TRIANGLE OF SUCCESS

Good day and I hope you are having a great week. Today I want to delve deep into what it takes to succeed.  I am going to explore the triangle of success as hinted  to in the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, and I will also relate that to the fact that there is no scarcity according to the Law of Attraction (LOA).

The principle of The Law of Attraction  states that there is no scarcity in the universe.  The Universe does nothing with strain.  We human beings have a hard time coming to grip with that fact especially considering the economic fact that  2-3%  of the population acquires and controls 97% of the wealth.  So how can I say that Universe does not do anything with scarcity and that scarcity does not exist? Scarcity is also a cornerstone in the science of economics.  What are my bases for advocating that there is no such thing as scarcity?

From the LOA stand point there is no scarcity. This principle can be demonstrated very simply by the fact that almost everyone at one point or another has ideas that occur to them that  they think would bring them wealth.  Think about yourself. Have you had some idea that you thought “oh my God this is the one. This would be what makes me a fortune”?  Those little gut feelings or inspirations that when they first occur to you, fill you with excitement, but then for one reason or another you brush them aside, or ignore them or listen to people who shoot holes in your dreams. Perhaps your previous beliefs make you think that it is impossible, hard to do, take too much capital, or that  it is out of your level of expertise.  From a Universal standpoint these vibrational pushes and hints are offerings  of opportunities.  The Law of Attraction dictates that whatever you give your attention to will attract more and more of the same.  When you are feeling good, and concentrating on bringing wealth, opportunities in the form of these thoughts occur to you. 

Now let’s discuss why 95-97% of the population does not follow through with these ideas?  In the great success book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill states that the three key characteristics of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford that made them successful were Persistence, concentration of effort, and definiteness of purpose.  These make up what I call the Triangle of Success.  In my previous blog I mentioned another quote by Napoleon Hill. He likens persistence to the character  of a man as carbon is to steel.  We know that in very few instances success comes immediately.  Libraries are full of biographies of people who have overcome amazing adversities to succeed.  So it is no surprise that success takes persistence. 

Concentration of effort is the opposite of being all over the place.  Scattering your energy and focus is what gives rise to procrastination.  Many people are very good at starting a  project, and have lots of ideas, but few are skilled at taking a project to its completion.  It is a scientific fact that you cannot concentrate on more than 3 important topics at a time and excel at all of them.   Anything more, destroys your focus and dooms the project.  I would go further and say that when you starting on your venture to become wealthy or successful, whatever that definition means to you, take one project at a time.  As ideas occur to you write them down and come back to them, but take one project to completion.  There is a psychological benefit to that  as well. When you finish something, you built in yourself the habit of following through with persistence and concentrated effort until you are done and you succeed.  This is a very important characteristic and habit to develop if you want to succeed in anything. 

Definiteness of purpose goes back to the core of what LOA is all about. You need to have a burning desire for what you want so when crap hits the fan you can have the internal fortitude to carry on.  If things are not important to you and if you don’t have a definiteness of purpose to follow through,  giving up is  very easy and excuses  will push you to other things, and  will get in your way.  So you see these three building blocks  of success will all feed into each other.  If you have read my book Road Map to Life, you know that the first step in setting a goal is to know exactly what you want and why you want it.  That is definiteness of purpose. Then you follow through with concentrated effort. Without the first you will not do the next step. Concentrated effort will then lead you into a focused mental attitude to be persistence and that will lead you to success. That will separate you from the 95% of the population who does not or is not willing to do what it takes.  That will make you a 3%er. 

I hope this was helpful, and as always I invite you to discuss what you read here on my Facebook Page and Twitter feed so we can benefit from different points of view.  Feel free to share this with anyone who may benefit from it and until next week, to your success.  

WATERCOOLER COMFORT ZONE

Good day and I hope you are having a great week. Today I am going to explore some social paradigms that may be harming you, even though you may think they are harmless.  We will explore their meaning from the stand point of The Law of Attraction (LOA) and see how they reflect themselves when it comes to pursuing the road to success.  Let’s dive right in.

