Inward Achievement

"What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality." – Plutarch

It’s kind of funny but I still am self conscious about doing my personal brain training in front of people. I really ought not feel that way but I do. My mentor tells me I NEED to do it in front of people to show them what I am doing to improve myself. I know I am a better person than I was a few years ago. I know that the result is from the work I am doing inwardly.

So here I sit writing this blog after having done my morning ritual of gratitude and planning. Linda is home for a week and I am a bit off my game. I miss Linda (I can tell you more about that later) and having her around I want t spend as much time with her as possible. So I am doing just that!

"What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality." – Plutarch

I am still struggling with all of this and sitting here at 52, I am pretty sure it will be a struggle for the remainder of my life. And I am OK with that. I am enjoying this “struggle”. It is a struggle of positivity and growth. It was harder when I was starting as I did not see any change at all. In fact it was horrible. I would spend mornings working on self improvement and not see any improvement, and most of the time actually saw things getting worse.

Luckily I had used Darren Hardy’s words, ideas and techniques from The Compound Effect and put them in my mind. I was EXPECTING things to get worse before they improved. But improve they did. And they continue to improve.

So what is my struggle now? It is I think that if I miss a day it won’t matter. It does matter. This is an uphill fight. Do you know what it is like driving a car up a steep slope? Or riding a bicycle up a steep slope? As soon as you slack off a bit your momentum doesn’t slack off a bit it drops drastically. Soon everyone is behind you and passing you. SO slacking off on my personal training isn’t about taking a break, it’s about letting my past catch up to me. NO WAY!

So my mornings aren’t really about doing this to show people what I am doing. It is really about keeping momentum on my personal growth and keeping my personal demons at bay. Once I have finished my thought training I go about my day in a positive mindset.

I believe in the concept of en theos (I likely spelled them incorrectly). The GOD WITHIN. I am not a religious man but I believe in the concept of good and evil. I also believe all of these “things” are not opposites but two sides of the same coin. So by expanding my mind positively I am polishing that side of the coin. If I want to continue to grow I must keep polishing the coin. I also believe that negative responses to my growth will come back to me more quickly than positive responses. The universe will pay me, quickly for negativity and slowly for positivity.

All of my inward achievements will eventually pay off. They are already paying off in improved relationships with everyone in my life. All of life is relationships. As these relationships grow and improve, as I can help more and more people, my life will be rewarded more and more. I am a rich man in spirit and in love.

Go in peace my friend and grow your soul to be expansive and helping. Be a servant to those that you come in contact with.

Great Minds Have Purposes

"Great minds have purposes; others have wishes." - Washington Irving

Another great thinker, Washington Irving. He’s even buried in Sleepy Hollow New York….. No you will look him up!

Great minds have purposes and others have wishes.

That says a lot doesn’t it. In this time of protests against the 99%, the Idle No More movement and others complaining and being alarmed about the 1% or 3% or 5% or whatever the mathematical formula is this week there needs to be thought going the other way.

I think the 85, 97 or 99% are wishing. If they ALL had purpose, then all of the wealth in the world would be re-distributed. There is more than enough to go around. BUT they only have wishes. I try not to generalize so I will speak ONLY of the people I am acquainted with that have participated in protests like Idle No More. They tend to complain about how such few people control all of the world’s wealth. They have wishes.

I look at anyone who is trying to create their own wealth. Are the major wealth holders of the world conspiring against them? Nope. In fact people who start to understand wealth understand one big thing. Wealth is infinite. And wealth means something else to each person – but it is infinite. If wealth were finite then I could see the richest people of the world getting nervous around people like Bill Gates, et al.

So what is wrong with wishing? Nothing. I wish people a good day. I wish people a happy birthday. I wish all sorts of things for all sorts of people. I just don’t wish for myself. I know I am going to have a good day, a happy birthday and much more. My life is my decision. My purpose.

Washington Irving hit it right on the head. GREAT minds have purposes. I live my life on purpose. I have goals and I will achieve them I do not wish for things to happen. I look forward to achieving all of these things.

I get tired of hearing people complain about things rather than work to improve their situation. I am not saying at all that it is an easy thing to do – to break away. In fact, the more young people I meet at high school the more I realize their mind sets are so ingrained that it would seem impossible to them. But it is possible.

One of my goals is to help 100,000 people realize they can have dreams and work toward them. I have been doing that with my students but that is slow. I am up to about 1,800 people in 26 years. The business I am building now can give me a platform that I can help hundreds every year. All I want people to know is there is a better life if they choose to have purpose rather than wishing.

SO if you are reading this and wishing for a better life do yourself a favour and start to live a life of purpose. Do things on purpose. Have a purpose and your will begin to reap rewards.

Wishing is for amateurs.

Be a professional.

Be a Crank

"A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds." - Mark Twain

I think the people with the most courage are those who do the right thing no matter what. I can’t remember who said it right now but the best I have heard is:

“The opposite of fear is not courage it is conformity.”

I look at people who are now called visionary who in the beginning were cranks. They were looked upon as being ‘out there’ when they first started doing their thing and then once they started to see success were finally accepted as visionary.

There is a lot going on now with the change in government in the US. Both ‘sides’ are being irrational in my mind. A lot of fear mongering is going on. There is one ‘crank’, a voice in the wilderness who is tirelessly telling people what is what. I am very interested to see what the population of the US will be saying in a year or so about this ‘crank’.

