Surprising Reminders

It had been quite a few days since I’d been to my office, but when I went in recently, I was surprised to find 3 books on my desk from years ago, all signed by the authors. I took them home with me to refresh my memory as to why they were out.

The book that really caught my attention was Leadership Fitness by Homer Rice, so I re-read parts of this great book. I didn’t remember Rice from past years, although I’m pretty sure I did meet him. I was, however, very pleased to see that the foreword was written by my very good friend Paul J. Meyer. Paul was a very smart guy who made a fortune and became my hero and mentor. Sadly, he passed away a few years ago.

Paul really liked Rice’s book. He made this statement about it: “Homer identified, from his comprehensive reading, the significant elements of success: attitude, desire, belief, visualization, spaced repetition, habits, and focus.”

I was super surprised at how much I learned going through Homer Rice’s book. He reminded me of things I knew but had stopped using. Oh yes, he wrote about things that I had been writing about and preaching at my seminars, like how critically important it is to set goals and how super critical it is to write down those goals with a time limit on them. But what I hadn’t done in the past was to set goals in all the many other areas of my life.

Homer Rice writes that a person should set goals in every part of their life, not just in regard to business and money. Goals for family, friends, donations, traveling, and more should be included. For example, travel goals for me would include going to different cities and neighborhoods, as well as different countries, especially since the mind and the body really crave novelty and making lists. Putting a time limit down to accomplish those items helps tons in seeing them get done.

Reading through Rice’s book, I became really motivated to set more goals and go after them with energy and passion. Although I was surprised at how inspired I became re-reading this book, the real surprise came at the end of the book where he listed “Suggested Titles to Read”. In that list of books, I found Financial Genius by Mark Oliver Haroldsen. I was surprised and even a bit shocked to see my name. Remember, I’m not sure I ever met him, but he knew me, or at least knew of me.

I’ll try not to get a fat head over his recognition of my book. I totally love helping people and seeing so many people become super successful or more successful is just as much of a thrill as having that success myself.

So, I do encourage you to pick up Homer Rice’s book, Leadership Fitness. It’s very helpful in many ways that go way beyond just making money. You might also want to look up some of the work by Paul J. Meyer. These are two really smart men who have a lot to teach us.

A Sign for Unconditional Self-Acceptance

A few weeks ago, I wrote about “USA”, an acronym for Unconditional Self-Acceptance, discussing how we should think about what that stands for anytime we are down on ourselves for doing something stupid or worrying about tomorrow. When a psychologist introduced me to that term and encouraged me to think about that when I’m down on myself, I put that to work on my brain. It turned out to be very, very mind boosting.

After a while, however, I realized I wasn’t thinking about that as often as I used to, so I did something to help me remember it, putting it into regular use when needed.

What did I do different? Well, I kept in mind that when I set a goal and write it down, I am so much more likely to work on that goal. I figured I could make writing things down work for this too. I took a large piece of paper and a black magic marker and wrote in big capital letters: USA. I put it on my bedroom wall where I could see it every day, many times a day.

That little step has helped a ton. The human brain can be so fantastic and little things like posting a reminder on my wall really helped my brain to keep it at the front of my mind as well as helping me to not be so hard on myself. 

Yep, positive self-talk is such a great thing for us humans and little things like a piece of paper with a message on it can help more than you might expect.

So, if you are being hard on yourself for some mistake you made, or worrying needlessly about something in the future, just take time to think about “USA”. Go a step further even and post a reminder in a location where you’ll see it often. Go ahead and do it now and see how well that works! 

The Challenge of Retirement

For those of you that have recently retired, or if you are approaching retirement and doing some planning, there are a few unexpected surprises that might be waiting for you. At least there were for me.

I had looked forward to being retired and having all that extra time to do anything I wanted to like travel, play more tennis, and just have a great time. Well, I must tell you, when that day arrived, I was in for an enormous surprise.

I don’t think most of us realize what a great challenge retirement can be. It didn’t hit me immediately, but after a few months of it, I found myself going stir crazy. I came to realize that we humans need structure and a routine. Without that, we can become very frustrated. I talked to a few friends that had retired a year or so before I did and they told me that the same thing hit them. We all need a reason to get out of bed in the morning and I didn’t have any routine or daily plans to motivate me.

