One of my favorite mentors during the beginning of my personal development career was a guy by the name of Matthew Ferry. I’ve learned many amazing concepts about the law of attraction, the universe, synergizing, and several others.  However, one of the most concepts I’ve ever heard was the six steps to mastery.

1. Formulation

• Create a clear vision for your goals
• Make a decision as to what you want
• Create a step by step plan
• Look into who needs be involved with you
• Make an announcement about your intention to anybody and everybody (the universe)

2. Concentration

• Start taking action (get to work)
• Work with your plan (modifications or small changes)
• Get the ball rolling
• Consistency is what will be the decisive factor to take you to the next phase [critical]
• You’ll be doing a lot of work and see little to NO RESULTS
• This phase is compared to you being a hamster on a wheel

3. Momentum

• This is the phase where you’ve learned a few tricks allowing you learn effectiveness
• You finally start to see some results
• The following phase begin to inspire you, Stabilization

Momentum KILLERS:

• No system or lack of structure
• Ego (Dam I’m good! Check me out now!)
• Momentum killers can take you back a phase as they slow down your growth

4. Stabilization

• Repetitious Boredom – you find yourself not caring as much as you use to when you prospect for new business
• You finally have systems in place that allow you to become automated
• You have a strong structure with statistics and predictable numbers
• Consistency*
• Organization and constant planning
• Empowering other to manage your systems (delegation)
• Big results happen in this phase

*Don’t change things that are working
*Don’t experiment unless there is a reliable system in place.
*Instead, ADD NEW THINGS

5. Breakthrough

• Sudden or unpredictable bursts of results
• Everything begins to speed up
• You must stay calm and simply deal with the power and velocity
• Your communication skills becomes one of your most vital tools (staff, customers, affiliates)
• Be certain everything around you is supported and organized
• Your breakdowns will become opportunities for you to go through break throughs
• After you have your breakthrough, you must go back into stabilization

6. Mastery

• Excellence is achieved
• DO NOTHING AND HAVE EVERYTHING OCCUR
• Everything delegated
• The business has a life of its own
• Everything is done by people who are better than you

Set Backs

1. Breakdowns

• You aren’t doing the things that got you into the momentum
• You stop following your routines, schedules, and processes
• You become distracted by things that may seem like they are important
• You stop following your plans and begin to break promises

2.Disasters

• Managing emergencies instead of processes
• Stopped doing the plan a while back
• Stopped following a schedule, routine, or rituals
• Started lying or hiding the truth about daily activities
• Lack of communication

Achieving the phase of Mastery would be every entreprenur’s dream. Are you will to do whatever it takes? Which phase would you consider your in right now, and why?

Has there ever been a time in your life where someone said something to you that hurt you? Maybe it was someone really close, maybe not, but whatever was said still affects you today? Most people have had some kind of experience in their past that actually prevents them from getting the results they want now, in the present, which ultimately affects their life in the future. Fortunately, our minds are like VCR tapes, they can be recorded over on. You can literally replace an event that’s happened to you in the past with something different or modified.  Can you imagine how much less resistance you’ll have to move forward if that particular event didn’t affect you the way it did?

The following are the 5 steps that you need to go by to reprogram your brain. You can do this yourself, but it would much better if someone did it to you. I’ve written the steps like a script so you can just read it verbatim to yourself or when you do it to someone else.

Step 1

I want you to go back and experience the last 40 seconds of an event that has happened to you in the past that still negatively affects you today. I want you to see the person who is saying the things they are saying. I want you to hear the person who is saying the things that they are saying. I want you to feel the feeling that you felt when the person was saying those things. Close your eyes and begin…

• What feelings did you get as you played the event in your head? Hurt? Sad? Angry?

Step 2

This time do the same as Step 1 with a few changes. I want you to think you are sitting in a movie theater and watching the event unfold on the movie screen. Change the following about the person who is saying the things that give you the negative feelings you get.

• Change this person’s nose to a big red clown nose.
• Change the voice of this person to sound like Mickey Mouse or the Chipmunks.
• Picture this person picking their nose while talking.

When ready to play the movie, make sure that those three things are happening at the same time… Let’s play the movie!!

Step 3

Now let’s play the movie in slow motion. You see the big red clown’s nose and the person picking their nose. You also hear the Mickey Mouse or chipmunk voice as the person is saying the things this person said.