I see people around me who are brave enough to change the way things are done simply because they don’t care what others think about them. I believe the shackles that bind most people is the addiction they have to caring about what others think about them. I say be damned about what others think of you.

If you are progressing along your life path and doing things that are not hurting others, and in the long run will help others, then you are doing well. Who cares if others think of you as a crank? All of the great philosophers talk of taking the ‘road less travelled’.

Jim Rohn keeps talking about people who think it is crowded at the top. The bottom rings are where it is clogged. Once you climb a couple of rungs the air gets clearer, the sun shines longer. If the pack is going one way, you go the other!

There is a guy who lives across the road from me, Bill is his name. A number of people think Bill is a nice guy but odd. Bill traveled the world in his youth, was one of the first IT teachers at high school teaching computers when no one else was, led a small IT revolutions with a company here in Milton. Bill swam against the crowd. Bill was a crank. Be like Bill.

If you have a dream live it. Don’t give a damn about what other people think. Guard your heart and chase that dream. When you achieve it everyone will say WOW but again – who gives a damn about them.

Have a wonderful day and live life like a crank!

Make Your Life Count

"And in the end it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." - Abraham Lincoln

Profound words. Words I have heard before but oh so true. You know it is ever so easy to just have a crappy day. Or even worse, just live through a day without finding any joy in it. I would rather feel something, even if it is something bad than feel nothing at all.

It really is easy to find life in your years, your days, your hours, minutes. I am not as good at that as many people but I am so much better than I used to be. I try to find joy in “everything” I do. It is not easy but it is doable.

What I have been trying to do is take joy in what I am doing. No matter what that is. That sounds pretty insane to some people. Especially those who know me. I’m not the most tolerant of mundane jobs and my career is full of the mundane. That is just one way to put life into your years.

I have to ask myself a question, if I want to put more life into my years how can I do that? I think my answer is I need to help other people put more life into their years. I get so much juice from helping people see the joy in their own life it gives me joy.

Let me tell you about a kid at my White Oaks Secondary class. This kid is pretty quiet. I think he has learning challenges. He listens, tries to participate in conversation and generally is a nice guy. I think he has low self esteem though. I’ll bet you know the type of person I am referring to. He participates when we are in the greenhouse or doing practical work elsewhere but not much of a volunteer.

This week I asked for a couple of volunteers to clean and plant some clematis seed. This guy jumped right in. Now I was pretty pleased he wanted to help. But he was more interested in making sure he did the job right than I had expected. Clematis seed is tiny on a string of plant material (I think called a pappus but that matters not). He cleaned the seed very well and them followed my instructions and sowed that seed perfectly. Thank was last Tuesday.

Last Thursday I was in class again and because I get to class so much earlier than everyone else I went into the greenhouse to check on our seeds. Nothing going on yet as expected. About 1:15 pm, before class was to start in walked my guy and the first thing he did was go into the greenhouse to check on things. Now that is taking joy in your day.

I am not suggesting that we all need to find something passionate in to do every single day although that helps. I suppose what I am saying is take joy in every day. Some days you’ll just be weeding the garden and some days doing something more exciting. Leave your mark. And be a good role model. You can never tell the impact you’ll have on someone by showing them how to take joy in the small things.

Leave a legacy by having life in your years. I truly believe that is the best thing you can do. As Les Brown says, a legacy is what you leave in someone not what you leave for someone.

Experience is What You Do!!!!!!!

"Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you." - Aldous Huxley

What an amazing man Aldous Huxley was. I admit I have never read Brave New World but I have read a lot of his brief essays and items like that. He had an amazing upbringing in an extraordinary family.

We live in a world where most people complain about their circumstances. It seems 95% of people will say the reason something did or did not happen was the circumstances they were under and not their reactions to it. More people blame what happened to them rather than what they did in those circumstances.

I used to be in the group that blamed everything. I still do not know how I got there as I didn’t start out that way. My dad and my Uncle Ralph were the two most important male role models of my youth. Both of those guys would experience whatever happened to them and then deal with it. No complaints, nothing. In fact both would look at something like a rain storm when there was a lot of work to do outside and say something like, “Well now we can clean the garage, do this or do that….” My dad was a public accountant and did personal tazes for a LOT of people. I never heard him complain. He never talked about anything other than the things he was doing and where those actions were leading him.

Then I got into the “real world” where circumstances drove the results. I remember working in sales during a recession. Our sales group hit our sales targets. No other group did. The VP of sales asked how we did that. Honestly, at the time I did not know. But later I realized what happened. We realized that we could make our own circumstances. But slowly we fell into the deep pit of blaming everything else rather than ourselves for good things or bad…..

“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.” – George Bernard Shaw

I have been teaching for 26 years now. I look back on my students and see this 95:5 ratio in action. I teach about 20 students in each class. Now because I am teaching an apprentice class and therefore the ratio will be a little better in my classes because these are movers and shakers that start my classes. BUT STILL only 1 or 2 people in the class really want to improve their circumstances.

So I look way back to my dad and Uncle Ralph and am starting to re-program myself into making my own circumstances. I don’t care what happens to me, I will take the circumstance and bend it with my will to achieve my will.

I now follow Shaw’s words – if I don’t see the circumstances I see, I will make them.