Have you even noticed that most people, maybe even you, cannot wait to share with others when things have gone wrong? I have noticed this in myself.  I can’t seem to be able to control myself. I just have to tell people the bad things that happened. Is it because I am seeking comfort or validation? Is it because I want camaraderie? Is it because I have been conditioned by society to share bad things? Have you also noticed that when people share bad things with us, we just can’t help join in the sorrow and share our own bad experiences or validate their feelings? Are we trying to empathizes with them? Are we trying to show that we are also confronted with misfortunes? Are we seeking pity?  Or are we just trying to do what is “normal”?

Now consider this. Most people have a hard time sharing with others, especially those who are not in their close relationships, the good things that happen to them. Why is that do you think? Does is come off as showing off, or bragging? Does it look like they are rubbing our nose in it? Is it prideful or egotistical?  Funny isn’t it, how societies reaction to bad things seems to be ok and even encouraged in the name of empathy, but sharing of positive things is seen as somehow not classy or within socially acceptable behavior.  Think about your own reactions in the past when someone you did not know really well, was excited about something great that they achieved or had happened to them.  What is your reaction when someone tells you they got a really great deal on a house, or you see or hear on the news that so and so has won the lottery?  Is it resentment? Is it envy? Can you be honestly happy for them? But then most people have no problem empathizing with disaster, or accidents.  Take a look at our news if you think I am making this up.  What makes up the bulk of news programing? Have you heard the saying “if it bleeds, it leads”?  Does this seem right to you? Am I not stating the obvious?

At the risk of being redundant, I am going to go into The Law of Attraction’s perspective of these incidences, since after all this blog is about LOA.  If you have been reading this blog for any length of time and are familiar with the concepts of The Law of Attraction, you can see where I am going with this. That is the recognition I want to bring to your attention in this post.  When we associate negative vibrations to good things, we are actually pushing them away from us.  Worse yet, by associating negativity to good things, we are actually anchoring negative feelings as triggers to when things go well for us. Is there any reason why “good times don’t last”,  when you are conditioned and create these triggers for yourself?  Conversely when we are attaching one of the highest vibrational feelings to bad things, like love for those who are devastated, we are again anchoring positive vibrations to bad situations, and then we wonder why bad things keep on happening over and over.  We attract to our reality what we give attention to with our feelings.  Feelings of love and hate are extremely powerful vibrations.  Is there any question why the Universe is confused about what you want? You say you want wealth, but when you hear a news of someone winning the lottery you are filled with negative feelings of envy, or disgust.  Yet you say you don’t want to experience bad situations but you are sending out the feeling of love and empathy when you see victims of fires and floods on the news. 

I am not saying do NOT be compassionate and do not have empathy.  Let me make that very clear.  This is an educational post, designed to get you to understand that what you do unintentionally is programming your subconscious to create your reality.  I am trying to shed some light on the subject so you can recognize and use these feelings as a manifestor rather than just someone who is experiencing things by default.  I cannot tell you what the right response is in any situation.  That is because I cannot feel what you are feeling in different situations. What I can teach you, is to take control of how you respond to good things and bad things.  Do empathize with victims. Send a donation check and send love and good vibration and think of the good your donation will do. See the victims getting back on their feet.  Do no delve on their sorrow and wallow in their pity.  When you hear good news, be happy, and also empathize with the winners.  Share your wins with others, and feel pride and gratitude instead of ego and superiority.  What you concentrate on will keep on happening in your life.  Concentrate on the good things.  Supercharge good things with your emotions.  Monitor your feelings when bad things happen and make sure they do not reach your subconscious without your input by default. 

I hope this post made sense and has stimulated your thinking.  Share with me your thoughts, and lessons on my Facebook page  and/ orTwitter feed.  Feel free to send this post to anyone who can benefit from it.  Until next week, to your continued success. 

LEARN FROM 3RD GRADERS

Good day and I hope you are having a great week. Today I am re-visiting some basic principles that will help you make the most of using this thing we call The Law of Attraction (LOA).  I say basic principles because they are well known and are core principles to the working of this universal law, however by no means does the word basic mean that they are easily understood or used properly by everyone. 