Step 4

I want you to float out of your movie seat and go sit by the projector. I want you to observe yourself sitting in the seat watching yourself on the big screen as the incident is playing. Everything is the same as step 2. The big red clown’s nose, Mickey Mouse or the Chipmunk’s voice and picking his or her nose while saying the things this person said. I want you to fast forward through the film.

Step 5

Now think of the same incident again. What feelings are you getting?  Your sad, hurt, and angry feelings should be gone  and transformed into some kind of humor or amusement.

I can take a guess and bet that most of you who read my blog and the other blogs out there on personal development get some sort of “high” with every new article. When I say “high”, I mean in the sense of empowerment. To go even further, you feel as if you are doing yourself a favor by learning about new ways to take your life to the next level. Now, the obvious question is, are you? After you read one of my powerful articles, do you really go back to “reality” and take action on this new information you just learned about? Has there even been a time when you read an article, then just forgot about it?

“Forget it about it”

Chances are that you’ve read dozens and dozens of articles on the web about how to do “this”,  what to do with “that”, and 18 million steps to be “something”, etc. Do you ever get an empty void type of feeling that tells you, “I need more…”?  The truth of the matter is that most of the stuff you read, whether it be online, in a book, or at a seminar, you will forget about within 1 hour to give or take a few days. You, like most other people, just have that feeling inside that tells you to keep reading, keep studying, and wait until you have everything single bit of information you need, before you take action. Why is that? The answer lies in the ‘fear department’. It could be you fear of failure, rejection, success or a number similar issues. So let me start by saying that the average person will usually forget almost 80% of the information they learn every day. Chances are by the end of this day, you will probably forget most of what you’re learning from this article. Well it’s wasn’t necessarily your fault in the past, but it will be after you finish reading this…

Take Action

The most successful people on the planet can take bits and pieces of information from a few pages in a book and implement it in their business right a way. Not only that, but these types of people are not afraid of failing. In fact, one must fail forward fast if your interest is in growing and moving forward.

Here are different ways we learn according to the William Glasser’s Institute.

• 10% What we READ
• 20% What we HEAR
• 30% What we SEE
• 50% What we SEE and HEAR
• 70% What we DISCUSSED with OTHERS
• 80% What we EXPERIENCED PERSONALLY
• 95% What we TEACH TO SOMEONE ELSE

Obviously the best way for you to retain information is by teaching someone, but how can one teach someone something they haven’t done themselves. So what the statistics above should tell you is that the sooner you learn something new, the faster you better take action on it, since the quicker you do, the better you’ll understand it.  As you begin to shift your mindset to this new style of thinking, I want you to go back to a time when someone told you to do something and you did it. What happened? Were you instantly satisfied with the results? Let’s take the time you learned to drive a car. You read about it, you took action and followed through with what you read and then you practiced it. Sooner or later after that moment, you practically mastered it or at least allowed yourself to do it as if it were second nature.  Pretty powerful, isn’t it?

Since your beginning to understand the urgency of this issue, I need you trust me and pay attention to what I have to say. After you read this article, I want you to read one of my previous articles or download my book, 7 Day Persuasive Communication and immediately take action. It’s very simple guys and gals, learn something new and do it right away. If you don’t, then consider yourself to be as useful as a computer, full of information, but you probably won’t make a dime off of it. I guarantee that if you do what I say, you’ll see better results than you would by reading 5 books back to back.

To recap, read an article of mine, my 7 day course, or even someone else’s blog for all I care and figure out a way to APPLY IT in your life seconds or even moments after your finish reading it. Write a comment and share your experiences with me below.

So those of you who have trudged along with the hordes of people to see the newest sensation Bruno might be wondering why on earth Sacha Baron Cohen is still alive, let alone incredibly successful. Why do we enjoy watching this man do things that even in our worst nightmares we would never ever do?!

Well actually, believe it or not, Sacha has displayed a drastic example of something that we as a society love- risk takers! We all admire the entrepreneurs, the sky divers, the rock climbers, the men and women who take chances! And the reason is simple: People who take chances and are not afraid are the ones who are incredibly successful within our society: at both dating and business!

What we all love about Borat and Bruno is that because he lacks any inhibition (and when I say any I mean any) to do the things he does we see him as a tremendous risk taker and therefore we psychologically, unconsciously admire him! We admire his confidence, his quick wit and the fact that he is seemingly comfortable and even enjoying the situations he puts himself into.