At that point, I began to see how very important things like going to the office and interacting with others were for us humans. I missed the social part of my work life and struggled with feelings of worthlessness because I wasn’t producing anything. We thrive on being productive which helps those around us and lifts our brain and lives to a higher level. Sure, I can travel more and have great fun hanging out with my kids, grandkids, and friends, but we need to be contributing to our lives and the world around us in some way as well.

My advice to everyone is to plan for retirement, not just financially, but in what you will do with your time. Make lists and talk with others that have retired or are heading that way fairly soon to see what, if anything, they are planning. It’s a good idea to look at your life and think about what brings you the greatest pleasure and what stimulates your brain and then see if you can build your retirement around those things.

Patrice Jenkins, PhD, wrote a brilliant book called What Will I Do All Day? Wisdom to Get Over Retirement and on with Living. In the book, she offers some great advice: Creating meaningful work in retirement provides an opportunity to step out of your comfort zone. If you’d like to, you can redefine yourself try something new and different. In retirement, you have the freedom to be anything that suits you.

Even if you are many years away from retirement, it’s not too early to do some thinking and planning now. I think you will be very glad that you did when those retirement days come around.

Narrow Your Focus

I know I’ve been talking a lot lately about acting on your goals, but there are smart ways to go about that and not so useful ways. So, this week, I wanted to talk about a really important part of taking action that makes the action you take not only more productive but makes it far more likely that you’ll achieve those goals. What I want to talk about is summed up really well in this quote:

Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all of your energies on a limited set of targets. — Nido Qubein

How true. Trying to work on all of your goals at once requires that you split your time and resources among them. That makes it far less likely that you’ll accomplish what you’re after, or at least not to the extent that you might have hoped. But what if you spend all your time and resources on just one goal?

For example, maybe you’d like to be a great at a bunch of sports like tennis, baseball, hockey, and football. Can you imagine trying to work out, learn, practice, and play all four of those sports at the same time? You might be able to do it, but you wouldn’t be great at any one of them. Now, if you picked just one sport and put all your energy and practice time into improving your skills and stamina in it, don’t you think you’d be very good, if not great, at it in a fairly short span of time?

If you have set multiple goals this year, take a step back and choose just one or two to work on for now. Pick the most important or the most urgent. If you choose two, try to pick ones that are in two very different areas of your life. For instance, you can work on jumpstarting a new career while aiming to do some sort of exercise every day. With those goals, you won’t be trying to focus on more than one objective during any one part of your day.

I’m not saying you need to put aside or forget your other goals. You can always work a little here and there on them, preparing for the time when you can give them the focus needed to work on them productively. You just need to keep in mind that you should concentrate on a “limited set of targets” so you have enough energy and enthusiasm to take the action needed and be super successful!

The Responsibility of Knowledge

Here is a very simple thing to think about for our lives as we head into a new year. 2022 is going to be a good one for you, especially anticipate having the best for you, your family, and your friends and then work hard to make it that way.

I just read a great little piece by Carlos Castaneda about what it means to be “a man of knowledge”. I wanted to share it with you, my readers. I did change it a bit to make it a “person” of knowledge as I this applies to all humans, not just men.

A [person] of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what [they] will think when [they have] finished acting… [They] know that [their] life will be over altogether too soon… [they] know, because [they] see that nothing is more important than anything else… Thus a person of knowledge endeavors, and sweats, and puffs, and if one looks at [them, they are] just like any other ordinary [person], except that the folly of life is under control. Nothing being more important than anything else, a [person] of knowledge chooses any act, and acts it out as if it matters to [them. Their] controlled folly makes [them] say that what [they do] matters and makes [them] act as if it did, and yet [they know] that it doesn’t; so when [this person] fulfills [their] acts [they] retreat in peace, and whether [their] acts were good or bad, or worked or didn’t, is in no way any part of [their] concern.

So, what are you doing, or will you be doing, with the knowledge you have? I think that would be a great focus for the new year. Let’s look at our lives and consider the things that we know but aren’t acting on and make it a goal to act on all this great knowledge we have.

Stimulating Passion

Most every human being loves their passion. There are so many ways to go after and build such passions. Some of these come easily and automatically, such as when we were young and everything was new. Those new things made our passions rise. That first day of school, seeing old friends and new, could be a quick and huge hit on the passion button.

In my book How to Ignite Your Passion for Living, I make the point that, from my experience, passion can start to fade a bit as we age. But, thankfully, passion can be manufactured. All you need to do is put something together in an unusual, better, or at least new-to-you way.