You have perhaps heard that, to be able to use The Law of Attraction successfully you need to know and ask for what you want. When I talk to people around the world, in my workshops, and training groups, it is amazing how little people really know about what they want. It seems like a simple question right? Try this for an exercise, write down 20 things you really want. Do it right now. I will wait. Do it and then come back to this post. It is well worth it.

Are you done? Did you even do the exercise or did you just said oh yeah I know that stuff let’s just see what he is saying next.  I was like you. I used to speed through the blogs, and teachings,  hungering for knowledge and tools to get going with the LOA.  I DON’T BLAME YOU. I just want to point out that knowledge is NOT necessarily power. More knowledge will not get you there quicker unless you understand and PRACTICE the knowledge and can put it into action. Reading about something without actually practicing the principles will give you very little to no results. That’s right. You heard me right. I am talking about zero results.  So go and do the exercise. Write down 20 things you want. Thanks.

Ok, now I am hoping most of you have done this. I can only lead you to water, I cannot make you drink it. What you want to gain from this post, and how much benefit you will receive is directly proportional to the amount of effort you put into doing what I ask you to do. 

If you are like most people the first 10 to 15 things came easily and then you had to really think. That is good.  You should do this at least once a month. Now go through your list and see how many of the things you wrote about are actually things that you DO NOT WANT TO HAVE IN YOUR LIFE.  Do you have any of those, “I don’t want to have any more credit card bills, I don’t want to be sick, I don’t want to work at  blank, I don’t want to have a mortgage, I don’t want the car I drive”…?

It is so natural for most adults to go to the things we don’t want when asked about what we want. It is a part of our cultural conditioning. All the negativity and gossip you are bombarded with on a daily bases for the past decade or so of your life has programmed you this way. I am trying to shine a light and make you take notice of this habit.  Whenever you write your goals or things you want, make absolutely sure you are writing about what you want and not what you do not want.

 

Recently I did a goal setting  and vision board workshop for a group of 3^rd to 8^th graders.  What surprised me the most was that unlike the adults that I work with, when I asked them what they wanted, not a single one of them told me things they don’t want or can’t have.  How cool is that?  Somewhere between early adolescent and adulthood we get lost in the negativity of our world. The good news is that even though that sneaked up on you, you can now  do something about it and change it. Don’t be too hard on yourself on this. It did not happen to you over night and it will also take some time to change the way you think. 

 

Recognition is a huge part of this process.  Success is a journey.  Learning to concentrate on what you want positively in the present moment is a huge part of making the Law of Attraction work for you.  Remember when you are concentrating on “NOT HAVING___” BLANK, you are actually sending the vibration of attracting more of the Blank into your life. What you are giving your attention is brought into your reality, because what you concentrate on is what comes back. Think of it like a mirror, if you frown you will see a frown in front of you. If you smile there is a

smile looking back at you.

I hope this was helpful. Please pass this along and share this blog and its posts with anyone who can benefit. I also would love to hear what you think, and weather this is useful or not on my Facebook page and Twitterfeed. Until next week, have a great time practicing what you want and to your success. 

HARNESS YOUR ANGER

Good day and I hope you are having a great week. Today I want to explore the use of negative emotions and how to take advantage of them. Throughout the teachings and exploration of The Law of Attraction (LOA) you have learned that whatever your feelings are vibrating now, will attract more and more circumstances to continue to feel that way.  Therefore many people surmise  that if they are feeling bad feelings, like anger, hate, vengeance etc., it is a bad thing.  I was in agreement with this statement for the longest time.  Then I started to look at some examples of really hateful and angry people  who are amazingly successful, are amazingly wealthy, have seemingly all their stuff together.  So I started to think about it with an open mind and tried to go out of the box.  Here is my conclusion for discussion here.

As human beings we have control over The Law of Attraction (LOA), in fact we are the only specie on this planet if not the universe, that can control The LOA.  We have a choice on how we feel, and how we use those feelings.  So the next time you are angry or are in a state of mind that you would normally think of as negative mindset or feeling, go ahead and direct that to the goal that you want to acheive.  I say that because anger and hate are extremely strong vibrations, and in our today’s society they are allot easier to reach. People get pissed off allot faster and easier than they can be at peace and in a meditative state.  I wonder if I get an argument on this point.  I hope you agree with that.  If you need proof, try to drive in a rush hour traffic on any major freeway in the United States for a few hours.  You need to use these opportunities.  What you need to do when you get angry, or you get upset, or in a mode of wanting to exact some kind of revenge, is to use that high vibrational state and concentrate it on the goal that you want, instead of letting it go out into your reality like a shotgun blast with no direct focus other than to amplify your blanket feelings of negativity.