So Sacha Beren Cohen has given us a great method for developing confidence- leave your comfort zone! The reason why people don’t succeed is because they find a situation they are comfortable with and they refuse to leave. But we here at Styles of the Mind refuse to allow that to continue! You deserve to be as successful as Bruno and therefore this article is going to give you a list of challenges you can do that are going to be both fun and develop your confidence beyond anything you will ever imagine.

Now of course, we are not suggesting you dress in your skimpiest outfit and wear a suit made entirely of Velcro…but here are some things that might be more up your alley! If you truly do these exercises I swear to you that you will immediately see an incredible difference in the way that people react to you and deal with you. You will become powerful and influential quickly. (By the way, do all of these things with a friend who is willing to push you. Push each other to complete these challenges)

The Challenges

The Subway Challenge

Those of you living in New York may have had the good fortune of running into myself or Mo Mehlman doing our now legendary subway speeches. Here is what you do. While on a bus or subway you get up and in front of the entire subway car or bus profess your love for literature, tell a fun soliloquy, a poem, sing a song or anything else you might prefer. Check out the video below of me performing the Subway Challenge:

The purpose of this is simple. After getting up and giving a speech about nothing to an entire subway car full of people it will be a cinch to go ahead and flirt with that cute guy, or make friends with random people in a lounge. At least you don’t have an entire subway car looking at you whilst you speak.

The Umbrella Challenge

This was a suggestion given to me by an avid reader: Basically go into a mall, open up an umbrella, walk around (indoors) and start conversations with people. When asked why you have an umbrella open indoors simply declare: “because of the rain of course”.

The Forehead Clock

This is a particularly fun one also taken from classical psychology. Paint a blue clock on your forehead with the time on it and then walk around asking people for the time. (There is actually a difference between using blue and red. Ill let you find out what the difference is. If you really want to know drop me an email.

The Sky Stare

This is a fun one. Go to a central place with a few friends (you need around four) then all you need do is get you and your four friends to stand there and stare up at the ceiling. Do this for about three minutes and you will actually find that other people will stop and simply stare at the ceiling along with you. Staring at nothing of course is the general idea.

The Peacock Challenge

Find an incredibly crazy hat, an incredibly crazy jacket, put the two together and then walk around and talk to people. Of course I don’t suggest you do this at your best friends birthday party but rather at a place where you will not be recognized and you can be free to experiment to get out of your comfort zone!

You will find that people’s reactions to you tend to be amazingly different than normal and not in a bad way. In a surprisingly good way.

The Random Opener Challenge

This is an important one and I again want to stress how important it is for you to have a friend who will push you and help you to do these challenges. This challenge is to walk over to a random stranger and ask an incredibly strange question, my favorite for this being, “Excuse me, where can I get a stuffed monkey?”

The purpose of this is simple. After asking this sort of strange question to a random stranger walking over to somebody who is a possible business connection or date and asking a normal question is going to be incredibly easy!

The Yoga Challenge

This one is simple. Find a group of people, doing yoga, exercise, jogging, or even standing around talking and walk over and join them! Say this as you join them: “Sorry I am late everyone, traffic was murder” and join in on the exercise. (Those of you located in New York, visit central park on a Sunday and you will find plenty of yoga groups I promise you.)

So all of this sounds intense, after all would you actually go and do these things? Well yes, those of you who want to head out and have a good time while actually doing challenges that will tremendously up your confidence level should call a friend, print out this article and immediately get a move on. After all, you have no idea what you are missing out on until you try now do you?

And remember this: If you are afraid to do it, you have an obligation to yourself to do it! Take a chance, take the risk and grow as a person!

About the Author: Yehuda Neuman is a widely renowned relationship expert and dating coach as well as professional sales consultant for some of the largest companies in New York City. Visit stylesofthemind.com and follow him on twitter or facebook:

In time, Spielberg became a studio regular, produced a short film, and eventually was offered a seven-year contract. Knowing what you want and pursuing it with great passion will help you to become that.  Since your beliefs determine your actions and your actions determine your results, it makes perfect sense that a positive outcome is affected by a positive attitude.  The most powerful words you can speak are the ones you say to yourself.  I have developed a three-step plan to help you stay motivated and inspire you to create your future.  I call it the T.A.B. Plan.  (I like to use acronyms because it helps me to remember each step.)  Think It, Act It, Become It.  This three-step plan works for everything you do.

