Lead by Example

It’s funny how often the problem is you. Whenever you don’t get the results you want, you need to swallow your pride and look inward to see if you were part of the problem. Ask yourself these three questions:
1. Did I clearly articulate the goal?
2. Did I give myself enough time and resources to accomplish the goal?
3. Did I really believe I could do it?
Leaders need to understand how profoundly they affect those around them. Optimism and pessimism are equally infectious. You directly set the tone of everyone around you.
Successful people make time for those who answer to them. Unsuccessful or poor leaders treat their subordinates as necessary Evils. Mediocre leaders don’t even take the trouble to know their people. As a successful person you know that you don’t do it alone; you need to send a signal to people you work with that they are important. As a matter of fact, nothing else should be more important to you.
No matter what your current status is, start thinking of yourself as a leader. Leaders are not born; they are made. Lead by example. A leader is a person who continually looks for solutions to problems. Leaders know how to be held accountable. Leaders must acknowledge mistakes and take responsibility. It is far more important to correct the mistakes than to worry about making them.
Show me a person who doesn’t make mistakes and I’ll show you a person who doesn’t do anything. Mistakes are blessings in disguise. Mistakes account for many of the great discoveries of our time. Think of vulcanized rubber, Post-It notes, etc. Don’t ever stop trying.

Today’s Exercise: Make up your mind today that you are a leader.
Today’s Affirmations: I attract success and happiness into my life every day.
Points to Ponder: Mistakes are blessings in disguise. It is far more important to correct the mistakes than to worry about making them.

Happiness Is Your 100th Birthday

Imagine your one-hundredth birthday. Most people will say they don’t want to live that long, because by that time they will be old and feeble, alone in a nursing home and unable to do anything for themselves. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. Your body is designed to last several hundred years, but we abuse it so much that it breaks down way before its time. All through this book we talk about how your mind controls your body and that over eighty percent of all disease and illness is psychosomatic.
What happens if we finally stop feeding our mind with negative prompters and commands? What happens when we realize that happiness is a pill we take to eliminate aging, sickness, disease, boredom, hatred, jealousy, frustration, and fear? What happens when we eliminate the idea of retirement from our thinking process?
Retirement is working forty years at a job we hate with our mind fixated on retiring and doing what we like, only to find out that at age sixty-five or older, our body cannot do the things we wanted to retire for. There is no balance in most people’s lives. They work fifty weeks, take two weeks off and try to cram a years worth of fun in those two weeks, only to find out they are really too tired or broke to do anything meaningful. I have a friend who spent his vacation painting his house. I asked him if he loved painting, he said no and that he hated it. Some vacation, huh?
In some European countries, vacations are four or five weeks and most of the time is spent traveling to new countries and cultures. In the United States, there are many, many people who have never traveled more than one hundred miles away from their home. The secret of longevity is happiness and work. Take a lot of small vacations and get a hobby that makes your heart sing.
I’m seventy years old. I just bought a new home with a thirty-year mortgage. I intend to pay off this mortgage. I’m Chief Executive Officer of three different companies. I intend to write a new book every year for the next thirty years. I’m writing this page at 5:00 A.M. and I’m not the least bit tired. My best advice to you is to get a life. Happiness is the magic pill.

Today’s Exercise: Get up at 5:00 A.M. and do something you Love.
Today’s Affirmation: I am as happy as I make up my mind to be.
Points to Ponder: The secret of longevity is happiness and work.

Continued Success

All great men have followed one success, with another, and another. Thomas Edison did not stop when he invented the talking machine (record player). Next, he invented the light bulb. It did not work with his first try; it came on after 3000 failures. Edison said, “I now know 3000 ways a light bulb won’t work.” Did he quit? No, thank goodness, or I would be writing this in the dark.” Edison patented over an additional 300 inventions.
Edison used to go fishing with his friends, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone. One day, Edison’s wife asked her husband what he and his friends did while fishing. They had no hooks and no bait. Edison’s reply was, “We’re just fishing for ideas.”
The more the mind does, the more it can do. Ideas are released energy. You can do more and better work than you ever have done before with this released energy. You can know more than you know now. You know from your own experience that under proper mental conditions of joy or enthusiasm, you can do three or four times the work without fatigue than you could ordinarily do with this released energy.
Tiredness is more boredom than actual physical fatigue. You can work almost indefinitely when the work is a pleasure. One of the most famous and most reproduced poem, The Victor, by C.W. Longenecker, starts out by saying:
“If you think you are beaten, you are;
If you think you dare not, you don’t;”
If you like to win, but think you can’t, it’s almost certain you won’t.
The poem ends by saying:
“Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man; But, sooner or later, the man who wins is the man who thinks he can.”
The key word throughout this message is THINK.
It all begins in a person’s mind and thinking capacity. Success begins with a person’s will; it’s all in the state of mind.