 Here is the difference in the two modes of this process.  When you concentrate that feeling and that vibrational state on the goals that you want, for example if I am angry that I don’t have time to spend with my children due to lack of money, I will get that highly intense vibrational state and focus it on making a million dollars per year.  While I am in that angry state, I can concentrate on the fact that when I am making a million dollars a year I would not have this issue.  Get the “why?” of your goal to help you here.  How much easier it would have been. The fact that I can easily hire a nanny, or an assistant, I can just take time off when I want to because I have multiple sources of income etc.  So the anger has put me into a high vibrational state, but instead of trying to stop it and go back, and try to create an opposite high vibrational state of being happy and grateful for stuff that I have right now, I will continue  in the high negative vibrational state and focus that energy on the things that I want. More often than not you will realize that your feelings will start to change from negative to positive without having to stop on a dime and go back and do it all over again.

Whereas the shotgun approach of having no control over your anger and feelings associated with negativity , as most people do by default, means that you are sending out that high vibrational energy in a situation where you are not really in control. So now the focus of the energy is on you being “not in control” and of course you are going to attract more and more circumstances of not being in control.  Your high vibrations are saying bring me more of what I don’t want, because that is the reason you are presumably pissed.  If you are focusing your energy of hate and anger on something that you want, you are now in control of that energy and again by The Law of attraction you will attract more and more opportunities to be in control. In my example that would be earning over a million dollars a year. 

So I hope this is as beneficial to you as when I stumbled on it.  Please leave me comments and thoughts on my Facebook Page and Tweet me your opinions good or bad. We can all learn from each other.  Till next week, to your success. 

SHOPPING CARTS IN THE MIDDLE

Good day I hope you are having a great day.  The other day I was at Costco and even though I have seen this scene many times before in many places, it prompted me to write this post.  The question that I have is Why do people leave their shopping carts all over the place when it only takes a few steps to put it back into the return carts area? I thought about and brainstormed many possible reasons. Is it laziness? Is it people are not looking for the return area? Is it that nobody will know? Is it, it’s good enough if I just leave it here? Is it the thought that somebody else will take care of it? What is the reason that some people just leave their carts right there without returning them?

I am not talking about people who are handicapped. I am not talking about the elderly or people with some physical handicap that prevents them from walking that few steps. I am also not talking about those places that you have no idea where to put the carts or the ones which only have one on the other side of the parking lot.  I am talking about young, vibrant individuals that for one reason or another just don’t want to do this simple task even when the conveniences are readily available.  How does this relate to success or The law of Attraction you may ask? What is the point of this post?

Well when it comes to success principles as well as using The Law of Attraction (LOA), all the reasons / excuses, I stated above for not returning the carts,  are stumbling blocks to achieving greatness. All the reasons, like: nobody is looking, it’s good enough, somebody else will do it, why should I, I’m lazy, when trying to use The LOA to succeed or following any success principles are stumbling blocks in the way of your success.  Dave Ramsey said “how you do anything is how you do everything”.   It may seem to be a small little thing here that “hey I’m not going to take that extra 2 to five minutes to take that cart back to where it belongs, what’s the big deal?”, but if you take short cuts like this in little things, imagine what you do when things matter or when you are faced with bigger challenges.  If you can’t do the right thing when it comes to the easy stuff, what makes you believe you can do the right thing when things become harder?  In fact it is much more difficult. What you are doing here is you are training yourself to get used to a pattern of “taking the easy way out”.  It is a behavior pattern.