STEP ONE:  THINK IT

Anything you can conceive, you can achieve. The very moment your mind conjures up an image, a dream, a visualization, you are one step closer to making that become a reality. When you have these thoughts, you are setting a plan into action. You have the ability to create anything. The more you talk about your plan and the more people you tell, the more real it becomes. Imagine that you want to become a millionaire. I had a goal to be a millionaire by the age of 25 and I achieved it. How did I do it? I started to create that thought process of what it would be like. I started to talk about it and constantly tell people I was going to be a millionaire. In fact, I told people so often they actually began to believe me. I asked myself, “What are the characteristics of a millionaire?” I had to think about my belief structures that would support my desire. I asked myself important questions that would affect my achievement. Would I have to conquer my fear of public speaking? Would I have to learn how to be very good on the phone? What would I have to become as a person to become a millionaire and be that successful? I had to get my thought process in motion on all of these questions in order to have a clear vision of what I wanted.

STEP TWO:  ACT IT

Once you’ve set the plan in motion by creating a goal, you’ve got to move on to step two.  You have to believe that your goal is simply your future spoken out loud today.  Start living your life as if that goal was, in fact, a reality that very minute.  Everything you do must reflect your desire.  For me, step two required me that I start acting as if I was already a millionaire.  I started to imagine and pretend and visualize as if I was the pinnacle of success. I acted like I was the top income earner at my company.  When you act it, all of your actions will reflect that you are really a millionaire.   If you want to be the best, you have to have the characteristics of being the best.  Show up early.  Be on time.  Take better notes.  Read more books.  Go the extra mile.  Why?  Because that’s what someone who is at the top would do.

STEP THREE:  BECOME IT

Once you’ve thought about it, set your goal, and start to live your life as if that were the way things really are. Ultimately you become it. People see you in that way because you have total self-belief that is real. I became a successful millionaire by age 25, meeting my goal, and even surpassing it.

How “It” Changed My life

When I started to practice the three principles of the T.A.B. Plan, everything I did seemed clearer and more achievable. That is the true power of the spoken word. It is every aspect of who you are and what you become. When we started our Company , we set our first goal to be a $100 million dollar-a-year company and to impact 100,000 lives. The first time I stated this goal was in front of 350 people at our convention in Las Vegas. No other network marketing company in the history of the business had ever reached this goal. I had only heard of one other company that had set their sights so high. I had heard (though never actually confirmed) that another company had accomplished this goal, and I believed that if they could do that so could we. It wasn’t until after we achieved this dream that I found out that this other company had never really hit their goal. In fact, they’ve since gone out of business. I had established our goal on a false belief that it was possible. In the end, it was possible because I believed that we could make it happen. That we had the power to make this seemingly impossible goal, real. I got up on stage that day and I spoke those words, and this was the biggest dream I could think of at that moment in my life. My mother’s words, “Dream big dreams, small dreams have no magic” were running wildly through my head. That commitment, those few words, started everything in motion that has became our reality.

Everyone who attended that convention was talking about it when they left, and they told everyone they knew. I knew that we would have to apply the principles of T.A.B. because almost everyone thought we were crazy. That such a huge goal was, well, impossible. I knew if I could get them at least thinking about it, that eventually I could get them believing it. And if I could get them believing it, I knew we would become it. Even my uncle, a member of my own family, thought we were aiming just a little too high. When I walked out of the auditorium that day, he was standing with some people and they were guessing where we actually would be in two years. My uncle was pretty sure we’d be doing $4 million a month, but we had to be at $8 million to make our dream a reality. I pulled my uncle aside and I said to him, “If you’re going to be on our team, your answer needs to be congruent with our goal – $100 million a year, $8 million a month. Believe it, speak it, and soon you will develop that belief.” From that day forward, everyone in the company was taking about our goal. Even though we only had four employees at the time, we had them put stickers on their computers in the office that read “We’re is doing $8 million a month by this date.” And you know what? We met that goal in our 13th month of business, 11 months early, and we made history by becoming one of  the fastest growing company in the industry.  Not bad!

About the Author: Jason Boreyko was the CEO & Co-Founder of a start up company in Scottsdale, AZ which grew into a $220 Million Dollar a year business with over one million distributors, created 40 Millionaires and generated over $350,000,000 in commissions for its members. Learn more about Jason by going to his website: www.jasonboreyko.com

In NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), State Calibration are just “indicators” of a person’s state. When the red light is on on the oven, it mean it’s heating up.  When you’ve calibrated a person, you can know that a specific person a brow furrowed, right eye squinted and hunched means they’re perplexed.  Therefore the “brow furrowed, right eye squinted and hunched” state is like the red light on the oven; both the red oven light and the furrowed brow, squint, and hunch serve as indicators for what’s going on “inside”.

