Tag: Tony Robbins

BE YOUR OWN HERO

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Here is a picture I have up in my locker. In the past I have written and spoken about modeling people who have succeeded in your chosen field. I personally read and follow people like Tony Robbins, Les Brown and others that inspire me.

I stand by that idea and encourage you to do so, but there is another person you want to model, the best version of yourself. To me, “be your own hero” means to act in such a fashion that the things you do both inspire you and give you a sense of pride. When I help someone to see the beauty in themselves and the world around them, i am my own hero. When I work with someone to improve the quality of their products I am my own hero.  Even if I make a coworker or server smile, i consider myself a hero. The idea is to think of times when you were the best version of yourself and that is the goal you should aspire to. Look up to your heroes, Be someone else’s hero for sure,  but remember to be your own Jeri at the end of the day.

PLANT TWICE AS MUCH

Rodent
Rodent (Photo credit: thriol)

I am going to share a story with you that I heard listening to one of my favorite motivational speakers, Tony Robbins. This is a story about his former father in law that he heard at the man’s funeral. The man was asked what he was going to do about the rodent population in the area. He was asked if he had found a way to kill all of the rodents so they wouldn’t eat all of his crops. After a moment of contemplation the man answered “I’ll just plant twice as much” This struck a chord with me because it is often the choice a lot of us face in life. When there is something that bothers us we are focused on how to ‘get rid of the problem’. I hear this a lot in political circles no matter the party. “We need to get that guy out of office” I usually ask who they would like to see in office. After some look of confusion I usually receive answers to the like of “Anybody would be better” or even the occasional “Having nobody in office would be better” These people are so focused on the problem they have spent little or any time on the solution. I have been just as guilty of this. Before I began this blog I was focused on eliminating as much negativity from the world as I could. Sounds noble enough at first blush, but if you notice I am still focused on the problem, the negativity. I am focused on getting rid of something and thus, giving it all my time and energy. What did I really want? I wanted a more positive world. I heard a Mother Theresa used to say she would never attend an anti-war rally, but would be one of the first at a pro-peace rally. There is a woman who understood how the world worked. So instead of trying to eliminate the negative I decided to increase the positive! I started this blog. I began to be more positive in every aspect of my life and began work on my first book “A Happy Life for Busy People” which should be out in the next few days. The ironic thing about this, once I began increasing the positive the negative began to go away on its own! So next time you face a problem, instead of focusing all your energy on solving the problem, work more on creating a solution. A subtle difference, but a powerful one to be sure! Remember to plant twice as much!

EMBRACE FAILURE

Adaptation of above image illustrating an Inte...
Adaptation of above image illustrating an Internet meme (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I do a lot of talking about goals on this blog, which in a strange way is rather ironic. If you had asked me 2 years ago about goals the mere sound of the word would’ve caused me to go in the opposite direction. Goals brought up a feeling of deadlines and the possibility of failure. Neither of which sounded overly pleasurable to me. What if I don’t make this deadline? Do I want that hanging over my head? What if the deadline comes and I fall short? What if I fail? Sound familiar? I actually found myself fearing goals. If I never set a goal I could never fail. One problem with this. I am also a procrastinator. I never realized that part of my reasoning for not setting goals was that it would force me to take action which I was uncomfortable doing. Then I heard a couple of phrases that changed the way I view goals altogether. Funny thing is they were not about goals or goal setting. They were about the one thing I feared the most – failure. Who wants to fail? You look foolish, people think less of you, it may discourage you from trying new things. That is what I thought. Then I heard the phrase “the key to success is massive failure” I couldn’t comprehend that Until I listened to one of my favorite motivational speakers, Tony Robbins. How can failure lead to success? Well in my own world I notice my fear of failure was actually keeping me from trying new things. If I never tried, I could never fail. Then I had to question my definition of the word failure. In essence to me it meant not achieving a certain end you had set out to accomplish. Now it may mean something slightly different to you, but in general I think we are close here. I realized by fearing failure I had not tried, therefore I had not accomplished much of anything. It was keeping me from learning and growing. I also had to ask myself the tough question “what happens when I do fail to reach my goal? What happens when I fail?” Again I thought of Edison and his quote about having to try 10,000 different materials to find one that worked as a filament in a light bulb. When someone asked him how he could keep going after failing so many times. he responded “I didn’t fail, I just discovered 10,000 ways that didn’t work” I always read that and thought I am not sure if after 100 times of trying something I would keep going…maybe even after 50 or 25 depending on the situation. Yet look what having a deadline does to most of us. As a deadline draws nearer our action intensifies, we begin to try anything and everything to get this accomplished. Have you ever done this? maybe the night before an exam? Even if we fall a little short we walk away with more knowledge and a far better chance of succeeding next time. An example from my personal life is as follows. Let’s say i set a certain amount of my book I would like to sell in a month. As the end of the month grows closer I will try many different methods to get my book in the hands of as many people as I can. Some may work, some may not. Now if the end of the month comes and i am short of my number should I feel terrible? Like a letdown? No! I sold more books than if I had no goal at all. Than if I had been afraid to try and afraid to fail. I also will have learned some new marketing tools and some that may be a waste of time and money. All because I wasn’t afraid to fail. Think of your own life. What are you fearing doing? What may you learn if you embrace that possibility of failing? Why are goals so damn important anyway? That is what we will look at tomorrow!

