becoming interested in others than you can make in 5 years of trying to get others interested in you! How do you become interested in others? You ask questions and then keep your mouth shut!

Dale Carnegie wrote a best selling book entitled ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People.’ One of the key premises of this book was that everyone’s favorite subject is actually themselves and that the sweetest sound to their ears is the sound of their own name. Einstein knew this and realized he could influence others by choosing his spots to speak and validating others by extending them the courtesy of listening.

Memory Power – Blaine Athorn Video Training Seminar

Memory training can be beneficial for students and business professionals alike. With information coming to us at a faster speed than ever, there has never been a more important time to enjoy the benefits of memory training. The fact is, most people never receive memory training in high school or college, yet the benefits can be immense. Whether it’s a clients name or a new product presentation, or studying for an exam, we could all benefit from using our memory more effectively.

Join memory training expert Blaine Athorn, as he guides you through the process of retraining your brain to be more efficient. In this session, Blaine will teach you his entire technique for remembering the things that are most important to you. You’ll learn how to use more of your brainpower in a whole new way, completely different from how most of us were taught to memorize. This memory training seminar is highly recommended to anyone serious about reaching higher levels of success and awareness in life.

As president and founder of The Memory Training Institute, Blaine Athorn has been involved in the communication skills arena for more than 20 years. He’s been a guest speaker at over 2,000 companies nationwide, and has helped simplify and revolutionize memory training so anybody can master it. In addition to custom designing workshops for corporations and organizations, Blaine Athorn has also developed educational programs for students of all ages. Thousands have applied these learning and success skill to increase their grades, self-confidence and enthusiasm for learning.

The Power of Your Beliefs

Your beliefs are the driving force behind your behaviors. Beliefs send powerful messages to your brain that affect your actions (and their outcome) in either a positive or negative way. Your beliefs will cause you to do one of two things:

Be fearful and RETREAT, or

Be empowered and ACT!

That’s how powerful your beliefs are. Your beliefs about failure, risk-taking, and success will either cause you to repel success, or act and attract it to you. Success takes two ingredients: belief and time. The more belief you have, the less time it takes.

How can you ensure your belief system is empowering and is actually attracting success to you? Three things:

First, it is imperative that you are making daily efforts to get the negative messages out of your life. You need to create an obsession with filtering what you allow in. Television, newspapers, some movies and songs, negative thoughts and people, all need to be limited – even banned from your day.

Second, you need to expose and replace the negative beliefs you presently have. Think about what you say on a daily basis. Observe your habitual behaviors in different situations. Tell the truth. Expose these negative beliefs. Only then will you be truly free. Then, replace these negative beliefs and bad habits with empowering ones. Think on these new thoughts and beliefs about success and over time you will retrain your mind and change your heart.

Lastly, create a compelling vision of your success. Craft a picture of you – as the person you want to be – in your mind and THINK ON THIS throughout your day. Not only with this vision put a smile on your face, this habit will actually create success.

Remember middle school science class? You learned the difference between potential energy and kinetic energy. Potential energy is energy waiting to happen. Not until it’s moving and active will you see it in its kinetic energy state. When it’s in the kinetic state it is a reality. Wow! That means you can create reality (the kinetic energy) with your thoughts and beliefs (potential energy). Never underestimate the power of your beliefs!

Change Your Beliefs and You Change Your Behavior

Change Your Behavior and You Change Your Life!

Brian Tracy – Science of Positive Focus

From goal setting to the psychology of achievement, New York Times bestselling author and motivational speaker Brian Tracy knows what he is talking about. This powerful session on staying positively focused is filled with ideas for higher achievement. You’ll learn exactly what to do in order to the break negative patterns that are stopping you from reaching your next level. Goal setting is one of the core skills for creating your ideal life. You’ll discover the critical steps necessary to stay focused on your goals and make the goal setting process fun, instead of a chore. You’ll also get the motivational boost you may need, to follow through on your goals and keep yourself in balance. Loaded with great ideas and philosophies for the achievement of big dreams, this power-packed training video is one of Brian Tracy’s best ever.

Brian Tracy is one of the most in-demand speakers in the world on the subjects of goal setting, success and personal performance. He’s a dynamic and entertaining presenter, teaching critical laws and important ideas on how to reach higher levels of achievement. Brian Tracy is the author of numerous bestselling books and audio programs on achievement, and has appeared on countless television and radio shows. In addition, he is featured regularly in major publications across the country, and overseas. Brian Tracy has also conducted high-level consulting assignments with several billion-dollar-plus corporations in strategic planning and organization development.