How Do You Calibrate a State?

When you see a person having a unique body posture, or movement, you ask them what they feel, and if they respond, you’ll know that that specific external body language, posture, breathing, and the like corresponds to their state!  ANY time you see them with “brow furrowed, right eye squinted and hunched, ask them what they’re feeling.  If they respond, you’ve just successfully calibrated their state!  Now whenever you see that external body language, you will understand that for that person it calibrates to “perplexed”.

A green light on the oven could mean, “cleaning mode”, just as someone who’s in a state where their breathing is steady, chest out, and smiling, and you ask them what they feel they’ll say “happy” you’ve calibrated that “breathing is steady, chest out, and smiling” to mean happy for THEM.  So to that specific person, just as the green light means “cleaning mode”, “breathing steady, chest out, and smiling” means “feeling happy”.  Now, “breathing is steady, chest out, and smiling” does not mean happy for every person; just that specific person. To continue the analogy to now an absurd level of metaphor (LOL!) everyone’s “oven” is built different with different indicator lights. The oven lights are just a metaphor for “external indicator” that calibrates to an “internal state”.

So Why is This Useful?

State Calibration has millions of applications, but we can focus on two: dissolving confusion and persuasion.   Having calibrated a state is obviously clarifying because it  decreases confusion from ALL of these external states and configurations of body posture, breathing cadence, brow, voice tone, etc, because now you know, after calibrating, those are indicators of internal states. If you ask them what they’re feeling (so you don’t fall into the trap of mind reading) and they answer with a response of their internal state, you have just calibrated their external sensory indicators to their internal state! Congrats!! Successful calibration!

Persuasive Calibration

Now let’s examine the persuasive benefits of State Calibration.  Let’s say you’ve calibrated a state when you notice a person has “dilated pupils, slumped shoulders, and tapping feet”.  What state does that calibrate to?  Well you ask them and they respond, “Interested.  I feel interested right now.” Excellent!  Now you know that whenever that person displays that “dilated pupils, slumped shoulders, and tapping feet” external behavior, then you know they’re interested.  Why would knowing their internal state be so persuasively valuable?  Let’s say you’re offering this person a sale and he suddenly pops into his “interested state” but SAYS “The price is too high; I don’t have my heart set on the product.”  If you hadn’t calibrated, you might have sold the product to him for a lower price.  However, the calibration master would demand the sale as is or even increase the price!  Why?  Because the person who has calibrated already knows that this person is clearly interested.

Additionally, you can know when you’ve successfully put someone into a state.  What if you’ve calibrated a woman to “aroused” or a prospective client to “attentive and eager”.  You know when your communication is successful because you have those calibration “lights” that flick on revealing to you that your communication is effective!  All the best communicators and the most persuasive people utilize state calibration because everyone needs “checks and indicators” for if what they’re communicating is working or not!  You need feedback for what and how you communicate and all the lights start flashing and you can learn to read a person “like an oven” with effective state calibration!

About the Author: John Thomas Kooz also blogs on Validate Life

Culture

Culture is a way of being and doing. It is so much a part of who we are that, like fish who cannot understand water until they are pulled out of it, we do not see the effects of our own culture on us. Cultural influences are most visible when looking at other countries and societies.

What strikes us is how strange other cultures are. How can they possibly believe that? Most people would question why someone would be willing to sacrifice their own life for their culture.

What does your culture tell you is worthwhile? What does your culture tell you is worth sacrificing your own life? Everyone, in any culture, will know the answers. It will seem so ‘common sense’ that these, and other questions are simple.  No one asks where the ideas come from.  Our own cultural influences are mostly hidden from us. And no matter how the answers differ from one culture to another, each person will be convinced that theirs is the correct answer and will feel it deep in their bones. Culture is like that. Don’t underestimate it.

Culture Goes Deeper Than You Think

It may surprise you how far back your cultural training goes. Surely, being right or left handed, or the sounds our mouth and tongues make, or the things we can and cannot eat – those are inborn, right?

Wrong.  There is a preference for one hand over the other before birth (as shown by thumb/finger sucking behavior) and if ‘left alone’ by culture, this will remain the dominant hand. However, cultures haven’t always stayed out of the picture. It takes about 8 months to switch from one hand to the other (as demonstrated by people who lose the use of a dominant hand).

In Britain, during the 1970s, a study was conducted that showed while more than 10% of the population started out left-handed, the population over 55 was down around 3%. What happened? The explanation is cultural.