USE YOUR RESOURCES

A funny thing happened to me the other day. Ok, funny things happen to me most days. Especially Friday because it involves my good friend Margie and rum. This was not one of those moments. You see, I am always looking for ways to improve this blog, and listening to ideas. Quite often you will see them make the pages of this website. While typing the post ‘Picking your posse’ last week an idea just popped in my head. Usually that is to hit the snooze one more time or have one more slice of pizza, but this was neither of these so I thought I should listen. I remarked in that post how my friends have changed and how I discovered I had naturally gravitated to a more positive and inspiring group of people. Why was I not using this precious resource? A lot of what you read here comes from the minds of great people in history. Lincoln, Martin Luther King jr, Tony Robbins, my own mother. Still here was this group of genuinely inspiring and optimistic people. Why have I not been picking their brains? So I started. I asked George, the insurance sales man his secret to happiness. Truly the world of insurance can’t be all sunshine and rainbows. I also asked Jim, who sells fireplace blowers. I began to ask all of my customers at both the post office and the bar what was the secret to their happiness. The answers varied, but there were some common traits as well. Then, proving that all people in our life are gifts I began to ask those less than inspiring characters I encountered the same question. Oddly enough, there was patterns there as well. Over the next couple of days we will explore both. For today, however, I encourage you to do the same. Find someone who has a genuinely sunny disposition and ask them their secret. I will let you in on a clue. Happy people tend to be eager to share what makes them so. You may even wish to do the same with those who genuinely seem unhappy. If nothing else you may get their minds pondering the joy in their life. See if you notice any patterns. Feel free to let me know. Oh, and if you see me on the street and have any ideas on how to make this blog better, feel free to do that do.

THE TALLEST BUILDING IN TOWN

I was listening to a cd the other day.  I want to say it was one by Tony Robbins.  It reminded me of a situation that often gets under my skin.  Now I try not to let too many things get to me, but here is something that does.  Perhaps you know someone who does this.  Perhaps you, yourself are guilty of it as I think we all are at some point in our lives.  The question is simple, How do you get to have the tallest building in town.  There are two answers.  Which one you choose goes to show a lot about the kind of life you are living at the time and the kind you are going to live in the future.  The two choices are simple.  If you want the tallest building in town you can either knock everyone else’s down or you can work on your own.  Now I think the answer as to which is better is fairly obvious.  Still, how many of us hear people, or ourselves put people down, or minimize their accomplishments because we don’t feel strongly about our own?  This causes us three kinds of problems.  First, when people hear you belittling someone else’s life, they think, even subconsciously, “how are they talking about me when I am not around?”  This may lead to mistrust on the part of your friends, or at the very least, a lack of desire to share details of their life with you.  What that gets you is relationships that are not as close and beneficial as they could be.  Second, when we put down someone else, it is because we feel inferior to them in some fashion.  By putting them down, instead of forcing ourselves to work harder we provide ourselves an excuse not to improve our lives.  In other words work on our own building.  Lastly, when it comes to the law of attraction, when we celebrate our friends, and even our enemies victories no matter how hard that may be, it draws the same thing to us.  In simple terms, when you finally achieve a goal do you want everyone putting you down? Saying you succeeded just because “you were lucky” or “got all the breaks” I would guess the answer would be no.  So next time you hear of someone’s success. Cheer them on.  Celebrate as if the success was your own.  You will make them feel better and life will work better for you.  If we all just worked on own buildings we would build a far better city, and a far better planet.  We can’t control what other’s do anyway, so let us just focus on us.  Start the positive revolution one person at a time.