One of the keys to manufacturing passion is to set difficult objectives and work towards them. I clearly remember when I was 27 years old, and I set a goal to make a net worth for myself of $1 MILLION by the time I hit age 30. What a huge turn on that was for me. It raised my passion level big time. I was one year late in hitting that goal, but having that huge and exciting goal really kept me and my passion going.

From about age 25, your brain produces less and less dopamine and serotonin, the hormones that help you feel good and fan the flames of passion. Although a child’s body is awash in these hormones, we need to work on stimulating our system to produce more of these hormones as we age. We can do this by eating the right foods, exercising, and, most importantly, setting the right goals that keep us going after them.

Renewing your passions can really show you what you and your brain can do. It can give you a ton of energy as well as raising the quality of your personal and business life.

One of my biggest passions is travelling. I’m talking about everything from huge international travel, like going around the world on my honeymoon, to just driving through a neighborhood that I’ve never visited. I’ve been to 94 countries and still feel my passion rising just planning a trip to a new place, even if it’s a small country or an old neighborhood.

Passion for living comes and goes. Our big challenge then is to figure out what our passion is, what turns our lights on and gets us excited. When we figure that out, we can do it more and more. And it’s always a good idea to write down our passions and the goals that keep them going so it will stick in your brain, pushing you to do it and to keep doing it.

Your Book, Your Life

In my previous two posts, I wrote about my great younger brother Scott who died a couple weeks ago and how devastating it was to me and his kids and grandkids. However, he did something recently that has helped me and others a ton. He wrote a book about his life as a cop, and it was published just a few days before his unexpected death.

Now I’m reading his book, Cop Living On The Edge. It has lifted me so much since his death. It’s very well written and tells of his many dangerous and exciting experiences as a cop living in Denver, Colorado. It brought him back to life for me. That’s the power of books. They can really lift your spirts and your mind.

And this, my friends, is a very good reason for people to write a book. It doesn’t matter whether you can find a publisher that will print and distribute it because you can do that yourself. You can even print just a few copies.

Why would anyone want to do that? Because you could be helping your family, your kids, your grandkids, and, yes, even your great-great-great-grandkids. The book will be there long after you’ve passed on to whatever comes next! (I sure hope there is a “next”!) All those humans can benefit from your words and life experiences. And those that didn’t know you when you were alive can be inspired by your life and your legacy. The book can teach others through the things you’ve learned and experienced, showing them what motivated and pushed you to bigger and better things in this life.

Don’t think you can’t write your own book just because you never thought of yourself as a writer. You simply take it small and easy at first. Just write a little at a time and I think you’ll be surprised with what you come up with.

Personally, I started by writing in a small diary. Back then, I never saw myself as a writer and certainly not a writer that would sell 2 million copies of my first book and write 8 more books since then. I then changed to writing in a journal and, from time to time, I would go back and reread what I had written and make improvements and changes to make it better. I would strongly suggest you do the same. I think you will be surprised and pleased with what you come up with in the long run.

Just think of how your family and friends will be lifted to a higher level and love you even more long after you have checked out of this world because of your book. It doesn’t have to be a how-to or motivational book, just the story of your life, what you have learned that helped you enjoy and lift your life to higher levels, and insight into the things you loved that made you very happy and satisfied!

I challenge you to start on your own book. Take that first step today. I’m pretty sure you’ll be very glad you did!

Let Your Mind Take Over

This week, I want to continue with more revelations buried in the Bunker Bean story.  

If you read the previous posts about this book, you might recall that the character Bunker Bean was tricked into believing that, in his former life, he was the great Napoleon Bonaparte. Believing this really lifted his life to great new heights. But then, later on, he discovered that his friend, the spiritualist, the one that convinced him of his past life, was revealed to be a fraud, a man who lied to others to obtain their money.

Bunker Bean was crushed by this revelation. So, he hadn’t really been Napoleon in a previous life after all! He was just plain old Bunker Bean. But the news came too late—in a good way! Bunker realized that it didn’t matter who he’d been in a former life. What mattered was what he had allowed himself to become in his present life.