Because of societal prejudice in the 19th and early 20th centuries, left-handedness was seen as a detrimental trait. A trait that could keep you from getting married and reproducing or one that had to be ‘beaten out’. Thankfully, this has changed. As cultures came to accept left handers (and even value them in some sports) the number of people born with a left-handed preference remained left handed. When cultures change, people change.

Culture also determines the sounds you are able to make with your mouth. Humans are born as natural linguists, able to speak any human language at all. This ability, found in young children, is lost as age increases and we are then only able to correctly pronounce our native language. We are born mimics, and our culture tells us, and shapes us, to make the sounds required to fit in.

How Culture Affects Communication

Culturally based communication styles cause problems when parties do not recognize relevant cross-cultural differences. People tend to think that everyone uses the same rules and meanings. An American, for instance, usually uses an informal speaking tone and adopts an open and honest style in negotiations. This is also reflected subconsciously in their body language.

But there is no universal, cross-cultural mode of communication. Americans tend to smile a great deal, even with strangers. It’s seen as just being friendly. In other cultures, a smile may indicate embarrassment or even be insulting. Even such common, subconscious movements, like shrugging, or rubbing one’s forehead, can be misinterpreted and have great significance in other cultures.

A good idea would be to identify these often subconscious speaking and body language habits. If they can be made visible, and if they can be understood, they can be used consciously to great effect.

Beliefs

Beliefs are opinions and ideas about things for which there isn’t enough information available to say, “I know.”

The difference between beliefs and culture is that while they both give us ‘truths’ of a sort, culture moves very slowly compared to beliefs. Culture changes over generations, beliefs can change overnight. Throughout your life there will be periods where beliefs change. They disappear, get stronger, and new beliefs arise as old ones are abandoned. Some changes are obvious – Santa Claus and the tooth fairy are two we usually abandon fairly soon. Religious conversion (either towards or away from) is a powerful belief change.

The important thing is to understand that shared beliefs encourage rapport. When you run into a belief that strongly contradicts your own, you are most likely to reject the person who holds them as being stupid or crazy. But, of course, our own beliefs aren’t stupid or crazy. Are they?

Well, we used to believe the earth was flat, Pluto was a planet, ‘bleeding’ someone could cure disease and women weren’t smart enough to vote.  Stupid? Crazy? Not at all. Remember, beliefs fill the gap when there aren’t enough facts to actually know.

Recognize that others hold beliefs contrary to your own. Forget actual truth value, beliefs only seem true because they haven’t been proven false. Beliefs are powerful things and often resist change.

Past experiences

How you react to the events in your present circumstances is based on similar experiences you’ve had in the past. This is a great convenience to us, but is prone to mistakes.

The expedient part is that we don’t have to rethink every small part of our daily experience. A thousand minor events are dealt with nearly subconsciously. Everything from tying our shoes, buying gas, even reading and writing – all these skills are stored as memories. And we don’t have to relearn each task. The mistakes happen when we misuse or misapply our experiences. Americans have some difficulty driving in Europe. The same task that is automatic at home suddenly becomes difficult ‘on the wrong side of the road’. Of course, there isn’t a right or a wrong side. It’s just that our experiences no longer match the world around us.

Less obvious to us are the day to day mistakes – the assumptions we make, based on past experience, about new people. Slurred speech means they are dumb. Wrinkled clothing means they have sloppy work habits. The list of prejudices is endless. But memory is a powerful thing. If you’ve had difficulty with computers, and you need to use a computer, the whole experience is going to be shaped by your past experience. This may even congeal into a belief – computers are hard to work with.

April, 2007, Virginia Tech. 32 students are killed by Seung-Hui Cho. Although his motivations were complex, one thing is clear from the statements he left. His fear and loathing for society at large had been building for a long time. Labeled years before as having a social anxiety disorder, Cho’s experiences were of rejection and bullying by his peers. He found nothing of value in society and said, “You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option…You just loved to crucify me. You loved inducing cancer in my head, terror in my heart and ripping my soul all this time”.

Experiences matter. They accumulate and contribute to our model of the world around us. And a different set of experiences makes a different person. You are not just what you do, but what you have done. The paradox is that every new activity is different in some ways from the remembered one. Finding and exploiting these differences is key: knowing how much, and how little, to rely on past experience.

Become a Powerful Influencer

Now that you have a much better understanding on why people do what they do, you will find it much easier to “relate” with people you talk to. It’s not about you, it’s about the person in front of you.