Visualization, one of the greatest tools of manifesting is thought by many people to be easy, but concentrating  and making your mind do what you want it to do is one of the hardest tasks that any person can accomplish on a consistent bases.  Success requires persistence,  and doing little things properly over and over.  If you cannot return a shopping cart to its proper place, you will definitely  not be able to succeed in amassing wealth or building a great relationship.  You may not agree. You may say but A.J. it is just a little shopping cart. I will do the right thing when things matter. Really? Only you can answer that. Actually I take it back. You have fooled yourself into believing that is the case. I am calling your bluff and I am saying you are full of S#@%.   I am pushing you here today and challenging you to prove to yourself you can do the right thing every time, and all the time.  You don’t have to prove it to me. Who gives a crap right? You have to prove this to yourself.  Success begins here.  Success begins with the little things. Success does not accept compromise.  Anything worth doing, is worth doing right is not a cliché of my grandfather’s generation.

Keep these things in mind. The LOA  is a very simple principles but it is by no means easy.  It requires you to do little things properly every time, all the time.  The principles of success are very straight forwards, but again they require you to do the little things the right way all the time, every time. So the next time you see shopping cars all over the parking lot, let it be a neuro-linguistic  anchor for you.  A reminder to ask yourself  “are you doing the little things the right way all the time, every time or are you taking a shortcut”?

I hope this post was productive and made you think.  Please feel free to share this with anyone who may benefit from it. I look forwards to your views and comments on this point on my Facebook Page and Twitter feed. Please click on the appropriate blue link and leave me comments or your thoughts. Till next week to your success. 

DO YOU WANT TO BE RIGHT OR DO YOU WANT TO BE HAPPY?

Good day and I hope you are doing well this week.  Today I want to explore the saying that “you can either be right or be happy” from the standpoint of the Law of Attraction.  Does there have to be a choice? Where is the line when it comes to your loved ones, your friends, your colleagues? How can you tell what to do? What is better? What if something is really important to you? Do you have to compromise?

You can probably see where I am going to go with this if you are a regular reader of this blog or if you have had experience with The Law of Attraction (LOA).  From The Law of Attraction perspective there is nothing more important than feeling good. There are times in my experiences, specially dealing with my children, that I feel my ego jumps in the way of my happiness and that prevents me from manifesting what I want.

Let’s get into the meat of the matter with a personal example.  If I only concentrate on being right when it comes to dealing with my children, the feelings that are generated are not usually very positive or productive.  Sometimes I justify this because of fear of a physical harm coming to them. At other instances I can’t even tell why I did what I did. I was not present in the moment.  The emotions took over and ran away and I was going by default reacting and letting my “so called reality” dictate my emotional vibration.  When most people are disciplining someone they rarely feel good about the process.  Looking at that from The LOA point of view we can see that when we start to feel negative thoughts, we will start to attract more and more opportunities to keep feeling negative thoughts. The next time you start to feel like you have to make a decision between being right or be happy, explore options to see if you can be happy and bring the other party to see your point of views  by positive reinforcement instead of negative reinforcement.  It will be difficult at first because we are so used to reacting in times like this. It will take a conscious decision to look outside of the box.  Don’t beat yourself up if you do not recognize the situation at first. Keep on trying and you will get better at it. 

When it comes to disciplining or mentoring, the old cliché that “you can attract more bees with honey than vinegar” is very apt.  Studies have shown that negative reinforcement, even though successful immediately, rarely change behavior long term.  Whereas positive reinforcement very easily, and more effectively  changes long term behavior.  When you are using positive reinforcement you are also feeling good not only about the situation at hand, but also about the fact that you can control your own behavior  and reaction in a situation that normally would evoke emotions that would lead you to spiral into a negative reactionary mood which would emanate negative vibration from you.  That is a big win. So it is extremely important for you to monitor your feelings when you are faced with situations that elicit your ego’s response to being right.  Try to plan ahead if you can anticipate situations that will be bringing to light this dichotomy.  When I take my children to the park or to a restaurant, I have to keep myself ready for times where they may not be acting properly, and when I plan for it, it is much easier to act appropriately as opposed to react to the situation.

When you succeed in working with this concept and practice with this principle you will very quickly realize that you can be both happy and right, however lead with your feelings rather than your thoughts.  Let you heart lead instead of your head.  This is especially difficult if you happen to be in a position of authority and your go to trigger is your mental faculties. It takes some rewiring of your responses.  In the long run it will be more productive and healthier for you and for those you love and work with. 