Today’s Exercise: Use your mind, it’s free!

Today’s Affirmation: I have a positive mental attitude, therefore I am a success.

Points to Ponder: Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man; but sooner or later the man who wins is the man who thinks he can.

Genius

You were born a genius and slowly life convinced you that you were something a lot less. As far as I know, God does not make mistakes. Your body might not be perfect but your Subconscious Mind is. Have you ever wondered why a two-year-old can learn any language you teach it in just a few short months? Have you ever seen a six-year-old on a skateboard doing impossible maneuvers?
Right now, you have the creative genius to be a millionaire. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Ask yourself these questions: Do I have enough intelligence and ability to invent the “Pet Rock?” Somebody did and made millions. How about the Frisbee, do you know how that was invented? Some workers in a pie factory were bored during their lunch hour so they started throwing and catching empty pie plates in the parking lot. A motorist passing by said to himself, “That looks like fun.” He patented the idea and he too made millions.
Do you know how the hula-hoop craze got started? A hardware storeowner made the first ones out of plastic, and put them in his store window with a price tag of a dollar. Nobody bought any so he lowered the price to fifty cents. Still, no one bought any. Finally, he lowered it to twenty-five cents. There were still no takers. One day, a five-year-old boy was staring at it in the window. The little boy asked, “ How does it work?” The man in an effort to get rid of the kid said, “Look, if I give you one will you go away?”
The kid said, “Yeah.” The man took the hoop out of the window, walked outside, and handed it to the boy. The boy was so excited he couldn’t wait to try it. He put it around his waist and started gyrating. The hoop was flying around his little waist. Within minutes, a crowd of kids gathered around and they all wanted one. The storeowner quickly changed the twenty-five cents on the sign to two dollars and fifty cents. He couldn’t produce them fast enough, for every kid in town had to have one. You see, sometimes Geniuses need a good kick in the rear to get started.

Today’s Exercise: See the possibility in everything, and then everything is possible.
Today’s Affirmation: I have a positive mental attitude, therfore I am a success.
Points to Ponder: As far as I know, God does not make mistakes.

A Lack of Ambition to Aim High

There is no hope for you if you don’t have a definite goal to aim for. This goal may change from time to time, but change is always necessary to zone in on your target. Changing a goal reminds me of watching scenes from World War II on The History Channel. An enemy plane is diving in on a ship; the gunners are firing furiously into the sky, and yet, the plane still bears down on the ship. Unless the plane actually flies into the wall of lead, it ends up hitting the ship.
Success can elude us if we are firing out of control. In today’s warfare the ship fires one missile before the plane is even in sight, when the plane zigzags, the missile zigzags. Usually the plane is destroyed before the gunner actually sees it. Our new philosophy is Ready, Fire, Aim. So, if you are Ready, Fire, and Aim high. It is better to aim at the stars and hit only the moon, than to aim at the moon and hit your front yard.
There is a price for success, as well as a price for failure. You must be willing to pay the price. I can tell you from my own experience that the price for failure is always much higher than the price for success.
God did not give us the ability to dream without the ability to fulfill our dreams. Ambition is part of dreaming. Know this and know it well. Ambition is the power that allows us to go forward when things look the darkest. Ambition will always outdo skill. Ambition is simply your decision to write your own ticket. Ambition is disguised in the beginning as being enthusiastically discontented. Ambition is reading this book and books like it.

Today’s Exercise: Set your goals high; you take care of the “WHAT” and God will take care of the HOW.
Today’s Affirmation: I do only those things that make me successful.
Points to Ponder: Ambition is the power that allows us to go forward when things look the darkest.