Not Even Trying

Has there ever been a time you wanted to do something, but got very nervous and didn’t go through with it? Maybe something like not taking an open shot during a basketball game and instead passing it to your teammate. How about picking up the phone to make a sales call, but rather thinking about what else you can do right now so you wouldn’t have to dial the number. Has anything like this every happened to you? If you aren’t willing to admit, I sure am.

I used to be the type of person who would pass the ball to my team mate even though I was wide open to take the shot only so I wouldn’t feel embarrassed if I missed it. I would also be the type of person who would rather not speak up because I was afraid to be rejected by the response I get. This made my life very mediocre, boring, and unfulfilled.

Who Cares?

Finally, I reached a breaking point and decided that if I don’t make a change, I will continue to be unhappy.  I started doing sales and overcame my fear of getting “no’s”, failing, embarrassment, rejection, and almost everything else that gave me a negative mindset.  And ever year after I turned 18 (no significance to that particular number) I decided I would change myself and adapt to how I need to be to become successful. My new mindset had the “who cares” motto attached to it.

• Who cares if someone doesn’t like me?
• Who cares if people think I am not good at something?
• Who cares if I get embarrassed?
• Who cares if I miss a shot?
• Who cares if someone tells me no?
• Who cares if I make a mistake?

Many things in life are uncertain, but one thing that is for certain is that you will fail over and over again. Sometimes you will fail only once before you succeed and other times you will fail 9,999 times before you succeed. In the words of Thomas Edison, “I didn’t fail, I learned 9999 ways that wouldn’t work”. Talk about a powerful mindset. If you were to gain control of your mindset in that way, would you see better results?

What You Can Do Right Now!

Success depends on the results you are able to get. No results, no success. If you already know that most of the time you must fail in order to see results, shouldn’t you fail forward as fast as you can? Are you still scared? If you are, why? Rejection and embarrassment are all in the same category as failure. If you are scared to fail like how I was when I was younger, your mindset will remain undeveloped and you will find yourself missing out on a lot of what the world has to offer. I know I did.  Luckily, I was able to turn myself around when I did so that I can finally begin to set myself up for a healthy and successful future.

Here is how you should start:

1. If you notice an opportunity, go with your first thought and move forward with it.

With this type of mindset, I could of scored a lot of points when I was playing basketball. Sure I might of missed some, but 3/10 is much better than 0/0. Have you ever passed up on an opportunity that ended up going mainstream or big time? Life in general is a risk. If you play it safe the rest of your life, I assure you that most of your dreams or wishes will never come true.

2. Fail forward fast.

I’ll probably get a lot of heat for this one, but you must fail in order to learn, grow, and gain experience. Everyone fails at something in their life and that’s perfectly normal. It will only make you stronger. Sometimes people fail over and over again i.e Thomas Edison, and it’s their persistence which finally leads them to some success.

3.Be comfortable being uncomfortable

I’ve said this several times before in my previous blog posts, and I will continue saying it future blog posts. Do things your uncomfortable with to radically change your mindset. If you find yourself taking a step back from something, take one leap forward.

4. Talent

If you want to be good at something, it takes practice and many years of it. This also means many years of loosing, failing, embarrassment, etc.  Look at any successful person’s track record and you will find yourself in a pool of failure

This entire article was to show you that if you don’t try something, you won’t ever know whether you can do something or not.

Not taking the shot is the same as missing the shot, so instead, how about you just take it?

The Worse Thing That Can Ever Happen

Unfortunately, most people will begin or have already began to perceive our current economic situation in this negative way. People who have this perception usually say things like:

• “There aren’t any opportunities…”
• “The US economy is terrible right now…”
• “Everyone is having a hard time…”
• “Who knows when this thing will turn around…”

You get the point…

These are people who do not understand that regardless of whether the economy is good or bad, it is still a pretty equal playing field. What I mean by that is most people face the same challenges you face with no advantage in particular. The economy has not slowed down for just you, it slowed down for everyone.

People with this perception also have a tendency to become lazy, frustrated, angry, and depressed.  All negative feelings that not only prevent you from personal growth, but they also prevent you from achieving success.

Let me tell you that these negative feelings do happen to the best of us, but the difference between the two  types is that the  ’your chance to make it big’ people are able to better communicate positivity and action to their minds.