I hope this blog post was helpful to you.  Please do not forget to leave me comments and share your thoughts on the Facebook Page and / or my Twitter feed so we can benefit from different points of view. As always share this with your friends, and anyone who can benefit from it. Till next week to your success.  

CART BLANCH FOR FAILURE??? I THINK NOT

Good day and I hope you are having a wonderful day. Today I want to go over a topic that was pointed out on the TV series Shark Tank.  This is a lesson that most self-made successful business people learn the hard way. It is a lesson mentors try to drill into the heads of their protégés. Unfortunately like many success principles there seems to be a need for learning through mistakes the hard way.

The point is, one should never mistake persistence, with beating your head on the wall doing the same thing and expecting a different result.  Persistence is a fantastic characteristic. Napoleon Hill said that “persistence is to the character of man what carbon is to steel”,  so there cannot be enough said about persistence.  When you are in an entrepreneurial venture however, and trying to get off the ground, with excitement in your product, you tend to fall in love with your product. Especially if you are really passionate about the product you are involved with. When you make mistakes, that love of your product will prevent you from seeing the forest for the trees.

You have to listen to what the market is telling you. Rely on those cold hard numbers. If you have been selling  and putting money in a product for 2 or more years and the numbers are not showing you a success, or you are spending more money into the business than you are taking out, you need to take a good objective look at your business and decide if you need to change something before moving on, or cut your losses and move on to the next venture, because the market it telling you that it is not in love with your product.  Here the advice of good skilled professional advisers is worth its weight in gold. There is something to be said about marketing.   Marketing is a great skill set that is imperative to any business. I have heard it said a good marketer and a good salesman can sell ice to an Eskimo. Do you want to be in that type of a business though? Numbers  do not lie.  It is a mistake to lose everything you and your supporters have in pursuit of what you “think” is a hot product. The market is what determines the success of your product.  You should always keep your perspective open.

A great advice I have had from many mentors is to get a product I am working on, out into the market as quick as possible, and deal with improvement and fine tuning of the product only when the market proves to me that I am on the right track. That is a hard lesson to learn. I want to put out the best I can possibly make. Perfection however is a life long journey. It is also a good excuse for not taking action.  I can always improve my products, but if I am concentrating on a product that no one is interested in, it does not matter how perfect that product is. I will go broke.  I have made this mistake in real-estate a few times. I was so engaged in the deal that I did not want to admit I made a mistake so I kept on pouring more and more money trying to avoid the fact that I was wrong.  Instead of cutting my losses and moving on to another deal that was truly a winner,  I was stuck in trying and “hoping” to make the deal work.

The other side of the story is that while I may be putting all my energies, and capital  into a losing product, I cannot be concentrating on something else that may be more beneficial to the market as well as to myself.  When my concentration is focused on a losing product, I am blocking the inspiration and flow of the ideas that can become wining products.

Remember that the fourth step of goal setting  as I described in my book Road Map to Life: A real world lesson is coming up with a plan to get what you want. That step may be very vague when you start, but as you take action and receive feedback you need to listen to the feedback and modify your plans accordingly.  Do not give up if you see solutions that can be integrated into your plan of achieving your goal, but at the same time do not keep on doing the same thing over and over if you are not seeing a positive result.  There is something much better waiting for you if your feedback is such.  

It is  a very subtle distinction that we have been discussing here.  Many may feel this is a cart blanch card for GIVING UP. It is not. You know in your heart if you are just giving up or going after something that is not meant for you.  You will learn by practice which is true if you have not experienced it yet. It is a lesson well worth learning early in life. So set goals, and plans. Set them high, and go for it. Learn from mistakes and modify your plans until you succeed. If you are hitting a wall go towards your goals from a completely different stand point. Ask for advice from trusted advisers that have your best interest at heart. You can be what you will to be.

I hope you enjoyed this post. As always I urge you to comment and share your thoughts on my Facebook Page under this blogs thread so we can all learn from each other. Send me a Tweet at my Twitter feed, and share your thoughts. Till next week, to your success.