His spiritualist friend had helped Bunker to believe in himself enough to change some of his attitudes, habits, and behavior. Bunker had learned to form a game plan based on what others had done in the past that made them super successful. He had learned the value of studying the thoughts of great men. He’d learned how to make those thoughts of success his own thoughts. He’d also learned the need for a goal and the need for a detailed method to reach that goal. And he found out that one must follow his method religiously.

The story of Bunker Bean is told as fiction, but, actually, his story is as true as any told. The principles of his success, as outlined above, can be the principles of each of us and our success. But to make those work, we must learn the truth about ourselves and the truth is this: each of us has the potential and ability to succeed if we believe in ourselves enough to make it happen. We are what, and who, we think we are.

How much do you believe in yourself? Are you a great person? If you answer “no,” then ask yourself why not? Your answer needn’t be no. Each of us has the potential and ability to succeed if we are willing to pay the price. Start by setting goals. Set those goals high, then let your mind take over. Let it figure out how those goals can best be accomplished and be sure to write them down and put a time frame on them. In doing so, you may see yourself turn out like Bunker Bean!

For Love of Work

Last week, I said I would tell more of the story about Bunker Bean who I spoke about in the last couple of posts. However, I am going to do that next week as I have something else I want to share with you first.

Recently, I was thumbing through a great book that I read years ago entitled When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough by Harold Kushner. As I always do when I read a book, I wrote down many of the most interesting, helpful, and motivating quotes and comments that the author made. These notes are a great way to go back and easily refresh my memory since they highlight those points that hit me the hardest and helped lift my thoughts, actions, and life to a higher level.

Here are some of the points in this book that really helped me, especially the comments about work and how important it is for all of us:

l. Work can be the scaffolding that holds up our adult lives. (I need to keep remembering this as being retired makes it more difficult to find and do the best kinds of work for me.)

2. The key to one’s happiness is to find pleasure in our work and to use our abilities–no wasting them!

3. Our souls are hungry for meaning.

4. We work for meaning. We work so our days will not be empty of meaning!

5. Do not expect that life will always be fair.

6. For ultimate satisfaction, lower the level of what you want to what you already have.

7. The affliction which drains so much of the sense of meaning from our lives these days is that disease of boredom.

Kushner makes several other notable points in this book that are not easily summarized and put into a list. For example, he writes, “Asked, “’What do you do?’ we invariably respond in terms of our work, not our hobbies or organizational commitments,” implying that work is often our identity.

About himself, he notes that, “I work because I have a family to support and bills to pay. But I work also because it puts me in touch with people and helps me think of myself as a competent, contributing person.”

Kushner also writes that “there is something satisfying about being challenged to do something hard and then doing it. I think it must have been what Ecclesiastes had in mind when he said to us, in effect, ‘If you are not going to win a Nobel Prize for your work, if it is not going to make you rich and famous, it can still give meaning to your life if you take it seriously and do it with all your might.’”

I think the author makes many wonderful comments and offers some very helpful advice. It’s a great little book and I highly encourage you to get it and read it but, most importantly, LIVE by the advice that you think will make a big difference in your life, a difference for the better.

Powerful Duo: Belief + Goals

As I said many times before, “Your first step should be to set a goal.” That’s what Bunker Bean, the character I’ve been talking about in the book Bunker Bean by Harry Leon Wilson, did. He was determined first to learn all he could about Napoleon, who he had come to believe he had been in a past life. (See the last two blogs where I detail more about the Bunker Bean story.) Then he was determined to practice the principles that Napoleon followed and, as he did, he moved up the ladder in the company he worked for. 

Without a goal, you and I cannot go very far, which is exactly how far Bunker Bean was going until he met the spiritualist who made him believe he had been Napoleon. However, once you set your goal, funny things start happening in your head. Your point of view starts to change and suddenly you find yourself on a new, and much more productive, path. 

The process can be rather automatic. When you set a goal (and write it down) your mind starts working overtime, trying to figure out how to reach that goal. The mind will work on the problem even while you are asleep. It will work on it anytime it’s not otherwise engaged in important thought. 

So, the bottom line here is to set your goals high. Some things may seem impossible to achieve, but put your mind to work on the problem anyway. If you let it cook long enough in your head, a solution will be found. 

Whatever you do, don’t be like those who live well below their capacity. Set your goals high and then expand your capacity to meet them!  

Next week, I will talk about Bunker Bean finding out that his friend, the spiritualist, was revealed for what he really was — a fraud! I think you’ll be surprised to hear what happens to Bunker then!

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