Your Chance to Make it Big

Luckily, some people have more control over their thoughts than others which allows them to have a much more positive and in some cases profitable perspective than others.  Even though the economy is challenging, this group tends to view it as their chance to make it big. These people say things like:

• “I’m going to work my butt off…”
• “It’s my time to shine…”
• “While everyone is wallowing in their misery, I’m going to make it happen…”

Big difference in the way they speak huh?

The reality of our current situation is that during times likes these, people put their creativity on ‘high’ allowing them to create more and more ways of becoming successful and prosperous.

Take a Few Steps Back for Every Giant Leap Forward

I originally re-reminded of this idea when I read Tom Gorecki’s Blog on “Are your parents doing more harm than good” Now given the topic is a bit different, but the message most definitely applies. To those who are suffered with the challenges of moving back in with mom and dad, I say do it.  This is something I define as taking a few steps backward. For those who can, it is totally worth moving back in with your parents to save a thousands of dollars a month.  That money you save can be used to help you make more money. Once you have more money to play with, you can learn the ideology of using your money to make you more money. My friend Neil Patel is a Internet mogul and is proud to live with his parents!

The time for you to work hard is right now. By you working hard and taking those few steps backwards will help you take some giant leaps forward as the economy starts to turn around. I always say that if you can become successful in or during this economic situation, you will able to succeed anywhere no matter what.  That is a pretty bold statement and should not be taken lightly.

Taking a few steps back

• moving in with someone
• stop spending money on ‘wants’
• cut out traveling
• start studying and learning (investing time)
• limit taking days off
• taking on a part time job
• taking a pay cut

It is usually hard for people to take a few steps back because they automatically begin to think each step backwards is negative.  If you take a look at almost all of the successful people in this world, most of them had to take several steps backwards various times throughout their life in order for them to get where they are at today.

Work While Others Sleep

Now you do not have to take this in literal terminology, but it would be in your best benefit to spend more of your time working both on your business AND in your business. Working in your business means that you are developing new business while working on your business is honing in on your skills. For example, working on your persuasive communication to learn the language of persuasion. Being able to communicate effectively is working on your business.

I cannot tell you enough that if you are spending your time moping about why all this is happening to you, why you got laid off, why you are not getting paid as much, why are you getting all these bills that you cannot afford, you are heading down the wrong path.

First

Change the questions you ask yourself.

Second

Write a 90 day plan of action and follow

Third

If you have extra time, and even if you do not, make extra time and work on your business

Giant Leaps

You want to take giant leaps, then be comfortable with setbacks. Imagine yourself as a slingshot.  In order for the slingshot to work, you must pull it as back as you can. After you let it go, it can launch something 100x the distance you pulled back.

Decide right now to be comfortable taking a few steps back because it can help you go 100 steps forward.

Which direction are you stepping towards right now?

Why do you use excuses? Is it the fear of failure? Fear of success? Is it because you are lazy or just not motivated enough? What ever excuse you have for using excuses, drop em’. Excuses allow you to get away with something you are too scared to do because you feel uncomfortable. You give out excuses because you want to avoid potential embarrassment, failure, or even success.

STOP USING EXCUSES!

It is simple really, follow the steps bellow:

1. DO NOT Tell Anyone Your Excuses.

Even if an excuse pops up in your head, DO NOT repeat it out loud. The more people who know about your excuses, the more they will hold you accountable to them. As I have wrote in previous blog posts, sharing your goal with everyone is the secret to success because of the high level of accountability. Sharing your excuses is the negative version of that type of affect and will result in your mind subconsciously validating that excuse. This is similar to being sick with a small cold or flu. The more people you tell about being sick, the worse and worse you will feel.  There are a number of reasons why people like to tell others they are feeling sick. One of which is the obvious excuse of getting out of situation and the other is getting some sympathy votes.

2. Handle Your Own Objection

An excuses is really an objection in your own my mind, so handle it. Question yourself if your mind tells you that you cannot do something. Always look for an answer. People who can do this go from regular to great and great to master. Take Matt Scott for example (guy from the video).

3. Like Nike says, “JUST DO IT”

This is one of the most popular slogans of all times.  It does not take a rocket scientist to interpret this message…

4. Be Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

One of the major reasons you use excuses is because you may sometimes feel uneasy and uncomfortable.  What most people do not understand is that being uncomfortable is not just a good thing, it is a GREAT thing! I personally love to be in uncomfortable situations because it gives me new experiences and most importantly,  it helps me grow mentally.

Get To Work

One of the most over used and understated quotes I have ever heard while working at the Mike Ferry Organization was, “You can make money or make excuses, but you can’t do both”

What is the lamest excuse you have ever used?