What language do you speak?

The voice in my head asked me a very interesting question the other day.  Which is amazing because usually it is mentioning something about rum or pizza.  Terrible vices aside, the question was “How many different languages are there in the world?”.  To skip you from having to leave this site and head to Google, the answer, though debated is in the neighborhood of 6500.  Why on earth is this relevant, and what does it have to do with living an amazing life?  That is another great question and one that leads us to my next point.   In the past how many things have we tried learning that just never ‘clicked’?  I know I have quite a few.  English language for one, which is ironic considering my book is almost complete.  Maybe playing a certain musical instrument? Cooking a certain dish? Math? Science? History? Some of us just find a way to get through the subject and hope we never have a call to use it later in life.  Imagine if we had applied this same logic when we were learning to walk, or to talk?  There are some people I may speculate did give up, but that is a topic for another day.  Truth is we just kept at it, often approaching the subject from every different angle.  I began to ponder how this related to learning how to transform your life.  Now before you think I am going to tell you to read a book on motivation written in Zulu when you live in Peru let us slow down for a minute.  Think of how many books you have seen or heard of on how to improve your life?  How many different life coaches are out there? We both know there are a lot in both categories. Why? If there is a magical secret do we need both “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff”  as well as “Think and Grow Rich”?   If one person could teach us how to succeed in life to we need both the late Zig Ziglar as well as Tony Robbins?  The answer in short is ‘yes’.  To explain why, let me ask you another question.  Do they all agree?  To they all have the same plan and state it the same way?  You know the answer is no.  So who is right? They all are.  Then again, they all are wrong too.  Before you think I started listening to the rum voice in my head let me explain.  We all are unique creatures.  We all have had unique experiences.  That is why it is important to expose ourselves to as many different voices as we can.  I can think of no better field where this is so evident than self-improvement.  Haven’t you ever been having a conversation with a group of people and had to ask someone “What are they trying to say?” When your friend explains it, suddenly you discover that person was speaking a language you know and they are not crazy.  Ok, at least it should work that way most of the time.  The difference here is just the words being used. So remember to do yourself the service of exploring as many paths to motivation as you can and go with the one, or ones, that work for you.  I hope I will be one of them, but if not that is ok too. Just search and discover the voice that speaks to you!

KEEP AN OPEN MIND

Yesterday while listening to one of my favorite motivational speakers, Anthony Robbins, I heard him say something that made me understand why I seem to agree with much of what he says.  He said that when you should listen to what makes sense to you and the rest say “Well that Tony Robbins he is just crazy”.  It is refreshing to hear someone not profess to be ‘the answer’ or ‘the guru’.  When I mention to someone I listen to him, or Wayne Dyer, or Joe Vitale or read “How to Win Friends and Influence People” or watch the secret, they always seem to stress what they do not like about that person, book, or whatever it may be.  I’m here to tell you, expose yourself to as much material as you can.  What makes no sense to one person may change the life of the next.  Decide for yourself.  Make good use of your public library, or better yet, find a friend who is also interested in improving themselves and their life.  I am fortunate enough to have a few of those.  In fact, one friend of mine meets me for lunch and we exchange books and ideas.  If a person knows you it is like a second set of ears and eyes to look out for something that you may benefit from.  Plus, when going through any transformation there are always bound to be challenges and it is great to have someone in your corner cheering you on.  So take that class on self-hypnosis, pick up that book you’ve been meaning to try to listen to that motivational speaker your friend is raving about.  Even if you only get one thing out of it, you have just improved your life that little bit more. Who knows you may just find what you need to take your life to that next level!  So keep an open mind and have fun exploring.