Look Out, Baby, I’m Your Love Man

Les Brown and his twin brother were adopted by Mamie Brown, a kitchen worker and maid, shortly after their birth in a poverty-stricken Miami neighborhood.

Because of his hyperactivity and nonstop jabber, Les was placed in special education classes for the learning disabled in grade school and throughout high school. Upon graduation, he became a city sanitation worker in Miami Beach. But he had a dream of being a disc jockey. At night he would take a transistor radio to bed where he listened to the local jive-talking deejays. He created an imaginary radio station in his tiny room with its torn vinyl flooring. A hairbrush served as his microphone as he practiced his patter, introducing records to his ghost listeners.

His mother and brother could hear him through the thin walls and would shout at him to quit flapping his jaws and go to sleep. But Les didn’t listen to them. He was wrapped up in his own world, living a dream.

One day Les boldly went to the local radio station during his lunch break from mowing grass for the city. He got into the station manager’s office and told him he wanted to be a disc jockey.

The manager eyed this disheveled young man in overalls and a straw hat and inquired, “Do you have any background in broadcasting?”

Les replied, “No sir, I don’t.”

“Well, son, I’m afraid we don’t have a job for you then.”

Les thanked him politely and left. The station manager assumed that he had seen the last of this young man. But he underestimated the depth of Les Brown’s commitment to his goal. You see, Les had a higher purpose than simply wanting to be a disc jockey. He wanted to buy a nicer house for his adoptive mother, whom he loved deeply. The disc jockey job was merely a step toward his goal.

Mamie Brown had taught Les to pursue his dreams, so he felt sure that he would get a job at that radio station in spite of what the station manager had said.

And so Les returned to the station every day for a week, asking if there were any job openings. Finally the station manager gave in and took him on as an errand boy – at no pay. At first, he fetched coffee or picked up lunches and dinner for the deejays who could not leave the studio. Eventually his enthusiasm for their work won him the confidence of the disc jockeys who would send him in their Cadillacs to pick up visiting celebrities such as the Temptations and Diana Ross and the Supremes. Little did any of them know that young Les did not have a driver’s license.

Les did whatever was asked of him at the station – and more. While hanging out with the deejays, he taught himself their hand movements on the control panel. He stayed in the control rooms and soaked up whatever he could until they asked him to leave. Then, back in his bedroom at night, he practiced and prepared himself for the opportunity that he knew would present itself.

One Saturday afternoon while Les was at the station, a deejay named Rock was drinking while on the air. Les was the only other person in the building, and he realized that Rock was drinking himself toward trouble. Les stayed close. He walked back and forth in front of the window in Rock’s booth. As he prowled, he said to himself. “Drink, Rock, drink!”

Les was hungry, and he was ready. He would have run down the street for more booze if Rock had asked. When the phone rang, Les pounced on it. It was the station manager, as he knew it would be.

“Les, this is Mr. Klein.”

“Yes,” said Les. “I know.”

“Les, I don’t think Rock can finish his program.”

“Yes sir, I know.”

“Would you call one of the other deejays to come in and take over?”

“Yes, sir. I sure will.”

But when Les hung up the telephone, he said to himself, “Now, he must think I’m crazy.”

Les did dial the telephone, but it wasn’t to call in another deejay. He called his mother first, and then his girlfriend. “You all go out on the front porch and turn up the radio because I’m about to come on the air!” he said.

He waited about 15 minutes before he called the general manager. “Mr. Klein, I can’t find nobody,” Les said. Mr. Klein then asked, “Young man, do you know how to work the controls in the studio?”

“Yes sir,” replied Les.

Les darted into the booth, gently moved Rock aside and sat down at the turntable. He was ready. And he was hungry. He flipped on the microphone switch and said, “Look out! This is me LB, triple P – Les Brown, Your Platter Playing Poppa. There were none before me and there will be none after me. Therefore, that makes me the one and only. Young and single and love to mingle. Certified, bona fide, indubitably qualified to bring you satisfaction, a whole lot of action. Look out, baby, I’m your lo-o-ove man”

Because of his preparation, Les was ready. He wowed the audience and his general manager. From that fateful beginning, Les went on to a successful career in broadcasting, politics, public speaking and television.

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